A Saint on Death Row Read Free Page B

business, the only one he knew.
    He had begun somewhat inauspiciously by selling white candle wax, which he refashioned to resemble rocks of crack cocaine, but soon he was embedded in the brisk trade that fed the crack epidemic. “Dominique,” says Marlon, looking back, “wasn't selling drugs so he could go out and buy flashy cars oranything like that. He just wanted the money so we could live.”
    But if there is no honor among thieves, among drug dealers there is only shame and violation. Even Dominique, motivated by love of his brothers, could not escape the coarsening effects of such employment. And with the epic disappointments of his family life and the natural aggression that the advent of puberty can work on even the mildest of boys, the face that Dominique began to show the world was one of brutality and rage, a rage that would not abate for many years. For all that, his rage was eloquent, coherent, and full of grown-up resolve: “I promised myself that I would never sell myself short for anyone ever again. I stopped caring about people because those that I did care about did not care about me.”
    Some, such as his brothers, however, continued to receive the considerate gentleness that had previously distinguished Dominique in all his dealings. Another recipient of Dominique's positive attention was Jessica Tanksley, a captivatingly beautiful neighborhood girl, two years his junior, whom he would soon begin to court with extraordinary deference and ceremony. She would be duly impressed. But Dominique also impressed his juvenile probation officer, Sylvia Gonzales, who remembers him as “always well behaved” and extremely likable. “There are certain kids that you never forget,” Sylvia would remark many years later. “They just get to you—to your heart.”
    At sixteen, Dominique's rather realistic assessment of his own strategy was that eventually his drug distribution businesswould land him in prison. He hoped only to remain free as long as his brothers needed him. Then, he reasoned, after he finished serving his time, they would be old enough to take care of him when he returned to rebuild his life. As his bad luck would have it, however, he was to remain free only till he was eighteen.

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    On October 18, 1992, Dominique Green was arrested by the Houston police. It was his fourth arrest. He had been driving a stolen red car the previous afternoon when the police gave chase along a fifty-mile stretch of Highway 288. The car ended in a ditch in Brazoria County, just outside the city. Dominique, lightning quick, set off on foot through field and forest and succeeded in eluding capture till the next day, when the police sent out dogs to track him down. Arrested immediately were two others, Michael Neal and Mark Porter, both black, who were found in the backseat of the car in possession of a large handgun and a BB gun. The handgun was sent off for ballistics testing.
    The police, aware of a recent series of armed robberies carried out at a shopping mall and elsewhere by young black men,believed they had caught the perpetrators. In lineups, one or another of the arrested men was then identified by witnesses; and though no one identified Dominique, the three prisoners were charged with participating in robberies. Michael Neal, however, represented by counsel arranged by his mother, was able to put up a bond for his release.
    The ballistics test came back, establishing that the handgun, a Tech 9, was the weapon that killed a man named Andrew Lastrapes Jr. outside a Houston convenience store in the early morning of October 14. Eventually the police, questioning the suspects separately, determined that Mark Porter could not have been part of the group that morning, but that two other youths were: Paul Lyman, black, and Patrick Haddix, white. Neal did not provide a statement at that time.
    At this point, for anyone researching the history of these events, the record becomes exceedingly muddled and incomplete. How