The evil that is Texas Death Row

We who write to prisoners on Texas Death Row (through Lifelines) have a wonderful co-ordinator, who works tirelssly to keep us all in touch with each other and what's going on. This morning, she sent us all this email:

 

 

Dear Everyone

 

Please keep Max Soffar #000685 in your thoughts/prayers. He has been on the row for 33 years and is now dying from an aggressive cancer. He has no LifeLines penfriend.

This is one of many who have been on the row for years, in solitary confinement, waiting and waiting....I do hope that this man is at least being cared for, with the appropriate medication. But somehow, I doubt it. (If you would like to know more about Max, details can be found here.https://www.aclu.org/secure/max-soffar/ )

 

 

Poem from Death Row

Received in my latest letter this week:

INEVITABALITY

Why would I ever get out of  bed
When facing the day means facing the dead.
Still I arise and herein lies death
That no dream can conquer though what else is left
Other than surrendering to this reality, or run
Screaming into the medicinal haze that blots out the sun.
By which I mean that human reason alone
Cannot be of help where the sun has not shone.

So catalogue your memories, or throw them away,
And let the magic moments fall where they may,
Each like a snowflake in its majestic flight
That fades into nothing in the darkness of night.
My mind's eye cares not in the least
Whether the sun rises in the west or sets in the east.
All these emptying cells* still fill me with dread
As I wake every morning to go face the dead.

*Texas has already executed seven people this year. They had been on death row from between ten and twenty years. Many of those still waiting have been there for much longer.

A Death Row Journal

My Death Row correspondent has asked me to post this entry from the journal he tries to keep. I think he writes brilliantly. I'd love to know what you think. Every word and all the punctuation are as he wrote them.

The Row I've Hoed Bears Bitter Death

Sometimes the rain falls and I'm never aware of it. I'm sound-proofed from the world. Cursed to witness but not participate. Sometimes the sound of thunder is lost in the cacophony of shouting men screaming their grievances to apathetic guards; their prayers to an indifferent deity.

The only time I hear rain is when it leaks through the cracks in the ceiling. It's not the melodic symphony of water dancing off of the leaves or earth or man-made edifices. No, this sound has more of a dull metronomic quality as it slaps the stone floor. Each drop is a tiny defibrillator that shocks me back to reality; the needle that pierces all my dreams.

After the rain has fallen I plug up the concrete sky, shut off the light that became my fluorescent moon and stars and finally sleep.

This is where my life's journey has taken me and dropped me off, like a child on the first day of school...kicking and screaming. A ten by six cell where I play at being god. Creating, destroying, rearranging and likewise becoming indifferent to the world.

Irving Davis

Recently, he had to be transported elsewhere. He was returned late, and couldn't understand what all the little lights were in the sky. He finally realised that they were stars. He hadn't seen stars for eleven years. He never received the book I sent him; a harmless book he had asked for. It was refused him because of one sentence. I shall never know which.

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.

 

Letters from Death Row

My correspondent on Texas Death Row wants me to  name him; in prison, he is just a number. He writes:

Whenever you do talk about me, please use my name. I don't want to be hidden away. Not when a friend is your champion. I've been put on a shelf before and I was uncomfortable. Like my identity was stolen. That's all this prison does. They try to erase who we are and the best we can be and instead show what we are becoming and  the worst we have to offer.

 So. He is Irving Davis, and he's 30 year old. He's been on Death Row for 12 years, in solitary confinement ALL the time, in a metal cell with just a steel sink, loo and bunk. He is incredibly intelligent amd articulate; he paints and writes, when he can get the materials, and reads such books as he can get hold of. He may or may not be guilty of the crime for which he is convicted (many are probably innocent). It's not my job to judge or condemn him, but to be as much of a friend as I can be to him (I hate the expression "pen-friend" as it sounds so juvenile somehow).

In his last letter he writes of loneliness:

I did not know that aloneness could be so pervasive in one man's life. That my catchphrase would become, "I am alone". Not lonely. Just alone.

His family have all cut him off, although his father has said he can be buried in the family plot (no comment needed). Of his childhood he writes:

Basically my house was like a prison.You did your time and you left.

I cannot make excuses for what he might have done, but this is a man who was given little chance at the beginning, and is now given no opportunity for redemption. I think his execution date will be soon, as (he says) the warders all have it in for him. (Six people are alrady scheduled for April. Texas ha a very high turnover.)

A few weeks ago, he sent me a beautiful card. He has hardly any  money, and that card must have cost at least $2, without the postage. In it he wrote:

Frances
Thank you for this year that we've shared. Your grace and your patience has seen me through some dark days. I can't wait to see what this new year will bring us. Thank you. If all I can do is appreciate you, then I shall do my best. Stay golden, my friend.
With love and respect
Irving Davis

Are these the words of someone who is beyone redempton? I think not.

Irving has done for me at least as much as I have for him, but I don't think he can ever accept that this is so. When his time comes, I shall miss him more than I can say.

Letters from Death Row

In the governorship of Rick Perry, Texas has executed more than 250 prisoners, many of them  with very low IQs (this contravenes US law). As I think I've said before, Perry is on record (and I've  heard him) as saying that he wouldn't lose sleep if any of these prisoners were later found to have been inoocent. Just as well, as many of the verdicts were dubious.

I have no idea when it will be J's turn (my pen friend). But I dread it. I recently sent him a subscription to a magazine he likes. Should I give him a year's subscriptoin or six months? Difficult, when you don't know how long the recipient has to live.

J writes amazing letters. We have been discussing religion, and he says: I have no idea what love or faith are supposed to feel like. Does that lessen me? Since I've never been loved, how would I know what it is?...I have never been loved. I don't feel loss becuse of it. I used to try to, but if you've never had chocolate ice cream, how would you feel loss if you never had it?

I could go on, but enough for now.

Now for the commercial (again)! There are over 200 prisoners on America's many death rows who are on the waiting list for pen friends. If you are interested, do please contact Lifelines to find out more. You won't regret it.

Texas death row (again)

Since some of my followers have shown interest (thank you), I would just like to update you on the conditions on Texas death row. It is now apparent that the inmates are suffering the following inhumane treatment:

... taking away wheelchairs from those who cannot walk, denying mental and physical health care, being held in solitary confinement for over ten years without any legal justification based on their conduct, dangerously unsafe living conditions, inadequate nutrition, inadequate exercise, denial of adequate access to telephones, destruction and loss of necessary legal documents, denial of religious freedom, denial of fair administrative process, failure to timely deliver mail including legal correspondence, and other abuses...


I am sure that this is true, and explains in part why my own correspondent hasn't written to me for some weeks (mail going both in and out of the prison is regularly delayed). Yet again, may I appeal to anyone who is interested to think of writing to one of these men? It need take no more than about twenty minutes every couple of weeks. For many, this is their only contact with the outside world. My own penfriend has been dropped by all of his family, including his twin brother.

Do email me if you'd like further details, or I am happy to speak on the phone.

(I promise a nice, jolly post next time!)

A letter from Death Row

At last my new correspondent has repied to my letters (my last one decided he no longer wished to write). This is the man on Texas Death Row, and he is obviously creative and intelligent. He paints and writes, and would like to compose music, but isn't allowed an instrument to play on. His letter is bleak and hopeless Here is an extract:

"Everyone needs a friend. Being condemned to die. Being told by a jury that my life is so worthless that I must be wiped from existence has been at the front of my mind. To have it compounded by people who write* but don't let me be human to let me experience love, desire, indignation, sorrow, the full spectrum of emotions - well it doesn't make sense. I live and dream. I am here and I'll listen. All I ask for is a chance."

*I'm not sure whom he's referring to here.

He has been abandoned by family and friends, even his twin brother. He has no access to news or newpapers, and has no idea what's going on in the world. He is totally isolated, and it seems that the system offers not a shred of chance for any kind of redemption. His life is an ongoing punishment until he suffers the ultimate one (Texas executes inmates at a frightening rate; two already in the last month).

Death row - the last last meal

I promise I won't keep banging on about this, but I thought I'd post this as (a) it shows just how little feeling the state of Texas has for its death row inmates and (b) (perhaps hearteningly) that even at the end some people manage to have enough humour left to take the p*** out of the system! (This prisoner was executed last autumn.)

State prison officials decided on Thursday to end the practice of giving last meals to inmates about to be executed, their decision coming the day after they honored an elaborate meal request from Lawrence Russell Brewer, one of the men convicted in the 1998 racially motivated dragging death of James Byrd Jr. in Jasper.

Before Mr. Brewer was executed by lethal injection in the Huntsville Unit on Wednesday, he was given the last meal of his request: two chicken-fried steaks with gravy and sliced onions; a triple-patty bacon cheeseburger; a cheese omelet with ground beef, tomatoes, onions, bell peppers and jalapeños; a bowl of fried okra with ketchup; one pound of barbecued meat with half a loaf of white bread; three fajitas; a meat-lover’s pizza; one pint of Blue Bell Ice Cream; a slab of peanut-butter fudge with crushed peanuts; and three root beers.

The meal outraged State Senator John Whitmire, a Houston Democrat and chairman of the Senate Criminal Justice Committee. In a phone call and letter to the executive director of the state prison agency, Mr. Whitmire asked that the agency end the practice of last meals or he would get the State Legislature to pass a bill doing so.

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

Texas death row

My last death row correspondent, D, no longer wishes to continue writing (perhaps because his sentence has been finally commuted to life imprisonment), and I have been allocated a new prisoner to write to. This man had been on death row in Texas for ten years, and the conditions (especially compared to those of my last correspondent) are appalling. D was at least allowed an X box, and his exercise was taken in the open air. He was also allowed to speak with other prisoners. This is not the case in Texas. The conditions are as follows:

The men are kept in solitary confinement in a small cell, which contains a steel bunk, steel sink and steel toilet. Food is passed through a slot in the door on plastic trays. There is a tiny window shaped like a long letterbox, which is placed high on the outside wall. They have no television and only those with good disciplinary records will be allowed radios. There are no work facilities or study programmes. There is a commissary that sells stamps, stationery, toiletries, food and beverages. The food provided by the authorities is generally poor and those who can afford to will try to supplement their diet as much as possible. The prison is a non-smoking area and it is a disciplinary offence to smoke tobacco. (Of course, recreational drugs are not tolerated.) Prisoners recreate alone in cages big enough to pace around in. They are allowed recreation for one hour three times a week. The visiting is non-contact (behind glass), even for immediate family.

I have only just received this information, and am, quite literally, lost for words.

No more hearty meals for the condemned man

As a postscript to my last (below), apparently Texas is no longer letting prisoners choose their last meal before they're executed. It seems that some of them have been making exorbitant demands (how dare they?), and in any case (says Texas) they don't deserve a special meal. They're criminals. Let them eat the same as the other prisoners.

It's good to know that compassion and humanity are still alive and well in Texas, even if 400+ prisoners (since the 1980s) are not.