At age 19, Cerron Hooks was charged with murder. Two years later, he was sentenced to death. While he’s grown up on death row, his family has marked time on the outside.
His niece, Kayla, was two months old when Cerron was arrested; he calls her his timeline. In her teenage years, Kayla has struggled with severe depression and anxiety. On her 16th birthday, she received in the mail a drawing from her uncle. It said: May today’s tears water the seeds of tomorrow’s happiness. I am forever in your corner.
Even from death row, Kayla said, he has given me life. He’s helped me keep going.
Brenda was a teenager when she had Cerron. She said they grew up together: He was my baby, my son, my best friend. He’s now been on the row for half his life.
It’s been nearly twenty years since Brenda has truly seen her son. While she, Kayla, and their family friend Gale visit often, the prison’s visitation rooms separate the visitors from the loved ones with wire, bars, and a thick, scuffed glass that reflects glare from overhead lights. In order to see through the glass to her son, seated less than two feet away, Brenda must position her body to block the light, lining up her reflection with Cerron’s face, looking through her own face to see glimpses of his.
Shortly after her son was sentenced, Brenda got a tattoo over her heart: First Born, it reads. The ink, now nearly twenty years old, has begun to blur and fade.
Cerron’s drawing of America on the execution table is the cover image on Professor Frank Baumgartner’s book Deadly Justice: A Statistical Portrait of the Death Penalty. Cerron began drawing in high school. His art is his voice, Kayla says. You can’t look at his drawings and not see a human being behind them.
