17 Years on DEATH ROW

WAITING TO DIE

LIFE ON DEATH ROW

DEDICATION
 

This book is dedicated to all the unknown voices on death row that need to be heard as well as to the continuing efforts to abolish the death penalty by so many wonderful and hard working abolitionists around the world who are dedicated to ending this barbaric practice.

Hopefully this book will serve as just one more tool in the struggle. With the knowledge of what goes on behind these walls as we are kept in these concrete tombs along with the politics of the death penalty and the economics of the prison complex, I hope this will educate as well as awaken many more to our plight.

Our biggest weapon against the death penalty is our combined voices and social conscience. Sooner or later all of us on the row walks through the doorway never to return. Don't allow our efforts to go in vain. Use this book to help in the fight for abolition until its won.

This book is also dedicated to Fabian Gastellier, my French translator, for her devotion to this project. Words cannot express my love for her and for what she means in my life.

BIOGRAPHY

 

Richard Michael Rossi was born and raised in Brooklyn, New York. He succeeded in graduating from Pace College in 1970 with a Bachelor's degree in Accounting and Business Administration. He would go on to work as an accountant and be successful in various business. Personal tragedies resulted in his resorting to drugs to overcome the pain in his life. He became addicted to cocaine and amphetamines. While living in Phoenix, Arizona, he committed a murder while trying to obtain money for more drugs. He was tried and convicted of first degree murder and sentenced to death.

For over seventeen years he has been on Arizona's death row. During this time he became a paralegal and then became the prison library clerk. He turned to writing about death row conditions and the death penalty and about conditions on death row. His articles, essays and poems have been published across America and around the world in the abolitionist community. He has worked and continues to work with abolitionists in an attempt to help eliminate the death penalty by enlightening those in the free world about the real life of death row prisoners in America.

He was encouraged to write a book about the death penalty and about conditions on death row. He wrote that book while facing his last appeal.

 

 

 

Man's Humanity

Poem by Richard Rossi

 

E-Mail

 

My friend Richard Rossi - an appreciation

Almost eighteen years ago, in April 1983, I received a request from death row, Arizona, for a pen pal. I responded, being a long-time Amnesty activist, a member of LifeLines and a lifelong abolitionist. Now, at this juncture -the autumn of 2000- I have the indescribably difficult task of saying in a few words what Richie has become for me, and to my partner Tricia. Time is running out for our beloved friend. The state of Arizona will assuredly kill him in the no too distant future.

Hundreds of letters and cards have passed between the three of us. Five times Tricia and I have made the long trip to Arizona, where the Blue Mist Motel in Florence -opposite to the prison- became almost a second home. Audio-cassettes have been exchanged, examples of Richie's artwork hang in my home, I have all of his many articles and poems. Every single letter and card he has sent is meticulously fled.

There are remarkable individuals who have the capacity to endure unimaginable privations -like the Tibetan Buddhist monk Palden Gyatso, who suffered 33 years of incarceration under the Chinese occupiers of his country, and the more famous Nelson Mandela, who was imprisoned by the apartheid regime for almost thirty years. Whilst Richie - a convicted murderer - is clearly not in their league, I have to express astonishment that he has survived almost two decades on death row without being utterly destroyed as a human being. Not only has he survived, he has retained his curiosity about `life on the outside', his keen sense of humour, and his innate humanity. He is a truly caring person. Whilst inevitably he has suffered bouts of depression, he has not allowed the appalling conditions on the row to destroy his individuality. I cannot understand how any human being endures such privations for so long and remains whole. For death row is a torturous hell.

Almost twenty years ago Richie committed a terrible crime, for which severe punishment was merited. Yet I am strongly persuaded that, without in the least condoning heinous crimes, society must allow for change and growth. Most human beings are redeemable, and the death penalty is irrevocable. Capital punishment is an abomination. It is the ultimate cruel, inhuman and degrading punishment. There should be no place for it in any society calling itself civilized.

Read Richie's graphic account of his long years on death row and try to comprehend the sheer wrong-ness of such ways of dealings with serious crime. There are other, better ways.

Brian Crowther

USA Death Penalty Coordinator, Amnesty International UK and LifeLines activist.

 

PREFACE

 

Here is a book which should be placed in all and every hands. First all in those of the young ones today in Europe. They will measure, through this restraint story, the inhumanity and the shame of which the abolition of the death penalty has liberated us from, in France and in all of Europe.

The story, the testimony rather which is brought to us, is of a sinister banality today in the United States. It's author, Richard Michael Rossi, write to us from his cell of the Unit 2 of the Supermax State Prison of Arizona. He's one of the 3700 prisoners filling up the death rows of the United States.

Richard Michael Rossi is a murderer. Drug addict in 1983, he killed a receiver of stolen goods to whom he was trying to sell a stolen type writer. He, first, thought that the man would be give him to the Police. He was high on cocaïne. He used his weapon. Then he took the money from the cash register. A neighbor came in. He shot her, wounded her and ran off. He was arrested. For the Department of Justice, it was the sordid crime of a drug addict. The district attorney presented a deal to his lawyer : if Rossi admitted to the crime, the judge would sentence him to 25 years for the murder and 21 years for the assault without parole, 46 years in total. If he didn't admit to the crimes, the district attorney would seek the death penalty.

Richard Michael Rossi was 36 years old at the time. He calculated that he wouldn't get out of prison, if still alive, until the age of 75. He believed the jury wouldn't be hostile to him. After a terrible childhood, he had, thanks to his many efforts, managed to go to university, passed his diploma as an accountant before falling into the drugs spiral. He refused the plea bargain. A court appointed lawyer represented him poorly at the trial. The district attorney was right : Rossi didn't stand a chance in front of the Arizona jury members. For them, he was just another social wretch, just worthy of elimination. The Court sentenced him to death.

His fall into the prison hell has started.

It has been going on for 17 years. The American procedure is particular in that way because it offers offenders on death row two levels of appeals. One with the State Court where the crime was committed, then, the second one with the Federal Court, then with the United States Supreme Court in some cases. This double procedure is a never ending process. For the prisoner on death row, most people think, it is a way to gain time, a kind of survival obtained through legal paths. Those in favor of the death penalty condemn those procedures in which they see only a device or a quibbly slyness. Recent laws have indeed limited those appeals, such laws are very strictly enforced by the Supreme Court. But the prisoner who lives through years of waiting on death row, from appeals to denials, from new petitions to further refusals, it is an unbearable situation. In the past, the best writers, Hugo, Dostoïevski, Camus, described the waiting and the nights of anxiety which, all, announce the dawn of death. This has brought some of the best literature and has provoked abolitionist convictions. In the United States, it's no longer the way. The time for an execution is distant, far away, even if its perspective, always present, strikes the horizon of a large black wall. This torture can go on for decades. Yet, when one looks at the statistics on executions, when one measures the very few successful clemency decisions, one can see how, inevitably, it ends with the execution ritual. The hanging and the electric chair have given way to the mortal gas or the injection. Sometimes, it's the shooting squad for which there's never a lack of volunteers. But today the preference goes to the execution methods qualified as scientific and said to be painless, nevertheless, those remain the expression of barbarism.

To describe this prison abyss where the super power of the world, the largest democracy, plunges its death row prisoners supplied through the mass production of an alienated judicial system, it required a witness. Not necessarily a illustrious writer. Simply a voice to tell us how these men are treated in the heart of America, in the cells of death row. This is the voice you will hear in this book. Some books drag us in an abyss always deeper, always darker, so it is with this testimony. I don't know what will happen to its author considering the present situation in the United States under the Bush administration. Maybe, in extremis, the spirit of grace will reach those who hold a responsibility over his future. Or, despite the many efforts of a few women and men of good will, of true humanity, Rossi will go, at his turn, to lie down on the metal gurney, strapped like a beast to be slaughtered. The curtains will reveal, through the glass window, the legal authorities, the journalists and the witnesses to watch him agonize. He will receive an injection. He will suffer. Not that much, will say those who are not executed. Then he will die. The curtains will be drawn, the body will be removed. It happens, we are told, that the executioners think over what they have just done : they've killed another man, that's all there is to it. In the state of Arizona and other states too. They kill today in the name of what they still call Justice.

 

Robert Badinter

French former Attorney General

 

READER'S COMMENT

To whom it may concern,

 

My name is Suzette Lambert. Richard Rossi is my cousin and dear friend.

 

I wanted to thank those who have taken time and effort to enlighten the public via internet about cases/individuals such as Richard. 

 

I have come to find that Richard is one of the strongest, and most inspirational persons I have yet to meet. Many have much to learn about humanity.

 

Thank you, I appreciate your time and your effort. This is a wonderful gift.

 

Sincerely,

 

Suzette 

 

 

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