Families suffer grief of state-enforced death

Swiss photographer Fabio Biasio documents
the experiences of Tina Morris, sister of
death row prisoner James Blake Colburn.

Fabio Biasio came face-to-face with the grim reality when he travelled to the execution capital of Texas for a reportage on capital punishment in 2003.

“I wanted to tell a story about the death penalty,” said Biasio about his trip to Huntsville.

He soon realised that there was no welcome on the mat in Texas for him. “I couldn’t get access to the execution room or death row,” Biasio told swissinfo.ch.

“Huntsville is the capital of the Texan penal system. Every execution in this US state is carried out there.”

After getting onto the visiting list of a prisoner, he could at least see the death row visiting room. That’s how he got to know Tina Morris, the sister of James Colburn.

“Tina sat beside me, she was visiting her brother. It was the day before his first execution date, which was then postponed.”

More victims

He saw in Morris the possibility of telling a special story – the fact that an execution produces a second set of victims, the family of the perpetrator.

“The perpetrator has caused great suffering to the family of the victim, and now the state causes great suffering to the family of the perpetrator,” Biasio explained.

He called his story the “Diary of an execution”. The photos show Tina Morris in the week before the execution of her brother James. “I was not just a photographer but also her companion and chauffeur.”

Her family was important to her this week but on her last visit to death row she felt so terrible that she did not want anyone from her family around her. “It was too close for her. I think she did not want her sons or her partner to see her like that. With me she didn’t care.”

“Tina, I will also photograph you when you feel really bad, when you’re crying,” he warned her. She accepted that. “She wanted her story to be told.”

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Source: Etienne Strebel, swissinfo.ch, translated from German by Clare O’Dea, October 10, 2011

Online portofolio: "Pictures from an execution", Swiss photographer Fabio Biasio documents the experiences of Tina Morris, sister of death row prisoner James Blake Colburn, October 2011