Skip to main content

The captivity experience, l'expérience de la captivité



The captivity experience

My name is Travis, I am 31 years old and I am sitting on Death Row in Texas.

Can the experience of relating how it feels to be in captivity be only understood thru actual confinement? With that in mind I feel my experiment is the next best thing to captivity, so a person can get a general idea of what it’s like to be in solitude. First thing is to pick a weekend, Saturday or Sunday, where someone will be at your home/theirs. The bathroom in the apartment is going to be used as your cell. At 6pm on a Friday take a book, magazine or newspaper to the bathroom for reading purposes. Also take a sheet and blanket to lay on the floor as your bed. Once you are inside the bathroom you cannot come out for any reason (not at all) until 6:00pm on Sunday. The person there with you, is to bring you 3 meals each day. Breakfast is to be at 3:00am of 3 pancakes (palm size), 4 ounces of oatmeal and 4 ounces of apple sauce. Lunch is at 10:00am. With 3 different vegetables of 4 ounces each, one small meat course and 2 slices of bread. Dinner is at 4:00 pm and the food option is the same as lunch. You will love it! When the person serves your meals they are not talk to you in anyway. Just open the door, give you your food. If there is a shower, in the bathroom you can use it once a day. If not, you can leave the bathroom for a shower but must come right back after. Whatever you choose to do to occupy your time is up to you. About once an hour the person there with you should open the door and look in to check on you but say nothing. If you want you can also take a pen a paper with you also. As you come out on Sunday evening write down your feelings and thoughts of what you felt. Did this help you better understand my situation? Freely, give me your opinions on the blog!

Traduction disponible sur le blog :

Je m'appelle Travis, j'ai 31 ans et je suis incarcéré dans le couloir de la mort du Texas.

Je souhaiterais partager avec vous ce que l’on ressent en captivité. On ne peut le comprendre sans se retrouver réellement enfermé. Voici un petit exercice qui vous permettra d’avoir une idée générale de la vie enfermée avec comme seule amie, la solitude.
Tout d’abord, choisissez un week-end, un samedi ou un dimanche, où quelqu'un sera à votre disposition à la maison. Réquisitionnez votre salle de bains pour en faire votre cellule. Vendredi, 18h00, équipé d’un livre, un magasine ou un journal direction la salle de bains. N’oubliez pas de vous munir d’une couverture… Une fois enfermé, il n’est plus question de sortir pour un oui ou un non et ce jusque dimanche 18h ! La personne, conjoint, copine, frère ou mère a pour mission de vous apporter 3 repas par jour. Voici les horaires : Le déjeuner doit être servi à 3h00 du matin, au menu 3 pancakes, 4 cuillères de céréales et un peu de sirop d’érable. Le déjeuner vous sera servi à 10h00 : Avec 3 sorte de légumes, un peu de viande et 2 tranches de pain. Enfin le dîner servi à 16h00, le repas est le même qu’à midi. Vous allez adorer ! On s’entend sur le fait que la personne qui sert vos repas, n’en profite pas pour bavarder ou vous tenir compagnie ! Entrouvrez la porte, et c’est tout ! Les douches sont autorisées : une fois par jour. Vous pouvez libérez la salle de bain, et oui les autres peuvent se laver mais n’en profitez pas pour mettre un terme à l’expérience. Vous êtes libre de vous occuper comme vous le souhaitez. Au fait, une fois par heure votre « gardien » doit ouvrir la porte qui vous sépare de l’extérieur et regarder à l’intérieur pour vérifier ce qui se passe. Vous pouvez emporter un stylo et du papier de manière à noter vos impressions, vos sentiments et surtout de m’en faire part par la suite via le blog. Racontez-moi également si cette expérience vous a rapproché de moi… sentez-vous libre de me dire ce que vous en pensez !

Voir le blog de Travis : In Death Row : ma vie dans le couloir de la mort

Comments

Most viewed (Last 7 days)

'No Warning': The Death Penalty In Japan

Stakes for wrongful convictions are high in Japan, where the death penalty has broad public support despite criticism over how it is carried out. Tokyo: Capital punishment in Japan is under scrutiny again after the world's longest-serving death row prisoner, Iwao Hakamada, was awarded $1.4 million in compensation this week following his acquittal last year in a retrial. Stakes for wrongful convictions are high in Japan, where the death penalty has broad public support despite international criticism over how it is carried out.

A second South Carolina death row inmate chooses execution by firing squad

Columbia, S.C. — A South Carolina death row inmate on Friday chose execution by firing squad, just five weeks after the state carried out its first death by bullets. Mikal Mahdi, who pleaded guilty to murder for killing a police officer in 2004, is scheduled to be executed April 11. Mahdi, 41, had the choice of dying by firing squad, lethal injection or the electric chair. He will be the first inmate to be executed in the state since Brad Sigmon chose to be shot to death on March 7. A doctor pronounced Sigmon dead less than three minutes after three bullets tore into his heart.

Louisiana's First Nitrogen Execution Reflects Broader Method Shift

Facing imminent execution by lethal gas earlier this week, Jessie Hoffman Jr. — a Louisiana man convicted of abducting, raping and murdering a 28-year-old woman in 1996 — went to court with a request: Please allow me to be shot instead. In a petition filed with the U.S. Supreme Court on March 16 seeking a stay of his execution by nitrogen hypoxia, a protocol that had yet to be tested in the state, Hoffman requested execution by firing squad as an alternative.

USA | Federal death penalty possible for Mexican cartel boss behind 1985 DEA agent killing

Rafael Caro Quintero, extradited from Mexico in 2022, appeared in Brooklyn court as feds weigh capital charges for the torture and murder of Agent Enrique Camarena NEW YORK — The death penalty is on the table for notorious drug lord Rafael Caro Quintero, the so-called “narco of narcos” who orchestrated the torture and murder of a DEA agent in 1985, according to federal prosecutors. “It is a possibility. The decision has not yet been made, but it is going through the process,” Assistant U.S. Attorney Saritha Komatireddy said in Brooklyn Federal Court Wednesday.

South Carolina | Spiritual adviser of condemned inmate: 'We're more than the worst thing we've done'

(RNS) — When 67-year-old Brad Sigmon was put to death on March 7 in South Carolina for the murder of his then-girlfriend's parents, it was the first time in 15 years that an execution in the United States had been carried out by a firing squad. United Methodist minister Hillary Taylor, Sigmon's spiritual adviser since 2020, said the multifaceted, months long effort to save Sigmon's life, and to provide emotional and spiritual support for his legal team, and the aftermath of his execution has been a "whirlwind" said Taylor, the director of South Carolinians for Alternatives to the Death Penalty.

Execution date set for prisoner transferred to Oklahoma to face death penalty

An inmate who was transferred to Oklahoma last month to face the death penalty now has an execution date. George John Hanson, also known as John Fitzgerald Hanson, is scheduled to die on June 12 for the 1999 murder of 77-year-old Mary Bowles.  The Oklahoma Court of Criminal Appeals on Tuesday set the execution date. The state’s Pardon and Parole Board has a tentative date of May 7 for Hanson’s clemency hearing, executive director Tom Bates said.

Inside Florida's Death Row: A dark cloud over the Sunshine State

Florida's death penalty system has faced numerous criticisms and controversies over the years - from execution methods to the treatment of Death Row inmates The Sunshine State remains steadfast in its enforcement of capital punishment, upholding a complex system that has developed since its reinstatement in 1976. Florida's contemporary death penalty era kicked off in 1972 following the U.S. Supreme Court's decision in Furman v. Georgia , which temporarily put a stop to executions across the country. Swiftly amending its laws, Florida saw the Supreme Court affirm the constitutionality of the death penalty in 1976's Gregg v. Georgia case.

Bangladesh | Botswana Woman Executed for Drug Trafficking

Dhaka, Bangladesh – Lesedi Molapisi, a Botswana national convicted of drug trafficking, was executed in Bangladesh on Friday, 21 March 2025. The 31-year-old was hanged at Dhaka Central Jail after exhausting all legal avenues to appeal her death sentence. Molapisi was arrested in January 2023 upon arrival at Hazrat Shahjalal International Airport in Dhaka, where customs officials discovered 3.1 kilograms of heroin hidden in her luggage. Following a trial under Bangladesh’s Narcotics Control Act, she was sentenced to death in May 2024. Her execution was initially delayed due to political unrest in the country but was carried out last week.

Oklahoma executes Wendell Grissom

Grissom used some of his last words on Earth to apologize to everyone he hurt and said that he prays they can find forgiveness for their own sake. As for his execution, he said it was a mercy. Oklahoma executed Wendell Arden Grissom on Thursday for the murder of 23-year-old Amber Matthews in front of her best friend’s two young daughters in 2005.  Grissom, 56, was executed by lethal injection at the Oklahoma State Penitentiary in McAlester and pronounced dead at 10:13 a.m. local time, becoming the first inmate to be put to death by the state in 2025 and the ninth in the United States this year. 

564 People On Death Row In India, Highest Since The Turn Of The Century

In 90% of of all death penalty sentences in 2024, trial courts imposed sentences in the absence of adequate information about the accused, finds a recent report Bengaluru: Following the uproar and the widespread protests after the August 2024 rape and murder of a medical professional in Kolkata’s RG Kar hospital, there were demands for death penalty for the accused. The state government passed the Aparajita Woman and Child (West Bengal Criminal Laws Amendment) Bill 2024 (awaiting presidential assent) which included mandatory death sentence for rape which results in death of the victim or if the victim is left in a vegetative state, despite such a mandatory sentence being unconstitutional.