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    pre-emptive sighHamilton Nolan
    7/20/16 11:08am

    Reading things like this and then seeing the ‘pro-life’ protesters at the RNC just makes me furious.

    A 5 year old boy was walking the streets and being raised by drug addicts, dealers, and prostitutes, what did you think his life was going to turn out like?

    Where were all the ‘pro-life’ people stepping up to support a living, breathing child? Even if he had been put into foster care, there are 200,000 children in America that need adopting right now, most of those over age 4 will probably never be adopted. But go ahead and stay focused on fetuses...

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      ╰(　´◔　ω　◔ `)╯< Woke and Bokepre-emptive sigh
      7/20/16 11:09am

      Pro-fetus, not pro-life.

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      bassguitarheropre-emptive sigh
      7/20/16 11:14am

      The thing about this country is, they will fight his mom’s chance at every opportunity to say no, they will fight his mom’s chance at every opportunity to engage in safe sex, they will fight his mom’s chance at every opportunity to get an abortion, and when he is born, they will exclude him and treat him like shit, tell him he is stupid, put him under a magnifying glass and treat his every mistake like an intentional affront to the country, tell him he is a criminal and a thief and a rapist from the day he is born, and then when he commits a crime, they will go “SEE! JUST LIKE I SAID!” and pat themselves on the back for making this country “safe”.

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    HyperBowlingHamilton Nolan
    7/20/16 11:10am

    You know what HamNo, I used to give you a lot of shit for these articles. The race of the writer never mattered, I was turned off entirely by the idea of giving people convicted a murder a platform at all.

    Now, on the other side of two years of watching my country go mentally insane trying to reconcile years of bigotry, political stagnation and old people yelling at clouds I have to say I’d rather see this every day to read. Like finding a good newspaper article blowing down an alley full of dumpster fires.

    I came around. Keep up the good work.

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      ╰(　´◔　ω　◔ `)╯< Woke and BokeHyperBowling
      7/20/16 11:12am

      If I can change, and you can change, everybody can change!

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      DoctorMantisTobogganHyperBowling
      7/20/16 11:32am

      Jurors deliberated about two½ hours before sending Batiste to death row for the capital murder of Horace Holiday, who was gunned down for the rims on his white Cadillac in April 2009.

      After the jury’s verdict, Holiday’s mother spoke to the defendant from the witness stand.

      “You took a good person out of this world, a person who would have helped you anyway he could,” said Lisa Holiday Harmon. “A piece of my heart will always be broken.”

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    BrianGriffinHamilton Nolan
    7/20/16 11:08am

    Fantastic article. Any chance we can get his letters in PDF or some other readable format for those of us on mobile?

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      Pink SkullBrianGriffin
      7/20/16 11:38am

      Cosigned. I’m fascinated by these entries but meet me half way. I can’t be staring at the tiny type.

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      Hamilton NolanBrianGriffin
      7/20/16 11:56am

      I’ve added a PDF embed of the full letter at the bottom of the post.

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    TexasDevinHamilton Nolan
    7/20/16 12:02pm

    Long post coming up, but it feels good to write it so here I go.

    I graduated from high school in a Houston suburb in 1993. A friend of mine, Robert Shields, graduated alongside me. In 1994, I was in college and I happened to be watching the news when I saw that he had been arrested for murder. I followed his trial and then his conviction and sentencing with some interest. I didn’t know the victim, but it was in the same town I grew up in so i was familiar with the environment.

    He was convicted and sentenced to death by lethal injection. My father spent 25 years working as a teacher within the Texas prison system, so we both had a better-than-average understanding of how things work behind bars in TDC (Texas Department of Corrections-I don’t think it’s called TDC anymore, but but was at the time)

    The appeals process takes quite a bit of time and dad looked up a little info on Robert, mostly out of curiosity. He was spending his time on death row in the Walls unit in Hunstville TX, where executions take place. Dad told me he was assigned a job duty as a garment folder. At the time, and in the time since then, I thought about him on occasion.

    On August 23, 2005, he was executed via lethal injection. Sometimes I wonder if I should have sent him a letter or reached out to him in some way. I’m sure it must have been a very lonely 11 years waiting to die. It’s pretty clear from this article that any outside contact is generally welcome and inmates jump at the chance to participate in the world around them and know they aren’t forgotten.

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      RorisanIDKTexasDevin
      7/20/16 2:01pm

      Holy shit, I remember that guy. Didn't that happen in friendswood?

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      TexasDevinRorisanIDK
      7/20/16 2:43pm

      FHS class of ‘93

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    starcrunchHamilton Nolan
    7/20/16 12:19pm

    When will some US states realize the death penalty has no place in a civilized country?

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      librarian11starcrunch
      7/20/16 3:30pm

      When murderers like this asshole don’t exist. Until then strap them down and stick em.

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      starcrunchlibrarian11
      7/20/16 4:09pm

      What a charming rebuttal

      I’ll bet you are also an anti abortion (pro life !), bible thumpin’, gun totin’ patriot too!

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    CheeseSandwichHamilton Nolan
    7/20/16 11:26am


    Sadly, the system we currently have is not set up for things like this and I run constantly up against administration when I say we need to be doing more. Mental health counseling needs to be a staple and access to higher levels of care.

    We are learning that kids from backgrounds like this often have PTSD on rates on par with returning combat veterans.

    I’ve watched kids graduate and wished I knew they’d be ok or watched kids drop out and wished they find a solid path. All to often they don’t.

    We don’t do enough and when you place children in an environment like described they become twisted, angry and often rarely think ahead or of the consequences that will be brought down upon them.

    This is an interesting lawsuit I’ve been following regarding the role of the school in providing mental health.

    http://www.ibtimes.com/compton-unifie…

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      thenewcapCheeseSandwich
      7/20/16 11:51am

      Some would say, “he chose to be a criminal.”

      Fair.

      But then, “why did he end up there?” and, “How do we prevent more like this?” are questions we have to answer.

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      CheeseSandwichthenewcap
      7/20/16 2:45pm

      Yes, nothing happens in vacuum and it’s something that most on the Right don’t seem to grasp.

      People like this, they aren’t springing forth from their mothers loins as criminals. They are shapped by the world they live in.

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    RorisanIDKHamilton Nolan
    7/20/16 12:22pm

    I rly love that you do this. I’m a Houston native, and I’ve actually had to fight the justice system to clear my name of something that I absolutely did not do, that I could not have done. It took me two years, three attorneys and several thousand dollars to clear my name. And I’m a middle class white woman with a family that was willing and able to help me.

    I think about that every time there’s an execution. I think it’s important to humanize prisoners. The thing he said about not being touched since ‘09 hurt. How cruel. People make mistakes, we are all products of our environment. These people in our prisons are still human.

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      CrapcanPilotRorisanIDK
      7/20/16 4:59pm

      True. They are human. But if you’re not aware, Mr. Batiste opened fire on a man named Horace Holiday because Mr. Batiste wanted to steal the rims off of Mr. Holiday’s car. Mr. Holiday was shot in the arm and leg. Mr. Holiday swerved off the highway and crashed into a gas pump. He abandoned his vehicle and attempted to drag himself to safety. Mr. Batiste then walked up to Mr. Holiday as he crawled across the ground, and shot him to death. Mr. Batiste then drove off in Mr. Holiday’s car. He was pursued by police. During the pursuit Mr. Batiste threw a ski mask out of the window. So, one could infer that Mr. Holiday could not identify Mr. Batiste either way, and Mr. Batiste could have still stolen the vehicle, yet Mr. Batiste still felt the need to kill Mr. Holiday. I am not so sure it is fair to Mr. Holiday to classify Mr. Batiste’s actions as “a mistake.” Mr. Batiste also killed the owner of a tattoo parlor 11 days earlier.

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      RorisanIDKCrapcanPilot
      7/20/16 9:04pm

      I get it, he did something bad. That’s why he’s going to be put down, bc our society conflates vengeance with justice.

      I just think that there are maybe some systemic issues that society perpetuates in how it treats poor people and PoC, and maybe we should be looking at those, and until we fix those issues, maybe try to have an ounce of compassion for these guys. Bc the whole problem here is that he likely has never had that demonstrated to him before. And if you want to think that you're better than him, you should be about being better. Don't torture ppl. Period. For any reason. It's wrong.

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    ratchedHamilton Nolan
    7/20/16 10:51pm

    Just a question about practicalities. How is this typewritten? Obviously a lot can have changed since I worked in the Texas system, but an inmate could not possibly have a typewriter (primarily for the possible parts and weapons it could be broken down to and wiping out another vehicle for secreting contraband) years ago. I don’t recall if the law library had typewriters, (though I think not), but even if there were typewriters in the library, DR inmates couldn’t go hang out at the law library, because anytime a special housing inmate (which DR is THE special housing to beat special housing), all other inmates in the prison have to be rehoused and locked down while a special housing inmate is not in their own house or is “dead man walking”. That’s an attempt to cut back on jailhouse hits and/or staff assaults.

    Even if he was just free associating (which he did pretty darn well), that would have surely taken hours to type out. A prison isn’t just going to let a DR inmate dictate how long they *wish* to hang out and type fan-mail.

    Just a picayune point but it’s niggling at me. I probably have a real “duh!” moment coming to me.

    P.S. I see other inmate’s are using typewriters also, so I guess they are allowed now on DR.

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      lobstrHamilton Nolan
      7/20/16 12:22pm

      Presumably prison officials review all incoming and outgoing mail, so I’m surprised that — just to be dicks — they didn’t redact things in his letter that they may have found unfavorable, or pretend to mail it and just toss it altogether.. Do you know anything about how he writes letters? It looks computerized, but I imagine it’s probably a typewriter?

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        laceandcombatbootsHamilton Nolan
        7/20/16 2:27pm

        Thank you for this series Hamilton. I’m in law school and my goal is to do capital habeas work - seeing the letters you publish strengthens that resolve.

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