DYING TO SEE - THE TRAGEDY OF ROY BEVELS - Government - http://maxpages.com/lifemeanslife/Dying_to

Roy Beverls was 82 years old and had been confined in the Arkansas Department of Correction for longer than even he could clearly remember. The Cummins Unit had become his home. After more than two decades he had become a kind of icon to many of the prisoners here; an aged and withered symbol and living reminder of the meaning of hard times, and of doing time.

Roy was blind for the last several years of his life, and many of the men in the barracks with him respected, admired and cherished him. Despite his inability to see with his eyes, he could paint such vivid and living pictures when he spoke of the way "it used to be" back in the old days, at the turn of the century when trial and hate, prejudice, suffering and prejudice was just a normal way of life for black people like Roy.

As he told his many first-hand accounts about the cotton fields and the plantations still very much alive and well in the days of his youth, you could tell that the images in his mind were crystal clear and that he was seeing and living still yet the events he painted for his fellow prisoners with his words. Through his stories young men who listened to him could touch, fell and live with Roy what he had lived. They would become silent, solemn humbled and sometimes ashamed that they were not themselves stronger in facing and enduring their own trials here, down on the Cummins Unit Prison Farm.

Roy had also been confined in Arkansas during the "Brubaker" era, when inmate trustees were issued pistols, shotguns and rifles to level against their fellow prisoners, and who beat and tortured prisoners to the delight of the Arkansas good ol' boys. Roy knew about the daily use of "the Strap" that took the skin from human flesh in frighteningly large strips, and he knew the "Tucker Telephone" that was wired to prisoners' testicles and was then cranked to generate electricity "to make the call." He knew about the endless other abuses and murders that finally led to condemning the entire Arkansas prison system unconstitutional, a legal ruling that was unprecedented in the entire history of the U.S.A. Indeed, even when I arrived in the summer of 1981, inmate "turn keys" still "ran" things inside the prison and were directly responsible for prison security.

Read the U.S. Supreme Court decision referred to:

Most often, when Roy spoke of the trial and tragedies of his and his fellows' struggles across his life, it was not because he needed to wallow in some "poor me" self pity as so many do. Roy was very much aware of the fact that some things change only to stay the same, and that "slavery" was very much alive and well on the Cummins Unit Farm, regardless of the whitewashing that was placed upon it in the name of legitimate punishment and justice. He knew that prison keepers take utmost advantage of the fact that society has a closed mind, a blind eye and deaf ear regarding anything that might be perpetrated against "condemned criminals who only get what they deserve," and that the power to degrade, belittle and defile and push the human spirit to the breaking point has become a finely honed science to the good ol' boys.

Despite this all Roy's true life memories and accounts were full of dignity, pride and that special quiet that years of pain sheaths into undaunted spirits. More often than not, Roy would give his accounts not simply for the telling, but rather to encourage and to strengthen by example the younger men around him in the barracks of who sometimes seemed so overwhelmed by the experience of being here and who were ever on the brink of giving up and doing something crazy and thereby play into their keeper's sadistic hands.

When the men protested the insanity that went on and that goes on to this day, Roy would quiet them with one of the accounts from his own life. He knew that tragedy, suffering, pain, hate and frustration could sometimes be quieted only by examples much, much more extreme. No doubt Roy had had a hard life. Very hard. Indeed, despite its many and dark evils, prison itself was a very real respite to Roy, in contrast to what had gone before in his life.

He would tell the young men, "Man, you don't have it hard. You're having a picnic. I remember when..." There is no telling how much violence, especially violence against cruel and malicious prison keepers, that was prevented here because of Roy's recognition that desperate spirits can sometimes be shamed into the strength necessary to fight for change by peaceful means. I dare say that several guards and many inmates would not be alive today had it not been for Roy. The breaking point would otherwise have come to many.

After seeing Roy being escorted to chow, the chapel, bathroom, or anywhere else he had to go, I determined one day to inquire into what might be done to allow an old man to spend a few of his remaining years in a bright and free more gentle place. From my times in the western desert among the wind-burned and sun scorched faces of Indians and Mexicans with whom I shared some moments across the years, I knew the meaning of the lines etched in Roy Bevel's face. There had, indeed been pain and suffering gashed there many times, but kindness and humor had left their strokes as well. His face was also carved with the knowledge of things that I'm sure he sometimes wished he would rather forget, but that perhaps can never and perhaps never should be forgotten, even as I remember from my boyhood in Germany the lines on the faces of those who had endured the Holocaust, and from my days in the west I remember the lines on the faces of those who live with the slaughter of their tribes and the eradication of the culture of those who will pass this way no more. I remember the faces of those monsters who committed the atrocities of those WWII times; the same lines I now see on the faces of the good ol' boys. I didn't actually know Roy, and was not his friend, indeed I had never spoken to him. And yet, I heard his voice.

In 1984 or so, I was assigned to the prison Infirmary on the night shift, mainly in the summer months. It was still during the days when prisoners themselves basically were responsible for providing "medical treatment" to fellow prisoners. Oh sure, a few free world persons were employed as medical staff, especially after the federal courts had declared the entire system unconstitutional and when the Justice Department investigators were constantly under foot. But, few of them had time for things like their job, except when someone like the Feds were here looking.

During my time in the Infirmary, I often took the liberty of reviewing random prisoners' medical files(for reasons that will become clear in time.) All inmates who cared to do read them had ready access to the files, and especially those of us who worked in the Infirmary.

One evening as I headed to work, I saw Roy Bevels shoved into the riot gate when he was returning from chow by a guard who had decided he had the right of way, even against an old man being escorted through the gate by a fellow prisoner. Roy smashed his head against the iron plates and cut his lip. For a moment he stared at his hand with the blood on it as if he could actually see it, and then he raised his chin up and went on down the hall.

I decided then not merely to check into, but simply to do something about getting Roy some help so that someone might be able to get him out of prison and to a place he deserved to spend his last years. I wasn't looking for anything in particular in Roy's medical file, just anything that might be useful in making an appeal on his behalf to allow him to be granted clemency of something. I hoped for some clue to relatives or friends who might be contacted to that end. I was aware that Arkansas has an obscure law that allows for "arrangements" for release to be made for certain terminally ill or extremely elderly and infirm prisoners, or for prisoners who win substantial legal settlements against the state. Not, of course, out of any compassion, concern or respect for the dying, feeble or elderly, but so that the ADC and the great state of Arkansas would not have to absorb the sometimes high costs of prison healthcare or geriatrics, or by which to "deal" away having to pay legal judgements. I thought that maybe there was a loophole for Roy, based on something in his files.

After looking over most of his file, which really was very skimpy seeing that he had been locked up for more than two decades, I was about to give up thinking that I might find something there. Then, upon closing the file to put it a document in the very back it, bearing the symbol of an eye caught my attention.

When I reopened the file to look at the symbol I found a letter from the world renowned McFarland Eye Clinic in Pint Bluff. The letter was dated a few years before, addressed to the Arkansas Department of Correction medical staff and stated that after Roy's examination it was determined that he suffered from a severe form of cataracts, and that by a simple surgical procedure requiring no more than a local anesthetic, Mr. Beverls' vision could be restored to a level that would allow him to become self-sufficient again. I just stared at that letter for a while. Roy was blind and had been put through so much misery only because someone didn't want to spend the few dollars it would cost to remove his cataracts! I had to do something about this. I just had to.

At that time, a friend of mine, Jane Gordon, the daughter of a well-known and politically active family in Little Rock, had been coming to visit me in a continuing effort to get to the bottom of certain "rumors' of abuses going on in the ADC, especially regarding the beatings at the Tucker Maximum Security Unit. Jane was a freelance reporter for the Arkansas Democrat, prior to its merger with the Arkansas Gazette, and was on the staff of a Little Rock freebie rag, the Spectrum.

After I told Jane about Roy Bevels she determined to write an article in the Democrat making the public aware of the fact that an 82 year old man had been blind for several years only because the ADC had refused to pay for a simple, inexpensive cataract surgery. As hoped, the article stirred some public response, and also "stirred" the ADC officials to take the usual, "face saving and public appeasing" action. Roy's condition and the failure to provide the surgery had been an unfortunate oversight, it was said, and it was announced that Roy would soon be given the surgery.

Across many of the years of Roy's imprisonment, he had been collecting a Social Security check of about $50 a month. He was not, at first aware that he could get this money, but a fellow prisoner and some people outside made it possible for him to begin receiving checks. After many years of being forced to buy the most basic staple things that the great state of Arkansas otherwise did not (and to a large degree still does not) provide in any reasonable quantity; things like soap and toothpaste. Roy was still able to scrimp and save a few dollars now and then. By 1986 he had accumulated a savings of over $4,000, I was informed. It was his "going out to pasture money," as he referred to it.

In 1981, then Attorney General Steve Clark, an especially malicious and twisted Arkansas good ol' boy who liked to get elected by climbing on the bodies and suffering of state prisoners, decided one day to sponsor a bill to the General Assembly to require that ADC prisoners pay "room and board" for the privilege of being confined in the Department of Correction, which was still under declaration of unconstitutionality at that time! Act 715 of 1981 permitted the state to seize any assets or estates from any of its prisoners to whatever sum it was felt was owed for room and board at the time of the seizure. Of course, according to the Act the prisoners' resources were to be "investigated" by none other than the Attorney General, Steve Clark, himself. Clark then selectively single out certain prisoners from whom to collect the payment, and ADC prisoners soon dubbed those whom he went after as "The Chosen." Although, technically, the illegal bill applied to any and all prisoners, no effort was ever made to collect money from other than a handful of them. Some of them might well have insisted upon a right to trial by jury.

Not long after the state began seizing money form a select group of targeted inmates, Steve Clark was indicted for felony theft for paying for certain luxuries out of state coffers, so the real motive for his sponsorship of Act 715 was fairly evident to us. He wasn't concerned with wanting to have the people of Arkansas reimbursed for the cost of housing prisoners; he wanted ready funds for himself, his staff and fellow good ol' boys, to use to take vacations, throw parties and make expensive renovations in their offices and to pay for "official business" of every sort.

After Jane Gordon and the Arkansas Democrat revealed the tragedy of Roy's needless blindness and helplessness for so many years, Steve Clark and his cronies evidently decided to get even. Since the smart-assed old man had embarrassed creeps like Prison Director Lockhart and his ilk, and he was actually going to go through with forcing the state to pay for the surgery that they had decided he did not need, well, they would make it an expensive venture for him.

So, Roy was one day simply snatched out of the Cummins Unit, taken to yet another bastion of Arkansas justice, the courts of Star City, Arkansas, and without having been given notice or being provided an attorney, he was charged $22.50 per day for his "room and board" and over $4,000 that he had painstakingly saved across so many years from his Social Security checks was taken away from him.

Earlier, when Act 715 had come under some fire, Steve Clark had made the public comment that the Act was not unconstitutional nor unconstitutionally applied, and that he would resign from office if that were so. I wrote a letter to the Democrat "Voices" column pointing out a few facts that I felt the public should be made aware of, and commenting that Steve Clark would not resign from his job as AG even with an edict from the General Assembly. I also took the opportunity to point out several reasons why the Act was, in fact unconstitutional or illegally applied. The Democrat editors refused to print it, of course, just as they had refused to print all my previous "Voices" letters or any letters from prisoners which were not the obsequious drivel of some prisoner trying to "get in good" with Lockhart and his minions. I did also tease, or prod Clark by reminding him of his professed resignation should the Act be shown to be illegal.

I suppose that seizing Roy's hard-earned Social Security savings may not have been related to the "stir" he was causing once the reason for his blindness had become public. But, given that Roy had accumulated those savings for many years and yet no effort was made to take it for room and board at any time before, it seemed peculiar that "someone" suddenly decided to go after his Social Security money just when attention had been drawn to him. Since Act 715 directly charged Clark with the responsibility to investigate who would become The Chosen, there is little doubt that he was directly aware, by statutory presumption, if by no other means.

When Roy was returned to the unit, I sent him word that I would draft a lawsuit for him to challenge Act 715 and the manner in which the money was stolen from him without even affording him minimal due process of law. Cases were already pending, but I felt that local good ol' boy attorneys would fairly well botch the allegations asserted against the Act and would lose. Then the good ol' boy courts would spout some meaningless yap saying that it was perfectly legal. I also wanted to take the opportunity to shove the ultimate ruling up Steve Clark's - well, where the sun doesn't shine. So, I began drafting the suit for Mr. Beverls and began contacting some attorney friends of mine to perhaps represent it free of charge.

During the days immediately after the announcement that the cataracts would be removed, Roy became very apprehensive and afraid, and he didn't want to go through with it. Several of his friends and I concluded that Roy was just scared of the "change" that regaining his sight might bring after such a long time. Who knows the psychological mechanisms that underlie such things. He had become accustomed to being blind, and perhaps used the attention that he received because of it from fellow prisoners who always looked out for him. Or, maybe Roy just felt that he had seen enough in his lifetime and would rather finish life seeing nothing else except the images inside him. Maybe he knew or apprehended far more than any of the others of us could at the time.

Across several days, a lot of guys were stopping in to see Roy and to nudge him to continue to have the same strength and courage he had so often instilled or revived in many others himself and go to get the surgery. And so, taking a deep breath, and assuming an air of dignity and resolve only an 82 year old man can take on, Roy agreed to have the surgery. He wasn't doing it out of his own need, but as an example.

I was never his friend and never close to him, but it was a good thing to see in him nonetheless.

Finally, the day for his surgery arrived! On his way out several of the guys cheered him on. From a distance away, I could have sworn that I saw Warden Willis Sargent and Director A.L. Lockhart slinging rocks and dirt all over the place when spinning wheels and racing off in a state vehicle. Maybe I did.

We got word later that day, through the Chapel that Roy's surgery had gone just fine. It had only taken a few minutes, and he would be returning to Cummins later in the evening, once the effects of the anesthetic and other chemicals had completely subsided. Then, late in the day we learned that the Diagnostic Unit in Pine Bluff; today known as The Cemetery, had decided to keep him overnight just to make sure there were no complications of any kind.

The following day we got word that for no identifiable reason, Roy had died that night. It stunned many.

Looking back now, maybe that is why Roy had been so apprehensive and afraid of having the surgery. He knew or suspected something we didn't. Maybe he knew that to see meant to die.

Goodbye, Roy. I am sorry. I have kept my word; I have told part of your story. Vaya con dios.

by ROLF KAESTEL

Tell the Governor of Arkansas what you think

Explore Arkansas' River of Blood

Follow the Blood Trail

Meet Rolf Kaestel, read his Executive Clemency appeal and raise your voice to free him from the ADC

Peek inside the dark and evil world through the eyes of one buried there

These are the men and women currently residing on Arkansas' Death Row

View the artistic works of men and women incarcerated in the Dark and Evil World

View text of Miscellaneous Lawsuits and Court Decisions

View the Arkansas Constitution

Sign Guestbook

View Guestbook

SHELEA SUZANNE (SUE) TANT THURSTON
Mineral Cemetery
MINERAL	WASHINGTON
Linda Tant Miller
tantsy1@msn.com
sheleathurston@lewiscounty.com

Visitors: 02190

Page Updated Sun Dec 5, 1999 7:25pm EST