ABSTRACT

A small bald-headed man with a yellowed lined face and lacklustre eyes, he sat on a bench in the prison’s deserted dining hall talking in a strained hoarse voice, smoking cigarettes one after another without pause and stubbing them out in an overflowing chipped white ashtray which he held in his hand. —My name is Gus Webster and I’m sixty-nine. My crime was first-degree felony murder: I was sentenced to death for it at the age of twenty-four, but it was commuted to imprisonment for life. I’ve been incarcerated so far now for just over forty-five years.