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On death row, Christmas
just another day
Doug Russell -
McAlester News-Capital & Democrat
Christmas, like freedom,
is largely a state of mind for many of the men
on Oklahoma's death row.
"For some, it's just another day," said death
row inmate Don Hawkins.
"Every day is pretty much the same."
Hawkins, 42, has been
on death row since June 1986 for a murder in
Oklahoma County. If anything,
Hawkins said, life around the holidays is
harder on the prisoners.
"Sometimes the unit is
understaffed around the holidays, so we might go a
week without getting
a shower," he said. He shrugged. "That's just the
way things are."
Death row inmates commonly
are locked in their cells 23 hours a day.
Although the cells are
comparatively large, Hawkins said, the routine can
wear on a person. That
makes the trips to "the yard" special at any time
of year.
"The yard" describes the
exercise areas of the Oklahoma State
Penitentiary. On H-Unit,
the unit that houses Oklahoma's death row, the
yard is an enclosed area
with high walls and a heavy mesh over the top.
Death row inmates go
to the yard in groups of 5 or 6.
"You don't know who you'll
be with from one day to the next," Hawkins
said. "The walls are
about 18 feet high, I guess," the 6-foot-2 Hawkins
said. "You can't really
see the sun unless it's right overhead because
the mesh is so thick.
"Sometimes, some of the
guys hope a bird will fly over while they're in
the yard. Even so, all
you could see would be a shadow."
The food that inmates get makes a big difference around the holidays.
"Some years, we get real
turkey or real ham," Hawkins said. "Other years,
we get that processed
stuff. When we get the real thing, that's pretty
special.
"Food can be a very emotional
thing when you don't have any say about
it."
Thoughts of gifts matter
less to death row inmates than to many other
people, Hawkins said.
"When you look back, you
don't think about the things you've gotten or
the things you've given.
You think about your family and being together
with them.
"You remember the family,
because that's what holidays are all about
anyway. You already miss
them, so that can make it harder for some
people."
Although some of the inmates
on death row have families or friends who
come to see them or otherwise
make the holidays a little more bearable,
others do not. In either
case, Christmas is personal for each inmate.
"It's kind of like a sense
of freedom for us," Hawkins said. "Much of
what you go through is
in your perception."
To illustrate his point,
Hawkins told a story. 2 men, a paralytic and a
man with a terrible lung
disease, were confined to a hospital room. Each
day, the medical staff
would help the man with the lung disease sit up
for an hour and, during
that time, he would gaze out the window and
describe what he saw
to his paralyzed roommate whose bed was on the side
of the room away from
the window.
"He'd describe children
running and playing, a father walking with his
child or a bluebird in
a tree across the way," Hawkins said. "And his
descriptions gave the
other man a sense of hope."
One day, the man with
the lung disease died. The paralyzed man asked to
be moved close to the
window and, when the nurses obliged, asked them to
help him sit up so he
could see out. Again the nurses obliged, but all
that could be seen from
the window was a wall.
Shocked, the paralyzed
man told the nurses about the wonderful things his
former roommate had described
and about how those descriptions had given
him hope. The nurses
were a little shook up by this and told the
paralyzed man something
he didn't know about his roommate.
"He was blind," they said.
"The point is, freedom,
like the holidays, is largely in your mind,"
Hawkins said. "It's how
you think, how you dream, that determines how you
see things. And how you
perceive things, that's your freedom. That's your
Christmas."
(source: Doug Russell
- McAlester News-Capital & Democrat)
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