A COURAGEOUS FOOL

Nonfiction

Just another evil act

A COURAGEOUS FOOL 

By Todd C. Peppers with Margaret A. Anderson

279 pp. Vanderbilt University Press 

Reviewed by Marty Carlock

This is a book about murder. Murders, actually, plural. They were all legal. Done by you and me. A Courageous Fool is about the death penalty, and the pain it exacts not only for the condemned but on all who participate.

The courageous fool is Marie Deans, a woman who fought the death penalty in some of the states where it is most often applied. Not content with opposing it, Deans visited the men on death row, listened to them, urged them to appeal, reaffirmed their dignity and their existence as human beings.

Marie Deans was likely not an easy person to hang out with. She smoked, talked incessantly, had no patience for those who disagreed with her. On Death Row she was somebody else; the men adored her, protected her. She saw the humanity deep in men who had committed hideous crimes.

She wrote: “To me, the people who had committed murder had survived intense abuse, brain damage, and/or mental illness. They were, however, alive, and they could survive.”

Marie herself was a product of such a childhood. She was Southern nobility, descended from the family of Stonewall Jackson but fallen into genteel poverty. Her mother was likely schizophrenic, “a manipulative woman who used threats and emotional blackmail to try to control people.” Marie was closer to her passive-aggressive father, although she described him as a morally insane molester and sadist. 

Spiritual without being a Bible-thumper, Marie was exceptionally well read and witty, able to come up with jokes even in the death house. She befriended and fought for dozens of convicted individuals, usually failing to save them.

As if her life hadn’t been full enough of tragedy, Marie was stunned by the murder of her mother-in-law Penny, the first mother who she felt loved her. Marie threw herself into the work of Amnesty International, which was moving into opposition to the death penalty. To answer the inevitable question, “But what about the victims?” she formed a group of families like hers who saw no point in revenge.

AI representatives began to visit death rows to report on conditions there. In South Carolina she was shaken by “the classic nightmare of being in a zoo where the animals in the cages are human,” but she also found sympathy for the warden: “It would be a great deal easier to think of you following these execution procedures if you were an insensitive clod. We’ve made it too easy for people to demand the death penalty and tell you to take care of the dirty work.” 

She had never intended to work directly with the men on death row, but she was asked specifically to meet with a prisoner, J. C. Shaw, a schizophrenic who had participated in a rampage of killings. She consented, thinking it might help her understand her mother’s schizophrenia. The South Carolina Department of Corrections had treated Shaw’s mental illness, with the ironic result that he had become aware of what he had done. Depressed and uncommunicative, Shaw dropped his appeals and volunteered for execution, hoping his death would help the victims’ families heal.

A skillful writer, Marie describes her first visit with Shaw, who sat across the table and just nodded until she said, “  ‘I don’t want you be killed.’ ‘Why not?’ His speaking startles me… ‘I don’t know. I believe life is sacred…I know what you did is horribly wrong…I’m not saying you don’t deserve to be punished. But…executing you…is just another evil act…you can’t make it right, and you shouldn’t be part of another evil act.’ ”

The psychological toll on Marie was weighty, but she consented when other men asked her to visit them, too. She became their friend and mentor, got them legal help and counseling, fought through endless petitions and appeals – but managed to save only a few. When she failed she sat with 34 of them until the brutal end.

Nowhere else have I read such graphic descriptions of electrocutions. I can only extract a few choice observations:

The victim’s head and right leg, where the electrodes will be attached, are shaved, and guards spend hours rubbing in conductive material. 

The black-uniformed execution squad tapes over their name tags to render themselves anonymous. 

Once they strap the man into the chair, they pull a mask over his face so his eyeballs won’t pop out. Sometimes he catches fire. 

The stench is terrible. 

To produce the 2300 volts needed, a convertor grinds to a massive, vibrating rumbling sound – that is sure to be heard by other men waiting on death row. 

When it is over, the executioner must wait five minutes for the body to cool before they can confirm death. They pack the body in sandbags to straighten its fused joints.

Do not try to read this book at bedtime. It’s a horror story.

Once a journalist chasing facts for The Boston Globe, Marty Carlock finds it’s more fun to make things up. Her short fiction has appeared in a dozen-plus journals and quarterly publications. She’s author of A Guide to Public Art in Greater Boston and several unpublished novels. She sometimes writes for Sculpture and Landscape Architecture magazines.