Death, Defeated
I’m just a plainspoken Colorado criminal defense lawyer, but the way I see it…
One of my few remaining memories of my mother, who died when I was thirteen, is of her, bent over our kitchen table, weeping. I can’t remember her face, but I still see her tears in tiny explosions on the Formica. She is reading aloud the two- or three-paragraph story in the Sacramento Bee: our cousin Foster is dead. Forced by the State of California to take poison gas into his lungs, for the murder of his wife.
My mother fought the death penalty and lost. I’ve written about it, as a journalist and as a lawyer, too many times. Too many times, because each time should have been the last.
Today my mother and I — and every person who believes that while some on death row may deserve their fates, we do not deserve to be the instruments of their fates — have won, at least in the state I now call home.
The governor of Colorado has signed his last death warrant. The death penalty itself is dead.
I’d like to imagine my mother, not in a barely marked grave outside Sacramento, but in the heaven she believed in, weeping anew.
Weeping with relief. For the innocent, for the guilty, for all who sit and judge their fates.
1 May 2020 @ 1:00 pm
I just now read this or I would have replied earlier. I know our Momma is so proud of you! I’m sure she is indeed weeping anew for joy. A special thanks to Ms. Mantei too, from an absent daughter.
2 April 2020 @ 4:45 pm
Phil,
A very personal and moving tribute. A special kudos to Ms. Mantei for taking care of your mom’s headstone.
31 March 2020 @ 6:12 pm
I never understood a barbaric act in response to another barbaric act. Your walk is your talk. Good for CO.
31 March 2020 @ 10:10 am
When I saw the picture of the tombstone of your mother, my heart wept. That is my grandmother I never got to meet. I heard she was a beautiful woman inside and out. I have a vase of hers that Grandmother Carroll gave me when I was young. I still have it and think of her every time I see it. She gave birth to five children; one is my father and the other four are my aunts and uncles who I love very much.
I love you Grandma Jane and will meet you someday…………
Your granddaughter, Monique