Russell Moore was condemned to the electric chair in America for the brutal murder of a rich socialite. This is what he told us from there. Florida prison inmate number 083475, James Hudson Savage, Race Unknown, knew he’d never get out of his jail cell except in a body bag. In reality he was Russell Thomas Moore, a Yorta Yorta and Wemba Wemba Aboriginal from Murray River territory, who had been locked up on Florida’s death row. Incarcerated 16,000km from the home he never knew but had come to yearn for since being sentenced to die in Florida’s infamous electric chair, Russell feared he was doomed never to set foot on Australian soil again. In the end, he would instead be lowered into it, in a coffin surrounded by relatives who had never met him, but knew his tragic story. Even 20 years ago, in the cellblock of 1 of the 20 prisons he was shuttled between in the decades he spent in Florida’s prison system, Russell told me he didn’t expect to get out alive. At that point all hope had not ...
Striving for a World without Capital Punishment