I Am a Killer

I accept full responsibility for the way my life turned out and stuff.

People always saying... talking about how unfair the world is and stuff,

ain't nobody ever said that life was meant to be fair.

People just got to accept that, man. You know?

There ain't no sense in just being bitter about it, you know?

That's life.

I'm James Robertson, I'm 54.

I've been in prison for 37 years.

You know, I finished my original time way back in the, like, late '80s.

I've got a bunch of other time, uh...

I don't even really know how much time.

About a hundred years, I guess.

I got to the point where I said, "Fuck this shit. I'm going on death row."

And I walked up, I fired one shot.

And as I got closer, I fired one more shot.

She was shot through the cheek and it stopped in her jaw.

I drove him around behind a desk and I stabbed him approximately 25 times.

I couldn't believe it.

I just thought I can't believe I just killed somebody.

I don't feel bad about it.

I started stabbing him, stabbing the guy on the couch.

I had a pretty good childhood.

I, uh, spent my first, like, 12 years on the east side of Orlando.

It had kind of a...

It's kind of a...

back then, it had kind of a semi-rural feel to it

even though it was, like, right outside of town.

As far as I'm concerned, I think we were, like,

what you would call lower-middle-class.

Uh, I've lived in neighborhoods that were all white,

I've lived in neighborhoods that were mixed.

I went to schools that were all white,

I went to schools that were 90-percent black.

I've... I've been, um, just all over, really, you know?

I didn't go to school a lot of times. When I was in junior high,

I used to skip school all the time.

I used to love doing that.

And I loved hanging out on the streets, I loved using drugs,

partying with friends.

Smoked a lot of pot.

I did other things, you know. Acid, uh, PCP, uh...

using Quaaludes and valiums and cocaine. Stuff like that.

I started getting locked up when I was 12, I think.

I had been stealing mostly. I mean, kids' stuff like bicycles

and stuff like that, you know.

I was 16. I was hanging out on the streets

and I would like, uh, see some place that looked like I could break into it

or something, you know. Get some money for the dope.

There was some little business across the street from my house.

I had already broke into there and stole the stereo.

You know, I took it to the dope man, you know, got some dope.

And I went back in there to steal, uh, some speakers.

And some security guards caught me.

And, uh, I got into a little wrestling match with them,

and I thought I had a knife in my sock.

I tried to get the knife out and stab 'em so I could run off

but I couldn't get to it. They were both on top of me.

That's... that's what I came to prison for.

Originally, I had a 10-year sentence.

Then I, uh... something happened.

Uh, I was at Cross City Correctional Institution,

some guy got killed.

I didn't kill him, but some other guys killed him,

and I got 15 years for that.

Tried to escape one time. I went to outside court,

and I kicked a guard. I tried to take his gun from him.

And then that's, you know, kinda at that point,

I'd kinda... kinda had a bad attitude.

And I caught a lot of time. I used to... stabbing dudes and stuff.

I was in a position where I was getting into fights all the time

and I had a riot and all this stuff, you know.

All this bullshit, you know, so they made a big deal out of that, like,

"Oh, man, that's terrible. You was in a riot."

And all this kind of stuff. What the fuck you expect?

You know?

That's the stuff you expect,

you should expect that to happen in prison, man. It's prison.

You know, you got a lot of bad guys in here and of course,

inmates are gonna get into stuff like that. You know what I mean?

But they'll say that I'm the troublemaker. I'm the guy that's the bad guy.

I got put on some kind of, like, long-term maximum-security status

where you're locked in a cell all the time.

They took everything from me.

My TV, my property.

Man, that shit's... man, that shit's torture, man.

You're locked in a cell all day.

I mean, you might get to come out a couple times a week for, like,

two hours or something like that. They'll put you in a little dog cage.

You just lose all motivation, man.

I mean, you... you ain't getting no sun, really.

I got to live in humiliation every damn day.

The guards humiliate you all the damn time,

they treat you like shit, you know.

Like they think you're a bug or something, you know.

Uh, it's crazy because the motherfuckers that they like are the bugs.

Every time you go to the CM board, first thing they tell you,

something that you did back in the 1980s or the '90s or something.

"Oh, you got a bad history."

Well, I say, "What's that got to do?" They say, "That's your record.

That's why it's called a record."

They would use that as an excuse to keep me on CM.

Now, they're not treating all those inmates like that.

Some of those inmates, they'll get DRs and they'll let them out on the compound.

You know what I mean?

I mean, you just sit in that cell all damn day, man.

That's inhumane. I mean, that's crazy.

They just put somebody in a cell, man, and take all of his privileges from him

for years and years and years,

and I'm seeing all these other guys get off of CM.

I knew that they was gonna use any excuse that they could to keep me on CM.

Any excuse.

Finally, I-I got mad and I said, "I'm gonna go ahead and kill somebody."

It was premeditated. I wanted to get on death row.

So I said, "Well, I'll just go ahead and kill my cellmate."

I pretty felt pretty confident I could... I could overpower him.

He was a child molester.

And I didn't really want to have a child molester in my cell.

Believe me, it was premeditated. All the way.

I waited until the guard's made his round.

I knew I had about a 25-minute window of opportunity.

I got behind him, I nudged him, you know, I woke him up.

I had some socks tied up.

I said, "You gonna let me tie you up or am I gonna kill you?"

And he just said... he said, "Neither."

So I started struggling around with him.

Eventually, I overpowered him and strangled him.

It was like, it took about...

I don't know. About six minutes, five or six minutes. Four minutes, maybe.

I don't feel bad about it.

You think that's something, don't you?

I just got to the point where I said, "Fuck this shit. I'm going on death row."

Man, fuck that CM shit.

I'm tired of living in humiliation every day. Fuck that.

You looking at me like, you think, "Man, that guy crazy, man."

I met James several years ago

when I was making rounds in the confinement units.

I noticed him because he had a very angry face.

You could tell immediately that this guy was like

a pressure cooker waiting to blow.

He did not talk to his peers,

he didn't talk to the staff, he didn't talk to anyone.

But his quietness was something that was daunting to me.

And his look in his eyes.

He did not look at you, he looked through you.

My name is Anne Otwell,

and I've been at Charlotte Correctional since '92.

I'm a staff nurse there,

and at the time, uh, I was working in the medical department,

uh, taking care of close management and open population.

In close management, we deal with a lot of frustration,

a lot of anger, a lot of attempted suicides

because of the fact that they are isolated.

They don't have the amount of phone calls,

they don't have the amount of visits that general population has,

they don't have the freedom.

After a while, some inmates, it just gets to them.

They sleep most of the day.

But if you go by close management at night, they're up all night

and they're fighting with... amongst one another.

One room and the other, you can hear them all night long.

So, close management brings a whole different flavor to the pot.

From the moment that James entered prison,

he did not like the rules and regulations of the penal system.

He didn't like the rules and regulations of close management.

He did, however, want death row.

And their rules and regulations are very, very, very simple,

and he could handle that.

Death row and...

there's a big difference between death row and close management.

It would be like going from the slums to Beverly Hills.

They have their own TV, they have their own bedspread if they want to,

the food is quite different. They have their own nurse.

They have their own exercise area, and, uh, it's quiet.

Death row, you can hear a pin drop.

And surprisingly enough,

they have this camaraderie with one another,

that they're all there together.

And so, death row for them is a safe haven.

But the other thing is, in their mind's eye,

they know they're not gonna be executed tomorrow.

They know that they're gonna be there for maybe 25 years.

So they know that they're not gonna be going any place but the row.

They have come home.

And that's how the majority of them look at it.

They love death row.

Some people say that James killed Frank Hart

just to get better living conditions.

My feeling is an inmate that is like James is very narcissistic,

and I think he wanted to be on death row, um, to show everybody that he made it.

It's just like going to medical school when you graduate.

To... In his mind, he made death row.

And whether it be because he could have TV or better food,

he made it because of his narcissistic thinking

that he wanted to make something of his life

that everybody would remember.

Uh, my name's Robert Lynch.

I did four years in a one-man cell. Close Management 1,

so I'm pretty familiar with close management.

I've been in several prisons with, uh, James Robertson. "Chicken Head." Um...

Uh, I'm pretty sure that we started off together in the late '80s