The Deprived: Innocent On Death Row

By Steffen Hou

'The Deprived: Innocent on Death Row' describes how thousands of Americans are convicted of crimes they never committed. Many of them end up on death row where inmates have been executed despite their innocence.


The book tells the dramatic stories of innocent death row inmates and investigates the murder cases that led to their wrongful convictions. It also proves what leads to false accusations and who's most likely to be incarcerated for a crime they never committed.


'The Deprived: Innocent on Death Row' takes you on a journey through the US Justice system and proves its flaws and unjust through real human stories. It reminds of a suspense thriller. Just true.


The book is based on interviews with 10 Americans who have all been affected by wrongful convictions and the death penalty.


Get to know what it is like on death row when you are innocent and fighting for your life.

• Language: English
• Publisher: BookBaby
• Release date: Feb 15, 2019
• ISBN: 9781543955088

Book preview

The Deprived

Innocent On Death Row

Steffen Hou

ISBN (Print Edition): 978-1-54395-507-1

ISBN (eBook Edition): 978-1-54395-508-8

© 2018. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, including photocopying, recording, or other electronic or mechanical methods, without the prior written permission of the publisher, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical reviews and certain other noncommercial uses permitted by copyright law.

Table of Contents

Prologue | The Cheering Crowd

Chapter 1 | Please Kill Me!

Chapter 2 | Why Wrongful Convictions?

Chapter 3 | Ways of Executing

Chapter 4 | Risk Depends on Color

Chapter 5 | Teenagers on Death Row

Chapter 6 | Women on Death Row

Chapter 7 | No Compensation

Chapter 8 | Relatives for Prisoners

Chapter 9 | Freedom Fighters

Chapter 10 | The Voice of Victims

Epilogue | Harder Than Death Row

About the Author

Sources

Prologue | The Cheering Crowd

A crowd of three thousand people watched and cheered while the young man begged for his life. In vain.

The hangman showed no mercy when the noose squeezed all life out of Thomas Bird as he became the first person to be federally executed under the US constitution.

A few weeks earlier, the young man was tried for murder and piracy in court. Upon being sentenced to death, he asked President George Washington for forgiveness, but a pardon was denied. In June 1790, US Marshal Henry Dearborn hung him from the gallows in Maine.

Since then, almost 16,000 Americans have been executed. Most of these executions occurred by hanging, but others have been electrocuted or even burned to death—many times with a majority of other Americans supporting their death.

Today, 55 percent of Americans say they are in favor of the death penalty for a person convicted of murder, but the present support indicates a significant decline from just a couple of decades ago when it was in the range of 80 percent.

Most death penalty supporters still feel that execution is a justifiable punishment for those who have taken someone else’s life, whereas others believe that the death penalty sets an example that will deter crime and help lower the murder rate. But the statistics tell another story.

The South accounts for over 80 percent of all executions in America. Still, the murder rate in the South is almost twice as high as the murder rate in the Northeast, which accounts for just 1 percent of all executions.

Another fact that might have changed American support is that capital punishment is an expensive solution.

When Thomas Bird was executed, it cost Americans $5.50 for the construction of a gallows and a coffin. Today, states performing the death penalty spend millions of dollars on execution cases.

The cost of a death penalty case varies from state to state. Texas, as an example, spends an average of $2.3 million on each death penalty case—three times the cost of imprisoning a person in a single cell at the highest security level for 40 years.

Another recent study from Seattle University shows that, on average, a death penalty case costs the state of Washington about $1.6 million more than a noncapital case. The most notable increases occur in defense fees and court costs.

Often, the money spent is money wasted because people sentenced to death often languish on death row for decades and then die of natural causes or suicide before being executed.

However, the most important reason for the declining support may be that since 1973, more than 160 people have been exonerated from death row with evidence of their innocence. And the risk of killing innocent people could scare some Americans out of supporting the death sentence as innocent people have undoubtedly already been executed.

As an example, Cameron Todd Willingham was executed in 2004 in Texas for setting the fire that killed his three daughters. A decade later, the jailhouse informant who claimed Willingham had confessed to him admitted that he lied when he testified against the father just to reduce his own prison sentence.

In 1990, Jesse Tafero was executed for the murder of two policemen. Mr. Tafero was convicted for the crime along with his wife Sonia Sunny Jacobs. Two years after his execution, it was proven that they did not receive a fair trial as some evidence had been suppressed. Afterward, Sunny was released from prison.

Mr. Willingham and Mr. Tafero are not the only innocent people to have been executed.

A group of lawyers from the University of Michigan Law School, who investigated the error margin of 8,000 death sentences since 1973, concluded that 4 percent of defendants sentenced to death in the United States were innocent.

An argument for using life imprisonment and not capital punishment could therefore be that it is possible to get an innocent man out of his cell, but not out of his grave.

LIFE AFTER DEATH ROW

Over the years, I have repeatedly read about innocent people who have been released from death row under great media awareness and I have always been curious about how these people’s lives have evolved when the cameras have been turned off and the reporters have left the prison gate.

Several times, I came across the name, Nick Yarris—a man who was exonerated by the use of DNA evidence after spending 22 years on Pennsylvania’s death row.

Since his release, Nick Yarris has been one of the exonerated death row inmates who has attracted the most media attention. There has even been a movie produced about his life and he was compensated millions of dollars when exonerated. I contemplated that if one exonerated prisoner was to restore his life, it would be him.

For more than four years, I have followed Nick Yarris. When I first met him, he struck me as a person who has managed to forgive and to transform his traumatic experiences into a positive view on life. However, the better I got to know him, the more it became clear to me that as an exonerated death row inmate, you will forever be marked by the injustice done to you, no matter fame or fortune.

After interviewing Nick Yarris, I decided to approach other exonerees to find out if their experiences were similar to his. Unfortunately, they were. Most exonerees struggle to restore life. Some even say that returning to a normal life has been harder than adjusting to life on death row.

The intention of The Deprived—Innocent on Death Row is to investigate what leads to wrongful convictions and how people react when they become victims of an injustice that not only deprives them their freedom and family, but in a worst-case scenario, their lives. Do they lose the will to live, do they find meaning through religion, or do they become as evil as they have wrongfully been accused of being?

When I reviewed different cases of wrongful convictions, I was shocked by how easily people can end up on death row despite being innocent. This is often because society has failed to protect its own citizens when authorities have not conducted their duties properly or even when law enforcement officers have lied about their investigation and manufactured evidence. In other cases, the convicted has become a victim of false and vicious testimonies—even at times given by their own families and friends.

Therefore, I also wanted to investigate if innocent death row inmates can maintain trust in fellow man and that justice will prevail. Or do they become bitter and hateful toward the people who put them on death row?

Finally, I wanted to look into if the injustice they have experienced will always overshadow the joy of having regained freedom.

On a personal level, through my research, I have also tried to clarify if I believe it is fair that society demands an eye for an eye. When I was a teenager, I saw an innocent young man being stabbed to death by a group of thugs. Witnessing the crime had a huge impact on me. I was scared and for years I feared that one day, I would become a victim. My immediate reaction was that perpetrators deserved the same punishment as their victims: death. However, I started wondering whether this was a legitimate punishment because the death penalty also kills innocent people.

I have tried to answer these questions and many others by telling the stories of 10 people who have all been affected by wrongful convictions and the death penalty.

Derrick Jamison tells what it feels like to be scheduled to die in 90 minutes and why he accuses law enforcement officers of killing his mother.

Damon Thibodeaux tells what it feels like when even relatives believe you are a cold-blooded killer.

Sonia Sunny Jacobs tells what it is like to be a woman on death row and how she reacted when her husband was wrongfully executed.

Kwame Ajamu tells what it feels like to be put in the death house as a teenager and be deprived the chance of having children.

Randy Gardner tells what it did to him when a firing squad executed his brother.

Herman Lindsey tells why he is still labeled a murderer even after being exonerated.

Ronnie Sandoval tells what it is like when your teenage son is the victim of a wrongful conviction and how she lost him twice.

Magdaleno Leno Rose-Avilá tells why his own past as a violent gang member turned him into a human activist.

Marietta Jaeger tells why she forgave her seven-year-old daughter’s serial killer and fought for him not to be sentenced to death.

And Nick Yarris tells what life is like on death row when Ted Bundy lives in the cell next to you, how you survive the violence in prison without becoming a monster yourself, and how you return to life without hating the guards, the prosecutor, the judge, and the jurors who did you wrong. But he also tells why life after prison in some ways has been harder than death row.

The book is dedicated to people who are wrongfully imprisoned, to the exonerees, and to the relatives of death row inmates who have been executed for crimes they never committed.

Chapter 1 | Please Kill Me!

Name: Nick Yarris

Born: 1961

Race: Caucasian

State: Pennsylvania

Convicted: 1982

Exonerated: 2003

Sentence: Death

As the man steps into the restaurant, he lights up the room and attracts the attention of other guests who instinctively stop their conversations to stare.

The man is tall and wearing shades, a tight-fitting T-shirt, and an eye-catching gold chain on the outside. His upper arms are well-trained, his bald head is shaved to perfection, and his attitude is indisputably cool. The tanned man carries himself like an athlete and completely different than expected.

When he moves quickly throughout the Sunset Boulevard restaurant in West Hollywood, he smiles at everyone who can’t help looking at him. With his charismatic appearance, guests are obviously decoding if a celebrity just stepped in before they continue eating.

As Nick Yarris sits down at my table, I admit that I expected to meet a collapsed man almost crawling along the wall. This is how I imagined a person to appear after having spent more than 20 years on death row for a crime he never committed—either that or a hardened, repulsive criminal.

Nick smiles kindly while I express my prejudices and, finally, he says indulgently that people often have the wrong perceptions of others. That fact almost cost Nick his life.

Today, he is strong in his belief that life should be lived fully and never taken for granted. Even the smallest pleasures in life should be appreciated as if they were great human victories.

Therefore, Nick talks enthusiastically and without interruptions about his favorite football team, the Philadelphia Eagles. A smile is spreading as he recalls the team’s recent victory. He seems overjoyed as if the Eagles had won a battle of life or death. But to Nick, that is exactly what many things in life are—battles—and in worst-case scenario, battles against death.

When he thinks back on the battle that almost became fatal, his unstoppable speech dies out.

Linda Mae Craig was reported missing by her husband after she did not come home from her shift at a glass-figurine concession stand at the Tri-State Mall in Delaware near the Pennsylvania border. The next day, her body was discovered by two kids who thought they had found a mannequin. Later, it turned out to be the 32-year-old mother of three.

Mrs. Craig had been abducted in the parking lot of the mall where she was forced into her car and taken behind a church where she was raped. She eventually bled to death from stab wounds in her chest while the killer took off in her car. The car was later found with the motor still running. Inside, police officers discovered Mrs. Craig’s blood-spattered handbag. Not just her blood was found, but also the killer’s.

People always said that I would either be dead or in jail before I turned 21. Unfortunately, they were right, says Nick when he recalls the murder and the detective’s findings that would eventually lead him to death row.

However, his struggles began much earlier than when the murder was committed. When he thinks back on his younger days, his voice changes and he becomes vaguer. His face shows traces of sadness.

Nick had a terrible childhood and when thinking back to his teenage years, he is still filled with embarrassment.

There is almost no crime that I did not commit back then. I caused a lot of pain to the victims and to the people who loved me the most, my parents, Nick says.

Nevertheless, there were two crimes in which Nick was not guilty and yet these crimes would have the greatest impact on his life.

The first one took place in 1968, a year marked by chaotic and violent events. In April, Martin Luther King Jr. was assassinated and two months later, the country’s senator, Robert F. Kennedy, was shot. At the same time, several major cities were characterized by demonstrations against the United States’ participation in the Vietnam War. Violent riots often broke out between demonstrators and police. Meanwhile, Nick followed all of the events on television with disbelief. However, he will always remember 1968 for another terrible reason.

That year will always be a landmark for me because it was also the year that everything in my own life became chaotic and violent, Nick recalls.

SHIELD OF PROTECTION

One day, the seven-year-old boy was walking the family dog, Jocko, but instead of staying on the illuminated streets of Philadelphia as he promised his mother, the little boy went down a slope and into a small, wooded area. Suddenly, a man sat on a wooden stump in front of him.

Nick could hardly breathe when he saw the man. He had never been so scared in his life, but he tried to act cool and instead of turning back, he tried to be brave and just walk past the strange man.

Big mistake. I should never have done that.

Nick knew of the man from the many urban legends about him. He had a reputation for relentlessly beating both grown men and frail children. That afternoon, Nick found out that they were not legends, but reality. The violent drug addict went mad in a rush of blood as Nick passed him, and then brutally raped the seven-year-old boy.

I was laying still, just crying while he raped me. Then, all of a sudden, he started screaming: ‘Shut up, shut up. I will kill you and your family if you ever tell anyone. I am not gay. I am not gay,’ Nick recalls.

He was so scared that he never did tell. Instead, he went home without his childish belief that all people were good creatures.

When his mother opened the door, she almost fainted at the sight of Nick’s bloody face. Immediately, he was taken to the hospital, but still he did not tell anyone that he had been beaten and hit in the head with a stone before the rapist tried to choke him. Instead, Nick told them that he had fallen while playing.

"Once I told that lie, I could not go back to the truth. If I had, it might have helped me to get access to the

Reviews for The Deprived

[DiDonovan · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

True crime readers with a special interest in death row proceedings will especially appreciate the premise and developments in The Deprived: Innocent on Death Row, which collects the experiences of 10 Americans affected by wrongful convictions and the death penalty.

From what it's like to be on death row when innocent to how wrongful convictions happen, Steffen Hou goes beyond adopting a singular set of interview questions about experience to consider wider-ranging issues, from risks based on color, gender, and age to the circumstances surrounding evidence and convictions.

Since June 1790, almost 16,000 Americans have been executed. Modern support has waned for the death penalty in America, but many still feel it is a suitable punishment for murder. No matter what side of the issue the reader is on, Hou surveys many intriguing facts, from its financial burden to how many people have been exonerated from death row upon evidence of their innocence.

The heart of The Deprived lies not in a rehash of social debates around the death penalty's legality and issues, but on the personal toll it exacts from those involved, from family members who live with condemnation despite being good people themselves to how the innocent who have been wrongly convicted survive the violent, harsh atmosphere of prison.

Hou's intention is to personalize the death row experience from many different angles and to document just how innocent people become wrongfully convicted. His approach is more of a close examination of the justice system's failures than it is a social examination of the death penalty's validity. Even more eye-opening are numerous passages about those exonerated, who must live the rest of their lives with the badge of having been viewed as a dangerous criminal, with questions about the validity of their guilt or innocence continuing to impede their progress, test their families, and impact their lives.

Take the case of Nick Yarris, for one example: a long-time Pennsylvania inmate who spent over 20 years on death row before DNA absolved him of a heinous crime. Hou followed Yarris for four years after his release from prison, convinced that "...if one exonerated prisoner was to restore his life, it would be him."

Could anything be more challenging than life on Death Row with the likes of Ted Bundy in the cell beside you? Yes: release. The chapter 'Please Kill Me' covering his case, release, and ongoing challenges is a powerful testimony to a life that was ironically marked by crime and forever changed by accusations of two big crimes which he did not commit.

Lawmakers, justices of the court, and anyone concerned with the overall impact of the death penalty and its place in the criminal justice system will find The Deprived hard-hitting, with an unusual ability to juxtapose personal experience with bigger-picture thinking.

No debate or close examination of American justice or the death penalty would be complete without this highly recommended consideration of the many issues the death penalty ripples into society. Crafted on the shoulders of personal experience, this approach holds far more impact than any scholarly analysis could ever have achieved.