UNTIL DEATH DO US PART
After they have been sentenced to die, men and women simply become an identification number that slowly erases their name, their past and more often than not, their humanity. Behind each number, however, remains an individual with a past, a family, and loved ones. The death penalty reaches far beyond the four walls of a cell. Individuals from all walks of life, who pass each other without necessarily knowing one another, are engulfed by the death machine.
Whether they are a mother, a sister, a loved one, a pen pal, an activist, a chaplain, a spiritual advisor, a former warden, an attorney, a prosecutor, a death row inmate or even a victim's family member, all individuals express, directly or indirectly, the difficulty and often the suffering brought onto them by capital punishment. Indeed, it would be naïve to believe that the death penalty only affects the condemned: entire families collapse and individuals inside and outside the prison system are forever changed.
For 10 years, I documented the death penalty in Texas through the testimonies of hidden victims of capital punishment. Texas is the State that carries out the highest number of executions in the United States.
My book Until Death Do Us Part was released in April 2020,
with a foreword by Sister Helen Prejean and and afterword by Rick Halperin
For more information, check out :
- article published in the United Academics Journal of Social Science
- Utah Public Radio/Utah State University
Podcast & Interview with Tom William
- article published in the daily Ouest-France (in French)
