The Confession

  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, 2001, two events almost pushed him over the edge. The first was a letter from his mother. It was three pages long, in the handwriting that he treasured, and after he read the first page, he quit. He could not finish reading a letter. He wanted to and he knew that he should, but his eyes would not focus and his mind would not process her words. Two hours later, he received the news that the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals had affirmed his conviction. He wept for a long time, then stretched out on his bunk and stared at the ceiling in a semi-catatonic fog. He didn't move for hours. He refused lunch.

  In the last game of his junior year, in the play-offs against Marshall, his left hand had been stepped on by a three-hundred-pound offensive tackle. Three fingers were crushed and broken. The pain was instant and so intense that he almost passed out. A trainer taped the fingers together, and on the next series Donte was back in the game. For almost the entire second half, he played like a wild man. The pain made him crazy. Between plays, he stood stoically and watched the offensive huddle, never once shaking his hand, never touching it, in no way acknowledging the pain that made his eyes water. From somewhere, he found the iron will and the incredible toughness to finish the game.

  Though he'd forgotten that score too, he vowed to reach down again, reach into the depths of his gut and the subconscious layers of a brain that was failing him, and find the will to stop his slide into insanity. He managed to pull himself off the bed. He fell to the floor and did twenty push-ups. Then he did sit-ups until his abdomen ached. He ran in place until he could no longer lift his feet. Squats, leg lifts, more pushups and sit-ups. When he was covered in sweat, he sat down and made a schedule. At five each morning, he would begin a precise series of exercises and work nonstop for sixty minutes. At 6:30 a.m., he would write two letters. At 7:00 a.m., he would memorize a new verse of scripture. And so on. His goal was a thousand push-ups and sit-ups a day. He would write ten letters, and not just to his family and close friends. He would find some new pen pals. He would read at least one book a day. He would cut his sleep in half. He would begin a journal.

  These goals were printed neatly, labeled "The Routine," and stuck to the wall beside his metal mirror. Donte found the enthusiasm to stick to his regimen. He attacked it each morning. After a month, he was doing twelve hundred push-ups and sit-ups a day, and the hard muscles felt good. The exercise brought the blood back to his brain. The reading and writing opened new worlds. A young girl in New Zealand wrote him a letter, and he shot one right back. Her name was Millie. She was fifteen years old, and her parents approved the correspondence, but they monitored his letters. When she sent a small photo of herself, Donte fell in love. He was soon doing two thousand push-ups and sit-ups, spurred on by the dream of one day meeting Millie. His journal was filled with graphic, erotic scenes of the couple as they traveled the world. She wrote him once a month, and for every letter she mailed, she got at least three in return.

  Roberta Drumm made the decision not to tell Donte his father was dying of heart disease. And when, during one of her many routine visits, she told him his father was dead, Donte's fragile world began to crack again. The knowledge that his father had died before he could walk out of prison fully exonerated proved too much. He allowed himself to break his rigid routine. He skipped a day, then a second. He couldn't stop crying and trembling.

  Then Millie dropped him. Her letters arrived around the fifteenth of each month, every month for over two years, plus cards for his birthday and Christmas. For a reason Donte would never know, they stopped. He sent her letter after letter and received nothing in return. He accused the prison guards of tampering with his mail and even convinced Robbie to make some threats. Gradually, though, he accepted the fact that she was gone. He fell into a dark and long depression, with no interest in The Routine. He began a hunger strike, didn't eat for ten days, but gave it up when no one seemed to care. He went weeks with no exercise, no reading, no journal entries, and letters only to his mother and Robbie. Before long, he'd forgotten the old football scores again and could only recall a few of the more famous scripture verses. He would stare at the ceiling for hours, mumbling over and over, "Jesus, I'm losing my mind."

  ------

  The Visitors' Room at Polunsky is a large, open area with plenty of tables and chairs and vending machines along the walls. In the center, there is a long row of booths, all divided by glass. The inmates sit on one side, their visitors on the other, and all conversations are by phone. Behind the inmates, guards are always looming, watching. To one side, there are three booths used for attorney visits. They, too, are divided by glass, and all consultations are by phone.

  In the early years, Donte was thrilled at the sight of Robbie Flak sitting at the narrow counter on the other side of the glass. Robbie was his lawyer, his friend, his fierce defender, and Robbie was the
man who would right this incredible wrong. Robbie was fighting hard and loud and threatening hellfire for those who were mistreating his client. So many of the condemned had bad lawyers on the outside or no lawyers at all. Their appeals had run, the system was finished with them. No one out there was advocating on their behalf. But Donte had Mr. Robbie Flak, and he knew at some moment in each day his lawyer was thinking about him and scheming a new way to get him out.

  But after eight years on death row, Donte had lost hope. He had not lost faith in Robbie; he'd simply realized that the Texas systems were much more powerful than one lawyer. Absent a miracle, this wrong would run its course. Robbie had explained that they would file motions until the very end, but he was also realistic.

  They spoke through the phone, each happy to see the other. Robbie brought greetings from the entire Drumm family. He'd visited their home the night before, and gave all the details. Donte listened with a smile, but said little. His conversational skills had deteriorated along with everything else. Physically, he was a skinny, stooped, aging man of twenty-seven. Mentally, he was a mess. He could not keep up with time, never knew if it was night or day, often skipped meals, showers, and his daily hour of recreation. He refused to say a word to the guards and often had trouble following their most basic commands. They were somewhat sympathetic because they knew he was not a threat. He sometimes slept eighteen to twenty hours a day and when he wasn't asleep, he was unable to do anything. He had not exercised in years. He never read and managed to write a letter or two each week, but only to his family and Robbie. The letters were short, often incoherent, and filled with misspelled words and glaring grammatical errors. The writing was so sloppy that it was disheartening. A letter from Donte was not a pleasant envelope to open.

  Dr. Kristi Hinze had read and analyzed hundreds of letters he'd written during his eight years on death row. She had already formed the opinion that the solitary confinement had driven him far from reality. He was depressed, lethargic, delusional, paranoid, schizophrenic, and suicidal. He was hearing voices, those of his late father and his high school football coach. In layman's terms, his brain had shut down. He was insane.

  After a few minutes of summarizing where they were with the last-minute appeals, and covering the events scheduled for the next two days, Robbie introduced Dr. Hinze. She took the seat and the phone and said hello. Robbie stood close behind her with a legal pad and pen. For over an hour, she asked questions about his daily routine, his habits, dreams, thoughts, desires, and feelings about death. He surprised her by saying that 213 men had been executed while he had been on death row. Robbie confirmed the number to be accurate. But there were no more surprises, no more specifics. She quizzed him at length about the reasons he was there, and why he was to be executed. He did not know, did not understand why they were doing this to him. Yes, he was certain that he was about to be executed. Just look at the other 213.

  One hour was enough for Dr. Hinze. She handed the phone back to Robbie, who sat down and began talking about the details for Thursday. He told Donte that his mother was determined to watch the execution, and this upset him. He began crying and finally put the phone down to wipe his face. He refused to pick it up, and when he stopped crying, he locked his arms across his chest and stared at the floor. Finally, he stood and walked to the door behind him.

  ------

  The rest of the team waited outside in the van, a guard nearby, casually watching them. When Robbie and Dr. Hinze returned to the van, Aaron waved at the guard and drove away. They stopped at a pizza place on the edge of town and had a quick lunch. They had just settled back in the van and were leaving Livingston when the phone rang. It was Fred Pryor. Joey Gamble had called and wanted to meet for a drink after work.

  CHAPTER 11

  In a normal week, Reverend Schroeder would spend most of Tuesday afternoon locked in his office with the phones on hold as he searched for his next sermon's topic. He looked at current events, thought about the needs of his flock, prayed a lot, and, if nothing happened, would go to the files and look at old sermons. When the idea finally hit, he would write a quick outline and then begin the full text. At that point, the pressure was off, and he could practice and rehearse until Sunday. Few things felt worse, though, than waking up on Wednesday morning with no idea what he would say on Sunday.

  But with Travis Boyette on his mind, he could concentrate on nothing else. He took a long nap after lunch Tuesday and felt thickheaded, almost groggy when it was over. Dana had left the office to tend to the children, and Keith puttered around the church, unable to do anything productive. He finally left. He thought about driving to the hospital and checking on Boyette, in hopes that perhaps the tumor had shifted and the man had changed his mind. But that was unlikely.

  While Dana cooked dinner and the boys were busy with homework, Keith found solitude in the garage. His latest project was to organize it, paint it, and then plan to keep it shipshape forever. He usually enjoyed the mindless cleaning, but Boyette managed to ruin even that. After half an hour, he gave up and took his laptop to their bedroom and locked the door. The Drumm Web site was like a magnet, a thick juicy novel, with so much he had not yet read.

  THE KOFFEE-GRALE SCANDAL

  The prosecution of Donte Drumm was led by Paul Koffee, the district attorney for Slone and Chester County. The presiding judge at Donte's trial was Vivian Grale. Both Koffee and Grale were elected officials. At the time of the trial, Koffee had been in office for thirteen years. Grale had been on the bench for five. Koffee was married to his wife, Sara, and they had, and still have, three children. Grale was married to her husband, Frank, and they had, and still have, two children.

  The Koffees are now divorced, as are the Grales.

  The only significant motion filed by the defense that was granted by Judge Grale was a request to change the venue of the trial. Given its sensational nature and extensive coverage in the media, a fair trial was impossible in Slone. Attorneys for Donte wanted to move it far away, and they suggested either Amarillo or Lubbock, each about five hundred miles from Slone. Judge Grale granted the request--experts agree that she really had no choice, to have the trial in Slone would have been to create certain reversible error--and she decided to hold it in Paris, Texas. The courthouse in Paris is exactly forty-nine miles from the courthouse in Slone. After the conviction, attorneys for Donte argued vehemently on appeal that trying the case in Paris was no different from trying it in Slone. Indeed, during the jury selection process, over half of the prospective jurors admitted they had heard something about the case.

  Other than the change of venue, Judge Grale showed no patience with the defense. Her most crucial ruling was to allow Donte's coerced confession. Without it, the prosecution had no case, no evidence, nothing. The confession was their case.

  But other rulings were almost as damaging. The police and prosecutors used a favorite tactic when they produced a jailhouse snitch by the name of Ricky Stone. Stone was in jail on drug charges and agreed to cooperate with Detective Kerber and the Slone police. He was placed in a cell with Donte Drumm for four days, then removed. Donte never saw him again until the trial. Stone testified that Donte talked openly about the rape and murder of Nicole and said that he went crazy after she broke up with him. They had been dating secretly for several months, they were in love, but she became frightened and worried that her wealthy father would cut off the money if he knew she was seeing a black guy. Stone testified that he had been promised nothing by the prosecutor in return for his testimony. Two months after Donte was convicted, Stone pleaded guilty to a misdemeanor and walked out of jail.

  Stone had an extensive criminal record and zero credibility. He was a classic jailhouse snitch, fabricating testimony in return for a lighter sentence. Judge Grale allowed him to testify.

  Stone later recanted and said he'd been pressured by Detective Kerber and Paul Koffee to lie.

  Judge Grale also permitted testimony that had been discredited for many years in many jurisdicti
ons. During the search for Nicole, the police used bloodhounds to sniff around for clues. The dogs were given a scent from Nicole's car and some articles in it, and turned loose. The trails led nowhere, that is, until Donte was arrested. The police then allowed the bloodhounds to sniff through the green Ford van owned by the Drumm family. According to the dogs' handler, the dogs became excited, agitated, and showed every sign of picking up Nicole's scent in the van. This unreliable testimony was first played out in a pretrial hearing. Attorneys for Donte were incredulous and demanded to know how they were supposed to cross-examine a bloodhound. Attorney Robbie Flak was so outraged that he called one of the dogs, a bloodhound named Yogi, a "stupid son of a bitch." Judge Grale held him in contempt and fined him $100. Remarkably, the dogs' principal handler was still allowed to testify at trial, and stated to the jury that after thirty years of experience with bloodhounds, he was "absolutely certain" that Yogi had picked up Nicole's scent in the green van. He was eviscerated on cross-examination by Robbie Flak, who at one point demanded to have the dog brought to the courtroom, sworn in, and put in the witness chair.

  Judge Grale exhibited animosity toward the defense lawyers, especially Robbie Flak. She was much more agreeable with Paul Koffee.

  And with good reason. Six years after the trial, it became known that the judge and the prosecutor were involved in a long-running illicit romance. The affair came to light when a disgruntled ex-secretary in Mr. Koffee's office filed a claim for sexual harassment and produced e-mails, phone records, and even phone recordings that revealed her ex-boss's involvement with Judge Grale. Lawsuits followed, as did divorces.

  Judge Grale resigned from the bench in disgrace and left Slone while her divorce was pending. Paul Koffee was reelected without opposition in 2006, but only after promising to quit when the term was over.

  Attorneys for Donte sought relief because of the obvious conflict of interest between the judge and the prosecutor. The Texas Court of Criminal Appeals said that while the affair was "unfortunate" and "could possibly give the appearance of impropriety," it did not violate the defendant's right to a fair trial. Relief in the federal courts was just as elusive.

  In 2005, Paul Koffee filed a defamation suit against Robbie Flak for statements Flak made in an interview about Koffee's intimate involvement with his trial judge. Flak countersued Koffee for a myriad of offenses. The litigation is still pending.

  ------

  Hours later, when the lights were off and the house was quiet, Keith and Dana stared at the ceiling and debated whether they should go look for the sleeping pills. Both were exhausted, but sleep seemed impossible. They were tired of reading about the case, discussing it, tired of worrying about a young black man on death row whom they had never heard of until the day before, and they were especially frustrated with the newest person in their lives, one Travis Boyette. Keith was certain he was telling the truth. Dana was leaning that way but was still skeptical because of his disgusting criminal record. They were tired of arguing about it.

  If Boyette was telling the truth, could they be the only people in the world who knew for certain that Texas was about to execute the wrong man? If so, what could they do? How could they do anything if Boyette refused to admit the truth? And if he changed his mind and decided to admit the truth, what were they supposed to do about it? Slone was four hundred miles away, and they didn't know anyone there. Why should they? They'd never heard of the place until yesterday.

  The questions raged through the night, and the answers were nowhere to be found. They decided to watch the digital clock until midnight, and, if still awake, go find the pills.

  At 11:04 p.m., the phone rang and startled them. Dana hit a light switch. The caller ID read, "St. Fran. Hospital."

  "It's him," she said. Keith picked up the receiver and said, "Hello."

  "Sorry to call so late, Pastor," Boyette said in a low,