Tyree Bailey

TO WHOM IT MAY CONCERN …
A Soul Child’s interview


I have been a drug addict most of my life…  I think I started using heroin since I was 12 years old.  I can’t even remember how it started, I just remember waking up knowing that I needed it.
I didn’t have a mother, I had a « friend in need », she was just as hooked on drugs as I was. She taught me how to run scams, how to steal and boost. Our life was about our need, the only one that mattered… the drugs.
By the time I was 14, I had sampled every drug ever made it seemed, but I always ran back to the tar, it was the one thing I could never shake, it was the one that always « called » me, and I always answered.
My mom died when I was 15, I had no family that I could run to.  She was the only family I had.  I lived on streets, I continue to hustle (run scams), I slept with older men and women for money…  some were « dealers » (drug pushers) themselves, so they gave me drug for sexual favors.   I have heard and read stories my whole life about how people were hurt and destroyed by the acts and violence involved with rape, and the shame of being taken advantage of…  with me, it wasn’t that way, I felt nothing, it was just a means to an end.  In my mind, at some point in my life I was gonna die, I prayed for the day to come quickly.
But, it didn’t.  I bounced for one place to the next… I lived on sex and drugs.  Things were good for a while, as good as they can be when you are living your life that way.  But, just like any good thing, it ended, and things got really bad.
I have never been a violent person, but I started robbing.  It was nothing really, in my mind, because even though I carried a loaded gun, I never saw myself using it.  But the thing is I learned about life is, you cannot plan it, you just live it as best you can.
It was another « simple » job.  I spotted a older man at an ATM, my plan was to have him withdraw me a couple hundred dollars.  As he was leaving, I slipped in right behind him, I told him not to turn around.  I made him put his bank card in the machine and withdraw me 200 $$.  I told him to put the money in a bank envelope and place it on the ground.  I remember how he kept crying and begging me not to kill him… he talked about his wife and his two kids…. He talked about his son in college…. He asked me if he could show me a picture of his family.  But I wasn’t really listening, I was thinking about what I should do with him so that I could get away without any problems.  He continued to talk about things like his job as a high school coach, about his son being a track start, about his daughter being a tennis state champion.  He said things about his great wife, about her being too good for him.  He told me I could have all his money, just let him go home to his family.  I told him to get on his knees and to put his jacket over his head.  The plan was for him to do as I said, and I was going to run as soon as he obeyed me, but he didn’t, he turned to face me and in those seconds I saw fear, I saw a pleading that said « please don’t kill me », I saw amazement in his eyes and face that said he was being robbed by a child… then I saw something else, I saw doubt, and just like he ran at me, and I pulled the trigger.  I didn’t even know if I shot him, I just saw him freeze and look at me.  I stopped at a pay phone and called 911, and told them that I witnessed a robbery, I told them where it happened, and when she asked for my name, I told her.
I didn’t know that he died until I was arrested 5 years later.  I had just received my G.E.D.,  I went and applied for my driver’s license.  I was trying to get my life together.  I met the lady who helped me turn my life around…  the lady who saw something in me, a lady who would not let me run away !  She listened to my life story, she helped me battle my drug addiction, she saved me…  and later married me. But in life, I also learned that you can’t run away from the things you have done.
I was charged with capital murder.  My wife stood by me through it all.  Even after I was given a *death* sentence. We fought and fought, she raised money, sold all the things she could, and hired an attorney who promised us that she could help us…and she did… she got my charges dropped to manslaughter, and I was re sentenced to 15 years in prison.  I have done 11 so far, but I have been granted parole, so I will leave in March of 2011.
I didn’t really want to write about my life, but Tyree told me that people could really benefit from hearing my story.  He also told me that it would be good for people to hear from someone who has both been there on the row, and made it out alive !!!
For those of you who support those guys, it is a blessing to them, because it is hell back there.   I remember how badly they fed us, how some days they wouldn’t shower us, and leave us to have to bathe ourselves in the toilet, the time that the drains were stopped up and we had to stay in our cells for hours with no running water… it is a hard life on many levels.  After you have been there for so long, you start to welcome death.
One day, I may be able to write a book about my life there…  maybe I can tell the stories of my friends that are still there.
No one deserves to die, not the man I killed… not the men and women who were killed by the men and women on the row, but also, neither do those who sit behind these walls.  Life is life, no matter who’s life it is, it is precious.  Government and State officials could send that message loud and clear by ending the death penalty.  Honor is never easy, especially when what you stand for is not very popular.  But than again, words like honor would be spoken more often if there wasn’t such a price for it.
What I really want to say is fight for those guys !  Don’t just say the words,  put them into action !  What you do matters…  what you say matters…  what you « don’t do » matters as well.
As ever,
A Soul Child

*** Author’s note***   The Soul Child was not really interested in doing the article for me, but once I got him talking, he couldn’t stop. He told me that life back there is like being in a war, and if you are one of the lucky ones who survive it, it is almost impossible to ever be the same person you were before it.  I think death changes anyone who has been a witness to it !
I have asked victims’ family members what did watching the death of a criminal do to help them heal.  The ones that answered could not really say, they just answered; « it was justice ».  I have never been able to see a killing of any kind justified.  If a governing body can deem murder a crime, how can it be only a crime when it is done by a citizen ?  How can we place faith in a system that plays on our own belied ?  They say our justice system is a reflection of the American people…. If that is so what does that really say about us ?
The truth is hard to look at sometimes, because I am American, and even if I never paid attention to things like the death penalty when I was free, I still played a part in it.  I am just as guilty as anyone else for the killing of thousands of my own people.  I can’t take it back, but I can act…  And I do now, as best as I can.  Soul Child said : « don’t just say the words, put them into action !What you do matters… what you say matters…  what you don’t do matters as well ».   I finally understand what that means, I can only hope that all of you understand also.

Tyree