After more than 35 years, it looks like the conversation’s finally started about the cruelty and the unfairness of life without parole sentences. Academics and activists have been talking about it, but now, on August 2, at 9pm, HBO will air a documentary called, Toe Tag Parole: To Live and Die on Yard A. The verbiage on the film’s flyer goes on to state, “Life without parole is not better than the death penalty. It is the death penalty.” Would that the professional death penalty abolitionists understood this truth. It was made by the Academy Award-winning couple, Allen and Susan Raymond of Video Vérite, and filmed here at California State Prison, Los Angeles County. Although I haven’t seen it yet, I know many of my friends appear in it, and that I do as well. My wonderful daughter also appears, which I know was a big decision for her, and something for which I’m both proud and grateful.
There are 50,000 men and women serving life without parole in this country, a number greater than all the rest of the world combined. All of us need to start speaking up and speaking out to counter the deliberate lie that being sentenced to die in prison is somehow not the death penalty. This deliberate lie has been spread and repeated so many times that it’s become an assumed truth. I hope that those who have relied on that lie take the time to watch this film. We have to come out of the shadows and speak truth to power. Condemning tens of thousands of men and women to slowly die in terrible prisons all across this country should be an outrage. It should be a scandal. The fact that it isn’t is nothing short of a tragedy. Or, it’s the inevitable result of the lie that people sentenced to die in prison are not sentenced to death. As George Orwell wrote in 1946, “Political language is designed to make lies sound truthful and murder respectable”. His words ring with an awful truth even today.
Encourage everyone you know to watch this documentary, and then get involved! Call out the death penalty abolitionists on their big lie. Tell them to start fighting to end all forms of the death penalty for all prisoners. Now that the conversation’s started, the real question is, are we going to speak up for ourselves or not? This is Kenneth E. Hartman, Executive Director of The Other Death Penalty Project, from inside California’s prison system.
These commentaries are recorded by Noelle Hanrahan of Prison Radio.
