Riffs From The Row

By William Van Poyck - June 26, 2005

So, I’ve been invited to write a regular column, to commit to paper my mundane and scattered thoughts on life, and death on America ’s death row. With 35 years (give or take) behind prison bars, the last 17 on the row, you’d think I’d have plenty to say. And I do, for sure, though I’m not so pretentious as to believe that my every thought and utterance is worthy of notice. Still, as I sit here on my bunk, casting about for a topic for my first column, my thoughts keep returning to the subject that has been most pressing on my mind.

You see, on July 11, just fifteen days from now, the Commonwealth of Virginia, where I currently reside, intends to execute Robin Lovitt, a friend of mine. And given the success that Virginia has enjoyed in executing its citizens there is no reason to believe (though there is always hope, that most ephemeral of luxuries for those sentenced to death) that the Commonwealth will not accomplish its goal.

This is the part of living on the row that is the hardest, watching the guards shackle up someone you know and escort him, shuffling along in chains and handcuffs, out of the cellblock, for the short trip to Greensville where the death house is. You watch this guy – he may be a friend, maybe not – as he flashes everyone a lopsided grin, maybe tries to wave his chained-up hands, and you know that you are watching a dead man. And you know that he knows it too.

Here in Virginia , unlike most other states, very, very few men ever make the return trip back from Greensville. In my almost six years here I’ve seen only three men return with last-minute stays of execution, and two of them were subsequently executed. They don’t believe in stays here in Virginia , nor do they subscribe to notions of mercy or compassion. Here it is an assembly line of death, or “swift and sure justice” as the established prefers to describe it. Of course justice, like beauty, is a subjective term, and lies in the eye of the beholder.

Anyway, Rob’s plight once again reminds me of the disparity- the wide gulf, actually – between how society views a death row prisoner (faceless, anonymous, just a number) and how they are seen by a fellow prisoner. When you live with people in such close proximity, day and night, year in and year out, you are forced to see past that single essential terrible event that sent him to death row. Instead, you see his essential humanity. You understand that he’s some mother’s son, that he has family, loved ones, perhaps a wife and kids, that he laughs and cries like everyone else. Perhaps you meet his family and children in the visiting park, or you read his poems, and listen to his hopes and dreams. You may despise what he did to get on the row; you may even want to hate him before you’ve even met him. But as days turn into months, and months turn into years, the things you have in common begin to outweigh and outnumber the differences that separate you…

It’s said that it’s much harder to kill a man whom you know, to murder a man while you look into his eyes; which may be why society works so hard to not recognize the humanity in all of us, why they keep us locked in these dark cages until they come and drag us off to the death chamber. Yes, this is a hard and ugly place, with a rapacious appetite for taking human life…

And so I sit here on my bunk, looking at my calendar with its rows of X-ed out boxes, each one representing another day that will never be seen again, hoping that fate is kind to my friend Rob, and that he’s still alive when I write my next column.

William Van Poyck was sentenced to death in Florida but was transferred to Virginia’s death row by the governor of Florida after Florida State Prison guards murdered Van Poyck’s codefendant, Frank Vales, in his death row cell in 1999.

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