Post by pebbles on Feb 5, 2009 2:49:00 GMT -5
The forgotten victims
The families of death row inmates.
By Federica Valabrega / Washington, D.C.
Tuesday, February 3, 2009
Celia McWee, 83, looked forward to Saturdays for 13 years. This was her favorite day of the week because she would use it to make herself pretty for her Sunday morning visit. But she wouldn’t go to church. She would visit the state prison. She would drive three hours from Augusta, Georgia, to Ridgeville, South Carolina, to visit her son, Jerry McWee. Jerry had been on death row since he robbed and killed John Perry, a grocery store clerk in rural Aiken County, in 1991. He was executed on April 14, 2004. He was 52.
“Saturday was an exciting day because it was my day to choose the outfit I was going to wear, to go to the beauty shop because I wanted to look my best for him,” she said, crying. “And Sunday going up there was exciting because it was something to look forward to. But on the way back, it was nothing but tears.”
For as long as her son was in prison, her weekly schedule kept her going, she said. On Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays, she would not leave the house until she received her son’s phone call. Tuesdays and Thursdays were her days to go grocery shopping, do the laundry, and vacuum. And then came Sundays, when she would share a ride with other inmates’ mothers to the prison. She would meet them at a gas station in Columbia, South Carolina.
Although her son was executed four years ago, not a day goes by that McWee does not recall the sound of his shackles dragging on the floor of the prison each time she visited him.
“The noise that most stands out in my mind is when they would bring them from one building to the other, and we could hear them walking with those chains around their ankles and around their waist and their wrists,” she said. “That is torture. I mean, to see your son being brought in worse than you do to a dog.”
to read on click on the following link.
inthefray.org/content/view/3190/288/
The families of death row inmates.
By Federica Valabrega / Washington, D.C.
Tuesday, February 3, 2009
Celia McWee, 83, looked forward to Saturdays for 13 years. This was her favorite day of the week because she would use it to make herself pretty for her Sunday morning visit. But she wouldn’t go to church. She would visit the state prison. She would drive three hours from Augusta, Georgia, to Ridgeville, South Carolina, to visit her son, Jerry McWee. Jerry had been on death row since he robbed and killed John Perry, a grocery store clerk in rural Aiken County, in 1991. He was executed on April 14, 2004. He was 52.
“Saturday was an exciting day because it was my day to choose the outfit I was going to wear, to go to the beauty shop because I wanted to look my best for him,” she said, crying. “And Sunday going up there was exciting because it was something to look forward to. But on the way back, it was nothing but tears.”
For as long as her son was in prison, her weekly schedule kept her going, she said. On Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays, she would not leave the house until she received her son’s phone call. Tuesdays and Thursdays were her days to go grocery shopping, do the laundry, and vacuum. And then came Sundays, when she would share a ride with other inmates’ mothers to the prison. She would meet them at a gas station in Columbia, South Carolina.
Although her son was executed four years ago, not a day goes by that McWee does not recall the sound of his shackles dragging on the floor of the prison each time she visited him.
“The noise that most stands out in my mind is when they would bring them from one building to the other, and we could hear them walking with those chains around their ankles and around their waist and their wrists,” she said. “That is torture. I mean, to see your son being brought in worse than you do to a dog.”
to read on click on the following link.
inthefray.org/content/view/3190/288/
