Mt. Airy author, on Death Row, hoping for reversal

By AMY BRISSON

Second of Two Parts

On a visit to Pennsylvania’s death row, you might not expect to meet an award-winning poet, welterweight boxing champion and former resident of Mt. Airy. But that is just what Reginald Sinclair Lewis is.

Born in Richmond, Virginia, Lewis grew up in Philadelphia during the 1960s and 1970s, living with his family in Lower Kensington and with his grandmother in Mount Airy. Although Lewis always loved language, for many years he put his dreams of writing on hold while he became increasingly involved with the dangerous 12th and Oxford Street gang.

A shoot-out put Lewis in Rahway prison for several years, and when he was paroled he tried pursuing both writing and boxing, but began drifting without direction. His discovery of himself as a writer did not come until a few years later, when he found himself again in prison, and this time facing a death sentence.

Returning to prison

In November 1982, Lewis, who was working as a costume jewelry salesman, was arrested. He was accused of murdering a pimp in a seedy North Philadelphia bar over an extremely small debt. Lewis strongly defends his innocence in his latest collection of essays, Where I’m Writing from: Essays from Pennsylvania’s Death Row. Lewis maintains that he was in California at the time of the murder, but says that evidence for his defense was withheld.

Lewis was found guilty and sentenced to death by a jury presided over by Judge Albert F. Sabo, who was also the judge in Mumia Abu Jamal’s famous homicide case. Sabo, now deceased, presided over 31 trials in which the defendant was sentenced to death, more than any other U.S. judge, according to an Amnesty International report from 2000. Lewis’ state-appointed defense lawyer, who Lewis claims slept through parts of the trial, was disbarred three years after the proceeding.

Lewis and his current federal defense lawyer, Germantown resident Mary Hanssens, are awaiting a decision from a federal judge on whether irregularities in the trial and his previous lawyer’s incompetence are grounds to reopen his case. Though the process is slow, according to Hanssens, there is a chance the judge will either rule for a new trial or a new sentencing hearing. If granted a new hearing, his death sentence could be commuted to a lesser penalty, while a retrial would review the actual conviction.

The writing bug

“Right after I was sentenced to death I had a lot of emotions. Fear, anger, hate, despair and suicidal thoughts. It all came out on paper,” Lewis told a Local reporter on August 4.

Starting with some guest columns in the Philadelphia Daily News, Lewis was bitten by the “writing bug,” in his words. Writing and reading soon became his sole occupations in prison.

When he arrived at his cell at the State Correctional Institute in Greene County (SCI Greene), Lewis did not have any books to read. So he contacted poet and Temple University professor Sonia Sanchez and asked if she had any books she could send him. When she did, her package was returned to her by the prison. But to Lewis’ surprise, just one book, The Best Short Stories by Negro Writers, edited by Langston Hughes, made it through to him. The book was transformative.

“It was like my whole consciousness changed. They took me into these worlds … I had never read such superior writing,” said Lewis. Studying the early work of greats like Langston Hughes, Alice Walker, Zora Neale Hurston and Ralph Ellison, Lewis began to write prolifically.

Now, living on the death row wing of SCI Graterford, Lewis says his cell is cluttered with books and papers. During his 22 hours of restricted movement a day, Lewis thinks up and mulls over ideas for poems, then scribbles them on scraps of paper. While listening to jazz through headphones to block out the prison noise, he types his work on a beat-up electric typewriter and then edits it tirelessly.

“I look at the poem as a newborn baby that I’m constantly nourishing,” says Lewis of his work. “I stop when my head and heart tell me I can’t make this any better.”

People who know and correspond with Lewis are impressed by the level of effort he puts into his writing. “I have a tremendous admiration for him keeping his head together under terrible pressure that could lead to very severe erosion of a person’s basic underlying capability to function effectively,” Bernard Z. Friedlander, a retired professor from University of Hartford, Conn., told the Local. “He doesn’t just sit back and look at the ceiling and has this stuff pour out of him, and he’s got a finished product. Arriving at the finished product is the result of a lot of work.”

Poet laureate of death row

Besides numerous articles, essays, poems and fiction pieces that have been published in a wide variety of magazines and newspapers, Lewis has self-published two books of poetry while in jail, Leaving Death Row (2000) and Inside My Head (2002), and recently put out a book called Where I’m Writing From: Essays from Pennsylvania’s Death Row (PublishAmerica, 2005). He has also won several awards and honors for his work, and recently competed for a Guggenheim Award.

Though many of the essays in his latest book focus on America’s criminal justice system and prisoners’ stories, he does not hesitate to write about life on the outside as well.

“There’s no rule I should just write about prison; my life didn’t start in prison,” explained Lewis. “I like to write about life as I know it.”

For Lewis’ friends and admirers, it is the way he writes that is captivating. “He writes very vivid portraits of other people and of himself, distilled through the retort of poetic compression,” described Friedlander, who wrote a letter of recommendation on Lewis’ behalf for the Guggenheim contest.

“He’s always speaking from the vantage point of someone who in some essential way is an outsider,” Maureen Drdak, an artist living in Ardmore, told the Local. “Plus there is an aesthetic sensibility that attracts me about his writing.”

Lewis’ poetry, which has receive positive reviews from many publications, including Ms. Magazine and Black Issues Book Review, has won him the unofficial title “Poet Laureate of Death Row.”

Writing from prison

Of course, being locked in a maximum-security prison adds a dimension of difficultly to the very act of writing and publishing works. In many of his essays, Lewis writes about the harsh conditions he saw in over 20 years as a prisoner at SCI Greene, which for a long time employed Corporal Charles Graner, a central figure in the Abu Ghraib prisoner abuse scandal in Iraq. One of the biggest problems for Lewis was communication with the outside. He claimed that his mail was tampered with or purposefully misplaced, and that both prisoners and guards obstructed his efforts to publish and publicize his poetry.

Now at SCI Graterford, Lewis says that the environment is much more conducive to his work, and that he receives support from the superintendent and guards, some of whom have even read his books.

But some things are still difficult, such as trying to maintain an online presence. With a laugh but completely in earnest, Lewis told the Local that what he really needed most of all was a secretary. Now, when he wants to send an e-mail, he must type it up on his typewriter, print it out and mail it to a friend in California. The friend then types the letter into the computer and sends it on his behalf. Responses must be printed out and sent back.

Lewis says he is not discouraged, however, and can even find a silver lining in his jail time. “Because of prison, I’m a writer, and I’m more spiritual,” he said, noting that incarceration essentially forces self-reflection. “I discovered myself in prison. I’ve had a lot of time to think about my life, my mistakes and what I would have done differently.”

Thinking about the outside

In his 23 years in prison, Lewis certainly has had a lot of time to think. But rather than concentrate on the past, Lewis tries to focus on his writing, which connects him to the outside world and gives meaning to his life.

“On death row all I have is my God and then my writing,” Lewis declared passionately.

In the future he intends not only to continue writing, but to establish himself as a teacher. He has recently been given approval to establish a creative writing course for prisoners at Graterford, and he hopes to set up a classroom, complete with a selection of great works of literature. With the help of outreach programs, he hopes to invite professors from Chestnut Hill College, Germantown Friends School, Villanova and Temple to teach workshops for his course.

When Lewis isn’t busy reading or writing, he tries to pay attention to what is happening outside the prison walls. When he moved from SCI Greene in Waynesburg to Graterford, only an hour’s drive from Philadelphia, he immediately subscribed to all the newspapers in the communities he used to know. Among them is the Local, because, Lewis said, he enjoys reading about artists and students doing positive things in the community. He mentioned in particular how impressed he was by a mock trial at Springfield High School earlier this year.

One of his dreams, he told the Local, is for his children’s plays to be performed by students in his beloved Mount Airy neighborhood, to raise money for charity. Of course, he also dreams of one day being free from prison. Asked if he was hopeful about someday being released, Lewis was adamant.

“There’s always hope, that’s all we have,” he said. “Even if our hopes and dreams never come true, we still must hope, we still must dream.”