Texas death row inmate Hank Skinner is scheduled to be executed on February 24, 2010, on the first day of the World Congress Against the Death Penalty. His wife Sandrine Ageorges, the international representative for the Texas Coalition to Abolish the Death Penalty, writes a chronicle of his programmed death on Abolition.fr.For more than 13 years now, my life has been split between Texas and France. Hank’s life and his case have paced the choices in my personal and professional life. This case is unusual, in itself it exposes a very large number of systematic, if not automatic, problems which plague the application of the death penalty in Texas, but his case is particularly dense.
The state’s strategy in this case demonstrates to which extent the killing machine goes to impose its lies, with unlimited resources at the expense of the taxpayers, against those who have no resources for their defense. The common denominator for all death row prisoners in the United States truly is poverty.
The mirage of a new world where everything is however possible, so promising and dynamic that it is almost unconceivable to assimilate and accept the reality of what I have seen, read, heard and learned. So Hank Skinner’s story gradually became mine, the years of correspondence and visits reinforced our convictions and fed our thirst for justice.
The perspective of his up coming execution does not shake our determination to go all the way to bring the truth in the open. Despite all these years spent in hell, his strength never diminished, on the contrary. The constant retaliation by the department of corrections, which plays an insidious and illegal role with impunity in the administration of the death penalty in Texas, earned him exceptional treatment in terms of psychological and physical torture.
However, his commitment to prove his innocence, to defend the rights of death row prisoners and to improve the living conditions on death row has not diminished. He finds his strength in the truth of his own case and the 350 executions which took place in Texas since he arrived on death row in March 1995.
His daily routine is made mostly of petty and incessant punishments, total sensorial deprivations and impossible sleep. His strength is an unbelievable energy and a lesson for all of us, who sometimes doubt and run out of breath from one execution to the next, often a weekly occurrence in Texas.
This programmed death is the story of a man who is about to die without having been allowed to prove his innocence. If it is impossible to stop the unpredictable, it is always possible to save a life, and another one, then another one and many more until the nightmare ends. While we wait for abolition, there is no other choice but to fight and unite our forces, day after day.
Sandrine Ageorges
Click here to visit Hank Skinner's support website
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