The Fear of 13 Page #8

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I was so proud of that.

I woke up to a different person.

By now,

I had been in prison for 18 years.

And that's when I got sick.

I lost 31 pounds in a month

and a half.

I was really feeling poorly

and then I had blood work done

and they told me what it was.

I'm infected with this strain

of hepatitis C

that all the men who had dental work

at Huntington had contracted.

15 other men had got this hepatitis.

So the first guy to die

was DC, Dale Carter.

He died in the vents underneath me

screaming in agony.

Oh, my God.

So when I found out

I immediately said

"Yes, I'll take the drug treatments.

I'll sign up for it. "

But the years of drug abuse

had damaged my kidneys

and after about seven months

I started suffering

all the side effects of this drug.

I was peeing this horrible

coffee-coloured urine.

Everything tasted dead in my mouth.

I was just not right.

And then it was August.

I was out in the exercise yard.

I was so weak.

I was looking directly up

at the sky.

And then...

I couldn't see anything.

It went blank.

I knew what darkness is,

but this was black.

And that's when I found out

I was dying.

I was so afraid that...

I was shaking. I really was.

And so I remember

I stuck to my ritual.

I stood over the top of the

toilet bowl and I bathed

and I was doing the same ritual,

bathing, three days later

and I saw these swirls

around my thighs

and I realised I was seeing swirls.

So if I was seeing swirls,

then I was seeing.

OK.

The very first thing

I did later on that evening

was I sat by a very bright

light at my desk

and I wrote a letter to the judge

handling my appeals.

And another song, Patty Griffin's

"Gonna Let Him Fly".

It's so strange because the lyrics

are obviously a love song,

but to me it was all about me.

"Ain't no talking to this man.

"Ain't no pretty other side. "

It's so true.

There was absolutely no pretty side

to hope for any more.

No Jackies, no love, none of those

things that you could have

a pretty other side to hope for.

# Ain't no talking to this man

# Ain't no pretty other side

# Ain't no way to understand

# The stupid words of pride

# It would take an acrobat

# I already tried all that

# So I'm gonna let him fly

# I'm gonna let him fly

# Things can move at such a pace

# The second hand

just waved goodbye. #

"Dear Judge Giles,

as a criminal plaintiff

"I ask that one right

that I have remaining to me

"as a condemned prisoner

be recognised.

"And that is a condemned man's

right to be executed. "

# I'm gonna let him fly. #

"I hereby ask that

counsel be dismissed,

"that my record be then transmitted

to Governor Edward Rendell

"for my execution date to be set

"within 60 days

of receipt of this letter. "

# Took a while to understand

# The beauty of just letting go. #

"I hereby swear that I am sane

at the time of this writing.

# I've already tried all that. #

"Signed, Nicholas James Yarris.

"August 2002."

# Oh-oh, oh-oh, oh-oh

# I'm gonna let him fly

# Fly

# Yeah

# I'm gonna let him fly. #

When the letter was

received by Judge Giles,

he ordered that my lawyers

come to a conference hearing

and he wanted to know why someone

who had been asking

for DNA testing for 15 years

claiming that they are innocent

would now ask to be executed?

And he was really hard pressed

to get them to give up any answer

I guess,

because I didn't copy them in

on the letter

and they didn't even

know I wrote to the judge

so they were hearing

this for the first time.

So the judge, by law, really was

hamstrung in the fact

that he was going to be required to

transmit my record to the governor

as law required for me

to be executed

within 60 days from that point.

Instead he said,

"All right, whatever DNA testing

is remaining in this case

"I'm ordering it now tested. "

And that was April.

April turned to May.

May turned to June.

July 2nd, 2003.

I wasn't expecting the results.

For some reason, when he brought

the phone to my cell,

I really wasn't expecting to talk

to my lawyers about Dr Blake.

But he gave me the phone and said,

"Your lawyer wants you to call. "

So I dialled the number

and I'm waiting for the collect

phone call process to ring through

and it does and on the other end

was Michael Wiseman,

a lawyer who had been

representing me for seven years.

When I heard Michael Wiseman say...

"I just got off the phone

with Dr Blake.

"The gloves that were left inside

the victim's vehicle

"were found to have DNA

from an unknown male,

"DNA from Mrs Craig and DNA from the

sperm matching the killer's gloves. "

That was it.

I didn't have to hear anything else.

I knew.

You didn't have to tell Nick Yarris

what those results meant.

I started screaming,

"Oh, my God! Oh, my God!

"It proves me innocent!

Don't you see?!"

The guard came back to collect the

phone and he saw me huddled.

Crying on the bed.

In the foetal position.

And he said...

"Nick, what's up?"

And I lifted my head up

and I just shook my head

because I didn't even have the

strength to say anything, you know.

And he said, "Go down to the shower

and take a shower. "

And I got up,

I put on my shower shoes

and I started trudging

towards the shower.

And he opened the gate

down on the end of the block

and he walked into the shower

and he put a chair in there.

And as I got the last

few steps there...

.. he grabbed my arm gently

and he sat me down

and he just pushed the button

and left me there.

And I cried.

I cried like you

wouldn't believe, man.

I waited 15 years to cry.

The happiest memory I ever had...

.. is that we lived

at 2439 Milan Street.

Just like Italy. Milan.

There was a fibreglass awning

attached to the front of our roof.

And whenever it rained, it gave off

this hollow drumming sound

that just drew me out of wherever

I was and whatever I was doing.

And I would get a blanket

and Jaco my dog, who was

a little black poodle,

and we would go out

and sit on this lounge chair

that was set up like a deckchair.

And there, under this tattered

old green blanket

I would listen to the rain

and play out all these daydreams in

my head of adventures I would have.

And it was like this...

.. cocoon.

All I had was that blanket

and the dog

and this...

.. feeling that I was on a journey.

I remember as I ran out the door

with Jaco,

the last thing Mum said was,

"Don't you dare get

those school clothes dirty!"

It was still early.

Early, like April.

And in Philadelphia in the

springtime it's just beautiful.

Like 67, 68 degrees and you

just get these very nice days.

So Jaco and I were

just like throwing the stick

and doing the things

that we loved to do.

And I was walking along

deeper into the woods,

when I saw him.

I said, "Damn. "

I was so afraid of him.

The hobnail boots, denim jeans,

white T-shirt,

armband rolled up with a pack

of Lucky Strikes in the sleeve.

And he said, "F*** are you doing?"

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