I am Troy Davis!

...and so are you. So is everyone. We are ALL Troy Davis. It's along the same lines as 'I am Spartacus' (if you're a Kirk Douglas fan) or 'I am Brian' (if you prefer the Monty Python angle). A kind of 'one for all and all for one' pledge of friendship and comradeship. But with a vital difference; and vital is the pivotal word. Troy Davis will NOT be allowed to die. Troy Davis has paid more than enough for a crime he did not commit; twenty years on Georgia's Death Row and 3 near-executions attest to that. If Troy's forthcoming hearing fails and he is subsequently murdered by the State, then truth, justice and a piece of all of us will have died alongside him. It is an unspeakably fragile relief then, that through the undinting campaigning efforts of his sister and other supporters, and with death-penalty-qualified pro bono legal help finally onside, Troy now has a chance to contest not just the evidence against him, but effectively to set a precedent which could challenge American constitutional law.

'Where is the Justice for Me?' : An evening with Martina Davis-Correia in London

 

November 25th 2009, the eve of Thanksgiving, and once again I 

was back at the Amnesty Human Rights Action Centre in London, this time to hear from Martina Correia, whose brother Troy Davis has spent the last 20 years facing execution for the murder of Police officer Mark Allen McPhail in 1989. Accompanying Martina, were her son, Troy's 15-year-old nephew, De'Jaun, and 

Richard Hughes, drummer with top UK band Keane. Richard, a long-time human rights supporter has been campaigning publicly on behalf of Troy and earlier this year, travelled to the United States to visit Troy in prison along with a small delegation from the UK including Amnesty's Kim Manning-Cooper and UK

Photo: Jesse Quin

parliamentary representative Alistair Carmichael MP. It was good to have Richard tell us a little of his visit, and to introduce Martina and De'Jaun. The story which resonates with me from Richard's retelling, is the story of Troy getting to walk on grass for the first time in over 15 years, shortly before his last sickeningly close stay of execution in 2008. Just seeing a blade of grass, let alone touching one, is a minor miracle. You can hardly imagine, can you, how that must feel? As Richard says in his article in the Amnesty magazine (November/December 2009 issue), one of the debilitating facets of life imprisonment (and there are many, so many cruelties and barbarisms associated with Death Row - but that again is another blogpost-in-waiting), is that after years of walking only on concrete, prisoners' knees start to fail. 

There is much background available describing the progress of Troy's case, and the groundbreaking evidence of 7 out of 9 recantations of eyewitness testimony, plus 9 new instances of evidence against the real primary suspect for the murder. There's a wealth of material around this case that I could include in this post, but I won't. Just search online: there are a host of websites set up to campaign for Troy and support his family and seek his reprieve. 'Innocence Matters' is a slogan heard repeatedly and determinedly in connection with Troy's case. For Martina, and for Troy, it is one thing for the courts to award him freedom on the grounds of technical innocence: what really needs to happen is for an outcome of actual innocence be granted to the man. It makes me ponder the validity of the word 'pardon'. Surely the granting of a pardon implies the convicted person actually did something wrong and is being forgiven for it? In this case, as with many other proven and suspected miscarriages of justice so callously enacted by the State (and I refer to Britain's past as well here, alongside all nations who have at some time sanctioned capital punishment), it is the State who owes an apology to the exoneree, not the other way round. The pardon should be granted by the individual to the Courts and the system which by a failure of the legal process has denied justice, not only to the wronged convict, but to the family of the victim too. This was a point which Martina made repeatedly, as did Richard: Troy's case is as much about the disrespect paid to Officer McPhail's memory and to his family as it is to the Davises. How can they ever attain any kind of peace or respite from what happened until the true villain is brought to justice?

We also heard on Wednesday from Troy's nephew, De'Jaun, an amazingly charismatic and confident young man, who has previously addressed an audience of several thousand at the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People. The film clip that Amnesty played of that speech brought tears to several people's eyes and yes, I was there also, rummaging for my tissue and surreptitiously wiping away my tears. De'Jaun, or 'Dada' as the gang affectionately call him, has experienced a lifetime of prison visits, and is the epitome of a well-adjusted young man, who told us with awe, about his Uncle Troy's words of guiding wisdom which have encouraged him to work hard and behave well.

Here's a photograph of me with Martina and De'Jaun.

The highlight of the evening for me though has to be the phone call that Amnesty's Kim Manning-Cooper arranged while the guests were still milling around and speaking with Martina, De'Jaun and Richard. Later on, with only a handful of people still in the building, we eventually heard from Troy himself, on the other end of a phone line in Georgia, and were able to shout hello and let him know we were all rooting for him. A moment of magic - especially for me, who have yet to hear the voice of my penfriend far away in his own concrete box. I hope that will happen one day soon.

And the upshot of the evening, my friends: can there be any more compelling case against the death penalty than the risk of executing an innocent man? 

Race Report: Pine Ridge 10km

Wot a Mug!

22nd November 2009

Just taken part in my 5th 10km race (this year, and ever..). The character of each race I've run this year has been very different, and turning up to the inaugural Pine Ridge event (run by InMotion Sport, who also organise the GRIM events), I was expecting a flattish undulating run through woodland, and given how much more running I am doing these days, was harbouring vague hopes of scoring my best time over the distance. Fat chance!

Nooo.. sadly my PB still stands at the time I did in York in August - that was a nice flat road-race from the racecourse to the City centre along the river and back. Look - here's me in the local free paper (in the sunglasses, white vest)! Every inch the Paul Radcliffe, Nawwwwt!

Pine Ridge is quite different: peaty, boggy, sandy and strewn with tree roots. The route led from the middle of nowhere back to the same spot via a long circuit across commonland, over a footbridge spanning the A3, into woodland on the other side and up narrow spongy paths to the highest point of the race on Ockham Common. This included, at the summit of the (pine?) ridge, a steepish hill with steps cut into the path. This was also roughly the half-way point. It was nice to be told that it was downhill from there! Other hazards included fallen trees, and I had to do my 3-day eventing impression a few times to leap, colt-like over trunks of silver birch and fir, or stumps lurking insidiously at the edges of the track. Not to mention the water hazards, which as we will see, were to become both more and less significant in the latter part of the course.

* * * *

There were over 850 race entrants, according to the main website, and the organisers had to close registrations early because of over-subscription. Luckily, with the woodlands adjacent to RHS Wisley as the venue, on a cold damp November Sunday, there was plenty of parking available. There were portaloos next to the car park, which my hubby and friends availed themselves of. It was still 45 minutes short of the race so I decided to report to the start and collect my race chip. We set off following the trail of people streaming onto the common land next to Wisley village. And walked. And walked. And became more puzzled as to where the start may be... Eventually we met people heading back in the opposite direction and obviously hoping to hit the loos again before race time. After 15 minutes I was getting worried I wouldn't have enough time to squeeze in that last vital wee. A lot of blokes obviously had the same idea and were opting for the wayside bushes and tree trunks! Ah well, if necessary, I would just have to do the same!! It was a VERY long walk to the start - at least a kilometre. When we arrived, and had collected our chips (the RFID cardboard tag type with the twisty wire ties), my friend Carol and I decided to head in the direction of the 'Toilets' sign, in the opposite direction form the one we'd just come. We joked that it would probably end up leading us back to the car park again. It didn't... but it DID lead a further kilometre or so along boggy tracks, up hill and round bends until we reached the oasis of green tardises. We had to jog back and just made it to the start before the off.

* * *

So, the route was as described above, but I haven't mentioned the best bits yet! Apart from the slightly challenging terrain, the topnote of the day was the weather. What had begun as dull, middling but mild November, with a slightly playful breeze, turned into an adventure of an epic nature. OK well, maybe that's a bit of an exaggeration but it was a fun set of climactic conditions: shortly after the halfway point, the rain started and I had to take my specs off (when will they invent rainproof ones?). This made it harder to spot the tripping hazards and I had to watch my step carefully. The rain didn't continue to whinge down though, oh no... it picked up. I didn't mind - it's nice and cooling when you're running. But after a while, it turned from jagged rain into water cannon, and then into hailstones. Joy! My fellow runners and I were giggling as we went, fellow lunatics on a quest with no purpose other than to finish. And shortly thereafter, with my running shirt plastered to my body, my pants squelching and my running shoes waterlogged, I decided not to bother skirting the puddles any more and plough straight through. With thunderclaps sounding overhead, I managed to speed past about three people pussy-footing round the bogs. I did go knee-deep at one point in a deceptively deep bit of quagmire, but amazingly managed not to slip or fall.

* * * *

Ultimately, I got round without walking; I was last of our small group of friends who were there and crossed the line on a clock time of 1hr 8. I felt GREAT! It was such a different race to the norm, and I knew it would be good practice for the GRIM in a fortnight's time. Chip time will be just over 1 hr 6 but that's OK. It's about the same as I did for Mortimer in much more clement conditions, it's better than I did at Alice Holt with its nasty hills; and I've got til next York to try and get under the 1 hr target I've set myself this year.

* * * *

I like the runners' mugs that were handed out ('Run Forest' - see above). We also got nice green 'Pine Ridge' T-shirts which were marginally more tasteful than the ones you usually get. But best of all, coming away plastered in blackish mud, freezing cold and with knees intact and no blisters was strangely satisfying. I remarked to my husband that I'd probably come about 700th in the race, and as he encouragingly replied 'Yeah, but that's ahead of about 59 and a half million other British people'. Fair point!

:-)

post scriptum: Results now in and I came 594th out of 686 with a chip time of 1 hr 7:14. The only way is UP!

The winning time was 36:35.

The slowest finisher finished in 1 hr 31:24

What do you give the man who has virtually nothing for Christmas?

I'm planning some surprises for my penfriend for Christmas. Now this isn't an easy thing to achieve. Consider the list of items that will not get past the prison mailroom. Here is the list from the State Department of Corrections & Rehabilitation as to what cannot be sent in. Quite right too, it's not a holiday camp after all for goodness' sake! (In spite of the claims made in this article about the luxuries of Death Row; NOT true, btw, I can guarantee!)

• No tattoo patterns or gang logos



• No factory or handmade jewellery, clothing or food items



• No glitter, stickers, address labels (other than the blue airmail sticker on the envelope)



• No letters with perfume, powder, lipstick or oil stains on the envelope or letter



• No glued, plastic, metal or laminated items



• No cancelled checks, copies of cheques, copies of money orders, birth certificates, marriage licence, Photo IDs, deeds or credit card applications



• No hand-painted art (children's drawings are allowed as long as they are not in wax)



• No cotton paper or tracing paper



• No musical greeting cards



• No lipstick, hair (human or animal) or unknown substance (body fluid)



• No mail piece or item unable to be searched without destroying it



• No unapproved mail from other State Correctional Facilities



• No third party mail between individuals



• No obscene materials, this includes, but is not limited to, material containing sexually explicit images, defined as images that depict frontal nudity, whether in the form of personal photographs, drawings, magazines or any other pictorial format

There is also a long list of topics which are disallowed in correspondence: incitement to commit crime, codes, maps and directions, descriptions of how to make weapons etc.

I was amused by "Contains illustration, explanations and/or descriptions of how to sabotage or disrupt computers, communications or electronics". Better not send any Windows Vista instruction manuals then, lol!

So you can see from this how trying to come up with something fun and/or quirky is a bit of a challenge. I regularly send prints of photographs, printouts from web-pages, and have ordered books and magazines for my friend from publishers. These are allowed, though I cannot send in books or magazines myself. This Christmas, given the list above, there'll be no baseball caps, knitted sweaters, glittery cards or phials of bodily fluids then. But it's important for me to ensure that this year, he has something. I have a couple of mystery ideas which I'll let you know about once I've investigated some more... feeling all smiley at the thought of surpising my penpal with something meant just for him which meets all the criteria of the mailroom censors.

And all this in spite of the fact that this guy would be most happy if he could only get a hug from his mom.

* * * * *

On another note, I am hoping soon to have some content in this blog from my penfriend himself. He said I could use his first name, but I'd rather not. Let's call him 'B'.

Three wishes that Governor Rick Perry could grant this week

I refer you all to today's blogpost from Texas Moratorium Network: "Three Executions in Three Days in Texas, starting today"



Well - I went and did as TMN requested and contacted Governor Rick Perry to beg for clemency in the case of all three men. The web form for email submission was not exactly designed for non-US residents; I guess the Governor's Office cares little for the opinion of those who will never have the right to vote for him, but ho-hum. I made up an address and phone number (well, actually, I used the address for the Hilton in Austin), but used my genuine email address. Here's a photo of him. He looks like a nice guy, doesn't he? The kind who would listen, who might feel some compassion and have the gumption to do something because it is right? Maybe? Ha. Feels a bit like throwing a snowball into the ocean, for all the impact it is likely to have but I'm glad I did it anyway. Here's what I wrote:



Dear Governor Perry,
Although I have been able to complete this webform in full honesty as it does not allow for addresses outside of the USA to be entered, I nonethless wanted to take this opportunity to contact your office via the swiftest means possible. I am a resident of the United Kingdom, but with a strong personal interest in a matter which affects us all as citizens of the world. I have given my real name and email address.

I am aware of the impending executions of Texas inmates Gerald Eldridge, Danielle Simpson and Robert Thompson in the coming 3 days and I want to ask you, as a fellow human being, to consider clemency in the case of all three men. I am not a voter of course, but an observer and commentator on what is happening around the world in matters of the Death Penalty. The facts tell us that Gerald does not have the IQ to have fully understood the severity or outcome of his crime, that Danielle has volunteered to be executed because the burden and conditions of waiting on death row make it unbearable for him to live any more - but rather than take his own life he will 'allow' you to go ahead and murder him (which effectively makes him a martyr); and that Robert himself never committed the murder for which he has been condemned. But aside from the individual tragedies that mean none of these men should have their lives taken from them in this way, there is a more general reason for asking you to consider making the clearsighted, compassionate and informed choice this week to spare these men. In the eyes of most of the world, the death penalty is seen as barbaric and in contravention of human rights, whatever a perpetrator's alleged crime. The USA is increasingly exposed as one of the last bastions persisting in taking the life of a human being in the name of justice. As you know in your own state, the financial burdens are calling the matter into question; and at federal level, the nation is under pressure to desist in the hypocrisy of decrying human rights aberrations elsewhere in the world while ignoring and perpetuating the mess and questionable justice that is the capital punishment system within its own borders.

Mr Perry, you have a chance to do something different this week. Be bold, send a message to the world that Texas is progressive and ready to reinvest in humane justice. Please, please, give these three men the reprieve that they least expect at the moment their faith in humanity reaches its lowest and most feeble spark. Show them what goodness is. Please spare them.

With kindest regards


Kathy



There is a detailed document outlining the history, roles and procedures open to State Governors in considering clemency upon the final gubernatorial appeal (love that word... gubernatorial...) to be found here (pdf document, 15 pages). I admit I haven't had a chance to read it all through yet, it kind of needs a printing off to really absorb. But it confirms it is within Perry's remit to grant last-minute reprieves and commutations (but not pardons) without explicit recommendation from the Board of Pardons and Paroles.

"Governor, upon the recommendation
of the Texas Board of
Pardons and Paroles (appointed
by Gov.), has the authority to
remit fines and forfeitures, grant
reprieves, commutations and
pardons" (table, page 14 of 15)

The next three days are going to be gut-wrenching, my friends.

Say it loud and say it often, but above all say it with panache!

I just wanted to acknowledge a couple of really excellent articles I have read in the past couple of days, disparaging the Death Penalty.

It is time to abolish the Death Penalty

This News Junkie Post by Gilbert Mercier is spot on and makes some excellent points.

I was originally going to write a post for my blog called 'When is it OK to commit murder?' in order to set out my take on execution being no better than sheer State-sanctioned murder, but Gilbert puts it perfectly in his opening para:

"The death penalty is the ultimate denial of human rights. It is a premeditated and cold blooded killing of a human being by a state. This cruel, inhuman and degrading punishment is done in the name of justice. It is barbaric and violates the right to life as proclaimed in the Universal Declaration of human rights."

And the photograph (shown here) he uses sums it up brilliantly. In  fact I am going to use that on my blog homepage (can't see any copyright restrictions?) It shows a bumper sticker with the legend 'Why do we kill people who kill people to show that killing people is wrong?'

He also makes the point that America can hardly take an international stance on human rights when it has its own backyard situation to explain. I was thinking this very thing recently when friends on Twitter decrying the human rights situ in Iran were begging for foreign nations to openly criticise the Iranian government for allowing the execution of minors to go ahead (amongst the rest of the human rights abominations practised in that country). Apparently Britain and France etc were very swift in doing this, but for some reason it was taking the US Congress some time to come out and make a public international declaration against Ahmadinejad and the actions of his "judiciary". Hardly surprising given the domestic tolerance of the death penalty and everything that is despicable in relation to that. I would personally say that the USA is over the line, not close to it, on the matter of human rights. In another post I want to set down some thoughts about 'cruel and unusual punishment'; I can think of more than a few ways that the United States exact this on their condemned prisoners and their families and the families of victims.

Look, NOBODY deserves to die*, nobody. FFS, death comes soon enough to us all in any case. 'An eye for an eye' is barbaric, outdated, uncivilised and irrelevant outside of Bible-driven reactionary culture. And in any case it belongs to the dimension of Religion, not State issues. No-one would deny that the most dangerous members of society need to be incarcerated for the protection of that society; nor would they deny that in most cases, rehabilitation and 'corrective' atonement is not appropriate; nor would we deny that leniency has failed the public in the past - where people paroled too soon have succumbed to recidivism and lives have been lost or ruined as a result. Perhaps, too, there is a case for making punishment fit the crime. But punitive measures should NEVER be irreversible - for the obvious reason that even one innocent person wrongly executed or maimed makes the system inhumane and untenable; and neither should they result in cruelty as defined by international standards of human rights.

I truly, truly believe that every living person has value. It is most probably a lack of sense of that value which has led people into the lifestyles which has resulted in their criminal act (but that's a whole different matter). It is my belief that penal reform should embrace incarceration with relevance, irrespective of a person's crime. Killers should pay by having their freedom removed, by being denied access to common luxuries, and by being obliged while in confinement to work in some way which both proves their value and makes restitution both to their community and to the families of their victims.

But anyway - this is a whole different thing and I am straying from what I wanted to say next. Which was to point my readers to the other excellent article I stumbled across recently - by Mark Morford of the San Francisco Chronicle. A wonderfully sardonic set of observations around the cost of maintaining a system of execution by lethal injection for even one individual vs the funding it would take to get a bunch of under-privileged youngsters through a college education. As usual the comments in response to the article are a mix of support and callous unswerving ignorance, but we can't do more than ask for debate and keep, keep, keep repeating the manifold reasons why the death penalty is just WRONG.

The Lethal Injection College Fund

Pure class! Go read it in full here.

An excerpt:

"Here's my simple and semi-obvious idea: what if Washington D.C. had taken the same $30 million, and instead of killing a single remorseless criminal, created upwards of 600 full-ride college scholarships for lower-income or minority students, at 50 grand each?

In other words, for every criminal a given state is seeking to execute -- like, for example, the Fort Hood killer, who they say might well be eligible for the death penalty -- we take the same tens of millions in taxpayer dollars and send hundreds of kids through college instead, kids who otherwise would never have been able to afford it and in fact might've ended up on the streets or in prison.

We'll call it the Lethal Injection College Fund. It shall, by its very existence, do nothing less than completely transform the ugly American revenge impulse into something celebratory and optimistic. We shall transmute a brutal crime into a glimmer of hope and possibility. From dark to light. From excrement, flowers. From our most violent nightmares, a hint of grace. What a thing."

Cor, indeed, what a thing, bless ya Mark!

* I admit, I am struggling with the issue of immediate reactive self-defence and the defence of others. I think this may be the only time when it may be OK to kill - when all else fails in terms of stopping someone from killing you. The same might also apply for cases of severe cruelty and provocation if all else failed. However I can also see that there would always be an argument for stopping any such threat by causing injury rather than death...?

Even the Police Chiefs agree...

... that the Death Penalty makes no sense.

In a recent report released by the Death Penalty Information Centre, the findings from a poll of US Police Chiefs conducted in late 2008 were also included. The net message of the report reinforces two of the many reasons why the death penalty should be abolished: 

• IT IS NOT A DETERRENT AGAINST CRIME : since few perpetrators of violent crime consider the consequences of their actions; and many commit their crimes under the influence of drugs and/or alcohol.

• IT IS FINANCIALLY INEFFICIENT AND UNJUST : since the cost of administering the appeals system and housing condemned inmates is a massive drain on State budgets; and more of this money could be made available for other things including better assistance for victims' families.
  

Most of the Police chiefs polled ranked the death penalty as the least efficient use of taxpayers' money, when there are not enough police on the streets fighting crime and the causes of crime, particularly in the area of gang culture and drug abuse, and when there are not enough funds available for equipment and training to help solve crimes

California spends $137 million per year on the death penalty and has not had an execution in almost four years, even as the state pays its employees in IOUs and releases inmates early to address overcrowding and budget shortfalls. In Florida, where the courts have lost 10 percent of their funding, the state spends $51 million dollars per year on the death penalty or $24 million for each execution.

Sadly, the well-established financial argument has led some commentators to call for a resolution to this issue in the shape of shortening the time elapsed between sentencing and execution. In some parts of the world, already, execution follows directly from sentencing, with minimal or no opportunity for appeal. In the recent case of the executed 'DC Sniper' John Allen Muhammad, the time served was only 7 years (6 on Death Row), however the longest-serving death row prisoners have been there over 30 years without arriving at an execution date; such lengthy waits in death row conditions raise all sorts of questions about 'cruel and unusual punishment' and give rise to prisoner suicide and 'volunteering' for execution (but that's a topic for another blogpost, another day...). But... heaven forbid those States pushing to reduce the time to execution and hastening death - the appeals system is there for a reason! Too, too many cases of wrongful conviction, and well... sigh... no-one deserves to die, no-one, let alone have their state-sanctioned murder precipitated to save money!

So to the second point raised: clearly, the death penalty as a sanction has little deterrent effect. This is again a hotly debated issue - but aside from the obvious and instinctive view that someone intent on killing or out of their mind on drugs is not going to stop and pause and think 'Hmmm, maybe I shouldn't do this or I might get into trouble?', let alone that they might lose their own life as a result of their action, the statistics just don't reflect that the threat of capital punishment reduces capital crimes. 

"The death penalty is a colossal waste of money that would be better spent putting more cops on the street. New Jersey threw away $250 million on the death penalty over 25 years with nothing to show for it. The death penalty isn't a deterrent whatsoever. New Jersey's murder rate has dropped since the state got rid of the death penalty. If other states abolished the death penalty, law enforcement wouldn't miss it and the cost savings could be used on more effective crime-fighting programs," said Police Chief James Abbott of West Orange, New Jersey. Abbott, a Republican, has served 29 years on the police force and was a member of the state commission that recommended the death penalty be abolished.

One area where retentionists, especially those working in penal enforcement roles, i.e. prison officers, observe that the death penalty does carry weight as a final sanction is in the prevention of violent crime amongst lifers.  They argue that prisoners already sentenced to life, with or without parole, may commit murder against each other or against prison workers because they have nothing more to lose. Indeed, in some US States the murder of a prison or police officer carries a mandatory death sentence, and murder by a convict is the number one 'aggravating factor' formerly listed in the American Law Institute's model penal code which would direct jurors to arrive at a death sentence verdict if committed. These are shown below:

Aggravating Circumstances. 

 

(a) The murder was committed by a convict under sentence of imprisonment. 

 

(b) The defendant was previously convicted of another murder or of a felony involving 

the use or threat of violence to the person. 

 

(c) At the time the murder was committed the defendant also committed another 

murder. 

 

(d) The defendant knowingly created a great risk of death to many persons. 

 

(e) The murder was committed while the defendant was engaged or was an accomplice 

in the commission of, or an attempt to commit, or flight after committing or attempting 

to commit robbery, rape or deviate sexual intercourse by force or threat of force, arson, 

burglary or kidnaping. 

 

(f) The murder was committed for the purpose of avoiding or preventing a lawful arrest 

or effecting an escape from lawful custody. 

 

(g) The murder was committed for pecuniary gain. 

 

(h) The murder was especially heinous, atrocious or cruel, manifesting exceptional 

depravity. 

Interestingly the American Law Institute has just announced that is has abandoned this element (section 210.6) of the Model Penal Code because of doubts around the workability of the whole system...

“For reasons stated in Part V of the Council’s report to the membership, the Institute withdraws Section 210.6 of the Model Penal Code in light of the current intractable institutional and structural obstacles to ensuring a minimally adequate system for administering capital punishment.” 

I am hoping to uncover more facts behind this aspect of the death penalty as 'the ultimate sanction' in due course. 

Run, don't drink!

After a bit of a full-on week at the conference, and with the Pine Ridge 10 km and the Grim 8 Challenge looming, I decided to have a month(ish) off the alcohol, and I also set up my Justgiving page to start trying to get some funding going for Reprieve. I posted a status on Facebook to let all my buddies know I was on the wagon while in training, and began grovelling unashamedly for some sponsorship. Well a few good souls did show up to pledge some suppport and help me on my way, and the effect has been... er.... no drinking and more running!

This is a good thing, it's the first time I've really tested myself on the 'guilt factor'. People are sponsoring me and I can't let them down. So, I am pleased to report that this week the first week in November, I have put in circa 7km (4 miles) in hill/speed training with the local runnning club (in the cold and the dark on Tuesday evening); and that this morning I actually raised myself from my bed shortly after 6a.m. and bothered to head out for a 5 km (3 1/2 mile) run round the local streets. Crikey, did my legs feel heavy after Tuesday night's session! But I know it's all good. Tomorrow morning is the regular Saturday Parkrun. In spite of this being a regular fixture I haven't been for a few weeks, and I'm looking forward to it. I need to get these leggies loose.

What I really need is some LSDs (long slow distance sessions) to get me used to running >10km. That can be next week's target.

God but I miss the drink though.

All that glitters sure ain't gold...

My friend has just sent me a link to a TV show that will be airing in the UK next Monday (9th November). Channel 4 is showing "The Execution of Gary Glitter", a documentary-style look at

'an imaginary Britain in which the death penalty has been re-introduced, the film confronts viewers with the possible consequences of capital punishment in the UK.'

I will have to watch this, of course, but it is with a sense of instantaneous nausea that I am anticipating the aftermath. I fear this is going to excite the British public into a bloodlust frenzy. You see, Gary Glitter (born Paul Gadd) is the epitome in British currency of the kind of sick weirdo that deserves eradication. Or worse! Emasculation, torture, disembowelment and then execution if he's LUCKY. Apparently.

OK, maybe I'm expecting the worst. It might be possible that the documentary exposes and puts into genuine perspective the real, moral, practical, financial and human abhorration that capital punishment represents. But I suspect it will not go far enough, and what we will end up with is just enough treatment of the topic to stir emotion and generate column and comment MILES on the subject, and the ugliness of uninformed reactionary rhetoric will yet again have its day.

Just like the BBC's recent gift of a platform to the BNP in Question Time, maybe this will actually turn out to be a good thing. Maybe like Great Aunt Doris's tablecloths, it is beneficial to occasionally get these issues out and aired, so that we can remind ourselves why we hid them away in the first place.

Oh well, good. We'll see. As long as at the end of the day we all remember that civilised society sees the abandonment of irreversible forms of punishment as progress. Thank goodness Britain is in the EU, and the spectre of capital punishment rising from the grave won't become a reality on our shores anytime soon. Brrrr.

Mission accomplished

Last week I was in Florida for a work conference, which sounds like a lot of fun (OK, OK, it was!) but is also tremendously hard work. Yes, I ended up with 'EFS' (Exhibition Foot Syndrome) made worse by a final night of dancing. I can't resist a bit of a boogie, and my feet were practically raw by Friday morning. And glad of the 8-hour flight back to the UK so they could relax and swell in the little red Virgin Atlantic socklets to such an extent that I couldn't actually get my shoes on when we landed :-). Such is life.

I was pleased to get a chance to visit the USA again. As well as enjoying the people, the climate, the food and the grandeur and excess of it all, it meant I was able to do something by way of a small service for my friends at Lifelines UK. On my final day, I had a mission to complete, namely, the fetching of a batch of US Post Office money orders to bring back to the UK. Lifelines provides a service to its members who wish to send money to their penfriends as a gift. Let's face it, the list of what we can send into the US prison mailrooms is pitifully short, and especially with Christmas coming up, having the facility to post a small something to make our friends' lives better by a small measure means a lot.

This turned out to be a straightforward exercise. It was made clear to me that Western Union money orders would not do, so it wasn't a simple matter of visiting the nearest Publix store, I had to actually hop into a cab and make my way to the nearest US Post Office. They're not as plentiful as Post Offices in the UK, and I didn't have the benefit of a rental car so this meant a $15 cab-ride in each direction.

As you'd expect, there was a bit of a queue at the counter but not too bad. The assistant was surprised to be asked for ten individual $50 and $25 money orders to be printed off, but did so obligingly and painstakingly. It took a while, as each one is requested and printed off separately. I was amazed while there to learn they'd run out of stock of 98c stamps! Especially as there are so few Post Offices and that normal stores and gift shops do not carry them - not in any great number in any case. I bought all the remaining 26 they had to pass on to my penfriend. 98c is the minimum US postage rate for international letters. Clearly the people of Orlando don't write overseas very often. Or perhaps they DO and that's why the stock had run out??

In any case, I managed to get the money orders with no bother and transport them home. It was strange while I was on my mission to look around and observe my fellow US Post Office customers going about their business in a State which still metes out the Death Penalty and where the majority of State residents are in favour, and wonder what they would have said if they'd known what was taking me so long at the counter and holding them up in their own errands.

* * * * *

Some prisons are introducing electronic money transfer systems to help make the whole process of getting funds to prisoners easier. I welcome this as I do most of my personal banking online these days in any case, and I'll be exploring this method of getting my friend his pressie in the coming weeks.

* * * * *

Some stats about the death penalty in Florida
(source: Florida State Department of Corrections Annual Report 2007-8 and from the DoC website)

• On June 30, 2008, there were 391 inmates on Florida’s death row.
• Florida administers execution by electric chair or lethal injection.
• Lethal injection became an option for death row inmates in FY 1999-00.
• The executioner is an anonymous, private citizen who is paid $150 cash per execution.
• A death row cell is 6 * 9 * 9.5 feet high.
• Four inmates were executed in 2008 and 2009.

The average length of time spent by these 4 inmates on Death Row was 19.45 years.

I've only just begun...

My journey with respect to understanding more about Human Rights issues is really only just beginning. I am awed by the amount of work that is going on through organisations like Amnesty, and government bodies like the Council of Europe to highlight, resolve and prevent travesties in human justice and dignity around the world. It's a huge and daunting topic; but I suppose this makes me realise how important it is to throw my relatively miniscule effort into the ring too. I don't believe there can ever be too many people taking up the cause of delivering basic human rights, most urgently in the matter of the death penalty, but in cases of torture too.

Since I started following people on Twitter I've had my eyes opened to some abhorrent current practices of which I was only vaguely aware, and which I genuinely thought belonged to another age. Methods of execution in current usage include electrocution, the firing squad or other sorts of shooting, stoning in Islamic countries, the gas chamber, hanging, and lethal injection.

The USA by such extremes is 'relatively' humane... if there can be such a thing. See the Death Penalty Information Center's list of authorised methods of execution by State. However, the question of what constitutes 'humane' does not bear a great deal of scrutiny when it comes to it, not on any level. In a later post, I am going to look specifically at what happens when an execution goes wrong.... a topic which has recently been thrown into sharp relief by the sickening events at the scheduled execution by lethal injection of Romell Broom in Ohio.

One of the most appalling stories I have come across in recent readings was this report from Somalia, which featured fairly widely in the press in 2008. A 13-year old girl was buried to her neck and stoned to death after reporting a gang rape at the hands of the al-Shabab militia.

Next step on my journey, then, will be to locate and follow people on Twitter with something of interest to report or add to the debate. I get a bit overwhelmed by the flood of tweets on some regionally-specific tragedies, which I just don't know much about - like the situation in Iran, where death by stoning is still meted out as a punishment for adultery, where juveniles can be legally put to death, where legal under-representation is commonplace and skewed by any civilised standards, where the parents of a murder victim are permitted to kick away the hanging-stool of a perpetrator, and where the life of a murderer can be spared by offering enough cash to the family of the victim. But I'm glad I've decided to pay some more attention to what's happening in the world around me, and to pass on my learnings to my children, and to anyone else who will listen.

My primary interest will inevitably be what's happening in the USA; frankly because of my personal involvement due to my correspondence; but also because, well, it seems with all the financial pressure being commentated openly in the US domestic press, that this could be the first of the many remaining retentionist nations to be persuaded to abolish the practice. For a list of who's abolished, and who retains the Death Penalty as of October 2009 - see here.

For a full Amnesty report on the state of play with the Death Penalty by region in 2008, see here.