On October 29, 1999, two weeks after he was convicted, Donte Drumm arrived on death row at the Ellis Unit at the prison in Huntsville, a town of thirty-five thousand, about ninety miles north of downtown Houston. He was processed and issued the standard wardrobe of two sets of white shirts and pants, two white jumpsuits, four pairs of boxers, two white T-shirts, one pair of rubber shower shoes, one thin blanket, and one small pillow. He was also given a toothbrush, a tube of toothpaste, a plastic comb, and one roll of toilet paper. He was assigned to a small cell with one concrete bunk, and a stainless steel toilet and sink. He became one of 452 male inmates on death row. There were twenty-two condemned women housed at another prison near Gatesville, Texas.
Because he had no record of bad behavior in prison, he was classified as a Level I. As such, he was allowed a few extra privileges. He could work up to four hours a day in the garment factory on death row. He could spend his exercise time in a yard with a few other inmates. He could shower once a day, alone without supervision. He could participate in religious services, craft workshops, and educational programs. He could receive a maximum of $75 a month from the outside. He could purchase a television, a radio, writing supplies, and some food from the commissary. And he was allowed visitors twice a week. Those who violated the rules were demoted to Level II, where the privileges were curtailed. The bad boys were reduced to Level III, where all goodies were taken away.
Though he had been in a county jail for almost a year, the shock of death row was overwhelming. The noise was relentless--loud radios and televisions, the constant banter of the other inmates, the shouts from the guards, the whistling and gurgling from the old plumbing pipes, and the banging of the cell doors being opened and closed. In one letter to his mother, he wrote: "The racket never stops. Never. I try to ignore it, and for an hour or so I can, but then someone will scream or start singing badly and a guard will yell and everybody will laugh. This goes on at all hours. The radios and televisions are turned off at ten at night, and that's when the loudmouths start their foolishness. Living like an animal in a cage is bad enough, but the noise is driving me crazy."
But he soon learned that he could endure the confinement and the rituals. He wasn't sure, though, if he could live without his family and friends. He missed his brothers and sister and father, but the thought of being permanently separated from his mother was enough to make him weep. He cried for hours, always with his face down, in the dark, and very quietly.
Death row is a nightmare for serial killers and ax murderers. For an innocent man, it's a life of mental torture that the human spirit is not equipped to survive.
His sentence of death took on a new meaning on November 16 when Desmond Jennings was executed for killing two people during a bad drug deal. The following day, John Lamb was executed for the murder of a traveling salesman, the day after Lamb had been paroled from prison. The next day, November 18, Jose Gutierrez was executed for an armed robbery and murder he committed with his brother. The brother had been executed five years earlier. Jennings had been on death row for four years, Lamb sixteen, Gutierrez ten. A guard told Donte that the average stay on death row before execution was ten years, which, he said proudly, was the shortest in the nation. Once again, Texas was number one. "But don't worry," the guard said. "It's the longest ten years of your life, and, of course, the last." Ha, ha.
Three weeks later, on December 8, David Long was executed for the hatchet slayings of three women in a Dallas suburb. During his trial, Long told the jury he would kill again if not given the death penalty. The jury obliged. On December 9, James Beathard was executed for another triple homicide. Five days later, Robert Atworth was executed, after only three years on death row. The following day, Sammie Felder was executed after a twenty-three-year wait.
After Felder's death Donte wrote a letter to Robbie Flak in which he said, "Hey, man, these dudes are serious around here. Seven killings in four weeks. Sammie was number 199 since they got the green light a few years back. He's also number 35 for this year, and they've got 50 scheduled for next year. You got to do something, man."
Living conditions went from bad to worse. Administrators within the Texas Department of Criminal Justice (TDCJ) were in the process of moving death row from Huntsville to the Polunsky Unit near the town of Livingston, forty miles away. Though no official reason was given, the move came after an unsuccessful escape attempt by five condemned prisoners. Four were captured within the prison. The fifth one was found floating in a river, cause of death unknown. Not long thereafter, the decision was made to tighten security and move the men to Polunsky. After four months in Huntsville, Donte was shackled and put on a bus with twenty others.
At the new place, he was assigned to a cell that measured six feet by ten feet. There were no windows. The door was solid metal, with a small square opening so the guards could look in. Below it was a narrow slot for a food tray. The cell was enclosed, no bars to look through, no way to see another human. It was a cramped bunker of concrete and steel.
The people who ran the prison decided that a twenty-three-hour-a-day lockup was the proper way to control the prisoners and prevent escape and violence. Virtually all forms of inmate contact were eliminated. No work programs, religious services, group recreation, nothing that would allow human interaction. Televisions were banned. For one hour each day, Donte was led to a "day room," a small, enclosed, indoor space not much larger than his cell. There, alone and watched by a guard, he was supposed to enjoy whatever recreation he could fabricate in his mind. Twice a week, weather permitting, he was taken outside to a small, semi-grassy area known as the "dog kennel." For an hour, he could look at the sky.
Remarkably, he soon found himself longing for the nonstop noise he had so despised at Huntsville.
After a month in Polunsky, in a letter to Robbie Flak, he wrote: "For twenty-three hours a day, I'm locked in this closet. The only time I speak to another person is when the guards bring food, or what they call food around here. So all I see is guards, not the kinds of people I'd choose. I'm surrounded by murderers, real murderers, and I'd rather talk to them than talk to the guards. Everything in here is designed to make life as bad as possible. Take mealtime. They feed us breakfast at three in the morning. Why? Nobody knows, and nobody asks. They wake us up to feed us crap that most dogs would run from. Lunch is at three in the afternoon. Supper is at ten at night. Cold eggs and white bread for breakfast, sometimes applesauce and pancakes. Peanut butter sandwiches for lunch. Sometimes baloney, bad baloney. Rubber chicken and instant mashed potatoes for supper. Some judge somewhere said that we're entitled to twenty-two hundred calories a day--I'm sure you know this--and if they figure they're a little short, they just pile on some more white bread. It's always stale. Yesterday for lunch I got five slices of white bread, cold pork and beans, and a chunk of moldy cheddar cheese. Can we sue over the food? Probably already been done. But I can take the food. I can take the searches at all hours. I think I can handle anything, Robbie, but I'm not sure about the solitary confinement. Please do something."
He became even more depressed and despondent, and was sleeping twelve hours a day. To fight boredom, he replayed every football game of his high school career. He pretended to be a radio announcer, calling the action, adding the color, always with the great Donte Drumm as the star. He rattled off the names of his teammates, everyone but Joey Gamble, and gave fictitious names to his opponents. Twelve games for his sophomore season, thirteen for his junior, and whereas Marshall had beaten Slone both years in the play-offs, Donte would have none of it in prison. The Slone Warriors won those games, and advanced until they slaughtered Odessa Permian in the championship game, in Cowboys Stadium, in front of seventy-five thousand fans. Donte was the Most Valuable Player. Mr. Texas Football for both years, something that had never been done before.
After the games, after he'd signed off his broadcasts, Donte wrote letters. His goal each day was to write at least five. He read his Bible for hours and memorized verses of scripture. When Robbie filed another thick brief in another court, Donte read every word. And to prove it, he wrote long, grateful letters to his lawyer.
But after a year in isolation, he began to fear that he was losing his memory. The scores of his old games slipped away. Names of teammates were forgotten. He couldn't rattle off the twenty-seven books of the New Testament. He was lethargic and couldn't shake his depression. His mind was disintegrating. He was sleeping sixteen hours a day and eating half the food they brought him.
On March 14,............