HELL, HOPE OF AN INMATE’S SISTER
She strives to have her condemned brother be heard
“She’s an advocate for justice by nature. ” Jason Scales, pastor and founder of Believers Faith Fellowship in Christiana
The two little sisters loved when their parents went to a church meeting and left them with their older brother, Pervis Payne.
One of the girls would watch their parents drive away down the country road outside their house, staring until the car’s lights disappeared.
That’s the second the dance party started. “Y’all ready?!” their 15-year-old brother shouted.
“We’re ready!” they shouted back.
Pervis Payne cranked up the stereo, blasting R&B and pop hits their church-loving parents
didn’t like being played in the house.
“Rick James, ‘Give It To Me Baby’?” younger sister Rolanda Holman said, a smile splitting her face. “That was our jam!”
Payne played songs by Michael Jackson, Prince, Rick James and more that he recorded off Memphis R&B station 97.1-FM onto a cassette tape. His sisters, ages 8 and 10, jumped, twirled, laughed, spun around and sang along.
Five years later, Payne got locked up for a double homicide that he and his relatives say he did not commit. They say Payne, in the apartment complex visiting his girlfriend, heard the victims’ cries and tried to help after someone else stabbed them.
Shelby County prosecutors and 12 Memphis-area jurors disagreed. They convicted Payne of the 1987 bloody murders of a Millington, Tenn., woman, Charisse Christopher, and her 2-yearold daughter, Lacie.
The jury sentenced Payne to die. In the 33 years since, Holman only sees her big brother in the visiting room of Riverbend Maximum Security Institution in Nashville.
For 33 years, Holman shares microwaved cheeseburgers and chicken wings from prison vending machines with her brother.
For 33 years, Holman brings family to prison with her — first her parents, and then her husband and, eventually, her kids. Holman carried in a clear plastic bag with diapers and bottles of formula when the kids were babies.
For 33 years, Holman feels the ache of her big brother’s absence at landmark events in her life — her high school graduation, her college graduation, her wedding, the birth of her children, and funerals for their sister and mother.
“Every life event, I think, ‘He shouldn’t be missing this,’” said Holman, 46, who has lived in Murfreesboro since 1993 when she enrolled at Middle Tennessee State University.
“Every celebration and every tragedy we’ve experienced, I feel that.”
Payne’s execution on Dec. 3 was delayed because of the COVID-19 pandemic. Officials could set a new date for Payne to die as early as April 18.
Holman hopes momentum is building to get him off death row and maybe even get him released.
Payne has an unwavering defense lawyer, the national Innocence Project advocacy group and some Nashville notables on his side.
For Holman, who has called her brother “Bubba” since she could speak, hope is nothing new. She has believed since the day her brother was arrested that he’d be released eventually.
“We understand what he’s facing,” she said. “But as long as there’s breath in our bodies, and there’s breath in Bubba’s body, there’s an opportunity for a shift.”
‘Pervis got himself in trouble’
Payne and his sisters grew up in a modest 1,200-square-foot home in Drummonds, Tenn., a tiny town of about 7,000 that sits 40 minutes north of Memphis.
The house was so small Payne slept on a sofa-sleeper in the den, sometimes sneaking in a few episodes of “Starsky & Hutch” on the TV after his parents fell asleep.
“Don’t say nothin’!” he’d whisper and then invite his younger sisters to watch with him, Holman said.
Their parents both were factory workers, though his dad eventually became a full-time pastor. The family went to the Pentecostal church in nearby Millington, Tenn., three times a week.
The three siblings played kickball and dodgeball for hours at a time in their grandmother’s yard near their house.
“We’ve always had fun,” Holman said. “I loved my brother, and I always wanted to go everywhere Bubba went. I’m pretty much at his hip.”
As a child, Holman heard people call her brother “a little slow.” Payne has intellectual disabilities.
He didn’t do well at school, couldn’t help his sisters with their homework, and Payne had a hard time doing some tasks, such as separating clothes for the wash, she said.
After he turned 16, Payne loved to drive, often taking his dad’s Cadillac on Sundays to pick up parishioners for church. When he was 19 and 20, Payne would take the car to visit his girlfriend, Bobbie Thomas, in Millington. But his dad told him to find a ride to his girlfriend’s place the day Payne got arrested.
That day, Holman remembered her mom answering the phone and her parents hurrying to the car, telling their girls, “We’ll be back, we’ll be right back.”
Holman overheard her mother tell a cousin, “Pervis got himself in trouble.”
“I was shocked, but I don’t remember being scared,” said Holman, then 13. “Because what kind of trouble could Bubba get himself in? We didn’t really worry about it.”
When their parents came home hours later, after nightfall, they told the girls that their brother was in jail for two murders.
“I remember my sister and I freaking out. We had one of those crying moments. ‘What? In jail? Killed somebody?! Nah.’”
Neighbors and church friends supported the Paynes. But many of them sounded an ominous warning: “You understand this is a Black man accused of killing a white woman and her child. He is done.”
Prosecutors argued that Payne had taken drugs that day, looked at a Playboy magazine and approached the victim looking for sex. They argued he killed her after she rejected his advances.
The defense argued there was no proof Payne had taken drugs — authorities did not drug test him that day. Later, appeals lawyers discovered Payne had looked at a Jet magazine with Eddie Murphy on the cover, not a Playboy.
Payne walked in the victims’ apartment because he heard cries for help after they had been attacked, defense lawyers said.
Holman remembers being in the courtroom when the verdict was read. Two phrases stuck with her: “Sentenced to death” and “May God have mercy on his soul.”
Uncle Bubba
Several months later, Holman and her family made their first visit to see Payne at Riverbend prison in Nashville.
In the visiting room, all of them grabbed hold of Payne, and they all wept. Payne tried to comfort his family: “I’m going to be OK,” he kept repeating.
They stayed together for five hours, catching up on family news, telling stories, laughing and eating vending machine food, especially anything sweet.
On the way home, their mother said to her girls, “He’ll be home by Christmas.” Most years, their mother, Bernice Payne, said the same thing before each Christmas. She died in 2004.
Holman decided to go to MTSU in Murfreesboro in part because it was much closer to her brother’s prison.
She has visited him about once a month ever since.
Holman brought her fiance to visit her brother to get his blessing on the marriage. She visited Payne when she was pregnant so “Uncle Bubba” could rub her belly and talk to the unborn child. She brings her two kids to visit Uncle Bubba at least four times a year since they’ve been born.
Holman also started bringing in her “bonus baby,” the teen-aged nephew Holman took in when her sister died in 2016.
Holman has moments of sadness and fear, said her husband, La Vergne Middle School principal Cary Holman. But she persists in her fight to free her brother.
“In the time I’ve known her since 1996, from the college young lady and into our marriage,” Cary Holman said, “I’ve always seen her be very consistent in her efforts to always do what’s right.”
Through the fight for her brother, Holman, a pharmaceutical clinical researcher, has found a passion in helping others.
She is a motivational speaker and author. Holman in 2018 released a selfhelp book, “Living the Good Life on Purpose.”
“I think it’s bigger than her bother,” said Jason Scales, pastor and founder of Believers Faith Fellowship in Christiana, Tenn., where Holman goes to church.
“She’s an advocate for justice by nature,” Scales said. “It’s a part of her DNA and fiber to fight for people.”
For now, Holman’s main fight is for her brother. Roles have switched from the days when Pervis Payne cranked up tunes so his little sisters could dance.
Thirty-three years later, she is the one who looks out for him and cheers him along despite the steep climb ahead.
“He has wanted to give up at times,” Holman said. “But I say, ‘Bubba, you can’t give up.’ When his flame goes out, that’s when our strength comes in.”