Over the last month, I have tried to understand what it feels like to be a real coward. Not just an everyday coward who lacks courage or is very fearful or timid, not even a lily-livered coward.
I have tried to understand what it must feel like to be a Republican elected to the US Congress, who willingly lives under the thumb of Donald Trump.
I’m trying to figure out how it must feel to be elected to Congress, take an oath to uphold the Constitution, be paid by the taxpayers a salary along with benefits and privileges that are better than what their constituents get, and then abandon your singular responsibility to determine if the country should go to war when “there is no present danger.”
This is as close as I could get:
In my third year of law school, we were allowed to practice law in a clinic run by Professor Michael Millemann. For my first case, I was given a letter from an inmate at Perkins, a prison in Maryland that the legislature had endowed with indeterminant sentences.
An indeterminant sentence meant that when a prisoner had conformed his behavior to the standards acceptable to the outside world, according to a prison psychiatrist, he would be released.
The indeterminant sentence, however, had backfired because there were petty criminals like shoplifters or road rage drivers who had been given short sentences originally but had not convinced the system and thus remained in Perkins for years.
The letter was from an inmate we’ll call Rocky. It was short and sweet. It said: “GET ME THE FUCK OUT OF HERE.”
I had never been inside a prison before, but I had to visit Rocky at Perkins to discover any facts that I could use to “get [him] the fuck out of here.”
I waited in the waiting room with the echoing sounds of slamming prison doors along with all the other endless prison noises. There is nothing to absorb the sound. It is loud all the time.
Three sets of clanging doors opened and shut behind me as I was escorted through a maze of corridors to get to a small room with a low ceiling and no windows. Prison bars filled one wall, with a seat for the inmate on the other side and a folding chair and narrow desk held in place in front of the bars for the lawyer to take notes. When the prisoner and the lawyer were facing each other on opposite sides of the bars, they were probably no more than three feet from each other.
One of the prison guards sat outside of the door and, after a short pause with all the prison sounds echoing around me, Rocky made his appearance at the far end of the corridor.
As he walked toward me, I could see he was about five foot six, wearing prison pants and a sweatshirt cut off to show his shoulders and well developed chest and arms, which were complete with spider tattoos. He wore a red bandanna tied around his head.
What struck me first was his unyielding Charles Manson eyes.
Before he introduced himself and sat down in front of me, he addressed the prison guard with a hostile voice, “Hey, you fuck’n dick, get lost. I’m talking to my lawyer!”
The guard picked up his chair and immediately left me a little uncomfortable. Rocky then looked me over and said, “How fuckin’ old are you?” He didn’t wait for an answer. He sat down and continued, “I killed two people. How am I gonna conform to fit into society? Get me out of here!”
“Rocky,” I said with the calmest voice I could muster. “I’m here to listen to your story and do everything I can to get you what you want.”
“What don’t you understand? I can’t be here anymore. This fucking la la place is ruining my reputation in the outside world.”
I’m pretty sure that my hands were both shaking as I tried to take notes on my yellow pad. He told me that it was a dirty drug deal that went bad and that he had punched one guy to death. “I shot the other one with his gun. How do I conform? Bring ’em back? I want you to get me out of here! Do you understand?”
I kept asking thoughtful questions in an effort to look mature but, when I read my notes later, they didn’t make any sense.
I closed the interview by asking him what he really wanted, other than to get out of this place. He replied, ”What the fuck is wrong with you? I want to go to a maximum security prison where I should be. This la la land is wasting my time!” What’s so hard to figure out about that?”
“I got it, Rocky. I got it.“ I tried to smile confidently and failed. “Don’t bullshit me, boy,” he replied. “You’re not wasting my time, are you? Are you gonna get this done? I got friends on the outside who will be watching you. You understand?”
As if he was sealing the deal, he shoved his right hand between the bars to shake my hand, and I instantly flew backward against the wall as the folding chair collapsed beneath me.
He looked at me while I was lying there, shook his head and said. “You’re doing this, okay?” He turned around and screamed for the guard: “Hey, dick, we’re finished!“ As the guard approached, he turned to address me again: “We understand each other?” I replied in my deepest possible voice as I reassembled the chair: ”Yeah, Rocky. I’ve got you covered. We got a deal.”
My normal heartbeat returned about four days later.
At the end of the semester, the legislature voted to close Perkins and the governor had signed the bill into law and the prison system was sending its inmates to serve out their prescribed sentences in other prisons throughout Maryland.
I had nothing to do with the legislature’s termination of Perkins but I checked every day to determine when Rocky would be sent to serve out his life sentence at the Cut, which was a maximum security prison.
In fact, I had followed the process closely and had dreamed about Rocky throughout the semester.
After he was transferred to the Cut, I sent Rocky a copy of the bill that the legislature passed and the governor signed with a personal note: ”Rocky, Good luck at the Cut. It has a reputation as the harshest maximum security prison in Maryland to serve out the remainder of your life sentence. Best wishes, your friend, Bob.”
Looking back, I will admit I was a run-of-the-mill lily-livered coward but I’m still unsuccessful in determining what it must feel like to be one of those Republican congressional cowards.
Maybe we should reopen Perkins so they can stay for free until they can conform to the minimum standards for upholding their duties to the country and the Constitution.