More good news that made me cry. The turn toward the left is already showing results.  Amazing.  

 

A guy I knew when I was a teenager was still on death row in CA and from what I saw of the court transcripts, he wanted the state to kill him.  He took part in a heinous crime, he admits it, but that doesn't make it any easier for me to imagine because that was not the person I knew.  I was both shocked and also not shocked at all, but definitely horrified when I found out what he had done.  He was always a bit detached and one of the few actual hard guys that was associated with Oakland gangs in our large group in the East Bay suburbs.  They did some crazy shit, but I don't think when I knew them they ever killed or seriously hurt anybody.  A part of me still thinks there is no way he pulled the trigger, and was set up by the others involved, but he took all the blame.  I don't want to take away anything from the victims and their families, so I shouldn't speak on the crime. I don't know shit other than what I've read on SFGate and in the transcripts.  

I've thought about contacting him many times throughout the years just to see if he'd want to talk.  This crime happened only a few months before I left CA for the 1st time in Dec of '95, but I didn't find out about it until years later. When I first moved to CA a lot of people said/did some really shitty things to the  fresh-meat country-bumpkin from KY, but he was always cool with me.  We used to talk on the phone late at night, for some reason, even though there was no mutual attraction or anything.  He's also the person that came to me in front of the courthouse with a message before a person we mutually knew went to court.  He asked me to walk with him alone and then warned me that if my ex testified against the guy on trial he couldn't control what his boys would do. Before the guy on trial had gotten ahold of them, some of those "boys" had also been my good friends.  In hindsight, that guy on trial was also a fucking pedophile, along with one of his friends I briefly "dated", in part due to his relentlessness, my first few months in CA. I was 14, he was 23, he'd lied and said he was 21.  That's like my adult kid bringing home an 8th grader as her boyfriend.  Absolutely fucking disgusting.  Then, when he kissed me after cornering me at a party when I was already with my long term high school boyfriend, I had to immediately tell him I had "cheated" on him because I felt so terrible about it.  So gross.

I knew because of one of my best girl friends had a long-term relationship with the guy on trial, but had been fucking with the guy who was warning me, there was underlying shit going on between those two guys.  He wasn't warning us because he hated me or had any particular feelings toward my ex. He and I were cool, I'd always been nice to him no matter what was going on with him and whoever he was fucking in our group.  He was warning me as a friend, he told me as much.  I knew he felt some kind of loyalty to the dude on trial, but did not particularly like him in part because of some of the shit he'd done to my friend as her partner. I always fucking hated the dude because of the shit he did to her.  He also always gave me the willies. He always said "don't worry, I like you, even though you're trouble."  I think he was 26 or 27 and she was fucking 15.  When he tried to fuck with one of my other friends, she was 14. There was a lot of that going on during that time, like a very, very unacceptable amount.  It's creepy as fuck to think about as an adult.  The guy that was warning me, the one on death row, was only a year or two older than us, so I was all for her being with him, even though he had his own issues.  

In the end, I convinced my ex to not testify, not just because of the warnings we'd gotten, he was already thinking about withdrawing, but because he was lying.  He wasn't there.  He was trying to be that guy by perjuring himself because no one else who was there would go on the record, or snitch. Noble because this dude was a piece of shit on so many levels (still don't understand how he was the godfather of my ex's niece), but really stupid and not thought through at all.  Especially since this guy was a grown ass man with real ass ties to the Bloods in Oakland and supposedly knew "dangerous men" (hitmen) he worked on the same boats with in Alaska when he'd go up there to make a bunch of money for a few months.  This wasn't a game and he was potentially putting not only us in danger, but the people around us.  There were a lot of people there when the assault happened (I was not) who could have very easily gotten up on the stand and said my ex was definitely not there, so not only would this dude get off for something he definitely did -- he put a guy in the hospital (again) -- my ex's dumbass would go to jail for perjury for nothing.  Considering the guy on trial was already calling witnesses at their homes, including my ex's sister, this was a very likely outcome. So in some ways the guy that is currently on death row, or was, may have saved the father of my kid in more ways than one.  My ex used to get really pissed at me when I told this story, he really wanted me to think of and describe the guy on death row as a piece of shit who threatened me, maybe I'm naive, but that was not how the conversation went.

Anyway, I'd kind of like to know if he'd be willing to talk. I had a prison pen pal in the form of a guy who was like my ex's and my brother for many, many years. I don't think they were ever in the same facility at the same time, but they would have been on opposite sides of the yard, if you know what I mean.  Although, the guy who was like my brother told the nazis to fuck off, that he wanted to be on his own, and got the shit kicked out of him, his jaw broken in several places and wired shut for a long time for his efforts. One thing I worry about is the commitment.  He literally needed us, there were times when there was no one else helping.  I am not in a position to be that for someone again, financially or otherwise.  We'll see.  I am genuinely interested in how these guys, many of whom were likely content or happy with the state killing them, are handling the news of having to live.

[sorry for not doing better to identify the people in this story, I am not trying to call out or name anyone, for many different reasons]