It is a sickening montage of horrific dreams reeling through the minds of men and women on death rows across the nation. A meticulously rehearsed scene from a staged Shakespearean drama, haunting, stalking, every minute of our existence -- so when the fraternity of grim-faced, black-booted guards suddenly swept into my cell, I willed myself to a dead calm.

A tall, blond haired Lieutenant stepped forward and clamped a pair of heavy handcuffs tightly around my wrists. "Do you know where you're going, Lewis?" he asked in a cold, but professional thunder.

I looked at his white shirt and replied, "No, Sir."

"Phase II," he said. "Pennsylvania Governor Tom Ridge has signed your death warrant. Your execution is scheduled for July 15, 1997. Let's go."

They hustled me half-naked from my cell to a "Death Watch" cell with a security camera mounted at its door. Cold air blew in furiously from the vent up top. "Man, they must think I'm an Eskimo, instead of a Negro," I joked to myself as I felt a cruel unseen hand tinkering with the central air-conditioning system and making the frigid temperature even colder as if to give the condemned the sensation of the impending coldness of death.

Next door was a sick young skinhead, convicted of murdering his parents, assigned a sooner date with death. In this prison, he was the lowest form of White trash. Nobody, Black or White, talked to him.

His reaction at being a mere cell from a strong Black man in the same dire predicament was a mixture of fear, shock, and confusion. This cold reality obliterated his false notion of White superiority. He suppressed his racist views and confessed that joining the skinheads had been a tragic youthful mistake that had literally ruined his life.

He was given a stay of execution in less than a week, while I paced the five by seven cell in mincing strides. It soon occured to me that issuing my warrant was not only untimely, but suspicious. It has long been the practice of every Pennsylvania Governor to refrain from endorsing death warrants while an appeal was actively being litigated as was mine.

Within 72 hours of my being executed, my stay was granted.

So, here I wait. I wait to see if my appeal will be heard. I wait to see if another judge will beleive that the police removed documents from my briefcase when I was (arrested) that would prove that I was States away from the crime scene, that my inept court-appointed attorney pocketed funds intended to ensure the presence of my witnesses, and that the possibilities of my conviction skyrocketed with the selection of an all-white jury. Others; however, wait for my Quick, cold, death.

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