A Knock at Midnight(57)
And filing for clemency was an arduous process. While balancing the demands of firm life, there was no way I could submit petitions for all five of my clients at once. At the moment, I had the capacity to prepare and submit two petitions simultaneously. Sharanda’s, of course. And one additional client from the Wilson case. But which one?
There were no criteria available from the Department of Justice as to who would be the most likely candidate for clemency. Following Sam’s initial advice, I needed to start with the person whose story would stand out in the hearts and minds of the government lawyers who would read the petition. It seemed sick to me that I had to cherry-pick. All of my clients were worthy of getting out. Still, I had to choose. The person should clearly accept responsibility for their actions, and to show, like Sharanda, that his time in prison had been used for self-improvement. While every single one of my clients continuously sought to better themselves, at least on paper the choice was obvious. Slowly, painstakingly, seeking guidance every which way and writing each word with utter conviction, I began to prepare clemency petitions for Sharanda Purlette Jones and Donel Marcus Clark.
* * *
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“HEY DONEL, GET over here and help me unload the meat truck.”
Donel bit his lip in frustration. It was the fourth “Come help me” order of the morning, which almost always meant “Do it yourself.” Meanwhile, his own department, frozen foods, once manned by a team of four workers led by himself and now by himself alone, suffered. He hadn’t gotten to a single task in his own department all morning, though he’d been working since five. He had stocked Kroger bread from ten-foot-tall bread trays, stacked the shelves with canned corn, and unloaded the dairy truck. His own to-do list was way behind.
Donel sighed. He couldn’t afford to say anything. Not now, not with the new house and a mountain of bills. He noted his manager’s latest request meticulously in his notepad and then went out back to start unloading. The meat department employees were on their lunch break, and he worked alone, lifting packaged slabs of beef from the truck onto a dolly, wheeling it over to the butcher section in the back, and stacking the beef in the freezer before returning to the truck. He figured he’d get at least his inventory done before going to lunch himself, but he hadn’t even reached the shelves before Ray paged him on the intercom to assist at checkout.
If people took advantage it was because Donel was a get-it-done kind of guy, as by-the-book as they came. Always had been. Donel was just ten years old when his mother suffered a back injury that prevented her from keeping her job at the post office in Dallas. The government salary had helped her enroll Donel and his brother at St. Anthony’s Catholic School in South Dallas, where he became friends with Mike and Wayland Wilson. But when his mom lost her job, Donel knew that paying for the school he loved would be an impossible burden for her. So he and his little brother met with their two older sisters and made a pact—as much as they loved St. Anthony’s, they’d volunteer to go to public school to lighten her load.
Life still wasn’t easy—their mother had entered into an abusive relationship, and their home life was fraught with the collateral damage of domestic violence. Even so, Donel and his mom and siblings attended church regularly and enjoyed a close-knit family bond. In an act of tremendous courage, his mom left her abusive husband, and things got better again for a while. But three years later, she lost a grueling battle with leukemia. She was only thirty-seven years old. Donel moved with his siblings into his grandmother’s house on Malcolm X Boulevard, down the street from St. Anthony’s, where he rejoined the Wilson brothers briefly for his eighth-grade year before returning to public school. Donel worked all through high school to help out his grandmother and siblings, and even then he built up enough credits to graduate early, in the class of 1982.
At Donel’s graduation barbecue, his sister’s husband gave him the closest thing to fatherly advice he’d ever had. A cold beer in one hand to toast his young brother-in-law’s accomplishment, Ricky put an arm around Donel’s shoulders. “You gotta get the good things in life, Donel,” he said. “Get a job, get two jobs if you have to, meet a nice woman, get a house, raise a family. Those are the good things. Don’t you forget it.” That sounded about right to Donel.
He got a job at the Kroger grocery on Henderson and Ross, and a few years later took on a second job as a night manager at a liquor store in South Dallas. At twenty-four, he married the love of his life, Ceyita, and they soon had a son. Ceyita had a child from a previous relationship, and Donel proudly supported both kids, as well as his son with an ex-girlfriend. At twenty-five, he bought his young family a house. A homeowner with two jobs and a thriving, happy family, Donel Clark could not have been more on track.
For the first couple of years everything was fine. He’d been made frozen foods manager at Kroger and worked well for a while with the team of four under him. But little by little they cut back on his team until he was the entire department, and then called him away constantly to do extra work in other areas of the store. When his own department tasks didn’t get done, the new manager, Ray, jammed him up about it. Tensions between the two of them rose steadily, and finally Donel filed a formal complaint. Word got back to Ray quickly and he put him on night shifts.
“I can’t do night shifts, man,” Donel said. “I got a second job. You know I can’t leave it. I just bought a house.”