The Oklahoma

OKLAHOMA:On death row, Christmas just another day

Christmas, like freedom, is largely a state of mind for many of the men on Oklahoma's death row. "For some, it's just another day," said death row inmate Don Hawkins. "Every day is pretty much the same."

Hawkins, 42, has been on death row since June 1986 for a murder in Oklahoma County. If anything, Hawkins said, life around the holidays is harder on the prisoners. 

"Sometimes the unit is understaffed around the holidays, so we might go a week without getting a shower," he said. He shrugged. "That's just the way things are." 

Death row inmates commonly are locked in their cells 23 hours a day. Although the cells are comparatively large, Hawkins said, the routine can wear on a person. That makes the trips to "the yard" special at any time of year. 

"The yard" describes the exercise areas of the Oklahoma State Penitentiary. On H-Unit, the unit that houses Oklahoma's death row, the yard is an enclosed area with high walls and a heavy mesh over the top. Death row inmates go to the yard in groups of 5 or 6.

"You don't know who you'll be with from one day to the next," Hawkins said. "The walls are about 18 feet high, I guess," the 6-foot-2 Hawkins said. "You can't really see the sun unless it's right overhead because the mesh is so thick. 

"Sometimes, some of the guys hope a bird will fly over while they're in the yard. Even so, all you could see would be a shadow."

The food that inmates get makes a big difference around the holidays.

"Some years, we get real turkey or real ham," Hawkins said. "Other years, we get that processed stuff. When we get the real thing, that's pretty special. 

"Food can be a very emotional thing when you don't have any say about it." 

Thoughts of gifts matter less to death row inmates than to many other people, Hawkins said. 

"When you look back, you don't think about the things you've gotten or the things you've given. You think about your family and being together with them. 

"You remember the family, because that's what holidays are all about anyway. You already miss them, so that can make it harder for some people." 

Although some of the inmates on death row have families or friends who come to see them or otherwise make the holidays a little more bearable, others do not. In either case, Christmas is personal for each inmate.

"It's kind of like a sense of freedom for us," Hawkins said. "Much of what you go through is in your perception." 

To illustrate his point, Hawkins told a story. 2 men, a paralytic and a man with a terrible lung disease, were confined to a hospital room. Each day, the medical staff would help the man with the lung disease sit up for an hour and, during that time, he would gaze out the window and describe what he saw to his paralyzed roommate whose bed was on the side of the room away from the window. 

"He'd describe children running and playing, a father walking with his child or a bluebird in a tree across the way," Hawkins said. "And his descriptions gave the other man a sense of hope." 

One day, the man with the lung disease died. The paralyzed man asked to be moved close to the window and, when the nurses obliged, asked them to help him sit up so he could see out. Again the nurses obliged, but all that could be seen from the window was a wall. 

Shocked, the paralyzed man told the nurses about the wonderful things his former roommate had described and about how those descriptions had given him hope. The nurses were a little shook up by this and told the paralyzed man something he didn't know about his roommate. 

"He was blind," they said. 

"The point is, freedom, like the holidays, is largely in your mind," Hawkins said. "It's how you think, how you dream, that determines how you see things. And how you perceive things, that's your freedom. That's your Christmas."