I didn’t want to just learn more about his case—I wanted to do more.
IT’S 2016, AND I’M DRIVING NORTH ON U.S. 59, A four-lane stretch of blacktop in Deep East Texas bordered by towering pines. This morning, I’d set out from New Orleans, where I intern at a public defender’s office, to make the five-hour trek to rural Polk County, northeast of Houston. I see my turnoff up ahead: the country road leading to the Allan B. Polunsky Unit, a maximum-security prison comprising a collection of drab concrete buildings hemmed in by barbed wire.
This is where a dear friend has been sentenced to die.
At the gate, the guards search the trunk of my car to make sure I’m not carrying any contraband. I park, go inside, and am escorted to the visitation area, a long, narrow room with rows of cubicles separated by a heavy sheet of plexiglass. The air is thick with
