Pen Pal needed

Robert is  a 65 year old death row prisoner in PA, and he hasnt really got anyone. He has been on death row since 1988

If you can write to him it would be wonderful. 

 Robert Fisher AS-1738

S.C.I GREENE
175 Progress Drive.
Waynesburg,
PA 15370
USA

About Robert and his writings below.

http://robertfisher2011.wordpress.com/ 

Writing to Penpals on Death Row

All those years ago before I decided to write to a death row inmate I though about it for many months before taking the first step . I asked myself so many questions , what if I dont like the person , can I be non judgemental , do I have what it takes to try and understand them , can I listen to whats being said to me , not just hear it . Do I have the staying power and the time and strength to give a 100% commitment . 

We all have to learn how a death row inmate lives and how the death penalty is applied and to who .. when we have a knowledge of this we can begin to understand and to answer our own questions .
I have now been writing to my friend on Ohio death row for 7 years , its the best move I ever made.

These men and women on death row need friends , they have been judged by a jury so we dont judge them in anyway .. all they want and need from us is friendship , support , kindness and understanding and love , a letter once a week , just someone to use their name they know someone in the free world cares enough to write .

Anyone who is thinking of becoming a death row penpal , do it , you wont ever regret it , but you will be so glad you did .

If you want a penpal contact us at www.voicesfordeathrowinmates.biz
Linda Taylor

The execution of John Byrd

by The Columbus Dispatch -- Randy Ludlow 

(A column I wrote for The Cincinnati Post ... published Feb. 23, 2002)

LUCASVILLE, Ohio -- My reaction arose from neither familiarity nor sense of personal loss.

This hulking, hardened man with the Fu Manchu and massive arms blackened with crude prison tattoos meant nothing to me. We never had met since he refused my requests for an interview on Death Row.

Still, his entrance was a literal shock. The man who walked into the eerily dim room at 10 a.m. Tuesday was a stranger, albeit one about whom I had written nearly 70 stories.

The first time I laid eyes on John Byrd Jr., he had nine minutes to live.

Without urging or assistance, he slid onto the table and lay his arms onto the extensions as the execution team went about its grim work of strapping him down.

Once the IV lines were inserted into the pre-fitted vein shunts, the man behind the glass raised his head to survey the six media voyeurs who stood 12 feet away to verify the execution of sentence in Ohio vs. Byrd.

For a chilling flash of a second, Byrd made eye contact. I tried to calm myself. I was a detached observer with no personal stake in whether Byrd was executed at the age of 38 or died of old age.

I had sat with his mother and sister as they welled into tears over their loss-in-waiting. Their grief was discomforting, but ultimately, their son and brother was of little consequence in my life.

I also had covert empathy for the women of another family whose eyes burned with the resolve of an 18-year wait for justice. Monte Tewksbury was a loving husband, a good father, a decent soul, but I never knew him.

I consider myself an old-school, seen-it-all journalist who can wall off the emotions that accompany the gut-wrenching. But this assignment was unlike any accident, fire, murder or plane crash I ever had covered.

In the ultimate exercise of its authority, the state was sending a man to an unnatural death - killing a man some believed innocent - with an overdose of chemicals retailing for $43.23. The act was to be like euthanizing a pet.

To my surprise, my heart was pounding from adrenaline. My hand was shaking from jangled nerves, deteriorating my note-taking a notch below its usual level of nearly indecipherable. The throbbing in my temples was distracting.

I had a job to do, but was betrayed by something over which I had no control - my humanity. I wanted to flee this horror. But the reporter remained rooted, pen scribbling.

For the enormity of what occurred during those nine minutes, my notebook is surprisingly empty: 171 words across four pages. But the few words are but bookmarks to greater detail never to be forgotten.

''10:04 a.m. Statement over. Raising head, mouthing words to lawyers standing at window.

''10:05. Deep breath. Eyes half lidded. Faint smile to lawyers. Mouth words. 'I'm free.' Head rested down on bed.

''10:06. Slow blinks, breathing slowing, lapsed into unconsciousness.

''10:07. Breathing stopped. Pallor of skin change. Left fist clenched.'' Two words I cannot read. The next is clear enough: ''Dead?''

''Curtains at 10:08. Lawyers hug. Crying.'' More handwriting I cannot read. ''Somber, sad-eyed Mathew (Tewksbury, a witness and Monte's son). Curtains open. Warden: 10:09 a.m. Curtains close.''

I walk from the death house grim at the taking of life, knowing while I can write a story, I cannot truly describe its surreal quality.

Analyzing my gut reaction to watching a man be killed, I chide the bravado of believing my hard-nosed reporter facade was impenetrable.

The execution of John Byrd Jr. was an unnerving tragedy, self-provoked and perhaps deserved, but sad nonetheless. To have no reaction would have been impossible.

Extracting eye-for-an-eye justice on behalf of the people is a nasty, hellacious business - and may it always remain so.

If Gov. Bob Taft would witness an execution, his power of clemency truly would be tempered with mercy and insistence on certainity.

And if every Ohioan could watch the unnatural ebbing of life, the death penalty might not long survive.

Randy Ludlow is The Post's Statehouse bureau chief.

https://www.facebook.com/note.php?note_id=10150264285262261

Conversation by Steve Andrews

Conversation

- So why did you befriend a man who had taken another man’s life?

- Because everyone deserves a friend, no matter what they’ve done.

- Your decision made you unpopular amongst some of your friends and colleagues, I believe.

  Some refused to talk about it with you. Some thought you weird. Others were sympathetic but afraid to show it.

- Yes. People are odd sometimes. There are areas they don’t like to go. My friend was guilty, yes, but I promised not to judge. 

  There but for the grace … Well, yes.

- Yet the law says he deserves to die because of his crime.

- No one deserves to die.

- Ever?

- Ever!

- But surely he deserved some form of severe punishment?

- A lifetime of torture does not reflect well on us who stand in judgement.

- Torture is a strong accusation. Isn’t that a human rights violation?

- Certainly, and it’s inhuman and degrading too, if we’re going to get technical and quote international law.

- Where is the torture in death row?

- Knowing that the blow can fall at any time – or never. It is cruel, and we are better than that. Or should be.

- An eye for an eye?

- You should know better than to quote yourself wrongly.

- The guilty must  be seen to suffer for their crimes. The ultimate crime deserves the ultimate punishment, so the argument went. 

   I should know, I was there at the meeting.

- Which meeting?

- All of them.

- When?

- All of them.

- Where?

- Oh, come on, you should have got this by now. Everywhere.

- Sorry to be slow, but I’m new to this.  You know then that the courts are not infallible, like some of your agents claim to be.

- Now you’re being cheeky. Remember who’s got the keys here. But you’re right to be skeptical.

- Sorry. No offence. People sometimes get let out of prison on the basis they’ve been wrongly convicted. But I’ve read that as many as one prisoner in 6 on death row could well be innocent. 

  Anyway, there’s enough suffering in the world. It’s vindictive to revenge ourselves on others. I thought revenge went out in the middle ages, you know, when we got civilised.

- Yes, I know, I was there, remember.  You are naïve to assume revenge is out of fashion. I like the quote about it being a dish best served cold.

 

- Cold blood, more like. So what about redemption, mercy?

- Ah yes, being sorry.

- No, having the possibility to make something out of a life that has taken a deadly wrong turn at one point. Removing all hope is the worst cruelty we can inflict.

- Doesn’t society need to see justice done?

- Maybe. But society would rather not think about justice. It’s too uncomfortable. Society wants scapegoats. 

  Society knows it’s a mess where the strong and rich hold all the good cards, and the weak go under.  And it feels guilty. 

  Society wants an easy answer to a crime that frightens it, and all it can come up with is more violence.

 

- So, keep ‘em in prison a few years and teach ‘em to be nice people, and then let them out to kill again? 

  Sounds pretty feeble to me. What about the deterrent effect at least?

- Why murder someone to prevent murder taking place? Where’s the logic in that?  

  Anyway, everyone knows the deterrent effect is a myth.  

  The murder rate is just as high in countries which don’t have the death penalty, as in ones that do. 

  The death penalty is just a celebration of the power of the strong and bigoted over the weak and vulnerable, and it reflects badly on all of us. 

  I remember being at this conference a while ago and this nun  from Louisiana told us about when she decided to go and make friends with the black families in her neighbourhood. It was a world she’d never dreamed could exist. From her position of privilege she was shocked to see the realty of daily life for the urban poor. Unfortunately they don’t get to write the laws.

- A nun, eh? Some things are going right then.

- Now you’re interrupting. Fundamentally, I resent being part of a system which allows my elected representatives to kill people in my name.

- Soldiers too?

- Don’t change the subject. But as you mention it, yes, soldiers too. If you want to look at the health of a society, look at how it treats its prisoners. 

  Who said that? You should know. You were probably there. Even life imprisonment goes against the grain, because very few people who kill will ever kill again. 

  Ok, some whose minds are unbalanced to such an extent that they see threats all around. But they need help as much as anything else. 

  It seemed to me that we must always see the possibility of redemption. Our humanity lies in seeing some good in every dark corner, and if we take away all dignity and hope of absolution then we become as bad as those who we incarcerate.

- So, how far were you prepared to take this?

- Well, put it like this. Getting the sudden call to appear here before you certainly explains a lot of things,  - nice gates by the way - but I didn’t become a penfriend 

   to a death row prisoner out of any religious feelings – no offence. No one should be alone. No one should be beyond hope of  human contact. 

   I, and probably a majority of my fellow writers, if the worst came to the worst, would  go to the room of execution with our friend, so that, as the nun said, he would have had a friend’s eyes to look into at the last moment. 

   Sister showed me that, and she was right.

The Eye & Tooth Project: Confronting Capital Punishment in Texas by John Sullivan

Call it the ultimate deterrent; call it retribution, or closure, or simply an “eye for an eye,” Americans have historically supported capital punishment with strong resolve and a clear national conscience. Recently, however, this mandate has weakened as pressures for reappraisal and change kick against the goad of tradition. A national wave of death row exonerations, sparked by nonprofit watchdogs such as The Innocence Project, and former governor George Ryan’s mass commutation of all pending death sentences in Illinois, caused the nation to pause and wonder: How many innocents are housed on death row, how many have already been executed, how many more will die by mistake? Or worse yet, through malfeasance? Horror stories — of blatant racism in jury selection, shoddy, underfunded legal counsel and mentally ill inmates medicated merely to better comprehend their fate and legally qualify for execution — have eroded public confidence in this allegedly objective system that collects, organizes and weighs evidence, convicts perpetrators and puts them to death, all so very righteously.


read more
http://wayback.archive-it.org/2077/20100906202807/http://www.communityarts.net/readingroom/archivefiles/2009/08/the_eye_tooth_p.php

Contact Us

As a group we actively support all death row inmates. We will answer your questions with honesty and realism.

We can suggest people to contact if you wish to write to a Death Row inmate, but before you do you need to realize that you have to be committed to writing to these men and woman, as mail is something they look forward to.

Contact us at team@voicesfordeathrowinmates.biz and to be added to our mailing list drop us an email at mailing_list@voicesfordeathrowinmates

We have a facebook page too for you, http://www.facebook.com/?sk=lf#!/pages/Voices-for-deathrow-inmates/161880877228168

You can join our Facebook group by clicking this link  http://www.causes.com/causes/337384

Here are some of the reasons your voice should and must be be heard today

Executions cost more than life in prison.
$2 million per person vs. $500,000 (4x as much!). Free counsel for defense, for appeals, maximum security on a separate death row wing.


The innocent may be wrongly executed.
Since the DP was reinstated in 1976, 82 inmates have been freed from Death Row. That's 1 Death Row inmate found to be wrongfully convicted for every 7 executed. (http://www.antideathpenalty.org/reasons.html)

Many Death Row inmates are convicted while being defended by court-appointed lawyers who are often the worst-paid and most-inexperienced and least-skillful lawyers.

It violates international human rights laws.

The traditional mode of execution, still available in New Hampshire, which allows it at the decisions of the corrections officials, and Washington, at the decision of the prisoner is hanging. Death on the gallows is easily bungled: If the drop is too short, there will be a slow and agonizing death by strangulation. If the drop is too long, the head will be torn off.

Two states, Idaho and Utah, still authorize the firing squad. The prisoner is strapped into a chair, and hooded. A target is pinned to the chest. Five marksmen, one with blanks, take aim and fire.

Electrocution has been the most widely used form of execution in the U,S, in this century. The condemned prisoner is led--or dragged--into the death chamber, strapped into the chair, and electrodes are fastened to head and legs. When the switch is thrown the body strains, jolting as the voltage is raised and lowered. Often smoke rises from the head. There is the awful odour of burning flesh. No one knows how long electrocuted individuals retain consciousness.

Today 35 out of the 36 states that use the Death penality use lethal injection . When this method is used, the condemned person is usually bound to a gurney and a member of the execution team positions several heart monitors on this skin. Two needles (one is a back-up) are then inserted into usable veins, usually in the inmates arms. Long tubes connect the needle through a hole in a cement block wall to several intravenous drips. The first is a harmless saline solution that is started immediately. Then, at the warden's signal, a curtain is raised exposing the inmate to the witnesses in an adjoining room. Then, the inmate is injected with sodium thiopental - an anesthetic, which puts the inmate to sleep. Next flows pavulon or pancuronium bromide, which paralyzes the entire muscle system and stops the inmate's breathing. Finally, the flow of potassium chloride stops the heart. Death results from anesthetic overdose and respiratory and cardiac arrest while the condemned person is unconscious. Medical ethics preclude doctors from participating in executions. However, a doctor will certify the inmate is dead. This lack of medical participation can be problematic because often injections are performed by inexperienced technicians or orderlies. If a member of the execution team injects the drugs into a muscle instead of a vein, or if the needle becomes clogged, extreme pain can result.

Ohio and Washington are the only two states , so far, that have introduced a new one drug protocal . Instead of a lethal cocktail of 3 drugs. One large dose of the drug pentobarbitali s given.In changing its protocol Ohio also established a back up plan in the event that officials are unable to find an appropriate vein for the intravenous injection of the drugs. The back-up plan involved injecting the chemical directly into muscle instead of the bloodstream.

General information

https://twitter.com/#!/VoicesFDR Follow us on Twitter