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I spoke cautiously. “Yes, I saw that truck.”
His face hardened before he spoke. “I want you to know, that’s my truck.” He released my
arm and allowed me to walk inside the prison. I felt angry at the guard, but I was even more
irritated by my own powerlessness. I was distracted from my thoughts when the back door of
the visitation room opened and Mr. Jenkins was led in by another officer.
Jenkins was a short African American man with close-cropped hair. He grasped my hand
with both of his and smiled broadly as he sat down. He seemed unusually happy to see me.
“Mr. Jenkins, my name is Bryan Stevenson. I’m the attorney you spoke—”
“Did you bring me a chocolate milkshake?” He spoke quickly.
“I’m sorry, what did you say?”
He kept grinning. “Did you bring me a chocolate milkshake? I want a chocolate
milkshake.”
The trip, the Confederate truck, the harassment from the guard, and now a request for a
milkshake—this was becoming a bizarre day. I didn’t hide my impatience.
“No, Mr. Jenkins, I didn’t bring you a chocolate milkshake. I’m an attorney. I’m here to
help you with your case and try to get you a new trial. Okay? That’s why I’m here. Now I
need to ask you some questions and try to understand what’s going on.”
I saw the grin fade quickly from the man’s face. I started asking questions and he gave
single-word answers, sometimes just grunting out a yes or no. I realized that he was still
thinking about his milkshake. My time with the officer had made me forget how impaired this
man might be. I stopped the interview and leaned forward.
“Mr. Jenkins, I’m really sorry. I didn’t realize you wanted me to bring you a chocolate
milkshake. If I had known that, I would absolutely have tried. I promise that the next time I
come, if they let me bring you in a chocolate milkshake, I’ll definitely do it. Okay?”
With that, his smile returned, and his mood brightened. His prison records revealed that he
often experienced psychotic episodes in which he would scream for hours. He was generally
kind and gentle in our meeting, but he was clearly ill. I couldn’t understand why his trial
records made no reference to mental illness, but after the George Daniel case, nothing
surprised me. When I returned to my office, we began a deeper investigation into Mr.
Jenkins’s background. What we found was heartbreaking. His father had been murdered
before he was born, and his mother had died of a drug overdose when he was a year old.
He’d been in foster care since he was two years old. His time in foster care had been horrific;
he’d been in nineteen different foster homes before he turned eight. He began showing signs
of intellectual disability at an early age. He had cognitive impairments that suggested some
organic brain damage and behavioral problems that suggested schizophrenia and other
serious mental illness.
When he was ten, Avery lived with abusive foster parents whose rigid rules kept him in
constant turmoil. He couldn’t comply with all of the requirements imposed on him, so he was
frequently locked in a closet, denied food, and subjected to beatings and other physical abuse.
When his behavior didn’t improve, his foster mother decided to get rid of him. She took him
out into the woods, tied him to a tree, and left him there. He was found, in very poor health,
by hunters three days later. After recovering from serious medical problems relating to his
abandonment, he was turned over to authorities, who placed him back into foster care. By the
time he was thirteen, he had started abusing drugs and alcohol. By fifteen, he was having