He had shot and killed his mother’s boyfriend (with the boyfriend’s gun) when, in front of his eyes, that man beat his mother so badly, she lost consciousness and probably appeared dead to the boy. I might easily have done the same thing in his shoes, and I’m certainly not a murderer. While in prison, the boy was sexually assaulted by grown prisoners until he was finally put in the electric chair.

Another man was on death row for six years for a murder he didn’t commit. There were numerous witnesses saying that he had been miles away at the time, but police and prosecutor were pressured by public outrage to get somebody convicted, and the judge also evidently wanted that.

That the man was poor and black might have had something to do with it. His defense lawyer got hold of tape recordings the police had made (for some reason of their own) of them intimidating or paying large sums to other witnesses to get a conviction, and with these recordings, the lawyer eventually got the man freed. These things happen and aren’t so rare. That man later got a head injury while working as a tree cutter and, while in the hospital, hallucinated that he was back on death row. It was an experience burned into his brain.

Sigman thinks all this is OK because the death penalty might deter people, and it saves the taxpayers money if done right after conviction. He’d think differently if something like that happened to him.

Peter Schmidt

Durango