Mark
Mark has been working for me for three years now. I’d met him when he was an aide at Metropolitan State Hospital in Waltham, Massachusetts in the fall of 1980. There were about a dozen aides who worked on the wards as trustees. All were men serving life without parole sentences for first-degree murder. All were let out of prison for six hours each weekday on an unpaid work release program.
Mark was born poor and grew up poor in Virginia, one of seven children. It really was no excuse. After high school he joined the Coast Guard where he was a bit of a misfit, inherently smarter than the other enlistees, but lost nonetheless. After the Coast Guard he began hanging out in Boston, where he met eager women, smoked a little weed, drank a little rum, and found himself with nothing to do and nowhere to go. Adrift, he and his best friend Curtis crafted a plan to rob the bar at the Holiday Inn on Massachusetts Ave. outside Central Square in Cambridge one November after midnight. It was ill conceived and more impulsive than well reasoned. They waited until the bar was empty. They nursed their beers. The bar tender served them a last round. Curtis pulled out a pistol, which Mark claims he didn’t know Curtis was even carrying. I find that part hard to believe. The bar tender also drew a gun and Curtis shot him, dead. The man had a wife and two young children. Mark was also shot in the exchange of fire and ran bleeding from the bar. They’d taken all of two hundred dollars. The FBI knew who Mark was immediately from his fingerprints on the beer bottle. He became a fugitive and was successful at it for five years. Traveled in fear but without incident. When they finally caught him, the County prosecutors offered him a second-degree murder conviction if he were to plead guilty and give them the name of his accomplice and best friend. Fifteen years to life seemed as long as a life sentence then. The disloyalty was too unbearable. He took the case to trial and lost, as he knew he must, there simply was no alternative. And in the end found himself in state’s prison for the remainder of his natural life without the possibility of parole.
He sat in his prison cell. He sat there for years. The mind plays tricks on the mind. Life in prison is life in prison. He passed the time with no hopes of freedom. One day, as if an apparition, the lead investigating state police detective appears in Mark’s cell.
“Had enough?” the officer asked.
“What’s that supposed to mean,” Mark replies.
“It means I want the name of the shooter, like I told you the last time.”
“And what do I get for giving you that name?”
“You get a second degree murder sentence, just like I told you fifteen years ago, and with credit for time served you walk.”
“Do I get that in writing? Are there any guarantees?”
“The answer to your first question is no. As to your second question I give you my word.”
And Mark gave him his best friend Curtis’ name. And Mark walked out of prison. And Curtis walked in.
Mark has been working for me for three years now. I’d met him when he was an aide at Metropolitan State Hospital in Waltham, Massachusetts in the fall of 1980. There were about a dozen aides who worked on the wards as trustees. All were men serving life without parole sentences for first-degree murder. All were let out of prison for six hours each weekday on an unpaid work release program.
Mark was born poor and grew up poor in Virginia, one of seven children. It really was no excuse. After high school he joined the Coast Guard where he was a bit of a misfit, inherently smarter than the other enlistees, but lost nonetheless. After the Coast Guard he began hanging out in Boston, where he met eager women, smoked a little weed, drank a little rum, and found himself with nothing to do and nowhere to go. Adrift, he and his best friend Curtis crafted a plan to rob the bar at the Holiday Inn on Massachusetts Ave. outside Central Square in Cambridge one November after midnight. It was ill conceived and more impulsive than well reasoned. They waited until the bar was empty. They nursed their beers. The bar tender served them a last round. Curtis pulled out a pistol, which Mark claims he didn’t know Curtis was even carrying. I find that part hard to believe. The bar tender also drew a gun and Curtis shot him, dead. The man had a wife and two young children. Mark was also shot in the exchange of fire and ran bleeding from the bar. They’d taken all of two hundred dollars. The FBI knew who Mark was immediately from his fingerprints on the beer bottle. He became a fugitive and was successful at it for five years. Traveled in fear but without incident. When they finally caught him, the County prosecutors offered him a second-degree murder conviction if he were to plead guilty and give them the name of his accomplice and best friend. Fifteen years to life seemed as long as a life sentence then. The disloyalty was too unbearable. He took the case to trial and lost, as he knew he must, there simply was no alternative. And in the end found himself in state’s prison for the remainder of his natural life without the possibility of parole.
He sat in his prison cell. He sat there for years. The mind plays tricks on the mind. Life in prison is life in prison. He passed the time with no hopes of freedom. One day, as if an apparition, the lead investigating state police detective appears in Mark’s cell.
“Had enough?” the officer asked.
“What’s that supposed to mean,” Mark replies.
“It means I want the name of the shooter, like I told you the last time.”
“And what do I get for giving you that name?”
“You get a second degree murder sentence, just like I told you fifteen years ago, and with credit for time served you walk.”
“Do I get that in writing? Are there any guarantees?”
“The answer to your first question is no. As to your second question I give you my word.”
And Mark gave him his best friend Curtis’ name. And Mark walked out of prison. And Curtis walked in.
LAW STORIES
- 001 – Telephone
- 002 – Yvonne
- 003 – My offices
- 004 – One of those Days
- 005 – Bail
- 006 – The Suffolk County Courthouse
- 007 – Confession
- 008 – Not Johnny Cochran
- 009 – The Columbian Woman
- 010 – Samuel
- 011 – Met State
- 012 – Adversarial Relations
- 013 – Her Scream
- A Friend Named Jan
- Closing Argument
- Cop
- Eddie V.
- Eddie’s Bust
- Gainey
- Her Calls
- Her Grandfather
- Her View
- Hitting Louie
- Mark
- Meeting Drew
- Our Case is Called
- Partners
- Phone Call
- The House of Cohen
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