COURTE
SYO
F^ COURTESY^ OF^ FREE^ ROBWILL44 | Rolling Stone | February 2020
R
OLLING ALONG on Farm
Road 350 outside Living-
ston, Texas, past the bill-
board advertising Aqua
Plumbing (FOR ALL YOUR PLUMBING
NEEDS), and the plain white cross cast-
ing halfhearted shadows over the East
Tempe Baptist Church, and the sign
announcing “Grocery” where only
broken- down nothingness and weeds
currently exist, and the desultory sad-
ness of the Lake Area Mobile Home
Park, you eventually come upon the
flattened, sandy-colored expanse
of concrete buildings known as the
Texas Department of Criminal Jus-
tice’s Allan B. Polunsky Unit. Five gun
towers, officially called pickets, help
make sure its roughly 3,000 inmates
stay put, including all 209 prison-
ers currently marking time on death
row, though that number is constant-
ly changing, primarily because Texas
has the most active death chamber
in the country, praise be to its stock-
pile of the sedative pentobarbital.
About 21 five-gram doses are current-
ly in stock, according to one unoffi-
cial calculation, more than enough
for the eight upcoming scheduled ex-
ecutions — a number that does not, at
this time, include a death-row inmate
named Robert Gene Will, 41, who was
convicted of murdering a police of-
ficer in 2002. Lots of folks think Will
isn’t guilty and that his appeals were
big-time botches; he is slated to be fea-
tured on an upcoming episode of Dr.
Phil (much like fellow Texas death-row
inmate Rodney Reed recently was,which helped Reed get an indefinite
stay of execution). As for Will himself,
he says he spends his days painting,
reading, writing, meditating, prac-
ticing yoga, and trying not to let the
babblings of the nearby “schizophren-
ic” get to him. The friendly, wisecrack-
ing guard at Polunsky’s front gate
knows all about Will from his years
on the floor and has nothing but good
things to say.
“Near as I can recall,” he says, “he’s
been no trouble at all.”
And then, with a smile, he sends you
on your way, toward where Will has
spent the past 18 years.
In fact, everyone here seems pretty
friendly. Inside, a guard holds up a vis-
itor’s baggie filled with Altoids, frowns,
well aware that candy of any sort isn’t
allowed inside, and says, “What the
hell are those? Oh. Sure. Why not?”
And overseeing visits today is a stout
gentleman named Robert Hurst, also
friendly, who has been shuttling folkslike Dr. Phil through four locked steel
doors to see inmates like Rodney Reed
for the past six years, who has stood
witness at more than 50 executions,
and who seems to have hardly been
changed by the experience.
He sits you in a booth and sends for
Will. You’ll be on one side of a bullet-
proof, soundproof glass window, the
condemned on the other, the two
of you connected by a phone with a
crappy ancient-era connection. Will’s
case has gotten a good bit of attention
over the years, with a 2012 write-up in
The New York Times detailing just how
suspect the original verdict and subse-
quent appeals were; more recently, his
plight has been championed by Jason
Flom, a social-justice activist who
hosts the Wrongful Conviction pod-
cast and, as the music-industry CEO
of Lava Records, has launched the ca-
reers of, among others, Katy Perry,
Kid Rock, and Lorde. On Will’s behalf,
Flom has put together a couple of
successful New York events featuring
the convict’s paintings, with the pro-
ceeds going to his defense fund. And
it’s he who got Dr. Phil fired up about
Will’s case.
Flom: “What’s happened to Rob is
about as bad as it gets. I mean, you
look at the evidence and it’s clear from
the start he didn’t kill anyone.”
Dr. Phil: “Having been trained in
forensic psychology and spent many
years in the litigation arena, I am ap-
palled. The mismanagement of this
case and the attendant evidence is
nothing short of monumental.”
But that’s all on the outside. Right
now, inside Cage 24 on A Pod in the Po-
lunsky Unit, Will has stripped down to
be searched before he can go to the vis-
itation area. One officer paws through
his clothes, while another gets more
personal, saying something along the
lines of “Run your fingers through your
hair. Arms out, turn around. Lift your
feet one at a time. Bend over, spread
your cheeks. Turn around, lift your
nuts. Alright, here’s your shit! Hurry up
and get dressed!” A bit later, Will shuf-
fles into view: Tall, trim, clean-shaven,
bespectacled, oddly twinkle-eyed, hav-
ing passed on his way an emergency-
response team readying for SWAT
deployment — nothing unusual about
that — with his hands still shackled,
moving through a door that’s locked
behind him, after which, hands freed,
he picks up the phone, carefully wipes
it clean of germs, and first wants to
speak to Hurst.
“Hey, Mr. Hurst?” he says.
Hurst says, “Yeah?”
“I sent a 15-page letter out 10 days
ago and it hasn’t been received.”For two decades, Rob Will
has been on death row
for the murder of a cop.
But activists say there is
enough additional
evidence to save him
By E R I K H E DE G A A R D
REPORTS
Will Texas Execute
an Innocent Man?