"I Can't Stop Crying"

At Dunbar High School in Fort Myers, Fla., he was a triple threat: in football, an all-state wide receiver; in basketball, an all-conference playmaking guard; in track and field, a state champion in the 440-yd. run. An honors student, he went on to Edison Community College in Fort Myers but dropped out after 1 1/2 years to enlist in the Army. He was given a medical discharge after 17 months because of attacks of grand mal epilepsy. He married, fathered a son and went back to college, this time in California. His marriage soured, and he returned to Fort Myers, where he sank into alcoholism and despair. Sometime between Oct. 13 and 15, 1973, a woman named Margaret Mears, 68, was raped and beaten to death.

Doug McCray, now 32, had been on a drinking binge and could not account for his whereabouts at the time of the crime when police arrested him for murder six weeks later. The FBI had matched his palm print with one found in Mears' apartment. Nearly ten years later, McCray says he still does not know whether he is guilty. He has passed two polygraph tests, which prosecutors would not permit in evidence at his trial. An eyewitness who placed McCray in the woman's neighborhood at the time of the slaying later recanted, saying police had coached and coerced him. The physical evidences of rape could not be linked to McCray.

Nevertheless, he now awaits his fate on death row in Florida State Prison at Raiford. McCray looks back in anger: "I feel victimized by the Florida Supreme Court, which waited 5 1/2 years to rule on my case, which granted me a new trial and then abruptly took it away. [A 4-3 decision last March in McCray's favor was reversed six months later when one justice changed his vote without explanation.] I feel victimized by my clemency lawyer, who never even bothered to read the transcript of my trial. I feel victimized by a lawyer who took my mother's few dollars and never came to see me for almost eight years."

Outside observers, including New York Times Columnist Anthony Lewis, have rallied to McCray's defense. When a St. Petersburg attorney phoned him and volunteered to help, McCray remembers, "I started to cry. I can't stop crying in this place. It meant so much to me, after all the other things that happened, that this man cared."

McCray lives in a 6-ft. by 9-ft. cell. He and the other 194 inmates on Florida's death row each have a small black-and-white TV. He uses the light from the set to read constantly. "I've read thousands of books. Prison can be as rewarding as college if you actually have a desire to improve your mind." Yet his thoughts always wheel back to the central mystery that has brought him to this place. "The state says it's convenient for me to say I don't remember. But if it were convenient, I could have plea-bargained or made up some alibi. My girlfriend and one of my brothers say I was with them all that night. I wish I knew, even if it meant knowing that I'd done it. Who would want to live after committing such a terrible crime?" Since last fall, McCray has grown progressively more despondent. He now says he will not seek another stay of execution. "I'm tired. I hurt. I just wish to lie in peace. I will allow the state to do what it may.

"I am tired." This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so viewer discretion is required.