The LifeLines Autumn conference was held on Saturday 17th October, once again using the fantastic Amnesty International centre as its venue.  This year we were very lucky to hear four fantastic speakers.  Two of these were from the States and this was largely thanks to the generosity of Reprieve in helping LifeLines to meet the costs.

The day was opened by the LifeLines Founder Jan Arriens, who announced that LifeLines has now been running for 21 years.  This is a bit of a 'double-edged sword' in the respect that although we are still here, still offering support we are still necessary - the death penalty still exists in the United States.

 

Sally Rowen - The first speaker of the day was Sally Rowen, Director of the Death Penalty team at Reprieve.  She outlined the work of Reprieve for us all and stated that although they had started out with just 2 members of staff their team now consists of 10 people.  The world, in Reprieve terms, is divided into three - Asia, the United States and 'Rest of the World'.  They offer help to British Nationals and more recently European Citizens that are incarcerated on Death Row in many different countries.  There are, for example, 27 cases currently on Reprieve's books of British Nationals in 11 different countries.

Sally outlined the difficulties faced in their work and their hopes for the future.  She stated that one supporter of Reprieve had been fortunate enough to win a place on the 'Fourth Plinth' in Trafalgar Square and used the opportunity to highlight the plight of Linda Carty, who has been on Texas Death Row since 2002.

To support Reprieve, or for more information about their work, please visit their website:  www.reprieve.org.uk/

 

Erwin James - Erwin James has been writing for the Guardian newspaper since 2002.  He began his talk by outlining his own experiences of prison life and then spoke about his experiences in terms of his own redemption; his own reflection of himself as a person, his rehabilitation which, he said, the prison system is not really sure how to cope with - he stated that one failing of the British prison system is that although it wants rehabilitation, it is not sure how rehabilitated it wants one to be!  Finding himself reflecting on the direction his life had taken, which ultimately led to his imprisonment, he went on to study English (which he had always enjoyed even as a child) and later journalism.  He taught himself the skills he would need in order to become a writer for a newspaper, including how to touch-type.  

Erwin made the somewhat unusual but very logical comment that he wished the Death Penalty would be reinstated so that we (Britain) could see how uncivilised we are becoming by calling for it to be brought back - when, in his opinion (and undoubtedly the opinion of everyone in the room) nobody has the right to take another person's life.  He concluded by saying that a system that offers hope is better than one that does not.

Erwin James' column about John Thompson and LifeLines can be read here: www.guardian.co.uk/world/joepublic/2009/oct/21/death-row-survivor-support-group

 

AGM - The AGM was held before lunch.  During this, it was announced that there are now 1403 members of LifeLines!

 

Emily Maw - Emily Maw is the Director of the Innocence Project in New Orleans, founded by Emily Bolton in 2001.  Her talk opened with a brief video showing those that have been helped by the project against the poignant strains of 'Songs of Freedom' by Bob Marley.

The Innocence Project, New Orleans (IPNO) has been instrumental in bringing about changes to the justice sysetm - including the way DNA evidence is handled and used in many cases.  For example, since 1990 there have been 240 post-conviction DNA exonerations.  Hundreds more have been exonerated in cases not involving DNA.

The IPNO have helped to quash 244 wrongful convictions.  Amongst the reasons for wrongful conviction are: false or mistaken eyewitness testimony; perjured testimony (which can happen for a variety of reasons - including the actual guilt of the person giving evidence) and faulty or false forensic science.  Blood and DNA testing are the only scientifically proven methods that are used in forensic science.  The rest are far less accurate.

The work of the IPNO largely focuses on prisoners sentenced to Life Without Parole, as they are only entitled to a lawyer for their first appeal.

Since changes in the DNA laws brought about by IPNO, support for the Death Penalty has dropped - especially in the wake of so many resulting exonerations.

Emily concluded her talk by outlining the work of the newly created Resurrection After Exoneration Project, led by John Thompson - created because lawyers, social workers and other agencies cannot relate to the newly-released and exonerated prisoner, or understand the difficulties that they face regardless of the length of time they have been in prison.

The IPNO website can be visited here: www.ip-no.org/

 

John Thompson - John Thompson, as already stated, runs the Resurrection After Exoneration Project, helping those that have been exonerated adjust to life after prison.  He began his talk by emphasising how much the letters of LifeLines members means to the prisoners on Death Row - he himself was one of the first prisoners to receive a penfriend through LifeLines during his incarceration on Death Row in Louisiana, during which time he had been given numerous execution dates - one of which (and indeed the last) was the day before his son's High School graduation.  He related that day - how his son had found out about his impending execution when the teacher read a newspaper article to the class; how his innocence had been proven just before the execution had been carried out.  His exoneration was largely due to an investigator that had managed to access details of the blood samples taken from the crime scene; they did not match John's blood-type.  

By the time John was released from prison in 2004, he had lost 18 years of his life and found that he had to find away to piece it all back together again.  There are moments even now when he is affected by his time in prison.  He stated that he was lucky to have such a good network of family support - many prisoners find that once they are convicted and sent to death row their families abandon them even if they feel their loved one is innocent - simply because of the way society views Death Row prisoners.  It was in the time following his exoneration that John realised that the Resurrection After Exoneration Project was needed; ex-prisoners working to help those newly exonerated to adjust so that they would be given exactly the help and support they needed instead of 'outsiders' judging what they think exonerees need.

Resurrection After Exoneration can be visited here: www.r-a-e.org/

 

The next LifeLines conference will be held on 17th April in York.  Further details will follow in the Diary section of this website.

Sister Helen Prejean, author of Dead Man Walking, and Bud Welch, whose daughter was killed in the Oklahoma bombings, will be speaking at:

RAINTON MEADOWS ARENA, HOUGHTON LE SPRING on November 14th and 15th 2009.

 LifeLines expect to have a stall at this event.

Further details about this event can be found on Sister Helen's website: www.sisterhelen.co.uk

 

Booking forms can be obtained by visiting this website: http://rcdhn.org.uk/youth/srh09.php

 

Louisiana - www.metro.co.uk/fame/interviews/article.html?Emotional_rollercoaster_of_an_executioner&in_article_id=686139&in_page_id=11

LifeLines has recently enjoyed coverage on the BBC Birmingham website:

 http://www.bbc.co.uk/birmingham/content/articles/2009/07/01/lifelines_new_feature.shtml

 

We have also previously featured in the following:

 The Metro -

http://www.metro.co.uk/news/newsfocus/article.html?Sentences_welcome_on_death_row&in_article_id=575420&in_page_id=65

and The Guardian -

http://www.guardian.co.uk/lifeandstyle/2009/mar/14/death-row-experience

(please cut and paste the above links)

 

July 4, 2009

Across America today, on Independence Day, there will be traditional fireworks, parades, summer fun for children in swimming pools and at ballgames, and a pervasive national outpouring of patriotism, reflected in both flag displays and the singing of the national anthem at countless events.

There are also almost 3,300 individuals who will not be any part of these festivities; they are mostly forgotten, despised and reviled.... they are America's condemned.

They sit on death rows in 34 states, as well as in a military prison in Kansas and a fedeal facility in Indiana. Most are overwhelmingly guilty of vile, heinous, outrageous and terrible crimes. Many are mentally ill, even profoundly mentally ill, and a good number are innocent of the crimes for which they were convicted. Collectively, they are, in part, responsible for a great deal of anger, hurt, pain and rage in our society.

They face death by firing squad, hanging, electrocution, cyanide gas, and lethal injection (there are more methods of legitimate state-sanctioned execution in the the USA than in any other country in the world).

As this nation is trying to emerge from the worst global financial crisis in 70 years, it remains in desperate need of trying to find, uphold and defend its moral soul. We are a long way from accomplishing this important national task.

Most of America's political and judicial leaders, both male and female, in both major parties, remain committed to upholding the ideology and practice of human extermination. As long as any nation in the world, inclduing the USA, retain and practice the barbarism of killing people in the name of the law, they can never be free. If people support, or are indifferent to the liquidataion of condemned individuals, how can we be surprised that other horrors, such as torture, hate crimes, and crimes against women, continue at such an alarming pace.

To be sure, some advances in the abolition of the US death penalty have been achieved in the last decade: America has stopped executing its juvenile and mentally retarded offenders; New Jersey and New Mexico have legislatively ended the death penalty, and other states have, in recent years, come close to doing the same. Over 130 innocent people have been released from America's death rows to date, and more will emerge to the free world in the years ahead.

But this "progress" has come at a frustratingly, agonizinly slow pace. Of the 1168 individuals put to death in America since executions resumed in 1977, 736 have occurred since 1998, including 200 just in Texas alone since Rick Perry became governor in 2001. There is no immediate end in sight to this horror.

There will undoubtedly be the traditional praise and self-congratulatory editorials and op-eds in our newspapers today, from coast to coast, from our major cities to our small communities, reminding us of how lucky we are to live in such a great nation. And in many ways, that sentiment is correct.

But it is a fallacy to believe that assessment when considering what is happening in this country regarding the issue of the death penalty. It is time to face the truth, admit national pain, and come to grips with the fact that on this issue, 233 years after the Declaration of Independence was proclaimed (and 402 years after the British first settled here), we are a national disgrace and failure. We remain wedded to the love of violence, and to the preposterous idea that some people in our society (and even around the world), can be classified as "lesser" or "other" humans, 'deserving' to be stripped of their human dignity, caged like animals for years, physically and psychologically tortured and terrorized, and then ultimately liquidated in the name of the law.

On this day, when so much celebrating in America will occur, I hope and trust that people will take a hard look at the sobering realities of this nationa and its nightmare of the death penalty. Now is the time for all people of conscience, everywhere, to re-dedicate themselves with renewed fervor to end this terrible scourge, so that America may join the ranks of most nations in the world that have long since recognized the links between advancing human progress with ending the death penalty.

When the US does abolish the death penalty, it will then, and only then, have reasons to be proud and celebrate itself.

Rick Halperin

On Saturday 8 November, a remarkable event took place when Gloucester Cathedral dedicated a special Evensong service to the 20th anniversary of LifeLines. Here, in one of the most magnificent of England's ancient cathedrals, we were able to reflect on the way in which thousands of lives on both sides of the Atlantic have been changed by the correspondence conducted through LifeLines.

Gloucester Cathedral was the location for the filming of the first, second and sixth of the Harry Potter films. It has an all-male choir, including boy choristers, that was originally established by Henry VIII in 1539.  The service was conducted in the magnificent oak-panelled Quire, just over halfway down the cathedral. Including the choir and a good sprinkling of LifeLiners, the congregation would have numbered about 150.

After the opening hymm, the Dean of the Cathedral called on us to “reflect deeply on the darkness of capital punishment but also celebrate the joy of friendship and the strength and dignity of the human spirit”. It was precisely in this spirit that the service was conducted. The readings included the last letter written by a prisoner before he faced his end, and the passage from Matthew in which Jesus says, “I was in prison and you visited me… Truly I tell you, just as you did it to one of the least of these who are members of my family, you did it to me.”  

Thanking the Bishop and Dean for organising the service, the LifeLines founder, Jan Arriens, spoke on the theme of all that had emerged so improbably from the darkness of the death rows in the USA: the way in which prisoners had been forced to come to terms with their lives and what they had done and, in discovering themselves, had been able to reach out by letter to others and display their true humanity.

Some beautiful prayers of intercession were led by Bishop John McOwat of the Moravian church and Nichola Glasse. These extended not just to members of LifeLines and those they were writing to but also to the men and women who work in prison, the loved ones of those on death row, the victims of crimes whose lives had been so permanently damaged by the grief and loss they had endured, and those who live in violent places and have been damaged by crime.

 The choir was at its best for a performance of the Anthem “Take him, Earth, for cherishing”. The text is the English translation by Helen Wadell of the 4th century poem of Prudentius (348 - 413): Hymnus cica Exsequias Defuncti. The composer, Herbert Howells, set the text for an American commission occasioned by the assassination of President John F Kennedy. Howells was deeply touched by the loss of the young President. This unaccompanied motet was first performed in Washington in 1964.

When the service was over, those of us from LifeLines marvelled that our unusual organisation should have received such recognition. Also on our minds was the fact that until Britain abolished the death penalty in the 1960s, the Church of England had long been one of the most significant supporters of capital punishment. Here, in this building going back nearly a thousand years, it felt as though the Church of England, for its part, was making an act of reparation. We were conscious too that just four days before, the US had elected a new President who had expressed his opposition to the death penalty.

Other members of LifeLines who took part in the service were: Karen Collett (chairperson), Carole Butcher (membership secretary), Beryl Kingsbury (coordinator/committee member), Beth McOwat (committee member) and Elisabeth Calvert (one of the earliest LifeLines members).

 With thanks to Jan Arriens and Beth McOwat.

The conference this year was held in the Amnesty UK Human Rights Centre in London - a new venue for LifeLines - and was quickly sold out.

We were honoured to be joined on the day by three marvellous speakers - Sister Helen Prejean (to the left of the photograph), Peter Pringle (middle) and Sunny Jacobs (on the right).

The conference was opened by Mr Jan Arriens, founder of LifeLines, who spoke briefly of the history of the organisation and of a time of mixed feelings and reflection that, 20 years on, LifeLines is still necessary because the Death Penalty is still in place in the U.S.

The first speaker of the day was Sister Helen Prejean, author of the books Dead Man Walking and The Death of Innocents: An Eyewitness Account of Wrongful Executions.  Sister Helen spoke movingly of her first experiences of death row; of how she became a spiritual advisor to so many and of how she balanced her friendship and support of those on the Row with offering support equally to the families of those who had been murdered - often meeting with hostility and resentment.  Sister Helen spoke of the importance of human dignity and reminded us that "every human being is worth more than the worst thing they've ever done".  Sister Helen's speech was both moving and inspiring - serving as an excellent reminder (should we have needed one) of why we write and why we extend the hand of friendship and compassion to those that society would discard and forget.

This reminder was also an underlying theme of the talk given after lunch by Sunny Jacobs and Peter Pringle.  Sunny Jacobs spoke first - outlining the series of events that led to her and her partner, Jesse Tofero, being arrested and convicted for the murder of two police officers - a crime they did not commit.  Sunny spoke of her family, of the effect that their incarceration and Jesse's subsequent execution had on them - especially their children.  She talked about the evidence that had later come to light when the real killer bragged about the killing to other inmates (evidence which was ignored by the courts) and of how one person really can make a difference.  That 'one person' in Sunny's case was the juror that she met years later, who had refused to be swayed by other jurors (keen to get home to their families) into recommending the death penalty.  In the event, the judge over-ruled the jury decision of Lif and sentenced Sunny to death - a fact that was later instrumental in Sunny's death sentence being overturned.  Sunny spoke of her time in the solitary confinement of death row - of the compassion shown to her by some of the guards, who had been instructed never to talk to her but who nonetheless did what they could in a number of small ways to reach out to her - a newspaper, or her paper napkin folded in a pretty way.  Yoga and meditation were also instrumental in helping Sunny find a way through those dreadful days.

Now Sunny has rebuilt her relationship with her children; and has since met and married her husband, Peter Pringle.  Together they tour and campaign, speaking against the death penalty.  Peter Pringle himself has experienced death row - he was the last man sentenced to death in Ireland - and his story has many parallels to and echoes of Sunny's experiences.  With their words, Peter and Sunny reminded us that life is not a time for bitterness or resentment, but for forgiveness and celebration - and that every life matters.

With thanks to Clare Broom for the photograph.