Light from the darkness

Jan Arriens reflects on the life and death of a friend

Michael Lambrix was executed by the state of Florida on 5 October. He had been on death row for thirty-three years. He and I had corresponded for twenty-six of those years. Only a handful of people in all human history have spent longer under sentence of death before execution than Mike.

I met him on four occasions, most recently in February last year when he was on ‘death watch’ but received a stay when Florida’s sentencing procedure was found to be unconstitutional. Mike’s jury was not unanimous, as the law now requires. The law was, however, made retrospective to 2002 only.

That legal inconsistency did not appear to trouble the judicial system; nor did thirty-three years of incarceration under the death sentence appear to qualify as cruel and unusual punishment, as prohibited under the Eighth Amendment.

His case hinged on the testimony of his girlfriend, who later had an affair with the lead investigator. There was no forensic evidence. It was the state’s version of events against Mike’s. He consistently pleaded manslaughter in self-defence, twice refusing plea bargains under which he would long since have been free: he was not prepared to plead guilty to something he was adamant he had not done.

Ambiguities and uncertainties

So, his case was surrounded by ambiguities and uncertainties. There was nothing like the certainty one would have thought imperative for the ultimate punishment. The judicial system did not merely leave him dangling for thirty-three years; the actual execution was delayed by a further four hours while the US Supreme Court deliberated. The agony that he and his family must have gone through in that time, suspended between hope and dread, defies comprehension.

It has been terrible to watch the corrosive effects of this placement of institutionalised violence at the very heart of the judicial system in the US. But more than that, there seemed to be no place for compassion or clemency. Florida – one of the main executing states – has not granted clemency since 1983. There was no recognition of the way in which Mike had changed over the years to make something of his life on death row against the odds.

Mike arrived on death row as a young tearaway on the margins of society. He had come from a highly dysfunctional background in which he had suffered physical and sexual abuse. On death row, he discovered that he was intelligent, and read widely. He found that he could write, penning a series of brilliant essays. He became an accomplished death row lawyer. Had he had my life chances, he would never have come anywhere near death row but risen to the top of whatever profession he chose.

A flash of humanity

In my experience Mike was sensitive, considerate and kind. I remember visiting him in 2001 in the company of his parents and his daughter Jennifer, aged eighteen, born just after he was imprisoned. She suffered oxygen deprivation at birth and was dreamy and unable to follow a conversation properly. We sat around the steel picnic table in the visiting room and I wondered how Mike would cope with the situation: this was just the second time he had seen Jennifer.

While I made heavy weather of communicating with her, Mike was magnificent. He cracked jokes and drew her into the conversation. Then at one point he got up and announced that he would introduce his beautiful daughter to all the other men in the room. He promenaded her up and down, stopping gravely at each table.

This was not, of course, permitted, but the male and the female guard on duty had their heads down over some paperwork that suddenly demanded their full attention. It was a little flash of humanity at its best. I marvelled at the social poise Mike was able to display after so many years of deprivation.

An unexpected lightness

I have written previously about the profound experience Mike had in 1988 when he came within an ace of being executed (4 March 2016).

He woke on the morning of the scheduled execution to find his cell flooded with light. The guards on duty, who were there to make sure he didn’t harm himself, saw nothing. It was a light such as Mike had never experienced before, and the experience – the most real he had ever felt – stayed with him until his death.

It was also the time when a consciousness of a personal God died within him, giving way to what he called ‘a ‘‘more enlightened” perspective or what this thing we call “God” is’. It convinced him that the world was not as it seems, and that there was some form of survival beyond the grave.

In the two phone calls we had during the last week of his life, he repeatedly stressed that even if things went against him, he would ultimately be ‘all right’. Many people have said since Mike was executed that he has ‘gone to a better place’. It is something one often hears said after someone dies, and I have often wondered whether these are just comforting words lacking real substance.

Mike’s experience has made me look hard at what he was saying. Like many other people, I have had experiences that point in the same direction, but sometimes it is hard to believe what we believe. All I can say is that since Mike has died, I have felt an unexpected lightness.

Further information: http://deathrowjournals.blogspot.co.uk

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Comments

Thank you, Jan.  We’re still feeling for you, as we’re sure Mike’s death will be on your heart for ever.  But this article and his own one do indeed how there’s light even in very dark places.
Love from Diana and John in Canada.

By lampen on 19th October 2017 - 17:03

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I am Blown Away by this!

By andavane on 20th October 2017 - 17:30

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