“March 16, 1996. Somewhere in Merced County, California, this morning, a judge of the Superior Court will wake up, shower, shave, eat breakfast, kiss his wife good-bye, and drive to the county courthouse where he will dress in black robes, mount an elevated dais, and preside over a gathering of attorneys. He, in concert with the others, will decide the exact date and precise time that the state of California will kill my best friend (102).”
– Excerpt from Steven King Ainsworth, in his piece Danny, from the book Undoing Time: American Prisoners in Their Own Words, edited by Jeff Evans.
This is the opening paragraph in a piece written by Steven king Ainsworth, in San Quentin, California. This particular essay stood out in my memory for many reasons. One the entire essay analyzed the Criminal Justice System as a whole. The author starts with his understanding of how the government, (a judge) has complete control over determining someone’s death date, and in this case his friend Danny died on May 3, 1996. But as he continues the essay he reflects on what events brought his friend Danny to his death, and how those event played into the strucure of the prison system. The opening paragraph of this essay struck me the hardest. I want to be a judge, this is what the prisoners always question and challenge me about. Thus far, all of their questions I have been able to answer with confidence. But now it is me asking the questions…
“Alonna could you decide someone’s death date?”
I am thankful I have never been asked that question. My answer at first would be to defend my stance. I want to be a judge, that would be a part of the job – it has been determined that this persons punishment is death, and then I would do my job to carry out that punishment. That is exactly why this essay in particular interests me. He is not writing about punishment, he is writing about life. Steven’s friend Danny was the last true friend he had in life, Danny was a father, and a grandfather, he worked in the prison mentoring first offenders, and juveniles to change their lifestyles. Is that not enough a reason to live? How many future criminals could he have affected? Danny (Steve’s friend) was described as a prisoner of the justice system…
“The state raised him from the age of nine, fried his brain at twenty-five, and killed him at forty-eight (106).”
The biggest realization for me is that Danny is not the only prisoner who has had to live through this experience. Unfortunately for many – this is their reality. In aspiring to become a judge, I think that it is necessary to have an understanding of experiences such as these and how they develop throughout the US Criminal Justice System. How can the system be changed and reformed to create better society, and its citizens (yes that includes inmates).
He ends the essay with this…
My friend is dead and I do not think the world is any better for it. His poisoned cadaver joins the rising body count from death row since reinstatement of capital punishment in 1977:
Four men have been executed.
Two men have been murdered.
Eleven men have committed suicide.
Nine men have died of natural causes.
One man was shot and killed by a guard (106).
Eleven men have committed suicide.
Nine men have died of natural causes.
One man was shot and killed by a guard (106).
References:
Evans, Jeff. Undoing Time: American Prisoners in Their Own Words. Boston: Northeastern University Press, 2001.
I found these questions compelling. What this writer raises is the question of what state-sanctioned killing means. I found it especially effective and persuasive when he mentioned how his friend had been raised and then executed by the "state." This begs the question of how the "state" and the condition that make one a ward of state and the prisoner of hte "state" makes one a victim of the state. What this piece points to is that this prisoner was a product of his background. There was more to his story than just his own choices. Some of what happened to him (or perhaps the argument here is that most of what happened) was structurally based, not individually based.
ReplyDeleteI'm glad you are confronting these questions.