I clearly remember writing my first letter to an inmate on death row. It was a sunny day in 2004 and I was in my conservatory. “I gather that you would like a pen friend,” I wrote, adding a brief introduction about myself. I soon received a letter back from Texas. It was pages and pages long. He told me about his life, his interests and his family. His name was KC and he was quite a character. Soon, I was writing to him twice a month.
We had very different backgrounds. His childhood was perhaps typical of many poor American families: they moved a lot, lived on the breadline, with violence in the neighbourhood; I was from rural Cambridgeshire with a large, happy family. I had my own home and a circle of friends. KC lived in a world of aggression, uncertainty and disruption, a world of shakedowns and lockdowns.
I was a Quaker, and had decided to become a pen friend after seeing an advert by an organisation called Human Writes. He was very interested in my religion, because he’d never spoken to a Quaker before. When we had known each other a short while, KC started to send me poems he had written. Some of them were profound and moving.
After a few months, KC wrote to say that if I ever found myself in the US, I should visit him. I decided I would – I was intrigued, and I knew how much a visit would mean to him.
Walking into the prison was frightening. There was a constant loud humming noise, and armed guards were everywhere. KC was like a host welcoming someone into his home – except he was in a metal cage behind bulletproof glass and we spoke by phone. I knew that every inmate here was a convicted murderer with the alleged crime exacerbated by something else, such as rape or torture. KC admitted with great shame that he’d murdered a woman who was a mother. In the early days, we didn’t discuss his crime, but later on that changed and he told me he bitterly regretted what he had done.
I did not really connect the crime he had committed with the man I knew. The whole thing was just such a tragedy, first for his victim and her family, and then for KC and his.
I found our four-hour meeting both draining and uplifting. I continued writing and visited every summer for four years, usually four visits during one trip, which was the maximum allowed. We talked about just about everything: my family, work, travel, books I was reading.
I was shocked when I discovered KC had been given an execution date. He asked if I would go to watch, and I said I would. Several of us visited him during the three days leading up to his death, and I was close to tears for much of that time.
I can’t remember our final conversation, but I’ve relived the execution endless times. It was like being in a nightmare you can’t get out of, with that slightly unreal but desperately real feeling. I watched through a window with his family as KC was given a lethal injection. In another room, which we couldn’t see, was the family of his victim. During the 10 minutes it took for him to die, KC gave a little talk, saying he wanted to celebrate the life of the woman he’d killed. Afterwards, I felt cold, stunned. I lay awake all night going over it.
I think I had post-traumatic stress when I got home. I was given tranquillisers and counselling. It affected me very deeply. It was confusing, too. I felt guilty, because this man had done a terrible thing, yet here I was grieving for him.
I nearly gave up writing after that, but by then I already had a second pen friend and couldn’t let them down. I became a coordinator after retiring and now write four letters a week on average. I have ME and this has made my Human Writes work especially important. I feel I can really make a difference, even when I don’t have the energy to leave my house.
It has also broadened my mind. I have come to mistrust the justice system, and not just in the US. I had no idea about the level of poverty that poor Americans face. What my pen pals have been through is totally beyond my experience.
• As told to Linda Harrison.
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