'A recent card says he has decided to ‘turn his life around’ and be baptised.' Photo: by Tim Hüfner on Unsplash
Capital costs: Mary Brown on the death penalty
‘Conditions on death row are among the worst in US prisons.’
October 10 is the twentieth world day against the death penalty. I shall be thinking of my penfriend on death row in Texas. In the UK we gradually and cautiously abandoned the death penalty without the approval of the majority of the population. This gives me hope.
In 1957 a homicide act was passed, restricting the types of murder that could carry a sentence of death. In 1965 a private member’s bill suspended the death penalty for murder for five years. In 1969 that became permanent, but the death penalty in Northern Ireland wasn’t abolished until 1973. Espionage, treason and piracy with violence carried the death penalty until we ratified the sixth protocol of the European Convention on Human Rights in the Human Rights Act of 1998.
Margaret Thatcher asked parliament to restore the death penalty on several occasions, but MPs refused; the last parliamentary debate on it was in 1994. But we should not sit back in satisfaction: those found guilty of murder now serve about twice as long in prison as was the case in the 1960s, and more and more people are being told that they will end their lives in prison.
The death penalty still exists in fifty-five US states. No method of putting our fellow human beings to death can be considered humane, but the US policy of death by lethal injection is especially questionable. There is evidence that death is often painful. The US allow those sentenced to death to live on for years while they make one appeal after another. Conditions on death row are among the worst in US prisons, with people often locked up in single cages, only able to communicate by shouting from cell to cell.
To return to my penfriend: he has spent nineteen years on death row. He was due to be executed in March 2020, but the pandemic granted him a stay of execution. I never found out why. Was it because travel restrictions meant that victims’ families could not watch the condemned die (a particularly horrific aspect of the US policy), or was it to do with the supply of drugs? On the day he should have died a card arrived from him saying that he only wanted tears of happiness, as he would be free and waiting for me in heaven. He is still here today but has been given another date: 9 November this year.
A recent card says he has decided to ‘turn his life around’ and be baptised. He writes of being ‘held under for longer than usual’. Was this a joke or are there facilities for total immersion in Texas prisons?
This is the third penfriend I have had: the first was executed, the second became fed up with writing. I think this will be my last correspondent as it doesn’t seem sensible to embark on a long-term commitment at my age (eighty-six). But Lifelines (https://lifelines-uk.org.uk) needs more penfriends. Becoming one offers Friends the opportunity to cheerfully answer that of God in some of the most wretched people alive.
Comments
Thank you for this article. It is a very moving account.
By mkay on 23rd October 2022 - 16:41
Please login to add a comment
