Deprived (eBook)

Innocent On Death Row

Steffen Hou (Autor)

eBook Download: EPUB

2019 | 1. Auflage
218 Seiten
Bookbaby (Verlag)
978-1-5439-5508-8 (ISBN)

Infos

'The Deprived: Innocent on Death Row' describes how thousands of Americans are convicted of crimes they never committed. Many of them end up on death row where inmates have been executed despite their innocence. The book tells the dramatic stories of innocent death row inmates and investigates the murder cases that led to their wrongful convictions. It also proves what leads to false accusations and who's most likely to be incarcerated for a crime they never committed. 'The Deprived: Innocent on Death Row' takes you on a journey through the US Justice system and proves its flaws and unjust through real human stories. It reminds of a suspense thriller. Just true. The book is based on interviews with 10 Americans who have all been affected by wrongful convictions and the death penalty. Get to know what it is like on death row when you are innocent and fighting for your life.

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Six Americans tell the heartbreaking and dramatic stories of how they ended up on death row for crimes they never committed. In some cases they were minutes away from being executed despite their innocence. The Deprived: Innocent on Death Row provides a rare insight into life on death row. Through compelling interviews the book describes how innocent mothers and fathers suddenly become victims of meaningless violence in a vicious prison environment where their survival often depends on becoming just as brutal as the killers in the cells next to them. However, the book is also a life-affirming tale of how humans can survive even the greatest injustice, and how the innocent death row inmates, after their exoneration, have managed to transform a life in solitary confinement into a life full of love, hope and faith. But despite leaving death row today, death row will never leave them. Derrick Jamison, exonerated after 20 years:When Derrick's execution was announced, he had already spent more than 15 years on death row living in despair, but as he now sat alone in the cell knowing that his ordeal was about to come to an end, he found no comfort for himself. When he ate his last meal, he had one more wish-that his execution would be quick and painless. Not all of the 18 men who had been executed prior to Derrick were that lucky. "e;They were forced out of their cells, strapped down on a gurney, and had poison shot into their blood. Many suffered physically when killed. They had to have injections again and again. Knowing that death could be painful really scared me,"e; Derrick shares. Sunny Jacobs, exonerated after 16 years:"e;The guards were not allowed to talk to me because if they started seeing me as a human being, they might not be able to participate in taking my life. Therefore, they had to treat me as less than a human being,"e; Sunny says. For the same reasons, she was never referred to by her name. Only her inmate number. "e;That is your inventory number till they decide you must die."e;Kwame Ajamu, exonerated after 38 years:Old Sparky was the electric chair and Kwame had only been in the death house for a few minutes when the guards introduced him to what was going to be his final destination in life. "e;It mortified me. Imagine what that kind of cruelness does to a 17-year-old boy who knows he is innocent. It broke me down and gave me mental scars for life. I will never be able to shake off that experience. When other people do not care if you are dead or alive, you lose faith in humanity. I will remember those horrifying minutes until the day I die."e;Nick Yarris, exonerated after 22 years: "e;Normally, I would just hurt myself. I would knock my head into the wall until I tasted the blood. Because when I felt the pain, I would start to feel alive and be reminded that I was still human. But when that was not enough, I tried to commit suicide,"e; Nick says, telling that one of the reasons why he probably never succeeded in killing himself was because he could not disappoint his parents. He felt that he owed it to them to prove his innocence because they had already lost so much in life. Damon Thibodeaux, exonerated after 15 years:"e;Till I sat in that interrogation room, I was always convinced that a person would never confess to a crime they had not done. I was the person who did. Until you are put in the position I was in, you will never understand why. But investigators are allowed to manipulate and force you to get a confession. At some point, everyone will break. When I did, it got the real killer off the hook. Today, we all know he is still out there,"e; Damon says. Herman Lindsey: exonerated after 3 years:"e;By putting me on death row, God gave me a voice. We cannot be sure we are not killing innocent people. I am an example of that myself. And it changes people's views when I tell my story. God knew I had to go to death row to get that voice,"e; Herman says.

Textauszug

Prologue | The Cheering Crowd

A crowd of three thousand people watched and cheered while the young man begged for his life. In vain.

The hangman showed no mercy when the noose squeezed all life out of Thomas Bird as he became the first person to be federally executed under the US constitution.

A few weeks earlier, the young man was tried for murder and piracy in court. Upon being sentenced to death, he asked President George Washington for forgiveness, but a pardon was denied. In June 1790, US Marshal Henry Dearborn hung him from the gallows in Maine.

Since then, almost 16,000 Americans have been executed. Most of these executions occurred by hanging, but others have been electrocuted or even burned to death—many times with a majority of other Americans supporting their death.

Today, 55 percent of Americans say they are in favor of the death penalty for a person convicted of murder, but the present support indicates a significant decline from just a couple of decades ago when it was in the range of 80 percent.

Most death penalty supporters still feel that execution is a justifiable punishment for those who have taken someone else’s life, whereas others believe that the death penalty sets an example that will deter crime and help lower the murder rate. But the statistics tell another story.

The South accounts for over 80 percent of all executions in America. Still, the murder rate in the South is almost twice as high as the murder rate in the Northeast, which accounts for just 1 percent of all executions.

Another fact that might have changed American support is that capital punishment is an expensive solution.

When Thomas Bird was executed, it cost Americans $5.50 for the construction of a gallows and a coffin. Today, states performing the death penalty spend millions of dollars on execution cases.

The cost of a death penalty case varies from state to state. Texas, as an example, spends an average of $2.3 million on each death penalty case—three times the cost of imprisoning a person in a single cell at the highest security level for 40 years.

Another recent study from Seattle University shows that, on average, a death penalty case costs the state of Washington about $1.6 million more than a noncapital case. The most notable increases occur in defense fees and court costs.

Often, the money spent is money wasted because people sentenced to death often languish on death row for decades and then die of natural causes or suicide before being executed.

However, the most important reason for the declining support may be that since 1973, more than 160 people have been exonerated from death row with evidence of their innocence. And the risk of killing innocent people could scare some Americans out of supporting the death sentence as innocent people have undoubtedly already been executed.

As an example, Cameron Todd Willingham was executed in 2004 in Texas for setting the fire that killed his three daughters. A decade later, the jailhouse informant who claimed Willingham had confessed to him admitted that he lied when he testified against the father just to reduce his own prison sentence.

In 1990, Jesse Tafero was executed for the murder of two policemen. Mr. Tafero was convicted for the crime along with his wife Sonia “Sunny” Jacobs. Two years after his execution, it was proven that they did not receive a fair trial as some evidence had been suppressed. Afterward, Sunny was released from prison.

Mr. Willingham and Mr. Tafero are not the only innocent people to have been executed.

A group of lawyers from the University of Michigan Law School, who investigated the error margin of 8,000 death sentences since 1973, concluded that 4 percent of defendants sentenced to death in the United States were innocent.

An argument for using life imprisonment and not capital punishment could therefore be that it is possible to get an innocent man out of his cell, but not out of his grave.

LIFE AFTER DEATH ROW

Over the years, I have repeatedly read about innocent people who have been released from death row under great media awareness and I have always been curious about how these people’s lives have evolved when the cameras have been turned off and the reporters have left the prison gate.

Several times, I came across the name, Nick Yarris—a man who was exonerated by the use of DNA evidence after spending 22 years on Pennsylvania’s death row.

Since his release, Nick Yarris has been one of the exonerated death row inmates who has attracted the most media attention. There has even been a movie produced about his life and he was compensated millions of dollars when exonerated. I contemplated that if one exonerated prisoner was to restore his life, it would be him.

For more than four years, I have followed Nick Yarris. When I first met him, he struck me as a person who has managed to forgive and to transform his traumatic experiences into a positive view on life. However, the better I got to know him, the more it became clear to me that as an exonerated death row inmate, you will forever be marked by the injustice done to you, no matter fame or fortune.

After interviewing Nick Yarris, I decided to approach other exonerees to find out if their experiences were similar to his. Unfortunately, they were. Most exonerees struggle to restore life. Some even say that returning to a normal life has been harder than adjusting to life on death row.

The intention of The Deprived—Innocent on Death Row is to investigate what leads to wrongful convictions and how people react when they become victims of an injustice that not only deprives them their freedom and family, but in a worst-case scenario, their lives. Do they lose the will to live, do they find meaning through religion, or do they become as evil as they have wrongfully been accused of being?

When I reviewed different cases of wrongful convictions, I was shocked by how easily people can end up on death row despite being innocent. This is often because society has failed to protect its own citizens when authorities have not conducted their duties properly or even when law enforcement officers have lied about their investigation and manufactured evidence. In other cases, the convicted has become a victim of false and vicious testimonies—even at times given by their own families and friends.

Therefore, I also wanted to investigate if innocent death row inmates can maintain trust in fellow man and that justice will prevail. Or do they become bitter and hateful toward the people who put them on death row?

Finally, I wanted to look into if the injustice they have experienced will always overshadow the joy of having regained freedom.

On a personal level, through my research, I have also tried to clarify if I believe it is fair that society demands “an eye for an eye.” When I was a teenager, I saw an innocent young man being stabbed to death by a group of thugs. Witnessing the crime had a huge impact on me. I was scared and for years I feared that one day, I would become a victim. My immediate reaction was that perpetrators deserved the same punishment as their victims: death. However, I started wondering whether this was a legitimate punishment because the death penalty also kills innocent people.

I have tried to answer these questions and many others by telling the stories of 10 people who have all been affected by wrongful convictions and the death penalty.

Derrick Jamison tells what it feels like to be scheduled to die in 90 minutes and why he accuses law enforcement officers of killing his mother.

Damon Thibodeaux tells what it feels like when even relatives believe you are a cold-blooded killer.

Sonia “Sunny” Jacobs tells what it is like to be a woman on death row and how she reacted when her husband was wrongfully executed.

Kwame Ajamu tells what it feels like to be put in the death house as a teenager and be deprived the chance of having children.

Randy Gardner tells what it did to him when a firing squad executed his brother.

Herman Lindsey tells why he is still labeled a murderer even after being exonerated.

Ronnie Sandoval tells what it is like when your teenage son is the victim of a wrongful conviction and how she lost him twice.

Magdaleno “Leno” Rose-Avilá tells why his own past as a violent gang member turned him into a human activist.

Marietta Jaeger tells why she forgave her seven-year-old daughter’s serial killer and fought for him not to be sentenced to death.

And Nick Yarris tells what life is like on death row when Ted Bundy lives in the cell next to you, how you survive the violence in prison without becoming a monster yourself, and how you return to life without hating the guards, the prosecutor, the judge, and the jurors who did you wrong. But...

Produkt-Details

• Erscheint lt. Verlag: 15.2.2019
• Sprache: englisch
• Themenwelt: Recht / Steuern ► Allgemeines / Lexika
• Themenwelt: Recht / Steuern ► Strafrecht
• Themenwelt: Sozialwissenschaften ► Politik / Verwaltung
• ISBN-10: 1-5439-5508-8 / 1543955088
• ISBN-13: 978-1-5439-5508-8 / 9781543955088