The True American: Murder and Mercy in Texas (12 page)

Peckerwood Warriors, down for a cause

Texas convicts and solid outlaws

The rules they live by are written in stone

Awesome—fearless they are bad to the bone

The unit they live on can’t take their pride

They live in a warzone, they are ready to die

There bodies are solid + blasted with ink

To earn their bolts
is how they think

The strength they possess as they go into war

Was passed down to them by the great mighty Thor

They go into battle with their head held high

Some will get hurt, others will die

None of this matter’s, the battle is on

They’ll fight to the finish, till their strength is all gone

In time they grow calloused, ruthless + hard

Small price to pay, to survive on the yard

They are Peckerwood Warriors down for a cause

Texas convicts and solid outlaws

Some of Stroman’s correspondence rose above crude jokes and racist bluster to suggest something like a worldview. He claimed to be reading tons in prison, following the tentacular effects of 9/11 with particular interest: “I have never been on top of the news like I am now. It really sucks. This whole world is falling apart right before our eyes.” The ideas he formed from his readings and observation were grounded in a profound sense of besiegement. He felt himself and people like him to be standing on a shrinking platform at which minorities and immigrants and public dependents were nibbling away. This worldview was distilled in an eleven-point manifesto that he loved and often circulated to friends. It was yet another document
that did the rounds among men of his ilk, and on the Internet it was sometimes falsely attributed to prominent people, only to see those claims debunked on “urban legends” sites. Stroman gave the manifesto his own title: “True American.” It declared:

1. I believe the money I make belongs to me and my family not some midlevel governmental functionary with a bad comb-over who wants to give it away to crack addicts squirting out babies.

2. I think playing with toy guns doesn’t make you a killer. I believe ignoring your kids and giving them Prozac might.

3. I don’t think being a minority makes you noble or victimized.

4. This is my life to live and not necessarily up to others expectations.

5. I believe that if you are selling me a Dairy Queen shake, a pack of cigarettes or hotel room, you do it in English. As a matter of fact, If you are an American citizen, you should speak English. My uncles and forefathers shouldn’t have had to die in vain so you can leave the country you were born in to come here and disrespect ours and make us bend to your will.

6. I don’t think just because you were not born in this country you qualify for any special loan programs, so you can open a hotel, a 7-Eleven, trinket shop or anything else.

7. I believe a self-righteous liberal democrat with a cause, is more dangerous than a Hells Angel with an attitude.

8. Our soldiers did not go to some foreign country and risk their lives in vain and defend our constitution so that decades later you can tell me it’s a living document, ever-changing, and is open to interpretation. The dudes who wrote it are light years ahead of us. So leave it alone.

9. I never owned, or was a slave, and a large percentage of our forefathers weren’t wealthy enough to own one either so stop blaming me because prior white folks owned slaves, and remember tons of white, Indian, Chinese and other races have been slaves too.

10. I don’t believe in “HATE CRIME” legislation, even suggesting it pisses me off. You’re telling me that someone who is
a minority, gay, disabled, another nationality, or otherwise different from the mainstream of this country, has more value as a human being than I do as a white male? If ya kill someone that’s a hate-crime. We don’t need more laws, we can’t enforce the ones we got.

11. I will not be frowned upon or be looked down upon or be made to keep silent because I have these beliefs and opinions. I thought this country allowed me that right.

Like this manifesto, Stroman’s worldview braided together a variety of ideologies and outlooks: Fox News talking-head talking points and Hells Angels fuck-the-worldism; Aryan Brotherhood racism and Texan exceptionalism; Cato Institute libertarianism and middle-aged white-guy bitterness; old-fashioned nativism and Focus on the Family–style concern about social decay; “True American” national pride and a post-9/11 clamoring for “moral clarity.” Yet his ideas, as they emerged in his own writings, spoke of a man who had not grappled with them so much as heard things often enough to pick out what he liked and didn’t. Stock phrases that affirmed his instincts stuck with him and became the basis of a philosophy.

What had probably never occurred to Mark Stroman was that his tendency to hate could ultimately save his life. In fact, in Texas at this moment in time, it was different from what he suspected: committing a hate crime could get you off easy. If the state ascribed his actions to simple hatred, Stroman might have received nothing more than a life sentence. To give him the Death, as they sometimes called it in Texas, they had to accuse him of a fancier thing called capital murder—murder committed during one of a handful of other crimes, like arson or robbery. If a man entered a parking lot, shot a black guy because he was black, and sped away, he might well be looking at life. If he walked into a store and stuck up the same guy for $300 and then, having taken it, murdered him, he could get the Death. Another quirk of Texas law complicated the situation. Texas did not begin giving sentences of life without parole until 2005.
Before that, recipients of life sentences were eligible for release, assuming good behavior, after forty years on the inside. In short, to accuse Stroman of a hate crime would be to risk his walking the streets someday.

The signature of Stroman’s mini-mart visits had been that he took nothing. In the case of Hasan, he walked in and just shot him; the police report noted a stash of $100 bills left untouched. In the case of Bhuiyan, same thing. But there was a wrinkle in the murder of Patel. The surveillance tape showed Stroman barging into the store, yelling something to the effect of “Give me the money,” shooting Patel, and then seeming to fumble with the register. Stroman took nothing in the end, but those words and that fumbling complicated things.

The dilemma for prosecutors was this: even a cursory glance at Stroman’s history and statements, and at the details of the shootings, suggested that these were not really robberies. The man had taken no money. He had gone after an Indian, a Pakistani, and a Bangladeshi—the latter two Muslim, but none of them Arab—in the name of avenging attacks he and many others blamed on people who looked like them. “This whole September 11 thing has devastated everybody’s life,” Stroman said. “And then here I am—I step in and become an American terrorist.” For prosecutors, however, trying Stroman for a one-man War on Terror meant forgoing the death penalty, which meant his possibly reentering the free world. That outcome the government was unwilling to brook. They had had Stroman in their custody many times—starting with arrests before his armpits sprang hair—and yet had failed to reform him or lock him safely away. They were determined not to repeat their mistakes. Whatever the law, there was only one thing to do with a man like Stroman. Bob Dark, the junior prosecutor on the case, described it plainly: “This man needs to die.”

A decision was reached. The Bhuiyan and Hasan shootings, where Stroman had taken nothing and sought nothing, would be put to the
side. Stroman would be tried solely for the murder of Patel, during which he had barked “Give me the money” and fiddled in vain with the cash register. His attempt at a counter-jihad would be repackaged for a jury, and for posterity, as a garden-variety robbery-murder, committed to raise money for paying child support and bills—perhaps with a twist of hate but nothing more than that. Mark Stroman would be charged with capital murder, for killing Vasudev Patel “in the course of committing or attempting to commit robbery.”

Years later, Bob Dark could safely admit that it was the hatred more than the robbery that motivated prosecutors. They didn’t seek the Death because of that “Give me the money.” They sought it to get rid of a hateful, incorrigibly violent man, and “Give me the money” became a legal pretext. “Probably the main decision in seeking the Death on him was sort of the retaliation factor that he had—seeking out foreigners,” Bob Dark said. As he talked further, he began to hedge: “I guess in his mind he thought he was retaliating on behalf of the country. At least that’s what I think he thought. What he was trying to convey was that he was acting on behalf of the American people. But what he was probably doing was acting on behalf of himself, trying to rob some people.”

G
REG DAVIS, THE
lead prosecutor, stood before the jury and led off the opening statements. He framed the case as a simple robbery-murder centered on that utterance of “Give me the money.” In its facts the case was uncomplicated, and Stroman’s defense lawyer, an amiable man in his midforties by the name of Jim Oatman, made it simpler still. He decided not to give an opening statement, which was his chance to give the jury another frame for seeing the case. When the prosecution finished with many of its witnesses, Oatman declined to cross-examine them. “The defense has no questions,” he got used to saying. He also called no witnesses on Stroman’s behalf.
He seemed to know something about his client’s chances that no one else did.

The stakes of the proceedings could barely be felt in the way they unfolded. Here, the death of a man—and now the possible killing of the killer in turn—became boring and routine. It droned on like a school-board hearing more than a capital-murder trial. There were just eleven witnesses in all. The prosecution called Alka Patel, the widow; a handful of police types to establish the basic, incontrovertible facts of the case; and a few of Stroman’s buddies, to whom he had boasted about doing some robberies and killing some Arabs.

The prosecution rested. Then Oatman rose: “Your Honor, ladies and gentlemen of the jury, the defense will rest its case-in-chief.” What should be noted is that its case had also just begun. The beginning of the defense of Mark Stroman was also its end, because his team called no witnesses. The court adjourned early that day, to give the judge time to prepare instructions for the jury.

The jury’s duty wouldn’t be easy. The Death is not often thought of as a philosophical affair. If the country as a whole seemed to be losing faith in capital punishment, Texas was the stubborn outlier. Its system was often labeled corrupt and racist and inept. But even in Texas, it wasn’t effortless to get rid of a man. It remained a grave, complex endeavor, for it required the asking of big, nettlesome questions about the nature of a man’s life. In the case of
Texas vs. Stroman
, No. 0140949V, stripping away the basics of where, when, and how, the ultimate decision—life versus death—depended on the jury’s answer to three such questions:

Which was Mark Stroman’s sin in the killing of Patel—hatred or greed?

Was Stroman irredeemably violent, or could he be changed?

Had life given Stroman any choice but to become what he was?

The first of the three questions—whether Stroman came to the Shell station as a robber or, in his telling, a counter-jihadist—belonged to this first phase of the trial, which was to decide his guilt
or innocence. If Stroman was convicted, and convicted of capital murder rather than the generic kind, the latter two questions would come into play, as the jury considered how to dispose of his life.

The jurors reconvened the next morning. The judge explained to them the intricacies of the charge of capital murder: “Our law provides that a person commits capital murder if he commits murder, and he intentionally commits the murder in the course of committing or attempting to commit robbery.” They were shown a surveillance video that showed the defendant doing that very thing, and then showed Vasudev Patel squirming and dying. During the presentation of the video, Alka Patel stepped outside the courtroom, wishing not to see it.