A couple of month after he arrived on death row at theWilliam C. Holman Correctional Facility, Drinkard met Darrell Grayson, who offered him coffee, cigarettes, and an invitation. Each Wednesday, Grayson and a group of other death-row inmates would meet in the prison's law library and work on a plan to raise awareness about inequity in the criminal justice system. Dubbed Project Hope to Abolish the Death Penalty, it was -- and remains -- the nations's only anti-death-penalty organization run by death-row prisoners.
COMMENT
This library serves some essential function of libraries, but in extremely constrained circumstances. The inmates are in the prison library hoping to become knowledgeable enough about the law in order to avoid getting executed. It's hard to imagine library research with higher stakes, Particularly since the men in Project Hope are trying to make up for the inadequate legal representation that landed them on death row in the first place. The article says that people rich enough to hire a lawyer were never sentenced to death no matter what crimes they were charged with; impoverished defendants with court-appointed lawyers were sentenced to death even though some of them were innocent.
The prison library also serves as a meeting space. The article says that the group, which has existed for 30 years, is allowed to meet so long as they do not discuss prison conditions. There is a law class for Project Hope and members share information in a quarterly newsletter written on typewriters and printed by an outside board member who distributes 1,300 copies to subscribers. Since the library has no digital networking or news databases, the board members also have to gather and share articles about the death penalty.
No comments:
Post a Comment