Those Sunday nights at Pepe’s were often long and rowdy, and afterward we were in no condition to drive. I would walk to my office and sleep on the sofa. I was there snoring off the tequila when the phone rang after midnight. It was a reporter I knew from the big daily in Memphis.
“Are you covering the parole hearing tomorrow?” he asked. Tomorrow? In my toxic fog I had no idea what day it was.
“Tomorrow?” I mumbled.
“Monday, September the eighteenth,” he said slowly.
I was reasonably certain the year was 1978.
“What parole hearing?” I asked, trying desperately to wake myself up and put two thoughts together.
“Danny Padgitt’s. You don’t know about it?”
“Hell no!”
“It’s scheduled for ten A.M. at Parchman.”
“You gotta be kidding!”
“Nope. I just found out. Evidently, they don’t advertise these.”
I sat in the darkness for a long time, cursing once again the backwardness of a state that conducted such important matters in such ridiculous ways. How could parole even be considered for Danny Padgitt? Eight years had passed since the murder and his conviction. He had received two life sentences of at least ten years each. We assumed that meant a minimum of twenty years.
I drove home around 3 A.M., slept fitfully for two hours, then woke up Harry Rex, who was in no condition to be dealt with. I picked up sausage biscuits and strong coffee and we met at his office around seven. We were both ill-tempered, and as we plowed through his law books there were sharp words and foul language, not aimed at each other, but at the blurry and toothless parole system passed by the legislature thirty years earlier. Guidelines were only vaguely defined, leaving ample wiggle room for the politicians and their appointees to do as they wished.
Since most law-abiding citizens had no contact with the parole system, it was not a priority with the state legislature. And since most of the state’s prisoners were either poor or black, and unable to use the system to their advantage, it was easy to hit them with harsh sentences and keep them locked up. But for an inmate with a few connections and some cash, the parole system was a marvelous labyrinth of contradictory laws that allowed the Parole Board to pass out favors.
Somewhere between the judicial system, the penal system, and the parole system, Danny Padgitt’s two “consecutive” life terms had been changed to two “concurrent” sentences. They ran side by side, Harry Rex tried to explain.
“What good is that?” I asked.
“It’s used in cases where a defendant has multiple charges. Consecutive might give him eighty years in jail, but a fair sentence is ten. So they run ’em side by side.”
I shook my head in disapproval again, and this irritated him.
I finally got Sheriff Tryce McNatt to answer the phone. He sounded as hung over as we were, though he was a strict teetotaler. McNatt knew nothing about the parole hearing. I asked him if he planned to attend, but his day was already filled with important meetings.
I would have called Judge Loopus, but he’d been dead for six years. Ernie Gaddis had retired and was fishing in the Smoky Mountains. His successor, Rufus Buckley, lived in Tyler County and his phone number was unlisted.
At eight o’clock, I jumped in my car with a biscuit and a cup of cold coffee.
An hour west of Ford County the land flattened dramatically and the Delta began. It was a region rich in farming and poor in living conditions, but I was in no mood to take in the sights and offer social commentary. I was too nervous about crashing a clandestine parole hearing.
I was also nervous about setting foot inside Parchman, a legendary hellhole.
After two hours, I saw fences next to fields, then razor wire. Soon there was a sign, and I turned into the main gate. I informed a guard in the booth that I was a reporter, there for a parole hearing. “Straight ahead, left at the second building,” he said helpfully as he wrote down my name.
There was a cluster of buildings close to the highway, and a row of white-frame houses that would fit on any Maple Street in Mississippi. I chose the Admin A building and sprinted inside, looking for the first secretary. I found her, and she sent me to the next building, second floor. It was just about ten.
There were people at the end of the hallway, loitering outside a room. One was a prison guard, one was a state trooper, one wore a wrinkled suit.
“I’m here for a parole hearing,” I announced.
“In there,” the guard said, pointing. Without knocking, I yanked open the door, as any intrepid reporter would, and stepped inside. Things had just been called to order, and my presence there was certainly not anticipated.
There were five members of the Parole Board, and they were seated behind a slightly elevated table with their name plates in front of them. Along one wall another table held the Padgitt crowd — Danny, his father, his mother, an uncle, and Lucien Wilbanks. Opposite them, behind another table, were various clerks and functionaries of the Board and the prison.
Everyone stared at me as I stormed in. My eyes locked onto Danny Padgitt’s, and for a second both of us managed to convey the contempt we felt for the other.
“Can I help you?” a large, badly dressed ole boy growled from the center of the Board. His name was Barrett Ray Jeter, the chairman. Like the other four, he’d been appointed by the Governor as a reward for vote-gathering
“I’m here for the Padgitt hearing,” I said.
“He’s a reporter!” Lucien practically yelled as he was standing. For a second I thought I might get arrested on the spot and be carried deeper into the prison for a life sentence.
“For who?” Jeter demanded.
“The Ford County Times,” I said.
“Your name?”
“Willie Traynor.” I was glaring at Lucien and he was scowling at me.
“This is a closed hearing, Mr. Traynor,” Jeter said. The statute wasn’t clear as to whether it was open or closed, so it had traditionally been kept quiet.
“Who has the right to attend?” I asked.
“The Parole Board, the parolee, his family, his witnesses, his lawyer, and any witnesses for the other side.” The “other side” meant the victim’s family, which in this setting sounded like the bad guys.
“What about the Sheriff from our county?” I asked.
“He’s invited too,” Jeter said.
“Our Sheriff wasn’t notified. I talked to him three hours ago. In fact, nobody in Ford County knew of this hearing until after twelve last night.” This caused considerable head-scratching up and down the Parole Board. The Padgitts huddled with Lucien.
By process of elimination, I quickly deduced that I had to become a witness if I wanted to watch the show. I said, as loudly and clearly as possible, “Well, since there’s no one else here from Ford County in opposition, I’m a witness.”
“You can’t be a reporter and a witness,” Jeter said.
“Where is that written in the Mississippi Code?” I asked, waving my copies from Harry Rex’s law books.
Jeter nodded at a young man in a dark suit. “I’m the attorney for the Parole Board,” he said politely. “You can testify in this hearing, Mr. Traynor, but you cannot report it.”
I planned to fully report every detail of the hearing, then hide behind the First Amendment. “So be it,” I said. “You guys make the rules.” In less than one minute the lines had been drawn; I was on one side, everybody else was on the other.
“Let’s proceed,” Jeter said, and I took a seat with a handful of other spectators.
The attorney for the Parole Board passed out a report. He recited the basics of the Padgitt sentence, and was careful not to use the words “consecutive” or “concurrent.” Based on the inmate’s “exemplary” record during his incarceration, he had qualified for “good time,” a vague concept created by the parole system and not by the state legislature. Subtracting the time the inmate spent in the county jail awaiting trial, he was now eligible for parole.