A prison sentence is a deprivation of liberty. That deprivation of liberty is the punishment. But elsewhere it’s different. In America, things vary a good deal state to state but 29 states still have the death penalty though some of these have a moratorium on implementing it.
‘No longer held’
Over the years, I have supported men on death row. The 1st was a ‘country boy’ in North Carolina. Early on in his letters, he explained that capital punishment too often meant that if you hadn’t the capital, you got the punishment! Smart lawyers there are expensive and without them, many men end up on death row. They can be there for years. Those states still using the death penalty seem impervious to circumstance – recently, a prisoner who had gone totally blind was executed regardless. When my letters are returned overwritten ‘no longer held at this establishment’, it signals the penalty has been carried out.
Different to the films
The man I currently mentor is in Texas at The Polunsky Unit which started taking death row inmates in the summer of 1999. The death row transfer to populate it, which took 10 months, was the largest transfer of condemned prisoners in history and performed under heavy security. I soon learned how different the system is from the films we see on our television. There is no glamour, little interaction, scant empathy. This prisoner is mixed race – part Hispanic, part African American, part native American. He has spent 12 grim years on death row, waiting for the knock on the cell door that will tell him the date of his execution by lethal injection. For that, he will be transferred to Huntsville.
His
death-row cell is small and has a tiny, high, slit window 📸. The door is solid and his mail is delivered through a ‘letterbox’ and his food on a tray through a larger slot. There is no outlook for the imprisoned man. He went for weeks at a time not speaking as there was no-one to speak to. The unit is ‘all solitary’.
A lingering death
During his trial he pleaded guilty to the murder he had committed and asked for the death penalty, knowing that lifelong imprisonment was unbearable. He preferred death. Notwithstanding, he has lingered for 12 years on death row while the token ‘appeals’ that he never wanted have been processed. All are now exhausted. He is just waiting for the date.
I write every week, though I rarely hear from him, due to his circumstances. On one occasion, he wrote on toilet paper as there was no writing paper allocated to him. I am not allowed to send photographs, or cards, or magazines. On his birthday, I scan a card into the letter. He particularly appreciates any colour images that I can include as his world is devoid of colour.
Of little deterrence
My letters, typed on the computer to make this possible, have to be on white paper and use white envelopes or they will not be given to him. Early on, I learned to number the letters as well as date them so that he knew when a letter was missing. It was important he knows I still write, even if he doesn’t always get given the letters.
It can be hard to judge what to write about from a world that is free and has choices and a future to a man who has none of these but I have learned that writing about the normal, small, everyday transactions of life is most appreciated. He can relate to those, from the life he once had, though his prison world started when he was only 19. So justice has many faces. The Polunsky Unit holds 200 – 300 men, all condemned and life there is bleak beyond imagining.
The death penalty appears of little deterrence in Texas.
Source:
insidetime.org, Jane Smith, February 10, 2023. Jane Smith, a nom de plume, is a volunteer with the National Association of Prison Visitors (NAOPV).
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"One is absolutely sickened, not by the crimes that the wicked have committed,
but by the punishments that the good have inflicted."
— Oscar Wilde
