A GIFT FROM DEATH ROW
by Jody Cramer Strange, how reaching out as a designated "giver" to someone on death row can provide so much reward. I wanted to brighten Kevin Cooper's day as a pen pal, but I had no inkling of what gifts lay ahead for me.
In May 1998, when I began writing Kevin, I was an upper-middle-class white woman who no longer believed in the government. For the preceding seven years I had held a position as the director of a nonprofit under contract to do work on behalf of the government. During my tenure I saw enough of the dark side of politics to be thoroughly disgusted. I was well versed in the difference between "what we say we do" and "what we really do." I led a campaign to enact new public policy and felt firsthand the tremendous resistance to change and action that is needed to address suffering. I felt the sting of politics and public disapproval as I spoke at public hearings, was interviewed on TV and radio, sat on public boards and forums, and dealt with the pressure of officials wanting me to meet their political agendas.
Despite this firsthand experience, I was totally unprepared for what I would find when involved with the criminal justice system. This is an error-prone system, based on race and financial disparity, which allows one in seven people convicted of a capital crime to be innocent. Since the reinstatement of the death penalty, seventy-five people have been found innocent and exonerated. Many people in our society feel that the "one in seven" rule is acceptable, but if an orthopedic surgeon cut off the wrong leg in one out of seven amputations, he would be banned forever as a doctor. Politicians know that the death penalty is unfair, but they use it to whip up crime hysteria in order to win votes. It's the politics of scapep;goating.
My travels into the criminal justice system also taught me that confessions to crimes are sometimes obtained through torture, that police accountability is a significant problem in this country, that laws such as those regarding cocaine possession are written to discriminate against minorities, that public defenders are often overworked and uninterested in their cases, and that the state has little incentive to provide legal assistance to prisoners, once convicted. Many on death row have no representation at all.
This knowledge motivates me to work to abolish the death penalty and has led me to attend two outstanding conferences, one in Berkeley on the Prison Industrial Complex and one in Chicago on Wrongful Conviction and the Death Penalty. I have been moved to read The Celling of America by Dan Pens and Paul Wright, Live from Death Row by Mumia Abu-Jamal, and Among the Lowest of the Dead by David Von Drehle. I've subscribed to North Coast Xpress and the Prison Legal News. I've met numerous inspiring people, who have survived unimaginable suffering only to emerge as heroes. I've met wrongfully convicted men and women, attorneys, advocates, families of inmates, directors of public and private agencies working for penal reform, celebrities, professors, forensic experts and judges, tremendous people I never would have met if I hadn't taken this road.
Finally, I've been privileged to know a wrongfully convicted, innocent man Kevin Cooper, who has been on death row at San Quentin Prison for fourteen years. Through Kevin I've learned much about the realities of prison, about the filth, the gang violence, the fear, the isolation, the deprivation, the cruelty. I've learned that men and women aren't sent to prison to be punished by confinement; they are sent to prison to be punished far beyond their original sentence.
Knowing someone who has not only survived this, but who is nevertheless kind and compassionate, has added new dimensions to my life. I am honored by our friendship. I have discovered that I'm not the designated "giver." I am the designated "recipient."
Jody Cramer is Executive Director of the Kevin Cooper Legal Defense Fund. Donations for Cooper's defense can be sent to Robert B. Amidon, a Law Corporation, 2550 North Hollywood Way, Suite 502, Burbank, CA 91505.