Breaking Barriers of Isolation

Terrance Williams

     I live in state-sanctioned suspended animation, on Pennsylvania’s death row. Confined to my cell, alone, in a special unit 22 hours a day. I eat, sleep, defecate, urinate, read and write, watch TV or listen to the radio in the same 8΄ by 12΄ cell for years on end. Some interaction with other death row prisoners is allowed for two hours a day five days a week during routine exercise inside a cage that resembles a kennel. 

     The monotony, sensory deprivation and mandated idleness is especially tortuous for any prisoner because it is the ultimate punishment, coupled with alienation and isolation, developed to separate us from general population and from each other although death row prisoners are the best behaved in the system. 

     This solitary confinement paradigm amounts to a long-term storage container for humans. The dehumanization technique ofisolation is like an insidious poison that enters through the ear. It infiltrates your mind, robbing you of enthusiasm, energy – in short, your joy and hope. 

“We have entered the mean season of corrections in which penal philosophy amounts to little more than devising creative strategies to make offenders suffer.” -Alan Elsner 

     I got good at telling time by the shade on the ceiling, the sound of the metal meal cartsclanking on the unit. My bed is like a rack for me. I sit there trying to think of everything and anything. 

     For all death row captives the scene above needs no imagining, it is our everyday life. This is particularly tragic because many of us are not guilty, and many more have been denied a fair trial – letting alone being subjected, in the death penalty, to a cruel and unusual punishment in violation of the Eigth Amendment of the U.S. Constitution. 

“We must not merely shudder when we learn about an injustice and preoccupy ourselves with more pleasant life pursuits.” -Joel Friedman “

"The poor or the dependent often suffer in silence with no hope of justice.” –Benedict J. Groeschel 

     Each man in prison holds on to a glimmer of what life can mean. I view life through contacts with family and friends. My family lives in Philadelphia, six to eight hour drive from here, which allows for only intermittent visits. This forced alienation from family contributes to an abiding sense of loneliness. 

     To defend myself against these emotions I find ways to express them in art, music, friendships, letter writing and during visits and phone calls where minutes and hours disappear with a single greedy swallow. It is the connection with others, and interaction with people outside that makes the loneliness endurable. 

      This is more important than anyone on the outside can imagine. It prevents me from falling into the abyss where society becomes a distant memory. Contact with people in society provides hope. No contact means you are alone and eventually you succumb, you resign yourself to the blackness of the abyss. 

      In a speech to the American Bar Association, U.S. Supreme Court Justice Anthony Kennedy spoke about the inadequacies and injustices of the U.S. prison system:  "A decent and free society founded in respect for the individual ought not to run a prison with a sign or entrance for inmates saying, 'Abandon hope, all you who enter here.'” 

     Be my beacon of hope and exchange letter conversations with me. The more we learn about a person on death row, the more inhumane is execution as the response. -Terrance Williams, mailing address: AY-3626, 175 Progress Drive, Waynesburg, PA 15370