Robin Lee from a few days lived with a friend for the continuous quarrels with her husband. In the first hours of February 10 Robin learns the terrible news of the disappearance of her relatives.
All people think to a sad accident but few days Robin Lee Row is arrested with the accusation of arson. Everything so quickly happens that Mrs Row doesn't understand what is happening. The police is convinced that she has hung the fire and intentionally killed her family following a violent quarrel with her husband.
In the letter that this young woman has sent me from the jail of Pocatello in the Idoha last December, she affirms that police has written a false report . It already has so departed more than 10 years in jail with the nightmare of the electric chair in fact initially the death sentence was anticipated for December 16 th 1993. When Robin learned the news of the sentence she was already destroyed by the pain for the death of her children that she didn't even want to apply in appeal to the Federal Court preferring to die.
Subsequently her lawyer succeeded in convincing to resort her to the Federal Court and will probably succeed in showing her innocence.
In the message that Mrs Row has addressed me, a strong report is present to the American judicial system as well as a criticism to the death penalty. She affirms: "what is the difference among the death penalty and a murder? That the first one is legalized while the other no , but the substance is the same, one a person that kills to another person. Hasn’t God this prerogative only? ".
Since in the Usa has been introduced again the death penalty, from 1977 to 1999, 523 death sentences are been performed, (source Amnesty International) the most greater part through lethal injection, the method "painless", in fact the time of survival is esteemed in 6-10 minutes. The convict is administered to a chemical substance that the respiratory paralysis provokes and subsequently the cardiac paralysis if everything regularly happens, but very often complications arrive unexpectedly and the state of unconscious doesn't take over immediately making the endless and atrocious agony.
The electric chair, that was introduced in 1888, foresees instead a "rite" very longer: all begins three days confining the convict in a cell special confrontation with the electric chair before. When the execution starts, electric discharges are transmitted up to 2000 volts to avoid that the convict catches fire but, also in this case, the state of unconscious is not guaranteed to the first discharge.
Other systems of execution used in the Usa are gas chamber, hanging and shooting.
But the most puzzling datum, as underlines Robin Lee Row, is that an high percentage of prisoners submitted to these atrocious sufferings, before death takes over, they are innocent people! From halves the years '70 are 75 the people death row inmates for error and then you release, 75 people that as Robin Lee they have had the possibility to show their innocence. Robin has a team of very prepared lawyers that they have allowed her to resort to the Federal Court. Who doesn't have the money can only have public lawyers and the death sentence is guaranteed. According to Amnesty International an African-American person accused has four possibilities in more than a white accused to receive a death sentence for homicide, the probabilities are eleven if the victim of the homicide were "white".
In the Usa they are 38 the states where the death penalty is anticipated yet crimes for homicides don't decrease. Making lever on these data, Amnesty International Usa is trying to make reflect american citizen, through numerous initiatives, on the theme of the death penalty and it is not excluded that in a future, perhaps far, also the Usa reenters in the 67 states in the world that the death penalty has abolished.
It has been the same also in the ancient history. The Code of Hammurabi foresaw the capital punishment for numerous crimes as in ancient Egypt; only the Greek considered to the capital punishment preferring the reimbursement of the damage. In Europe the culture abolitionist born wiith the enlightenment thought. In 1764 with the publication of the book of Cesare Beccaria "Of the crimes and of the punishments" a reflection was stimulated on the penal system underlining the ineffectiveness of the capital punishment as prevention of the crime. Following this idea, in 1786 the Granducato in Tuscany (Italy) was one of the first states in the world to abolish the death penalty.
The debate and the reflection on the matter it is the only way to fight against the capital punishment as the history teaches.
Robin Lee story is not unique but it is made particular by the statistics since women rarely come death row inmates, last execution goes up again to 2002.
Robin has had to daily fight for surviving, now her prison situation is improved in fact she can write letters, to receive phone calls but to the beginning it has been difficult and humiliating. She was forced to have shower naked in front of masculine prison watches. Way of living in complete isolation was horrible, she could receive visits from narrow relatives which lived however very far from Pocatello.
Robin Lee Row with her letter wants to address a last message to the readers "you don't believe in what you read or you listen; police, judges, are not always honest as they would like to make you believe". Time in Pocatello's jail goese very slowly in the hope to be free again. She is a big reader and she love writing, she receives letters of solidarity from every part of the world and it is her only pastime.