time I went down I realized that the guy had a plan for this. These are his only outlets to an outside world. And I think Dominique over time certainly learned to trust me but I think he also respected me [because] I didn't really fall for a lot of his bullshit that a lot of the other visitors do.”
By calling some of Dominique's initial bluffs, Andy was rewarded not only with Dominique's respect but with a mutual friendship that became deeply rewarding for both men. We can almost listen in on their evolving conversation:
“Why did you lie to me the first time?”
“Down here you don't know who you can trust, and I didn't know if I could trust you. I didn't want to invest everything in you if you were going to just walk away. I didn't want to get any false hope that people might really care about my case this time.”
“Do you have much hope?”
“Hope is a loaded gun.”
Dominique was full of such gnomic one-liners, allusive, mysterious, sometimes profound. He called Andy Confucius, a name he might have applied aptly to himself. But Andy-Confucius came gradually to realize that it was Dominique'snearly absolute isolation that had brought this street kid to an intellectual and psychological flowering that might otherwise never have happened. “He was very streetwise upon going in and he became book smart, intellectually smart after some time there. I think a lot of that had to do with his isolation from society stressors that had been in his life the whole time, specifically the street and his mother. When he finally was put not in the general population where non-Death Row [inmates are housed] but in a solitary cell, in a strange way that same cell that theoretically protected us from him also protected him from us. That's why he blossomed. And he would say that over and over to me, ‘You know, being in here has made me the person I've always wanted to be.’”
Dominique Green, as removed from the world as any fourth-century Egyptian anchorite in his desert cell, was following an ancient path to spiritual enlightenment and personal transformation. Part of the formula, as had been the case for the desert fathers, was to look death straight in the eye. Andy suspected that Dominique “reconciled himself with the fact that they were going to kill him way before we even got involved in his case. He was on Death Row a long time, in which time they killed hundreds of people.”
But there was far more to Dominique's spiritual quest than a confrontation with the probability of early death. “I think he realized that he wasn't going to be able to do everything that he wanted in his life because they were going to kill him. And yet he wanted to at least do something so his life had some kind of value. And I think that's why he forgave his motherand why he tried to help other people on Death Row. I think that's why he allowed himself to trust me and to trust Sheila. I mean, he used me and I don't blame him. His job was to get himself out of there. I used him to get out of some classes in law school! What I was amazed at was here is some guy down in a cell in Texas in the middle of nowhere and he's orchestrating a worldwide campaign that he started. He wrote letters to everybody. He's the one who contacted people. He orchestrated this campaign from his little cell and he has people all around the world working for him and thinking about him. And to me that's the most amazing thing about him. Granted, it was to save his own hide, but I found that amazing. Especially when you go down there and see that there are hundreds of people on Death Row in Texas and maybe four or five have what he had by the end of his life.”
Indeed, a deepening familiarity with Dominique's case inspired the Community of Sant'Egidio to organize a worldwide movement to declare a moratorium on the use of the death penalty. As each new country signs on to this moratorium, the Roman Colosseum, ancient symbol of man's in humanity to man, is lit up in
By calling some of Dominique's initial bluffs, Andy was rewarded not only with Dominique's respect but with a mutual friendship that became deeply rewarding for both men. We can almost listen in on their evolving conversation:
“Why did you lie to me the first time?”
“Down here you don't know who you can trust, and I didn't know if I could trust you. I didn't want to invest everything in you if you were going to just walk away. I didn't want to get any false hope that people might really care about my case this time.”
“Do you have much hope?”
“Hope is a loaded gun.”
Dominique was full of such gnomic one-liners, allusive, mysterious, sometimes profound. He called Andy Confucius, a name he might have applied aptly to himself. But Andy-Confucius came gradually to realize that it was Dominique'snearly absolute isolation that had brought this street kid to an intellectual and psychological flowering that might otherwise never have happened. “He was very streetwise upon going in and he became book smart, intellectually smart after some time there. I think a lot of that had to do with his isolation from society stressors that had been in his life the whole time, specifically the street and his mother. When he finally was put not in the general population where non-Death Row [inmates are housed] but in a solitary cell, in a strange way that same cell that theoretically protected us from him also protected him from us. That's why he blossomed. And he would say that over and over to me, ‘You know, being in here has made me the person I've always wanted to be.’”
Dominique Green, as removed from the world as any fourth-century Egyptian anchorite in his desert cell, was following an ancient path to spiritual enlightenment and personal transformation. Part of the formula, as had been the case for the desert fathers, was to look death straight in the eye. Andy suspected that Dominique “reconciled himself with the fact that they were going to kill him way before we even got involved in his case. He was on Death Row a long time, in which time they killed hundreds of people.”
But there was far more to Dominique's spiritual quest than a confrontation with the probability of early death. “I think he realized that he wasn't going to be able to do everything that he wanted in his life because they were going to kill him. And yet he wanted to at least do something so his life had some kind of value. And I think that's why he forgave his motherand why he tried to help other people on Death Row. I think that's why he allowed himself to trust me and to trust Sheila. I mean, he used me and I don't blame him. His job was to get himself out of there. I used him to get out of some classes in law school! What I was amazed at was here is some guy down in a cell in Texas in the middle of nowhere and he's orchestrating a worldwide campaign that he started. He wrote letters to everybody. He's the one who contacted people. He orchestrated this campaign from his little cell and he has people all around the world working for him and thinking about him. And to me that's the most amazing thing about him. Granted, it was to save his own hide, but I found that amazing. Especially when you go down there and see that there are hundreds of people on Death Row in Texas and maybe four or five have what he had by the end of his life.”
Indeed, a deepening familiarity with Dominique's case inspired the Community of Sant'Egidio to organize a worldwide movement to declare a moratorium on the use of the death penalty. As each new country signs on to this moratorium, the Roman Colosseum, ancient symbol of man's in humanity to man, is lit up in
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