August 7
(in) SCOTLAND:
We're going to send 2,200 volts of electricity through you - any
questions?
WHEN she dies, Sunny Jacobs wants someone to plant tomatoes on her grave,
or apple trees, or even a patch of curly kale and potatoes, just like the
one in her back garden, so that she can still be a part of things. "But
while I'm still alive I'm planting my seeds everywhere I go," vows the
tiny, bespectacled American, whose joyful smile plays across her gamine
features.
And that, she says, is her revenge. "That is my legacy, and my memorial."
Jacobs, a 57-year-old grandmother, is a dead woman walking - although, in
her case, walking free, after being sentenced to death for a murder she
did not commit. She was locked up for almost 17 years - the only woman at
that time in America who had a death sentence. She spent 5 years on death
row, albeit one specially created for her by the Florida prison
authorities, which cleared out an entire wing of an old prison for women,
before locking her up in solitary confinement.
In 1976 Jacobs and her common-law husband, Jesse Tafero, were convicted of
the fatal shooting of two Florida police officers, based on the false
testimony of the man who had actually committed the murders. Like scores
of other innocent men and women wrongly convicted and sentenced to death
in the United States, Jacobs was eventually released in 1992, when the
real killer finally confessed.
It was too late for Tafero, though. He had been executed 2 years earlier,
in the most grisly botched procedure in the history of the American death
penalty - the electric chair malfunctioned and the executioner had to pull
the switch 3 times, sending three massive bolts of electricity through his
body. Before it was over, Tafero's head burst into flames. "It took Jesse
13 1/2 minutes to die," says Jacobs wearily.
After they sentence you to death, they tell you exactly how they're going
to do it, she continues calmly. "They say they are going to send 2,200
volts of electricity through your body until you are dead - then they ask
if you have anything to say!"
The profoundly shocking story of the mother-of-two, who suffered an
isolation from society that is beyond recompense, is just 1 of 6 death-row
tales that are told in the award-winning play The Exonerated. A scorching
indictment of capital punishment, it has been a phenomenal success in
America, changing hearts and minds on the issue. It opens in Edinburgh on
Tuesday.
All the stories related in The Exonerated, which was created by two young
New York actors, Jessica Blank and Erik Jensen, authors of Living Justice,
about the making of the play, are tragic and terrible. Each one is
powerfully told in the words of the condemned people - but it's Jacobs'
story that breaks your heart. Yet her heart is not broken, nor is her
indomitable spirit. Sunny by name (her given name is Sonia) and sunny by
nature, she says that laughter and living well are the best revenge for
what has happened to her. "I honestly never think about revenge," she says
softly, while trying to find a comfortable place to sit to ease the pain
she suffers after being seriously injured 5 years ago in a car crash.
"Life sends all of us many trials - it's just that mine seem to be a
little more dramatic than most," she tells me as she limps up to greet me
warmly at the airport on the west coast of Ireland, where she now lives.
As a yoga teacher who does workshops for long-term prisoners, she can deal
with pain, she says. She is just a little seized up after the long drive
here.
"I'll be fine tomorrow," she says with a wide smile. And you know that she
will, because this is a woman of iron will and immense inner strength.
"I'm a survivor," she says, banging her fist on the kitchen table. "I'm
strong." And, she adds proudly, she ought to be in The Guinness Book of
Records, since she has been portrayed by more actresses than any other
woman alive. In The Exonerated, Jacobs has been played by Susan Sarandon
(who also starred as her in the TV movie version), Mia Farrow, Lynn
Redgrave, Jill Clayburgh and many others. "With the exception of Mia, a
lotta tall women have been me - and I'm so short," exclaims Jacobs, who
has also played herself on stage and will do so for a limited run in
Edinburgh, where the cast also includes Aidan Quinn and Robert Carradine.
Jacobs' heart-rending story never fails to move audiences to tears. "The
play has given us a voice, but more importantly it has given Jesse a
voice. As he was executed, he said, 'They're gonna remember my name.' And,
thanks to The Exonerated, they do," she says.
Today, with the shimmering Atlantic Ocean virtually on her doorstep, and
rolling green fields surrounding the rented farmhouse she shares with
Peter Pringle, her 66-year-old partner - himself an exonerated death-row
inmate, from Ireland - Jacobs has finally found freedom. Although, even
when she was imprisoned in a tiny cell - "6 paces from the door to the
open toilet in the corner, and this wide," she says, stretching out her
arms to demonstrate how she could touch the walls - she remained a free
spirit.
"If you sit there rubbing 2 sticks together and crying on your sticks,
they're never going to make a spark," she says. "But, you know, if you
stop feeling sorry for yourself, just because you are determined not to
believe in hopelessness, then a spark happens, and then you keep fanning
that wee spark until you've got a flame. I realised that it was like a big
trick." Then she quotes her own words in The Exonerated, "I was like
Dumbo, and I put this feather in my nose and I flew, because I could fly
anyway."
40 years ago, New York-born Sunny Jacobs, barely 18, fell pregnant and
married her high-school sweetheart in Long Island, where she and her
younger brother were raised by loving parents. "My childhood was very
safe, very ordinary," she says.
The marriage broke down, leaving Jacobs a single parent, but blessed with
a son, Eric. Then, when she was 23 - "a hippie mom and a vegetarian,
believing only in peace and love" - she met Jesse Tafero, who had a police
record that dated from his teenage years. But those misdemeanours would
come back to haunt them. "I grew up with the romantic American dream, and
I wanted that," recalls Jacobs. "All I dreamed of was having a loving
husband and a father for my son; I was in love with Jesse, and I thought
we would live happily ever after."
They were together for 3 years, and although they weren't officially
married, she considered him to be her husband. She was the breadwinner,
doing part-time jobs in North Carolina. In 1976 she had recently given
birth to their daughter, Tina, when Tafero announced that he was going to
get himself regular work - not easy, given his police record. But he just
needed to go to Florida one last time to do a little deal. She didn't want
to know the details.
Then he called, told her the deal had fallen through, that he was broke
and had no way of getting home - "and he was staying with some girl". She
said she would be right there to get him. "How stupid was that?" she
wonders now. "But I loved him."
So she put 9-year-old Eric and 10-month-old Tina into her rusting car and
set off. By the time she got to Florida, the car had broken down and
couldn't make the long journey back. Tafero's friend, Walter Rhodes,
offered them a lift part of the way home. Jacobs didn't like him, but he
was willing to drive them north. "We had no money, nothing. And it was
only a ride," she says.
Shortly after they set off, Rhodes pulled into a rest area to sleep. Early
the next morning, 2 policemen, on a routine check, looked in the car, saw
the sleeping passengers, then spotted a gun on the floor between Rhodes'
feet.
They called in to headquarters and discovered that he was on parole, and
possession of a gun is a parole violation. At gunpoint, they ordered him
and Tafero out of the car. Then the shots began.
Shielding her children in the car, the terrified Jacobs didn't know who
had been hit. When it went quiet, she looked up and saw the two policemen
were dead. Rhodes then kidnapped the family at gunpoint, taking them on a
wild journey.
As they sped along the motorway, Jacobs heard helicopters and breathed a
sigh of relief - they were about to be saved. Rhodes swerved to avoid a
roadblock and the police opened fire on the car. Rhodes was shot in the
leg; Jacobs and her family were uninjured. The cops dragged everyone out
and brought them all in as suspects. Although she was scared, Jacobs was
certain they would let her and Tafero go.
Paraffin tests on their hands established that Rhodes was the only one of
the 3 who had fired a gun that day. But Rhodes was a career criminal and
he knew the system. He immediately started arranging a plea bargain - one
in which he would receive 3 life sentences and immunity from the death
penalty, in exchange for serving as star witness against Jacobs and
Tafero.
Tried separately, both Jacobs and Tafero were sentenced to death. She
remained convinced that the police would find out she was innocent."I was
so certain that I would be released that I kept my breast milk going for
Tina for more than a year," she says. "I managed to get a plastic bowl and
at midnight I would express my milk, so that I would still be able to
nurse Tina when I got out. One day, though, I realised there was no point.
She was no longer a baby."
She stayed sane by practising yoga, meditating, keeping a journal on
toilet paper, and continuing her relationship with Tafero through love
letters. They wrote to each other almost daily for 14 years - they each
got Japanese dictionaries and used the language for their correspondence,
because all mail was read by prison officers. "I existed on those
letters," she remembers.
Meanwhile, Rhodes was also writing letters - to judges and prosecutors, in
which he disavowed his previous testimony against the couple and took sole
responsibility for the crime. Then he would recant his recantations, so
that they both remained on death row. In 1982, though, the death sentence
against Jacobs was overturned and commuted to life imprisonment. Rhodes
was released on parole in 1994.
Fate was not done with Jacobs, however. Shortly afterwards, her parents
were killed in a plane crash in Louisiana. "That was the most horrible day
of my life," she recalls. "I saw it on the TV news; I knew that it was
their flight."
But Jacobs was not without caring supporters. A childhood friend, Micki
Dickoff, from Los Angeles, heard about her plight and was convinced of her
innocence. She worked tirelessly for Jacobs and Tafero, bringing in a new
defence lawyer and ultimately making a TV film about the case.
Despite these efforts, though, Tafero was executed. Then, 2 years later,
Jacobs was freed, in large part based on the theory that Rhodes was
actually the lone killer. It emerged that evidence in the couple's favour
had been held back, including a polygraph test taken by Rhodes, which had
been falsified.
After her release, Jacobs went to live in LA with Dickoff. "Everything had
changed. I hadn't, though. Sure, I was 45, but it all moved too fast. I
had to get used to crossing streets and opening doors. It was too much."
Taken up by the anti-death penalty movement, she became the face of their
poster campaign - "This poor little woman, this pitiful victim. But I
wasn't a victim! I was a survivor. Yes, I was wronged, but I was no
victim. So I left the movement. I had to build some sort of life for
myself and my children. We had to become a family again.
"We had a lot of difficulties. Tina and I made 4 attempts at living
together; then my son came to live with us, with his 3-year-old daughter,
Claudia, now 16. We were an odd family, because we had been so damaged,
robbed of all that time together, but somehow we survived. We connected."
After all those years on death row, what does the rest of your life look
like? "It looks like this," replies Jacobs, contentedly surveying her
cheerful kitchen, with pots of scarlet geraniums and family snapshots
everywhere. "Peter and I have no money. We own nothing. We could walk away
from here today with only 2 suitcases, and we would still be happy," she
says.
Despite having received no compensation, Jacobs says, "This is the
happiest time of my life; I've never known such peace, such love. It's a
gift." At this she gazes up into Pringle's navy-blue eyes. And indeed,
this gentle giant of a man, with his mane of snowy-white hair and beard,
looks exactly like Santa Claus as he gift-wraps her in his muscular arms
and kisses her pale cheek.
WHILE we talk, Pringle deftly prepares a hearty meal for us - picking
fresh salad ingredients grown by Jacobs - and tells his own story. He was
a fisherman who had recently separated from his wife (he has 2 sons, 2
daughters and 5 grandchildren) when, in 1980, he was arrested, tried,
convicted and sentenced to death for the killing of a policeman and of
committing armed robbery in Ballaghaderreen, County Roscommon. "When the
crime was committed, I was at least 50 miles away, in Galway," he says.
"The police had pursued one of the perpetrators into the county, but they
lost him. Then, for whatever reason, they decided to pick me up and
fabricate evidence against me. I did not have a police record, although I
had a political background and had been interned during the 1950s. Perhaps
that was enough reason for them."
His death sentence (capital punishment was not abolished in Ireland until
1990) was revoked 10 days before he was due to be executed. His sentence
was reduced to 40 years' penal servitude, without remission. He spent
almost 15 years in jail. Despite having left school at 13, he studied law
and finally proved his innocence. In May 1995 his conviction was quashed.
His fight for compensation is ongoing. "It's Dickensian. It's as if
they're waiting for me to die," he says.
"The coincidences between our stories just blew me away," says Jacobs.
They met when she was speaking at an Amnesty meeting in Ireland in 1998.
"Then he tells me he survived by studying yoga and meditating. I realised
I had finally met someone who knew where I had been, but also where I was
going."
Jacobs' goals are now to build a good, meaningful life with her "big
fella", help others to survive injustices and to understand the importance
of healing and reconciliation, and to make just enough money from
lecturing to visit her beloved grandchildren in the US.
But doesn't she feel any bitterness or anger over what happened to her?
With some difficulty, she stands up, holds her iron-grey head up high,
puts her hand on her heart and says, "They took away my name and I became
a number. I was in there 17 years; I'm not gonna give them one more minute
of my life."
The Exonerated is at Assembly @ Queen's Hall, Edinburgh, from August 9 to
27. For tickets and information, call 0131 668 2019
SOUTH AFRICA:
The death sentence will protect our children
Why is the government allowing our innocent angels to die and these
screwed up evil bastards to live? Bring back the death sentence.
My heart bleeds for the little innocent 5-year-old angel - Shanae Muir -
whose body was found decomposed.
It hurts so much, this pain within me is so great that the tears can't be
held back. But forget about me - think about her mom, her dad, her
siblings, her family. No, think about her.
The trauma - just being separated from her family, the fear of being with
these sinners. The anguish of not knowing what was happening, the loss of
her smile, her joy, her innocence, her future - not seeing her favourite
toy - not being able to say mommy again or tasting her favourite sweet.
Shanae represents all our children that have been hurt, abused, violated,
murdered.
This is a baby, we can teach her the fears of the world, try to protect
her, try to prevent it - but when these monsters attack, we are all left
helpless.
This baby is just one in the many millions that have been betrayed by us
because we do not have the balls to stand up and protect our children. To
fight for what is right.
We are cowards - we have killed our children. Now is the time to say
enough is enough.
We either kill our children and ourselves or we kill evil.
Bring back the death sentence.
K Naicke----Merebank
(source: Letter to the Editor, The Sunday Tribune)
