In The Dark - Coronavirus in the Delta E2: Parchman

Episode Date: May 6, 2020

How do you self-isolate when your home is a single room that you share with 107 men? That's what inmates at Mississippi's infamous Parchman prison have been wondering for six weeks.  Learn about your ad choices: dovetail.prx.org/ad-choices

Hello, this is a prepaid call from... Yeah, this is Marlon. How are you doing? This is Brandon. My name is Edie Harrington, and I'm here in Portland at U of 26. An inmate at the Mississippi DOC, Mississippi State Penitentiary. My name is Larry Jenkins. Earl Dyer. All these men are calling from inside Parchman Prison,

a prison deep in the Mississippi Delta, a prison that's notorious for its brutal conditions. I'm calling from Unit 30, G Building, Diz and Delta. Inmate number 427. I ain't got a letter from y'all. In March, we sent letters to prisoners we knew in Parchment, asking to talk to them about how things were going. Word got around, and a reporter at Parker Yesco's phone started to ring.

Hello. I'm doing all right, I guess. I don't feel sick or nothing like that, but, you know. At that point, no one at Parchman had been diagnosed with COVID-19. But we kept reporting. And within six weeks, two inmates had tested positive for the virus, and one of them died. Not a widespread outbreak. Not yet. Six weeks, two cases, and one of them died. Not a widespread outbreak, not yet. Six weeks, two cases, and one death. This is a story of those six weeks, told by the men who lived it, from inside Parchman Prison. This is In the Dark, Coronavirus in the Delta. I'm Madeline Barron.

I've spent the past two months, along with the rest of the In the Dark team, reporting on coronavirus in the Mississippi Delta, the poorest part of Mississippi, one of the poorest places in the entire country. In this series, we're bringing you stories of people trying to live in this really hard time, trying to make decisions, trying to get by, in a situation that none of us have faced before. Episode 2, Parchman. March 31st. Hello? Hello. Hey there, how you doing?

Randy Anderson calls our reporter, Parker Yesko, from Unit 30A at Parchman Prison. Man, the phone is terrible quality. Does it always sound like this? Yes, ma'am. It always sound like this? Oh my gosh. Randy was convicted of murder in 1997, when he was 20. He's been in prison ever since. Parchman's Unit 30A, where Randy lives, is basically just a big open room. With bunk beds laid out in rows.

And how many guys are in the dorm? There are at least two TVs in Randy's zone. They're on all the time. During the day, the TVs mostly play sports and old movies. Like this one day, a bunch of guys are gathered around watching a Jim Carrey movie. Pet control. I hate Ventura. Pet control. I mean, pet detector. But in the evening, they watch the news. The local news come on at 5. 5.30, the world news come on at 5.30. Randy watches the news every night. And so by this point, in late March,

Randy already knows a lot about this new virus, the coronavirus. And Randy also knows what you're supposed to do to protect yourself from the virus. He's heard the experts talking on the TV. Wash your hands, distance yourself from other people. But doing all of that in prison is pretty much impossible. Like, take social distancing. But in Randy's zone, this big room, there are about 108 men. They sleep in bunk beds. The inmates call them racks. And they're spaced incredibly close together. The bunks are so close together that when you're lying in bed, all without getting

out of bed. Or take washing your hands. First of all, Parchman doesn't even have hot water some of the time. And the water that does come out of the faucet, that you're supposed to use to wash your hands, according to Randy, it have a real bad smell. Like sewage. You ever have tobacco from the sewage? Sewage? Yes, ma'am.

So this is the water that you use to wash your hands and you drink and... The water you wash your hands with, the water you shower with, the water you drink. I mean, that's the only water we have. And this combination of Randy knowing what he should do and the reality that there's no way he could do it in these early days in late March is making him pretty anxious. I just try to cope with it, you know? Try to keep my hygiene up, and I try to keep praying and hoping, you know?

But like I say, I don't know. Is it going to get worse or is it going to get better? I don't know. It's going to get worse. It's going to get better. I don't know. The past year or so has been a particularly bad one at Parchman, even before the pandemic. Since late December, 20 inmates have died, including five who appeared to have been killed by other inmates, and three who appear to have killed themselves. Videos and photos surfaced on the internet. They showed overflowing toilets, flooded hallways, inmates fighting, blood smeared on walls,

buildings filled with fire and smoke, rats roaming the halls, sewage water flooding the cells. In the summer, the temperature easily climbs to 100 degrees because there's no air conditioning. And on top of all that, sometimes as many as several hundred cells are without electricity, so no lights at all. And the inmates are stuck dealing with these conditions in rooms so dark, it's hard to tell the difference between night and day. Earlier this year, a group led in part by the rapper Jay-Z helped to file two lawsuits on behalf of inmates to try to improve conditions at Parchman. One of the lawsuits says, quote, the conditions of confinement at Parchman are so barbaric, the deprivation of health and mental health care so extreme, and the defects in security so severe,

that the people confined at Parchman live a miserable and hopeless existence, confronted daily by imminent risk of substantial harm in violation of their rights under the U.S. Constitution. And now the prisoners have a new problem, a highly contagious virus, a virus that could easily sweep through the narrow hallways, the crowded dining halls, and rows of bunks and infect them. That's happening at a lot of prisons and jails around the country right now. There's some places with outbreaks of hundreds of cases in a single prison.

And guys at Parchman Prison know about these outbreaks. They hear about them on the news. And they spend their days wondering when COVID-19 will arrive in Parchman. And yet, by late March, there are still no confirmed cases inside Parchman Prison. But that is about to change. April 1st. Hey there, how you doing? Is this Randy? Yes, ma'am. Hey, Randy, how you doing?

I'm making this, Father. I ain't doing. Hey, Randy. How you doing? Rumors are starting to fly around Randy's unit. Rumors that maybe a Parchman guard has caught the virus, could be spreading it. Sometimes the guard in these rumors is a woman, sometimes it's a man. There are all kinds of stories getting passed around. And how'd you hear that? Through the grapevine. So how are you doing? One is like you're not worried at all, and 10 is like you're really, really worried. Well, I'm going to say 10. You're already at 10.

Yeah, well, 10, that's where I'm at. I'm at 10. I'm really worried about it. Because the prison isn't telling the inmates much, basically everything the prison does, especially anything out of the ordinary, the inmates view with suspicion as a possible sign that coronavirus has entered the prison.

Like Randy says, that just yesterday, guards showed up and moved everyone out of the zone for a few hours so they could clean it. They took us to the gym yesterday to clean the part up. We didn't come back until after 6 o'clock. So they took you to the gym so they could clean the unit? Yes, ma'am. It really wasn't no big clean. They just come in and just wipe down the wall a little bit, certain little poles, and that was it.

And is that a normal thing, or is that new? No, ma'am. It just started yesterday. That's the first time they've ever come in and done a big clean? Yes, ma'am. Randy wonders, did the prison clean his zone as a precaution? Or did it clean it because someone who'd been on the unit

had coronavirus? Things like this only make Randy and the other men on his unit feel more anxious. So people have started trying to make masks for themselves. I walk around with towels and socks and stuff all tied around my mouth and stuff like that. People got towels on their face or socks? How do you know it's dirty?

And how do you put it on your face? Some of the guys got small faces, you know what I'm saying? Little small heads. They tie it around to the back of their head. Some guys, they got the big head, they take out a towel around their face. Yeah, some guys put socks on their head and some put a towel around it. Randy's built a little cocoon around his bed. I take my blanket and just wrap a towel string around it and tie it to the edge of the rack and just go around it with, you know, my sheet, like a sheet.

Oh, your bed sheet. Yes, ma'am. You just build a tent around your rack, you know, just block it off, block off some of the germs. Every night you do this, you hang a blanket and a sheet over the side of your rack? Yes, ma'am. You block the whole thing off, basically, from the outside world. Yes, ma'am. Yes, ma'am.

Well, I try my best. All I can do is just pray and go to sleep. Hello, my name is Eddie Harrington, and I'm here in Parliament at Unit 26. Eddie Harrington lives in a building across the prison from Randy in Unit 26. The men on Unit 26 wear special green and white striped uniforms, and they travel all around the prison, to lots of different buildings, to do much of the work that keeps Parchman Prison running. Every night, you can imagine there's a convict in that building somewhere that does it.

Electrician, working in the field, driving a tractor, cooking and cleaning. The guys in Unit 26 are, generally speaking, a quieter bunch. The men live in groups of sometimes seven or eight in little alcoves along the edges of a big room. The inmates call the little alcoves cubes. The cubes make Unit 26 seem a little less like a warehouse than the wide open room with all the bunk beds in it that Randy lives in. A lot of the men on Unit 26 are religious. There's a weekly prayer meeting here,

where an inmate named Earl Dykus leads the guys in Bible study. It's near Eddie's cube. He'll have a church call on Sunday. He'll preach a sermon or something, you know, have a Bible study, prayer call. You go up there and he'll pray with you. Earl's been in prison for 37 years for killing two people.

He has a morning routine. He wakes up every day before dawn when everyone else is sleeping, leaves his cube, and goes into the day room to drink his coffee and read his Bible. Two o'clock in the morning, he's sitting at the table with his Bible and stuff, cup of coffee or something.

And because a lot of the guys on Unit 26 are older, they're maybe even more worried about the coronavirus than people in other units. There's a lot of men on the unit who've got some pretty serious health conditions. There's a guy in a wheelchair who can't go to the bathroom by himself. There's a man named Vernon Threadgill. He goes by Mr. Blind. Earl Dykus is 66 years old. He just came back from having surgery on his knee. Calvin Morrow has a whole laundry list of medical conditions. I'm really scared because I got COPD and emphysema. I got

a bad heart too. I got what you call angina. If I catch it, I'm dead. Eddie Arrington just wants to make it to his next parole hearing. He's been in Parchman for 40 years. He got locked up when he was 18 for murder, and he's now nearing 60. He says he also has all kinds of health problems, murder, and he's now nearing 60. He says he also has all kinds of health problems, including a hernia that's gone untreated for years. Eddie says his parole hearing is in 2021. He hopes he might be able to finally get out of Parchman, if he survives the pandemic. April 2nd.

Something else is happening across the prison in an entirely different building. Hello? Miss Parker? An inmate named Larry Jenkins, who's serving 60 years for sex crimes, calls Parker with alarming news. How are you doing? Oh, scared to death. I'm not going to tell you a lie, Miss Parker. I'm scared to death. The superintendent of Parchman Prison, a man named Marshall Turner, had just walked onto Larry's zone in Unit 30D, surrounded by guards, his own entourage. He called us all to the front, the whole zone. We all came up front, all 108 of us. Made us turn off the television so we could hear.

And he said, I'm not answering any questions. I'm going to give you what you need to know because I've got to go. And explain that there had been someone in our building tested positive for COVID-19. So it's possible that we may have been exposed. As for who that person was, the person who might have brought coronavirus into Larry's building, the superintendent wouldn't say. But Larry and some of the other guys on his unit believe it was probably a guard. The guards are the ones who go in and out of the prison every day,

the ones who live out in the free world where coronavirus is already spreading. It's not hard to imagine a guard could get infected out there and bring the virus back inside. The superintendent made an announcement. This part of the prison, the room where Larry lives, was now under quarantine. They just said nobody is to leave this zone under any circumstances. Said if you work in the kitchen, you're not going to work. If you work on the yard crew, you're not going to work. If you work anywhere, you're not going anywhere until you come out of quarantine. And nobody asked any questions.

We weren't allowed to. And nobody asked any questions. Basically, the superintendent was saying, coronavirus could be in here, so to protect everyone else in the prison, all the other inmates, all the guards on other units, we're shutting the door and leaving you in here for seven days to see what happens. The seven days of quarantine passed slowly. We couldn't go anywhere. They brought us trays for our meals, you know, styrofoam trays. Every day the nurses came around and checked our temperatures. The prison doesn't give them masks, Larry says. And he says most of the guards who come through the building every day aren't wearing masks either. How can we socially distance ourselves if we're already crowded three feet apart?

No masks, no protective, no PPE whatsoever. It's impossible. Day one passes, day two. One day during the quarantine, Larry sees on TV that Jay-Z's group is donating 100,000 masks to inmates at jails and prisons across the country, including 5,000 masks to Parchment. More than enough for one mask for each inmate. Good Morning America had it on the ticker that Roc Nation, which is Jay-Z and the other guy, G. Gotti or whatever his name is, they sent 5,000 it to Larry's unit. No one seems to have them. And so, Larry and the other men in his zone wait and watch each other as the days of quarantine tick by. Day three. I'm in one piece. We're doing good. Day four. Just lay there and cross your fingers.

Day five. Still no sign of the virus. Day six. Nothing else we can do. Finally, day seven. And still, no one's sick. We've been a week without any of the symptoms or any other apparently infected people. Larry is healthy. No one seems to have the virus. Although without testing anyone, who knows? The quarantine on Larry's building is lifted. The quarantine on Larry's building is lifted.

And then, on the very same day that the quarantine is lifted, Earl Dykus, the Bible study guy from Unit 26, calls his wife. He's coughing. We'll be back right after the break. Hi, this is David Remnick, and I'm pleased to share the news that I'm Not a Robot, a live-action short film from the New Yorker's Screening Room series, has been shortlisted for the Academy Awards. This thought-provoking film grapples with questions that we can all relate to about identity and technology,

and what it means to be human in an increasingly digital world. I encourage you to watch I'm Not a Robot, along with our full slate of documentary and narrative films, at newyorker.com slash video. full slate of documentary and narrative films at newyorker.com slash video. He called me on Thursday, and he was really sick. This is Barbara Dykus, Earl Dykus' wife. And he could only talk for about two minutes because he couldn't talk without coughing. In that two minutes, he told me to ask everybody to pray for him,

that he was on three antibiotics, and that he was just coughing all the time. And when did the cough start? He's had a cough for some time. I talked to him at least twice a week. And the cough was consistent. And I would ask him about it. And he'd say, well, maybe they'll give me something from a big toe.

What's that mean? It means their medical attention is not the best. Oh, I get, like, it's sarcastic, like, I got a problem in my lung, maybe they'll treat my toe. Yeah. If you're getting a Tylenol, you're doing well. So if he got three antibiotics, they knew it was serious. Parchman Prison won't comment on what happened to Earl Dykus. But in the past few weeks, we've been talking to members of the Dykus family and to four men who lived with Earl on Unit 26. According to what they've told us, here's what

happened to Earl. Toward the end of March, Earl got really sick, about a week past, before Earl was seen by a medical provider in the prison. He was given some medication. We don't know what exactly. According to an inmate on the unit, Earl was given some ibuprofen and cold medicine. According to one of Earl's family members, he was given some antibiotics. For a few days, Earl lay in bed with a bad cough, in his cube, with the other inmates.

He wasn't eating. He was not going out to work, you know. He was laying in the bed. I see him every day. He was sick. Mr. Earl, see him every day. He was sick. Mr. Earl, down there, say something wrong, Mr. Earl. Eventually, Earl was taken out of the unit again. They came and got Earl, and they took him to the hospital.

And for days, the men on Unit 26 didn't hear anything more about what had happened to Earl. But then one day, an officer walked onto the unit. The officer was there to deal with Earl's belongings. That's when we knew. Right then, we knew. Earl dead, you know. Earl Dykus had died. It turns out that after Earl had left the unit, he was transferred to a regular hospital outside of the prison,

a hospital in Greenville, Mississippi. Earl died in that hospital. The cause of death, according to a death certificate the family shared with us, was pneumonia due to COVID-19. COVID-19 had officially arrived in Parchman Prison. The Mississippi Department of Corrections released a statement saying that one of its inmates had died and that he tested positive for COVID-19. The statement didn't use Earl's name.

It just said, an inmate. The news release said, quote, the inmate, who had underlying health conditions, was tested when he began exhibiting symptoms and was immediately medically isolated, pending results. The results did not come in until after the inmate had died. Back on Unit 26, the guards didn't want to deal with Earl's belongings themselves. A guard told the inmates, somebody pack Earl's stuff up. No one wanted to do it. A lot of inmates were scared to go back there.

Some of them said, it ain't rolling back there. I might catch a virus, catch Corona. That was some of them saying. Earl's old friend Vernon, Mr. Blind, was there during all this, and he stepped in. I put on some gloves. I went to clean it out and clean that package stuff up. There wasn't much. A few letters, Earl's Bible. I put all this stuff in a sheet, tied it up, took it out in the hall. As for cleaning the area, according to the inmates, the prison didn't send anyone to clean the zone, or even just to clean the area in the cube where Earl slept. So Vernon took it upon himself to try to clean Earl's cube as best he could.

I cleaned out the bracket we were sleeping on, and I sprayed it down, sprayed the bed down real good. The mattress and pillow, I sprayed it down, and I set them outside to go to the garbage. After taking away Earl's belongings, prison officials came back onto Unit 26. According to the inmates, they pulled aside the four or so men who'd shared a cube with Earl

and tested each of them for COVID-19. While the men waited for the results to come back, they had lots of time to sit around and wonder. And Calvin was getting angry. Well, I don't know if this man next to me got it or this man got it. Everybody was worried and nobody was telling nobody nothing. A few days later, prison officials returned to Unit 26. Eddie said this time they were dressed in protective gear from head to toe.

Face masks and face shields, gowns and gloves. When they came, the way they were dressed, we know that something was wrong. They called out a name, the name of one of Earl's cube mates. They come straight in and told him, come on out. And the officer was trying to stay away from him. I could tell that. And I said, yeah, he's got it. And then somebody else said, yeah, I think he does too.

And we know that right away that he had pissed apart just by how they came and picked him up. The man stood up and walked to the door and was escorted out of the zone. That's it. Next thing I know, he was gone. The man was moved to another part of the prison, apparently to be quarantined. And the zone he'd been living on was also placed on quarantine for two weeks.

We still don't know how Earl Dykus contracted COVID-19, who gave it to him. The Mississippi Department of Corrections declined our request to interview the health of individual inmates because of HIPAA privacy rule protections. And we don't know how far the virus has spread inside Parchman Prison. The Mississippi Department of Corrections has said that there have been no other confirmed cases of COVID-19 in Parchman Prison. Just two. But as of today, Tuesday, May 5th, out of the thousands of inmates in state custody in Mississippi, 2,000-some men at Parchman and another 16,000 or so inmates at other facilities around the state, the Mississippi Department of Corrections has tested just 33. I was talking the other day to a Parchman inmate named Marlon Howell. Marlon sees all this a little differently from the other men. Because Marlon is in a cell all by himself,

just sitting there all day, every day, alone. Marlon's in a single cell because he's on death row. For a murder he says he didn't commit. And the cell that Marlon is in, it's the very same cell where Curtis Flowers used to live, before Curtis's conviction was overturned and he got out of prison. I was talking with Marlon about how a person deals with this virus, the not knowing, the risk of catching it, and the helplessness that it's easy for any of us to feel,

but especially for people in prison. You know, the last place you want to be in prison and then turn around and say, prison. You know, the last place you want to be in prison and then turn around and say, I'm scared. You know what I'm saying? But is there something that can come to you that you can't do nothing about? You know, you can't help but to be fearful. Marlon told me about something he learned from watching the show Dr. Oz, about what to do when you're feeling scared. When you feel your blood pressure rising or you feel like you're having an anxiety issue, you know, just start up a breathing regimen. So that's what I try to do.

I just lay still. I just lay still, lay flat on my back. And I take, you know, deep breaths in and deep breaths out. And I try to, I try to count. You know, try to count to ten. I inhale. And I hold it. And I exhale and I release. We're continuing to report on what's happening inside Parchman Prison, and we'll keep you posted.

There is one update. Inmates have gotten face masks. An inmate texted us a photo of one of them. You can see it on our website. In the Dark, Coronavirus in the Delta is reported and produced by me, Madeline Barron, managing producer Samara Fremark, producer Natalie Jablonski, associate producer Raymond Tungakar,

and reporter Parker Jesko. This series was edited by Catherine Winter. The editor-in-chief of APM Reports is Chris Worthington. This episode was mixed by Corey Schreppel. Music for this series by Gary Meister. To see photos that accompany our series, you can go to our website, inthedarkpodcast.org. Photography for this series by Ben Depp. Hi, this is David Remnick.

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