An hour in the world of Howard Neal

Howard Neal is on death row in Mississippi. He has been there for more than a quarter of a century. 

He was sentenced to death for the 1981 murder of his niece, plus a life sentence for the murder of her friend and his half brother. The only evidence linking Howard to the crime was a confession, allegedly made to a policeman after two full days of interrogation without a lawyer present. The statement, later recited by the police in court, was neither recorded, nor signed, nor even written down.

Howard suffers from what Americans call “mental retardation.” His age – he is now 50 – has nearly caught up with his IQ, which is 54. This puts him in the bottom 0.1% of the population, and translates very roughly to the mental age of an 8 year old. But an average child of that age would be able to read much better than Howard ever will, and would not be trapped in an adult’s prison cell.

Howard’s mother had twelve children. Many of them were taken from her by the state, and adopted by other families. Nobody would take Howard, as he was so severely impaired, so he was sent to a state institution for the mentally retarded from the age of nine to sixteen, where he was brutalized by staff and fellow inmates. He was then transferred to the Mississippi State Hospital for the mentally ill, where the abuse continued.

According to one study, as many as 44 mentally retarded men have been executed since the reinstitution of the death penalty in America in the 1970s. I have known some of them, and their limitations. The State of Georgia gave Jerome Bowden a test and told him that if he did badly at it, he would be spared; he tried hard and died in the electric chair.

In theory, the U.S. Supreme Court barred the death penalty for the mentally retarded in 2002. Five years on, Howard remains on death row, and the prosecution is still fighting for the right to inject poison into his veins. The same court banned racial segregation in 1954, but pronouncements from Washington sometimes take many years to filter through to Mississippi. Three decades on, the water fountains in the courthouse at the time of Howard’s trial were still tagged ‘White’ and ‘Colored’.

You can get some insight into Howard’s world through his naïve drawings. One picture shows a child crying at the back of a class – Howard’s lasting memory of school. Another depicts police putting a gun in Howard’s mouth, although the weapon is identified as a ‘Gug’. In a third image, your eyes are drawn to the tears streaming down Howard’s face as he is strapped to the execution gurney – the future that the state of Mississippi has in store for him.

As part of a Lent festival, from March 26, 2007, Reprieve is presenting a theatrical monologue about Howard’s life, This is a True Story, at the Bridewell Theatre. Australians Tom Wright and Nicholas Harrington created the piece and are donating their time to bring it back to London. Tom Wright plays Howard: “I got arrest in 1981. I got the death sentenced in 1982. It take a life to go through court. I know a story like this is hard to believe. I wanted someone to know my side of the story. I don't know if state is going to kill me or not.” Please come along to the performance and spend an hour in Howard’s world. Or drop him a postcard. He likes ones with animals on them, especially elephants. Then he’ll know that someone – he will not be sure where – gives a damn.

This article also appeared in the New Statesman.