..  ..James H. Roanne, Jr. ...No 206197 ...Powhattan Correctional Center ...State Farm, Virginia ...Year of Birth 1965 ...Marital Status married ...Children five ...Date of offense January-February 1992 ...Sentenced to death February 16, 1992 ...Status under appeal . Click on the image to view a larger version. Scroll below for an account of the session.

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Indicted under a 1989 federal statute, James H. Roane, Jr., Cory Johnson, & Richard Tipton were accused of eleven drug-related murders committed in Richmond, Virginia, in 1992. The state argued that the three men had been importing cocaine from New York to Richmond, where they used it to manufacture crack. Their victims included people who owed them money as well as innocent bystanders. The three men were tried together in 1993. Johnson was convicted of 7 murders, Tipton of 6, & Roane of 3. Johnson received 7 death sentences; Tipton, 3; Roane, one death sentence & two life. The United States, with its long history of revolution, frontiersmanship, & imperialism, has spawned a people that solve their problems with a big stick. The cowboys of yesterday are the gang members of today. Federal Prisoner No. 206197's story is centered in Richmond, whose crime-plagued ghetto produces many victims. The RICO Act & the Crime Bills of 1988 & 1994 were supposed to combat white collar crime as well as the less sophisticated but equally well organized inner city gangs. Racketeering is the reason we came to know James H. Roane, Jr. We had brushed past a tall, well-built Black man dressed in prison orange & shackled hand & foot. Later, when he shuffled in with three guards, we were embarrassed to discover that he was our subject. We apologized. But our callousness did not faze Roane a bit. He was starving to be heard. "And I left home to get with a girl. And I'd go back to that neighborhood & I was starting to use drugs. I started using drugs at the age of maybe 13....I've experienced smoking crack, IV drug user. You name it. And it developed into a habit. And I turned to drugs to make me happy. I...felt like somebody...." Roane had been on death row only a few months, so his energy level was still high. He spoke in an accelerated staccato in a visiting room so cramped we didn't have room to move. He talked of growing up in the inner city. "Because, as a kid, in the violence & destruction that I grew up in, it was a crime-infested neighborhood....You always had to fight. And I never really liked fighting. But, if you went to the store, you knew you had to fight. If you was on the school bus, you had to fight" The pressure of growing up too fast had a bad effect on him. So many citizens are caught in the purgatory between violence & drugs. The claustrophobia causes them the kinds of mistakes that James Roane made. "And I had like five kids & I wasn't a father. I would go see them & I wanted to do for them, but I didn't know how to. Because I didn't have no experience in working. I didn't have no education & I didn't have no skills. So it made it much more difficult for me. And I really had nobody to really talk to because I didn't talk to people....I didn't care about living....All I wanted to do was live to get "

In trouble since he was nine, James regretted the direction he had taken. He tried to get help. He pleaded with a judge, enrolled in programs designed to assist substance abusers. But eventually he fell back into his old habits. "Well, you know, it felt like everything was failing that I tried to do right. And so I started selling drugs. And in the drug life, it's an addiction. Dealing is an addiction..." Often people who trun to gangs are so disenfranchised they see crime as a reasonable means of "taking care of business." Drug dealing offers fast, easy money to young people for whom opportunities are minimal. Dealing drugs Roane a certain degree of respect in the depressed neighborhood. It was like helping an extended family. "And they would come to me & they would say, 'Junior, you know, you want me to go to the store for you?' And to me, I know what that means, 'I think that I'm hungry. My mom is probably somewhere smoking crack & I don't know how to ask....'m And even though I wasn't hungry at the time, because I had a little money, I would say, 'Well, just pick me up a soda, you know, get you & your sister something to eat.' ...And they'd say, 'We're doing in school...football...I've got a job at the corner store now....' And that's the gratitude I get for " Because this is a federal death row, it is a bigger, more convoluted maze. The statutes are complicated; the red tape is endless. We are able to get in only because of having been on other death rows-we were veterans. We were nevertheless a royal pain as far as the administration was concerned. We had to dicker for every concession. There was not enough room to set up for the shoot; we insisted on leaving some doors open so we could spread out. We were thus in full view of everyone moving in & out of the area. While all around looked on, Roane, crammed into a 6 by 9 foot cubicle, related poignant details of his friendships, specifically one with a friend who had committed suicide. "But anyway, he would always talk to me, as we got older, about change. And I never paid him no mind, you know, because I was always high & I always wanted to live life on my terms & not on life's terms. So while I was locked up, he really-preparing for trial, he killed himself....At that point, I felt like I didn't have the desire to live....Because it was always me & him. We always struggled....We laughed together. We cried together....It just changed my life" In the middle of the interview, Roane suddenly commented that all his life he'd like having his pictures taken. He wanted once to be a model. I think he envisioned this as the closest thing possible to a GQ photo spread.