The Monkey King's Used Primate Emporium and Book Reviews

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Daniel R. Williams, �Executing Justice � An Inside Account of the Case of Mumia Abu-Jamal�

Started January 12 � Finished January 14, 2003; 406 pages. Posted 16 January 2003

And so it comes to this. If the last five reviews I wrote seemed kind of bland, or like there wasn�t much work put into them, there�s a reason. I just finished writing all five, all in the same evening. Something else was on my mind, and this seemed like the book to tie it all together.

See, on the day that I started this book, Sunday, January 12, I had already discovered something: my friend who was raped and murdered nearly ten years ago, a case that had never led to any arrest, finally culminated in the apprehension of a suspect in Florida. And so what do I do when I hear about this? I read a book about the injustice of the death penalty.

This is why I�m no fun at parties.

Mia Zapata and I met though a strictly business proposition � she was the singer for a band called The Gits, located in Seattle, and I was booking shows in San Jose. The Gits had recently released their first album, Frenching the Bully, and I loved every song. If there was any band that I wanted to bring into San Jose, it was them.

But I soon found they were already playing in San Jose � for two nights, as it turned out; The Gits playing at The Oasis (which has since been converted into a church) for the first night, and Mia singing an acoustic solo act two days later at what is now called the Bee-Hive � the bar that seems to always end in a full police blockade when 2 a.m. comes about.

I tracked down a number for The Gits in the vain hope that I could get them to play at an all-ages venue. I was old enough to see them in the bar, as I had already done previously, but I saw how the crowd reacted to them � with utter indifference. The 21-and-older crowd was more interested in finding dates for the night and standing around the bar attempting to look cool than enjoying a great band. Besides myself, there were six other people who stayed at the front stage that night, and I knew five of them. I was determined not to let that happen again.

When I finally got a number for the band, I didn�t expect it to be the number for Mia Zapata herself. That didn�t matter; I had dealt with bigger bands on a face-to-face basis before. But what struck me about Mia was her accessibility. Instead of striking a business deal, we talked about music ideology, punk-rock politics, and everything else we could think about.

A conversation that should have lasted 20 minutes ended up lasting three hours. They couldn�t play the show I was trying to set up for them � their tour was booked solid, but she swore that I would be the first person they called when they went on tour the next time around.

I don�t think there has ever been a time that I�ve connected with somebody so quickly as I did with Mia. She asked if I was going to go to the San Jose shows they had booked anyway, and I acknowledged that I was � there was no way I was going to miss them. She offered to put me on their guest list and I refused � I knew they would need whatever money they could get from the door. I went to the shows three weeks later and never bothered to check to see if I was on the list or not.

The first show at the Oasis went better than the last time they came through. People had heard the new album and realized it for the brilliance that it was. Of course this also meant there were dozens of people up front, elbowing their way to try and see the firebrand of a singer exemplified in her small frame. When the band finished, Mia came back to the front of the stage, a stage built high for rock stars that wanted to distance themselves form their audience, and sat on the edge. I introduced myself.

She was excited to meet me and we kept trying to have a conversation, but were constantly interrupted by people who wanted to buy her shots of whisky, mostly in deference to the song, �Another Shot of Whisky,� arguably the hit of the album, despite that they were still an underground band.

It didn�t take long before they needed to leave, heading up to San Francisco for a place to stay before their next show. She dragged me over to their merchandise booth and handed me a huge stack of Gits stickers, making me promise that I�d come to her solo gig.

I still have two stickers left from that stack.

Two days later, I went to her solo performance. The place was a mess. The club failed to think through the logistics of how to present an acoustic performer, and thus only provided her with one microphone. She made do with the situation, hunkered over comically in order to try and make the mic pick up her acoustic guitar and her singing. The end result was pretty much what you would expect with that kind of situation.

When she finished her first set, she was once again assaulted by well-wishers bearing well drinks. For some reason, I felt I should let her be � I didn�t want come off as another drooling fanboy fawning over her. Hell, it seemed she could use a break, seeing the mad crush around her. Instead, I sat in the corner, waiting for her to start the second set, happy to be there to hear her amazing voice.

What happened instead was that she spotted me and marched over.

�Dean,� she said, �What the hell is wrong with everybody in your town?�

As if to accentuate the point, one bar patron started singing boisterously, bordering on obnoxious. The bouncer, sick of his mirthful behavior, slung him into a double headlock and rushed him down the stairs, but not before smashing the guy headfirst into a nearby pillar.

�Things like that,� she said, pointing at the bouncer. �Does that happen often? He was just singing! I�m not going to play the second set.�

I had recognized the guy, and knew that he had caused problems at several other shows. From that basis alone she decided to continue playing, but not without chastising the bouncer first.

In the middle of the second set, she broke a guitar string. I had to go home, as public transportation ended at 1 a.m. in those days. I told her I had to leave, and she promised to get a hold of me the next time she came down.

If that was all there was to it, I wouldn�t consider Mia a friend of mine. After all, being in a band myself, I know that more than a few times I met people that I gelled with and promised to keep in touch, only to forget about once I got home. But the thing was, she called me. Twice, in fact.

The first time, she just wanted to let me know that they arrived home safely and that they really wanted to book a show with me the next time they traveled, but the business formalities soon ended and we spent another hour on the phone just having a conversation.

I am not known for my conversational skills on the phone. In fact, I hate it � not being able to put a face with the voice drives me nuts, and I like eye contact, but we spent the next hour laughing and chatting as if we were in a bar together � a bar where people didn�t get tossed out for singing uproariously.

She called me again soon after for no reason at all, and we talked for nearly three hours. I should note that this wasn�t flirting behavior, although I found Mia to be absolutely stunning. We, however, had these conversations because we got along amazingly well, and I considered her to be one of my true friends � odd, since in reality we had only met in passing, and if you were to think carefully about it, we had less than 24 hours of contact.

A little over two weeks later, she was dead.

For whatever reason, the cops decided to disclose minimal information about the case. At first, all I knew was that she had been found in an alley, strangled by the strings on her hooded sweatshirt with The Gits logo on the back � the same sweatshirt she wore at that acoustic show in San Jose. It was another five years before I found out that she had been raped and that her body was positioned in the form of a cross, arms outstretched, legs placed next to each other, feet overlapping.

In the meantime, there wasn�t much that I could do. I made a T-shirt with her face on it, taken from the Enter: The Conquering Chicken album released posthumously, a shirt that I still have to this day, a shirt that I�ve been wearing for the last three days straight. I played her albums for anybody who would listen, and talked about her incessantly to this very day. And then, three days ago, I receive word that after nearly ten years of no leads, an arrest was made in Miami-Dade County regarding Mia�s death.

Since that announcement, I�ve received a deluge of calls and e-mails from people who wanted to make sure I knew, or wanted to make sure I was okay. I appreciate this. I haven�t been able to get back to most of you as of yet � it�s just too draining on me at this point, but I will get back to you eventually.

But the arrest has opened up an entirely new can of worms. Mia�s killer may have been captured. What happens now? The majority of people who contacted me had an answer for that � kill the bastard. For a few moments I was inclined to agree, but I was surprised at the vehemence of some of these people.

I�ve never been for the death penalty. I am not comfortable giving a government I distrust the power to kill in the name of law and order. The most common excuse I hear for its abolition is that an innocent person may be executed (and indeed has). But that�s not my problem with capital punishment. Rather, my dilemma lies with the realization that the death penalty is a way of the court system to throw their hands in the air, saying essentially, �Well, there�s nothing more we can do.�

A minute percentage of convicted murderers are people who have had no prior criminal past, and by minute, I mean in the .01 - .02 percent range, if memory serves correct. And while I have no research resources to confirm this, nor the compunction to do so, I believe statistics show that convicted murderers have an average of five prior convictions for lesser offences before they kill. What this says to me is that our current prison system does nothing but provide a veritable Time Out where people get bad tattoos, lift weights and become more and more disenfranchised with �normal� society. The thought that this is rehabilitation is a joke.

The man they arrested in the death of Mia Zapata, Jesus Mezquia, has several prior arrests for assault and battery, mostly involving women. (Side tangent: In my own perverse way of looking toward the bright side of life, the one comfort I can take from this entire ordeal is the fact that if this guy is guilty, then I can now say that Jesus killed a friend of mine.) Did the parole system truly think he was �rehabilitated,� a man who once attacked a pregnant woman? Or was it simply more cost-effective to let him go? I would argue the latter.

Of course, what I�m arguing here has no bearing on the case of Mia Zapata, as I�m faulting the entire judicial system, and we�re long past helping fix that for Mia, or for me for that matter. But I can�t help but wonder what would have happened if the judicial system had wisened to what most of us already know � the current incarnation of incarceration does no good. And thus, we are left with a system that ultimately leads to death � death of the victim, and death of the perpetrator.

Nobody wins. Nobody feels any better.

So no, while I hate Jesus (assuming he is the one who killed my friend), I do not wish him dead. That�s not easy for me to say, for if the police have identified him by DNA acquired by the saliva swabbed from the breasts of my friend. A lot of people have mentioned to me that while I surely can�t be happy at this arrest, at least there is finally some closure.

There is no fucking closure. My friend is dead, and she shouldn�t be. It is possible that they now have the person who did this, and I�m glad. But I will gain no satisfaction from killing him. Killing him won�t bring Mia back. Killing him will not save the taxpayers money (it actually costs more to kill a man on death row than to imprison him for life). Killing him will not serve as a warning for others not to kill, as crime rates in states that have the death penalty show. Killing him won�t even achieve the effect of making me feel safer that one of those �bad people� are gone; I�m willing to bet that this won�t be the first murder of a friend that I�ll have to deal with, at least as long as our prison system continues as it is.

Of course, I�m over-analyzing, as I�ll have nothing to do with this case. But frankly, I�m a little shocked that friends of mine would demand so-called �eye for an eye� justice. That�s what I expect to hear from the Bush administration attempting to justify Afghanistan and Iraq.

I miss my conversations with you, Mia. I miss seeing you on stage. I miss you, even after all this time.


Rating: Worth new, though I guess you have no reason to understand why I say so, as I never talked about the book.

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