Wideman John Edgar - Brothers and Keepers

John Edgar Widemans books include Writing to Save a Life, Philadelphia Fire, American Histories, Fatheralong, Hoop Roots and Sent for You Yesterday. He is a MacArthur Fellow and has won the PEN/Faulkner Award twice and has been a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award and National Book Award. In 2017, he won the Prix Femina tranger for Writing to Save a Life. He divides his time between New York and France.

ALSO BY JOHN EDGAR WIDEMAN

Fanon: A Novel

Briefs: Stories

Gods Gym: Stories

The Island: Martinique

Hoop Roots: Basketball, Race, and Love

Two Cities: A Novel

The Cattle Killing: A Novel

Fatheralong: A Meditation on Fathers and Sons, Race and Society

All Stories Are True

The Stories of John Edgar Wideman

Philadelphia Fire: A Novel

Fever: Stories

Reuben: A Novel

Sent for You Yesterday: A Novel

Damballah: Stories

Hiding Place: A Novel

The Lynchers: A Novel

Hurry Home: A Novel

A Glance Away: A Novel

Writing to Save a Life: The Louis Till File

American Histories: Stories

Published in Great Britain in 2018 by Canongate Books Ltd,
14 High Street, Edinburgh EH1 1TE
canongate.co.uk

This digital edition first published in 2018 by Canongate Books

Copyright John Edgar Wideman, 1984
Preface copyright John Edgar Wideman, 2005

First published in 1984 in the United States by Henry Holt and Company

The moral right of the author has been asserted

Every effort has been made to trace copyright holders and obtain their permission for the use of copyright material. The publisher apologises for any errors or omissions and would be grateful if notified of any corrections that should be incorporated in future reprints or editions of this book.

British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available on request from the British Library

ISBN 978 1 78689 204 1
eISBN 978 1 78689 206 5

To Bette Wideman
Whose love, whose sweet dream of freedom
blesses all her children

CONTENTS

PREFACE

S ince Brothers and Keeperss original publication in 1984, hundreds of well-meaning strangers, people who know me and my brother only from the pages of a book, have approached me and asked, Hows your brother doing? Heres a quick update of an impossible answer. Robert Widemans health is reasonably good, his spirit is strong, and he persists in believing hell soon be released from the penitentiary. Robby remains a determined, thoughtful, amiable, optimistic man, and, like my son Jake, creates inside the walls of prison a life fuller than the lives lots of us manage in the so-called free world. This in spite of the fact he is intensely aware of the limits and dangers imposed by confinement, and regrets each day the mistakes he committed that landed him in jail and cost the life of another human being. My brother speaks to me often about the greatest burden he believes he bears: being a source of immeasurable grief to his family and the family of the man killed in a crime this book describes. Robby has married again. As far as hes able from behind prison bars, he endeavors to support his former wife and their son, Chance, born February 13, 1990, two days after Nelson Mandela walked out of a South African prison.

Robbys legal situation requires a slightly longer summary. Four years ago, after a hearing in his courtroom revealed new, compelling evidence that medical malpractice contributed to the victims death, Judge James R. McGregor ordered that my brother was entitled to a new trial and immediately eligible for bail. The afternoon of the verdict, while my family gathered in my sisters home to welcome Robby back after twenty-five years in prison, I stood in the downtown Pittsburgh office of the Allegheny County district attorney Stephen A. Zappala, Jr., and listened as the DA informed my brothers attorney, Mark Schwartz, that hed decided not to appeal Judge McGregors findings. The DAs unambiguous statement of his intentions was crucial, since it permitted Robbys lawyer to begin arranging bail rather than to go down to County Court, where it would have been his duty to be on hand to oppose any state motion challenging Judge McGregors order.

I was elated. The possibility that the state would choose to conduct another trial was highly unlikely. A new trial would be expensive, the verdict quite uncertain given the new evidence, and finally, even if the state conducted a trial and won its case, my brother had probably served more time than any guilty verdict would mandate. No new trial meant the state would be forced to let my brother go. The unwieldy scales of justice at last seemed tilting in his favor. Then, without apprising us, DA Zappala changed his mind. In other words, he broke the commitment hed declared to my brothers counsel. About a half-hour before County Court closed, he filed a motion to stay Judge McGregors order. Unopposed by any legal representative of Robert Wideman, the stay was granted. Subsequently the DA filed an appeal that asked the court, in effect, to reverse Judge McGregors decision. That appeal was upheld as it crawled through Pennsylvanias appellate courts; all challenges to it mounted by Robert Widemans defense lawyers were denied, with little or no legal reasoning offered, until it reached the Pennsylvania Supreme Court, where it became the final word. My brother never received the new trial nor the chance for bail hed been granted, and he continues to serve a life sentence in prison.

I believe that in addition to breaking his word, the DA set in motion a chain of events that resulted in an illegal detainment of my brother. The afternoon following Judge McGregors decision, shortly after Robbys lawyer and I met with the DA, apparently, a call was placed from the DAs office to the State Correction Institute at Pittsburgh (SCIP), a call requesting that the prison not release Robert Wideman because a motion to stay the judges decision was on its way to County Court. It seems to me that the call was inappropriate (an eleventh-hour tampering with understood procedures), unethical (since hed promised not to appeal, the DA was well aware no counsel would be present at County Court to represent Robert Widemans interests), and illegal (at the time of the call, no motion to stay had been filed nor granted, and therefore, by requesting that prison officials detain Robert Wideman, the DA was asking them to violate a standing court order).

According to the Allegheny County sheriff, a very nasty, disruptive standoff occurred at SCIP when prison guards refused to remand Robert Wideman into the custody of sheriffs deputies whod been dispatched to the prison to execute Judge McGregors court order. For hours my brother was forcibly detained, denied his right to post bond and be freed. This after hed been ordered earlier that day, when prison officials learned of McGregors verdict, to clear out his cell and prepare himself to attend a hearing downtown, where he could post bond and then go home.

To this day I dont know why the DA said one thing and did another, why he didnt honor Judge McGregors ruling nor respect my brothers rights. I do know I was impressed by the courage of Judge McGregor, since the DAs father just happened to be chief justice of the Pennsylvania Supreme Court, and one of the chief justices functions is to oversee administrative matters that vitally affect the careers of judges. Perhaps after making his initial decision, the DA was advised that an inexperienced prosecutor couldnt afford the public embarrassment of losing a high-profile case and a high-profile prisoner at the start of a bitterly contested, whos-tougher-on-crime election campaign in which he would be fighting to convince voters to ratify his claim to an office hed gained by political appointment.