C H O I C E S

Living Consciously

Welcome to Hell: Letters and Writings from Death Row, compiled and edited
by Jan Arriens, Northeastern University Press, Boston, 1997.
A book review by Bill Menza (May 23, 2003).

This book aims to give a voice to the voiceless condemned men and women in America. It grew out of the BBC production and broadcast of the documentary film "Fourteen Days in May," which is about the execution of Edward Johnson by Mississippi officials on May 20, 1987. There is photograph of him in the book taken a few days before he was killed by poisonous gas. After the film was shown in Great Britain, people there became upset about the inhuman execution and treatment of Johnson and of death row prisoners in the United States in general. This led to the formation of the penpal organization LifeLines. The correspondence of these letter writers to and from those on death row in Virginia, Florida, Mississippi, Georgia, Louisiana, Alabama, Indiana, New Jersey, Illinois, and some other prisons is the substance of the book. In some instances the name of the prison or prisoner is not given to protect the prisoner.

LifeLines was set up in 1988 in Cambridge, England to support and befriend prisoners on death row in the United States, through letter writing. Its website: http://www.lifelines.org/site/home.htm, reports that at present there are about 50 women and 3500 men on death row in the US, held in harsh and dehumanizing conditions. That many are abandoned by their family and friends and have very little, if any, contact with the outside world. Consequently, letters can be a very real lifeline to them. As one prisoner said: "It gives us a reason to continue by showing that people care." Lifelines holds two conferences a year, which have included as speakers: Clive Stafford Smith (Director of the Louisiana Crisis Assistance Center, and who was Johnson's appeal attorney), Marie Deans (the founder of the anti-death penalty movement in Virginia and of Murder Victims Families for Reconciliation), Sister Helen Prejean (who wrote the book "Dead Man Walking"), Pat Bane (a former chairperson of MVFR), and Reverend Joe Ingle (founder of the Southern Coalition on Jails and Prisons).

Smith writes in the Preface that the book will "help dispel a little of the ignorance and inhumanity that pretends to justify the death penalty." And in the Appendix of the book titled "The Appeals Process," Smith its author, presents in five pages a synopsis of the death penalty in the United States. That it is almost exclusively a phenomenon of the Southern states of the former Confederacy. That elected local prosecutors have "absolute discretion" in deciding whether to seek the death penalty. That almost everyone on death row is indigent. That their court-appointed attorneys received less than the Federal minimum hourly wage in defending them, and many were not qualified to mount an adequate defense. That Ronald Reagan's appointment of right-wing ideologues to more than half of the federal judiciary greatly reduced death defendants' rights, as did the US Congress. Elsewhere in the book the outrageous decision of the US Supreme Court is mentioned---that the "discrepancy [in death sentencing] that appears to correlate with race" and its "apparent disparities in sentencing are an inevitable part of our criminal-justice system." [Translation: America's death penalty is racism in action.]

In the Foreword to the book Sister Helen Prejean asks: "Who wants a guided tour into hell....who want to go there....Why would anyone in their right mind want to descend into the hellish experience of death row inmates awaiting execution?" She answers that it is because we want to expand our understanding, as well as our humanness. I would add that we have a human, civic and taxpayer responsibility to know what is happening in these hells and to work to make them decent places to be imprisoned. There is no acceptable civilized reason for our government and prison officials to create and maintain these hells, or to be killing defenseless prisoners who were not adequately defended in legal proceedings, and some of who in fact may be innocent.

Many of the prisoners talk about their wretched lives of poverty, violence, abuse, drugs, alcohol, ignorance, and delusion, which were some of the factors responsible for their being sentenced to death. The psychic scars caused by these conditions do not go away, and most on death row come face-to-face with these inner hells on a daily basis.

Ronald Spivey on death row in Georgia says that condemned prisoners are emotionally handicapped people with "an overload of guilt" and "absolutely no sense of self-worth." Many are tormented by what they did (and say so in the book). But our judicial and prison systems are not very interested in a prisoner's remorse and their need for forgiveness. In fact they are used against them. The judicial system also does not take into consideration that many are on death row for a single act of uncontrolled behavior.

Spivey also tells us that "America is killing the economically deprived, those of the lower socioeconomic strata, killing the insane, killing the retarded, killing illiterates, killing the emotionally crippled, killing the childishly immature and mentally undeveloped, killing the socially disenfranchised and the politically powerless of our society, killing those so criminally abused as children that they never had a chance to develop normally to a well-balanced human being. Their minds were stunted, twisted and mentally and emotionally destroyed as children....We are killing the weaker of the species. We kill our mistakes. The financially strong and socially fortunate survive and the weaker perish....just like the jungle animal kingdom."

Spivey's remarks made me think of the work of Harvard University psychiatrist James Gilligan. In his book "Violence: Our Deadly Epidemic and Its Causes," Grosset/Putnam, New York, 1996, Gilligan says that he found that violent offenders experienced childhood poverty and abuse that is 'off the scale." These experiences told them that society was against
them, and killed their feelings and their sense of being a human being. Many violent offenders he studied said they felt like zombies or the living dead; some had to cut themselves to fee they were still alive. Gilligan says that to reduce violence we need to protect people from the devastation and squalor of poverty, we need to provide them with quality health care and education, and we need to change our drug policies which foster drug abuse and crime.

Spivey continues: "The state's power is most awesomely displayed when wielded against a social pauper who stands alone in this conflict, who must piteously appeal to the state, the very one trying to kill him or her, for the paltry funds the state reluctantly gives in amounts so
picayune as to permit only an inadequate semblance of even a poor defense."

Walter Correll on Virginia's row notes that it does not matter if a person is guilty or not. The courts are only interested if "they got a fair trial to begin with." This reminds me of the statement of former Virginia Attorney General Mary Sue Terry who said: "Innocence is irrelevant" in responding to the appeal of Roger Coleman, who was later executed. Even today Virginia judicial officials continue to fight tooth and nail to prevent DNA testing of a saved sample to see if Coleman was in fact guilty.

Correll's mother writes: "I have to take two depression pills every night to keep from having nightmares. I have been taking them since Walter has been in prison and he has been in there going on six years. People tell me I will have to try and not think about him being there, but they don't know what it feels like having a son in prison and who has been proven innocent." The book contains a photograph of Walter with his mother visiting him on death row. Correll had an IQ of 68. His two co-defendants blamed the murder on him and received lighter sentences. He was executed on January 4, 1996.

Some prisoners talk about the sham their death trial was, or of the great brutality of the police who arrested them. In one case the police almost beat the prisoner and a friend to death, in another a policeman shoved a gun down the prisoner's throat and another policeman zippered up his pants so that the skin of his penis was caught by the zipper. The cruel and inhuman treatment they get while being arrested and tried in a court continues when they get to death row.

Being on the row they tell us is to be terrorized and traumatized. It is be in hell. The actual conditions of each hell varies by state. Most prisoners seem to be held under supermax solitary control unit like conditions, while some are held in the general prison population. At the time of the correspondence used in this book, prisoners on Virginia's death row were allowed to pass part of the day in a common room with each other, but today they are held in a supermax prison.

In any case, most are held in small cells 7, 8 or 9 by 5 feet, which are equivalent to a small bathroom. The cell contains a sink, toilet and metal shelf for a bed. The bed has a 2-inch mattress in a plastic cover with a plastic covered pillow. Food is served cold on plastic plates. Sometime it is half cooked, or may contain insects. Many of the cells are extremely hot in the summer, so that many sleep on the concrete floor to get some coolness. In the winter the cell is cold. Prisoner Sam Johnson of Mississippi tells his penpal that the 116-degree temperature of his cell in the summer made it impossible for him to write letters. "At least there are no snakes or leeches," says one Texas prisoner.

One women prisoner says they "use to give us tea, coffee, salt, toilet paper, sugar, stuff like that" but it was cut out, so now you either buy it or do without. Another tells us that medical care is basically non-existent; another that bad teeth are pulled out not filled. Moreover,
when you are sick you must fill out a form to ask for help, which takes three days to process. There are restrictions on the number of book and magazines you can have in your cell, usually about six or seven. Also, many prisons restrict or deny access to law books that are needed to conduct one's own legal appeals, which may be the only way you can save your life, if you don't have a lawyer. And not having a lawyer after initial appeals is usually what happens to many of those on death row, until the time they are about to be executed, when they get one.

I might add that some prison officials seem to go out of their way to make imprisonment as unpleasant as possible. For example, a couple of years ago when Senator George Allen was governor of Virginia and he was having new supermax prisons built, one of which contains death row, prison officials went out of their way to have the windows frosted so prisoner
could not see the trees and sky outside.

Vic Roberts on Georgia's row writes: "Imagine spending twenty-one hours a day and twenty-four hours on weekends in a tiny cell being annoyed by others complaining about unnecessary things that have nothing to do with cruelty or unnecessary rules. To recreate, shower, visit, etc. you are stripped of your clothing in front of either males or females who open your mouth as you maneuver your tongue, run their fingers through your hair, raise your arms, lift your testicles, or run their fingers through your pubic hair, [as you] turn around to lift your feet, and bend over to spread your cheeks, while the guards search your clothing." And when you go recreate or shower or when your cell is searched you can only be dressed in your undershorts no matter how cold it might be. And you are given a disciplinary report for the smallest things or just because a guard is having a bad day, and are automatically found guilty in any administrative hearing. Which means you not permitted to leave your cell at all. If you protest or complain about any of this mistreatment, force is then used against you, so that while your hands are cuffed behind, you are grabbed by the neck and legs and if there is slightest movement a knee is put in your back or neck, while your face is hard pressed into the cold cement."

Prisoners in Texas say when tour groups are brought onto the row, which can be often, "you feel like an animal on display." You are forbidden to say anything to them and will be punished if you do, which of course the visitors do not know. Once when a Warden was asked why none of the prisoners were talking, he answered that they don't have the guts to face the public because of what they did which brought them to death row.

Treating these condemned people like caged animals can also be seen in news reports and in court proceedings where they are described as predators or monsters. The news media also sees them simply as news pieces for infotainment. Attorney Smith comments that at Johnson's execution a Fox Broadcasting Corporation reporter chattered excitedly about all the minute details of the killing process and how a poor black boy had his first ever shrimp dinner before being killed. "How truly incredible and sickening it was that anyone would want to watch Edward die and then describe it by emphasis on a shrimp dinner."

Time is a big issue. Tori Burbridge on Texas's row writes: "Now time is the enemy. Only part of the problem is that it runs out. Its weight suffocates me and, almost as a paradox, it fills me to the point of bursting." On the outside "time passes through you like the air you breathe." In here..."time has no place to go, so it accumulates. It builds up and builds up until it....begins to show weight and mass....So here we are, drowning under the weight of our own accumulated years while having to respectfully carry the tonnage of time left to us by the other men who have already died."

Many prisoners cut off all contact with loved ones, family, and friends because it is too painful to continue such relationships either for the prisoner or their loved ones. Or their family or friends sever contact, because the stress and pain of death row is just too much for them. Also, some prisoners are not able to maintain contact with anyone, even penpals, because of their poor mental health, the traumas in their lives or the trauma of being on death row. In any case, life in prison is extremely lonely. Kobai Scott Whitney, who has worked to help prisoners for years and was once a prisoner himself, and who is the author of "Sitting Inside," (Prison Dharma Network, Boulder, CO, 2002), says the biggest problem for prisoners is loneliness.

Depression is another "biggy," prisoners tell us. And being on the row also causes a certain mental numbness. Joe Payne on Virginia's row says that "where each day brings a person closer to violent death, it makes it hard to think...Makes it hard to feel like thinking....to feel motivated.....As each year passes the stranglehold routine of the row has had me struggling to remain thinking of life, future, and continuing to better myself as a living, caring human being." In 1996 Payne's death sentence was commuted by Virginia Governor George Allen to life in prison without parole on the condition that he never try to appeal his life sentence. From news reports it seemed that the warden of the prison where Payne was accused of killing a prisoner which brought the death sentence, worked to have Payne convicted of the crime, because he was so determined to find someone guilty.

The other Virginia prisoners mentioned in the book in addition to Correll and Payne are Joseph O'Dell (executed on July 23, 1997), Edward Fitzgerald (executed on July 23, 1992), and Richard Townes (executed on January 23, 1996). O'Dell claimed he was innocent. Townes also claimed he was innocent. He represented himself at trial, questioned no fitnesses, and presented no mitigating evidence regarding sentencing. His executioners searched 22 minutes for a suitable vein before injecting the poisonous chemicals into his foot.

Some respond to their hellish conditions with insanity, violence, or suicide. Some ask officials to give them Thorazine and can be seen doing the mummy-like "Thorazine shuffle." Some sleep all the time, waking only to eat and use the toilet. Some constantly sing and dance to every song they hear. Music is their medicine. Some try to develop humor or some sense of comradery (both of which prison officials are constantly trying to eliminate). Some find drugs or alcohol for escape. All try to adopt a tough veneer in order to survive.

The book also explains the downside of correspondence with those on death row. Some prisoners are angry, disturbed, manipulative, or unreasonable and this makes correspondence impossible. Others have deep character flaws, or death row brings out the worst in them. There are also prisoners interested in amorous or pornographic letters when a female penpal is writing. Because of their great loneliness and deprivation it is not surprising for prisoners to develop strong romantic attachments. Female correspondents need to set firm boundaries for a straight friendship if they do not want to engage in the prisoner's fantasy world through sexual letters.

Michael Lambrix on Florida's row does an excellent summary job of describing death row: "It is not enough to condemn us....we must first be stripped of our humanity before being deprived of our life. To recognize our humanity is to create a reflection of their own inherent imperfection, as well as face the truth that they are taking a human life. But to make us less than human pacifies society's guilt. They don't kill any particular individual, but rather something less than an individual. And so for years on end a death of the inner self is methodically inflicted upon us so very gradually that it's practically imperceivable. An erosion
of all emotion, until having been subjected to the endless rigor of administrative conformity, the person within is lost in a penalogically conditioned sacrificial surrender. The strength to resist no longer remains and without realizing it----we have been subdued. Conformance, and compliance----even the acceptance of death----become a form of adoptive security, protecting us from confronting atrocities we've suffered in the name of justice and "We The People."

In my opinion from what is said in this book "la creme de la creme" of the hell comes when a prisoner is about to be executed. That is when there may be a flurry of legal moves and a possible stay of execution. The condemned prisoner may gain a day or two or a few hours before their life is ended. The terror and hopelessness the judicial and prison systems work toward is now achieved in its fullness. Not only does the condemned prisoner think, feel, and know this terror and hopelessness directly, but so do each of the remaining prisoners on the row, as well as the condemned's family and friends. A Mississippi prisoner writes: "The depths of depravity and cruelty that people who wield power can knowingly and willingly descend to are unbelievable."

Bill Menza
May 23, 2003

Copyright © 2003, William Menza. All rights reserved.