It’s very easy to loose your identity when everybody wants to forget that you are alive, when fear wins and hate takes control. It is in that haze of a semi-human, semi-animal existence when you eventually become a number: a date for your death which everybody is looking for, a number of meals, a number of phone calls allowed, a number of cigarettes, a number of visits, a number of statistics, a number for the government, a number for the seconds still remaining of life before “the moment” arrives.
I have just read that one of the most important characteristics of a capitalist society is the “Law of Supply and Demand”. The more demanded a product is, the more expensive it’s going to be.
I can’t avoid thinking that I am as well a product of this law. My death is more demanded, and therefore the price of my life is more expensive. It doesn’t matter how expensive my death is. It is not a question of saving money by keeping me alive in prison for the rest of my life. The point is that the customer is always right. (They say that “Might makes right” as well, which it may also be the case with me.) The law of the market always wins.
This morning I woke up with an idea fixed in my head: if my death is going to be paid with tax money and every person who pays taxes in this state is paying for my death, this means that Father Pouland, my friend, my spiritual guide these last years of my life, my mother, my brother, my friends, everybody is paying for my death, but the most incredible feeling is to realize that even I am paying for my own death….
I have received support of many Christian and Catholic communities that are against capital punishment, but when the moment of electing our governor arrives, our decision does not depend on the support (or opposition) of capital punishment by the candidates, but on many other issues.
Believe it or not, I once loved a woman. Her name was Leslie and all I remember is the way she used to listen to me. I won’t have enough life for regretting what I did to her. Don’t you think it’s enough pain to be conscious of your own acts and to be alive for the rest of your life?
Please, don’t get me wrong, I don’t ask for anyone’s mercy. I am a public danger. I need help. The best thing that can happen to me is dying. The worst condemnation would have been to live.
I am guilty, I can’t deny this. I was terrified by my father, afraid of my mother and now I scare and terrify all of you. I am a victim of society and I make victim’s out of society’s members, but there are others after me, like Carlos Cifuentes, that are innocent. Believe me, when you are alone in prison and hours seem like centuries and at other time milli-seconds, the truth between us becomes revealed.
His only crime was to be at the wrong place, with the wrong people in the wrong moment. His worst crime was being defended by the cheapest lawyer in the state and to have been manipulated for politics using him as an example of “justice efficiency”.
Now I have to leave. This letter was my choice for “last wish” as this ritual is known. Father Pouland says that there is an after life world that we can’t see. Maybe in this world where numbers don’t exist, I will finally find the peace I never had here.
Maybe in another world, an innocent victim of our human justice 2004 years ago will see in me as a scared eight year old little boy crying for help without answer. Maybe one day that victim will forgive me due to my “mitigating circumstances”. I never had a “happy family” while I was growing up, I never had anyone who loved me. In a way I am peaceful. I didn’t choose my life, but I wouldn’t like to be judged in the other life for having the culpability of being mentally sound and still putting someone to death with other options available.
However, I don’t blame you. I am responsible for one of your lives and you are responsible for mine.
* In memoriam to all the victims of capital punishment
