If you have ever felt the death penalty is justified...

...do watch this gruelling BBC documentary. Made in the eighties, it follows a young man through the
last fourteen days of his life, leading up to his execution in the gas chamber of Mississippi's Death Row (he was later proved to be innocent). This film shows the sheer brutality of his execution, and the dreadful punishment it inflicted on him, his family and the officers around him who believed in his innocence. Please watch it if you can spare the time. I saw it when it came out, and have just watched it again, and I have rarely been so moved or so enraged by a documentary.

If you care about human rights, please read this

Okay. I'm on my soapbox again. And these posts are my least popular. But I feel so strongly about this, especially as I hear first-hand about the suffering of Irving, my death row correspondent. Rick Perry, the governor of Texas, has an awful lot to aswer for. And guess what? He's a committed Christian.

AUSTIN (The Borowitz Report)—Responding to the news that Washington Governor Jay Inslee had suspended the death penalty in his state, Texas Governor Rick Perry seized on the opportunity to urge Washington residents to “vote with your feet and move to Texas, where the death penalty is thriving.”

At a hastily called press conference this afternoon, the Texas Governor made an emotional appeal to Washingtonians who might be disappointed by the sudden suspension of executions in their state: “Come to Texas. The death penalty is alive and well here.”

Blasting Governor Inslee, he reassured Washington residents that if they move to Texas, “as God is my witness, no one will ever take your death penalty away from you.”

“That’s just not what we’re made of in Texas,” he said. “We believe in the sanctity of death.”

And here he is, defending his stance:

Fourteen Days in May...

...is a chilling documentary, following the last 14 days in the life of Edward Earl Johnson, who was executed by gas in May 1987 in Mississippi.

Johnson was on death row for eight years, and maintained his innocence until the end. There are huge doubts over whether or not he was guilty, but no matter. He was poor and black; even today  a bad combination if you want to get off death row.

This full-length film is now available on you tube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rhHutCNkjEc  and doesn't  make for easy viewing. The gassing of the rabbit (when the gas chamber is tested out beforehand) gives the viewer some idea of what Johnson had to go through.

His last words were: "I guess no-one's going to call now" (to grant a stay of execution). If anyone has any doubts about whether or not the death penalty is ever justified, they should watch this.

Return to my soapbox...

...Death Row, and in particular, the barbaric conditions on the Row in Texas. These are apparently my least popular posts, but I still want to spread the word. Here's part of an article written by a man released after many years on the Row. He was lucky (if you can call him that). Many innocent people have almost certainly been executed, with Texas just passing the 500 mark for executions carried out since the death penalty was reinstated.

There are 12 more people like me from Texas. Twelve people who spent years of their lives locked alone in concrete cages waiting to die before they were set free, exonerated for their innocence.

Eleven people have committed suicide on Texas' death row. All because of the conditions.

When I was sentenced to death, I did not know that this sentence would also mean that I would have 12 years without any human contact, i.e. my mother, my son, my friends. All those people were stripped from my life because of this injustice. I did not know it would mean 12 years of having my meals slid through a small slot in a steel door like an animal. I did not know it would mean 12 years alone in a cage the size of a parking spot, sleeping on concrete steel bunk and alone for 22 to 24 hours a day. All for a crime I did not commit. The injustice.

For me and the 400 other prisoners on Texas' death row while I was there, a death sentence meant a double punishment. We spent years locked alone in a tiny, concrete cage in solitary confinement, with guys going insane, dropping their appeals, doing everything they could to check out of this place before we were ever strapped to an execution gurney. All because of the conditions.

I am writing today because the ACLU has put out an important new paper about what it does to people to lock them alone in cages on death row. They found that over 93% of states lock away their death row prisoners for over 22 hours a day. Nearly a third of death row prisoners live in cages where their toilet is an arm's length away from their bed. Sixty-percent of people on death row have no windows or natural light.

Solitary confinement is like living in a dark hole. People walk over the hole and you shout from the bottom, but nobody hears you. You start to play tricks with your mind just to survive. This is no way to live.

I saw the people living on death row fall apart. One guy suffered some of his last days smearing feces, lying naked in the recreation yard, and urinating on himself. I saw guys who dropped their appeals and elected to die because of the intolerable conditions. To sum it up, I saw a bunch of dead men walking because of the conditions that killed everything inside of them. And they were just waiting to lie down.

After I got out, I have tried to use my time to raise awareness about these conditions. I am currently working on a book and traveling the globe trying to share my message and educate people about the effects of solitary confinement. I have createdAnthonyBelieves.com, which is my consulting firm that I use to help attorneys, nonprofit organizations, etc. I am asking for your support in my endeavors to bring attention to such inhumane issues by going to my website and ordering anything from my store to help offset my travel expenses. There's also a petition on my webpage that I am asking 10 million people around the world to sign in solidarity with me as I stand up for justice.

Please help me and the ACLU get the word out about these conditions. Our death penalty system is broken in this country – it is applied unfairly against people. When you have a broken system, innocent people like me can end up on trial for their life. And subjecting anyone in prison to solitary confinement is torture. I am speaking on experience. Many of these same people are returning to our society, and when they do they come with all the baggage we put on them in the system. This keeps the rate of recidivism high.

In this country, we should be doing better than that. We should not have a criminal justice system turned into a criminal by the way we treat our citizens. Even when we do not like people or believe they have done something wrong, our emotions should not govern our society. We should be making laws from a rational perspective. We have to be above the criminal by keeping our system humane. Everyone should be treated like a human being. This is America.
http://www.aclu.org/blog/prisoners-rights-capital-punishment/when-i-was-death-row-i-saw-bunch-dead-men-walking-solitary

Texas execute their 500th. prisoner

Ok, so I'm on my hobby horse again, but I was very sad to hear that Texas went ahead last night and carried out the 500th execution since capital punishment was reinstated in the US by putting to death Kimberley McCarthy. They have carried out nearly 40% of all executions in America, and (as I've said before) the governor, Rick Perry,  has said that he wouldn't lose any sleep if an innocent person were to be excuted. Kimberley is the first woman to be put to death for some time, and there are still big questions over the way her trial was conducted. She had already had several stays of execution, one at the last minute.

The link below is about the chaplain who for many years worked on Texas Death Row, and during his time there he remained with prisoners while they were executed. He finally decided that the death penalty was wrong, and he gives his reasons.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2013/jun/27/capital-punishment-texas-pickett

The conditions on Texas Death Row

The following account was published (at greater length) by Anthony Graves, who has since been found not guilty, and released from prison. It does give a picture of the horrendous conditions under which these people live. Once again (I know. I'm becoming boring about this!), new correspondents are desperately needed. For some, a correspondent will be their only "friend". I appeal to anyone who is interested to have a look at the Lifelines website, where details of how to become involved may be found:
www.LifeLines-uk.org.uk You are also very welcome to contact me (franstott@waitrose.com), and I will give you my phone number if you would like to know more.




On Nov. 1, 1994, I heard the gavel fall and the judge announce, "Anthony Graves, I hereby sentence you to death by lethal injection."

The jury had already convicted me of murdering six people and burning their house down to cover up the crime. I was completely innocent: they had the wrong guy. I was scared of dying for a crime I did not commit, but I knew I was innocent and hoped someone, somewhere would make it right.

What I didn't know then was that this wrongful death sentence was only part of the torture I would experience for the next 18 1/2 years. I didn't know that I would be forced to live in an 8-foot, by 12-foot cage. I didn't know I would have to use a steel toilet, connected to my steel sink, in plain view of the male and female corrections officers who would walk the runs in front of my cell. I didn't know that for years on end I would have no physical contact with a single human being.

I didn't know that guards would feed me like a dog, through a slot in my door. Instead of providing basic nutrients, the food sometimes contained rat feces, broken glass or the sweat of the inmate who cooked it. This diet caused me health problems that continue today.

The prison gave me no phone to call my loved ones, no television to keep up with the world and local events, and no real medical care. I lived behind a steel door, with filthy mesh-covered windows looking out to the run.

My only window to the outside world was a tiny one on the top of the back wall of my cell. With its peeling, old and dull paint, my cage was the image of an abandoned one-room project apartment. If I had known when I was sentenced all I would have to go through before I would win my freedom, I don't know if even my faith in my own innocence would have been enough to sustain me.

I was proven innocent in 2010, and became Death Row Exonoree No. 138. Some of us on Death Row were innocent. Some were unlawfully sentenced to death and had their sentences thrown out.

 

Bees in my bonnet

We all need bees in our bonnets. Not literally, of course (I've found that one bee in my hair is quite enough to deal with). But things that get us worked up, and that we really care about.

I have two major bees. The first is the current state of the nursing profession (I've just posted on my neglected Blog, Real Nurse Campaign, and that's made me feel a whole lot better.

The other, as anyone who reads this blog will probably know, is the death penalty, and especially the treatment of prisoners on some of America's death rows.

My prisoner correspondent writes fluently and heart-breakingly about how it feels no longer to be treated as human. He will probably never touch another humnan being again (prisoners aren't even allowed to hug their families before they die). He is just a number. In April, his best friend was executed, and he says that the following weeks were "hell on wheels". He (the executed man) had friends and a family. My penfriend (who has neither) wrote:

He had a life worth saving. I on the other hand have nothing. A bucket full of phantoms. Would I have traded places with him if it meant him living to be free? Yes. That doesn't make me noble in the least. But I would give him that.

He went without food for four days to write me that letter, because he couldn't afford the money for a stamp. I know this is true, because all prisoners' letters are censored. And he wasn't hinting for money, because when I sent him some, he was upset because he didn't want to be treated as a "charity". He asked me not to send any more.

I am not sentimental. I know that what he did (if indeed he did it) was very wrong. But condemning a man to year after year of solitary confinement, leading a totally useless life, followed by the awful ritual of the death chamber (sometimes after several last-minutes stays of execution) can hardly be the answer. Can it?

Death row revisited

A few weeks ago, I posted about Texas Death Row, and was pleased that at least two readers became interested in writing to Death Row inmates. One of the Texas Death Row inmates has a website (I've eno idea how he's managed it - probably through a third party) and here is what he says. Do please take the time to read it.

Have you ever had a life or death experience? If so, how close did you come to meeting your maker, and how long did it last? Do you even think about death? Well, think about this.

He goes on to describe how he lives in a small and filthy cage where you have no voice...a place where a desperate pleas is NEVER heard...where your humanity is no longer acknowleded and you are referred to as a number...I am a 27 year old guy who hast to "live" on Texas Death Row.

This man insists that he is innocent. There was no DNA, fingerpirnts or eye wintesses to connect him to the crime of which he is accused, and evidence used in his trial was tampered with. This is commonplace. One inmate, the now well-known Linda Carty (subject of a recent documentary), was given just five minutes with her attorney before her trial. A Texas inmate was executed last week, and several more executions are scheduled over the next months.

There are currently over 200 people on the waiting list for pen friends. It doesn't take up mmuch time. Do please think about it. The organisation through which I write is Lifelines, and Nichola Glasse is the membership secretary. Her email address is: nichola@glasse.org.uk

Death in Georgia

I have been feeling enormously sad at the execution of Troy Davis in Georgia last night. This man was on Death Row for 20 years, and had already had three stays of execution. After all that, his execution was delayed for four hours. Is that enough punishment for a man who has maintained his inncence throghout, and whose last words were a plea to the victim's family to find the real killer? Seven of the people who testified against him at his trial have since withrawn their testimony, and another man has confessed to the murder. But no matter. Revenge has been exacted, and so that's all right then, isn't it?

On a happier note, my own Death Row prisoner (the one I correspond with) has had his sentence commuted to life without parole. I only found this out by chance, and am delighted for him. Apparently:

"during a June 23 hearing, it was revealed that the lone juror at
the murder trial who held out to sentence **** to death and refused to
join with other jurors who preferred a sentence of life in prison was never
questioned by defense attorneys during jury selection."

Astounding, isn't it? One juror was in favour of the death penalty in this case. Just one. And if he had been questioned by the defense, presumably D would still be on Death Row.

It beggars belief.

D is for Death Penalty

Anyone who follows this blog may already be aware of my feelings about the death penalty. Ever since childhood (yes. I'm that old) when the death penalty was still used in England, I have had a total abhorrence of any form of judicial killing. As a little girl, I used to watch the hands of the clock as they crawled towards 9am (I think it was 9) when the hanging would take place, feeling full of dread. After the appointed hour, I would feel relief. At least it was all over; for the prisoner, his family and his friends (because of course, this of all punishments punishes many more than the prisoner himself). So many of those who were hanged during my childhood have since been "pardoned" (such an odd word to use), including poor, mentally challenged Derek Bentley, whose crime was to say to his accomplice "let him have it". To this day, no-one knows whether he meant it metaphorically (ie shoot the policeman who was challenging them ) or give him the gun. Bentley didn't even carry out the murder himself. The actual killer was too young to face the death penalty.

As I have mentioned before I correspond with a prisoner on Death Row in a US state. He is also a D. I have grown fond of him over the years we have been writing to each other (and having read about his court case, I think he may well be innocent). He is poor, comes from a very large family, and (probably; his letters are heavily censored) unable to pay for the services of a good lawyer. Two of his friends have recently had their sentences commuted to life after 30 - yes THIRTY - years on death row. Another, who had become a close friend, was executed a year ago, and D is still trying to come to terms with that. They are a close-knit bunch, as they are not allowed to mix with the other prisoners. D has a daughter although I don't think he sees her. He said in his last letter "I miss her every day. I try to keep my mind numb and try not to think about home all the time, but it is hard not to."

I'll bet it is.

(I'd better add that it goes without saying the murder is a wicked crime, and that life should often mean just that. We are sometimes too lenient in the UK. But I have never felt that the death penalty solves anything, and I strongly believe that everyone should be offered the opportunity for redemption.)