May 29, 2005

Dear Sis:

Last week, in a 6-1 decision, the Florida Supreme Court denied my appeal and affirmed my death sentence once again. Although the denial itself was disappointing and surprising, given the facts and the legal issue involved, it was the Court's basis for their decision (or lack thereof) which is astounding. Just to recap, you know that I was sentenced to death by a jury and judge that had been misled to believe (by the prosecutor) that I was the triggerman. On my direct appeal the Florida Supreme Court, in 1990, found that there was insufficient evidence to sustain a finding that I was the triggerman, and insufficient evidence that the homicide was premeditated. The Court went on to find that there was sufficient evidence to sustain a conviction for felony murder, and then, addressing my death sentence held that, even though I wasn't the triggerman, my death sentence could be upheld under the proportionality analysis mandated by Tison v. Arizona. What the Court failed to do was to consider how the jury's and judge's erroneous reliance upon the "fact" that I was the triggerman impacted upon, or affected their decision to sentence me to death. In legal jargon this is called a "jury taint" where a jury's death recommendation is "tainted" by their reliance upon the "facts" which later prove to be wrong. In a long line of cases, from the U.S Supreme Court on down, the Courts have held that the appropriate remedy in such cases is to vacate the death sentence and to conduct a new penalty phase proceeding so that a new jury and judge - free of the previous taint - can decide whether the defendant deserves to live or die. So, for the last 15 years, I've been trying to convince the courts to reconsider my death sentence in this light. In the interim, the State, through its many court filings, has openly conceded that I wasn't the triggerman, that they know Frank Valdes was the triggerman. And, of course, I've been saying, "Hey, that isn't what you told my jury and judge in 1988!" The bottom line, Sis, is that I was recommended for death and sentenced to death by a jury and judge who based their decision, at least in part, upon the mistaken, erroneous "facts" that have now been proven to be wrong. (Keep in mind that my 1988 prosecutor vigorously argued, and tried to prove, that I was the triggerman, even while he knew that I wasn't, and while he suppressed evidence that would have proven that I wasn't. The same prosecutor prosecuted Frank 18 months later and during Frank's trial that prosecutor argued that Frank was the triggerman.)

Anyway, flash forward to 2003 when, pursuant to a new law regarding the right to have DNA testing conducted, we filed our motion asserting that newly discovered evidence (in the form of the victim's blood evidence on Frank's clothes combined with no blood on mine) proves conclusively that I was not the triggerman. I want to use this "newly discovered evidence" to resurrect my "jury taint" claim (which has never been conclusively ruled upon). The State responded by saying "we know Van Poyck did not kill the victim, but it does not matter because the Florida Supreme Court already upheld his death sentence." The trial judge denied the motion and, of course, I appealed. Now I had the State openly conceding on the record that I was not the triggerman and their only defense was "it does not matter." Now, here's what you need to understand: in order for me to prevail on my claim I was required to demonstrate that "there is a reasonable probability that I would have received a different sentence had my jury and judge known about the "newly discovered evidence." In other words, is there a "reasonable probability" that I would not have been sentenced to death had my jury and judge known I was not the triggerman? This is called the "reasonable probability" test, and it's a common analysis or standard in criminal law jurisprudence. Luckily for me, I was armed with several previous decisions from the Florida Supreme Court granting relief in almost identical situations. In these previous death penalty cases the Court had ordered new penalty phases where the defendant produced "newly discovered evidence" showing that he was not the triggerman. The Florida Supreme Court had repeatedly held that the issue of the triggerman was a crucial determining factor in deciding whether a defendant should live or die. Accordingly, that Court held, when a defendant produces "newly discovered evidence" showing that he might not have been the triggerman, he meets the "reasonable probability" test and the remedy is to vacate the death sentence and conduct a new penalty phase. So, armed with these cases (State v. Mills being the prime case) I felt reasonably confident on my appeal. After all, I wasn't asking for much, just to have a fresh jury decide my fate based upon the true facts.

In their 6-1 decision the Florida Supreme Court said the fact that I was not the triggerman did not matter. Specifically, they said that "there is no reasonable probability that Van Poyck would have received a different sentence had his jury and judge known that he was not the triggerman." The Court did not (because it could not) cite one single case to support this remarkable statement, and they simply ignored State v. Mills and all the other cases I cited in support of my decision. Justice Anstead dissented and wrote a 3-page dissenting opinion wherein he blistered the majority's decision, but once again I'm on the wrong side of a split decision by the Florida Supreme Court (I've had two 4-3 decisions in years past). When you read the majority opinion, Sis, two things become clear: The Court (they said as much) tailored this decision just for me; and second, this Court is absolutely determined to have me executed, no matter what, and they're not going to let the "law" or the "facts" stand in their way. It's really hard to understand this resolute determination when you know (as I pointed out to the Court) how many cold-blooded killers they've let off the row, guys who've personally killed multiple victims in heinous and atrocious ways. In my appellate brief I pointed out the many such cases like these where the same Court said that death was not an appropriate sentence. And yet, in my case, where I did not even kill anyone, the Court refuses to even consider allowing a new jury and/or judge to reconsider my sentence and make a judgment based upon the true facts...

OK, Sis, I've gotta go. I've got a lot of work ahead of me as I cobble together a certiorari petition, in the hopes that the U.S. Supreme Court will view this matter differently. Enjoy the Memorial Day weekend. I hope you'll be rooting for Danica Patrick in today's Indianapolis 500. She's a spunky gal and a fine driver.

Love & Peace,
Bill

May 17, 2005

Dear Sis,

No yard again. This is becoming a regular thing; yard is being cancelled all week long (for the last 3 or 4 weeks now) so they can "work on the yard fences", but they never do any work. For the past month we've only been going out one day per week, on Sundays. Anyway, instead we had cell clean up and haircuts. I got my hair cut (I keep it pretty short) and then a shower, so I'm feeling pretty good. When you can only shower 3 times a week, every shower is something to look forward to. Our "barbers" here are two fellow death row prisoners, only one of whom, Rob Lovitt, actually knows how to cut hair. Rob's a good barber & I always get him to cut my hair. Unfortunately, unless the U.S. Supreme Court intervenes, Rob will be executed very soon, probably within 90 days. Rob's case is an interesting one. He was convicted in a more or less run-of-the-mill murder (a store owner stabbed to death in an apparent robbery attempt) on circumstantial evidence that was underwhelming to say the least. I don't know if Lovitt is guilty (he's consistently professed his innocence during the 5 years I've known him) but I know his legal issues are substantial. Immediately following his conviction (based primarily upon the testimony of a jailhouse snitch, a "professional witness" who claimed Rob "confessed" to him in jail) the clerk of the trial court, in direct violation of a specific state law on the subject, and against the specific advice of two other clerks, destroyed all of the evidence in the case. This included DNA evidence (bloodstained evidence) which the defense had challenged and wanted to have independently tested. (The Virginia State Crime Lab has a documented history of rendering false DNA results. Just within the last few weeks the FBI finally established that the lab's false DNA test results had erroneously sent Earl Washington to death row. Washington, after 15 years in prison, was finally exonerated). Anyway, the destruction of all the evidence has denied Rob the ability to possibly discover that some of his evidence was/is exculpatory. As you know, many of the wrongly convicted end up proving their innocence because they were able to (often many years later) have evidence re-tested or re-examined. You'd think that the State's deliberate destruction of all of the evidence, which was done on orders from the prosecutor and which destruction violated State law, would entitle someone to a new trial. But, so far the Courts have denied Rob any relief, essentially telling him "sorry, but too bad." Now, Rob is represented by Kenneth Starr (yes, that Ken Starr) who is passionately arguing his case. It's now in front of the U.S Supreme Court. Virginia will be signing Rob's death warrant very soon; they consistently don't even wait to see if the U.S Supreme Court is going to grant certiorari review. They are very eager to execute people in this commonwealth...

That's it for now, Sis. Keep your chin up and keep smiling!

Love & Peace,
Bill

May 11, 2005

Dear Sis,

Well, despite the erratic "must be global warming" weather I can confidently announce that Spring has finally arrived, at least in this little corner of Virginia. See, a few hundred yards beyond the fences there's a tall, spindly tree (of a type I've never been able to identify) which I've watched for the 5 1/2 years I've been here. Every winter, almost overnight, it suddenly drops all it's leaves and the result is a dead-looking collection of bare, sparse branches. It really is a pitiful looking tree (I think it's been hit by lightning in the past) and every winter I think it is its last one. Then, come Spring, again almost overnight, it suddenly blooms. One day I'm out in the yard and the tree is naked; the next time I go to the yard it is green and bushy and looking vibrant. This had been going on for 5 1/2 years and each time that raggedly old tree blooms again it's sort of a reaffirmation, for me, of the vitality of life...Speaking of the yard, I haven't been out in a week because we've been on a week-long lockdown. The warden locked the entire prison down for "employee appreciation week" so that all of the employees could attend a series of picnics, cookouts and parties. The guards haven't gotten a raise in years, so I guess the warden is trying to make up for that with hot dogs and hamburders... The other day this gal named Piper Roundtree was sentenced to life in prison, with parole eligibility in 15 years, following her first-degree murfder conviction for shoooting down her ex-husband in her driveway. Piper was an attorney, living in Texas, and presumably getting on with her life after divorcing her husband. The husband, living here in Virginia, was a college professor. But, for whatever reason, Piper (wearing a very bad wig and fake ID) flew from Texas to Virginia, waited in ambush, and gunned down the ex-husband in his driveway. Then she returned to Texas, but not before leaving a trail of evidence and witnesses in her wake. Anyway, my point here is that, as murders go, this was as cold, calculated and premeditated as they come. Yet she receives a life sentence and is eligible for parole in 15 years. Meanwhile, you've got people on death row convicted of homicides less agregrious than Piper's (or, as in my case, people who did not kill anyone at all). Piper's case simply illustrates the arbitrary nature of the death penalty in America. Whether a convicted murderer receives a death sentence in this country is really a matter of chance, a function of geography and/or who the local state attorney is, rather than the circumstances of the crime. At every major prison in America there are prisoners walking around in open population who have comitted crimes (murders) much more horrendous than those committed by some of the guys on the row. I know a guy down in Florida who cold-bloodedly murdered five innocent people, yet he's not on the row. I know a guy here in Virginia who murdered six people and he's walking aound in open population. When you're intimately involved in the system, as I've been for so many years, you quickly grasp the incongruities and you see how arbitrary and capricious the imposition of death sentences are. Anyone who thinks that "Justice is being done" is fooling himself. You can call it a lot of things but "Justice" isn't part of the equation.... It's past midnight and Nightline just went off, so I'm gonna wrap this up and mail it off so I can hit the hay. Keep your chin up, Sis, and keep smiling.
Love and Peace,
Bill

April 30, 2005

Dear Sis

It's early Saturday morning, I've just knocked out my breakfast (a fried-egg-and-jelly sandwich and a scoop of grits), and I'm settling down to a long day of legal work. Speaking of the law, yesterday I finished reading the Virginia Supreme Court's recent 139-page direct appeal decision upholding the conviction and death sentence of John Allen Muhammad, a/k/a "the D.C. sniper" who resides over in cell #1. You may recall that his juvenile co-defendant, Lee Boyd Malvo, who was the actual triggerman in this particular murder, was also convicted, but sentenced to life imprisonment. There was a total of 16 shootings and 10 homicides committed by these two clowns, but this trial was for one particular homicide). There's an old legal maxim that "bad cases make bad law," which, in the context of appellate work means that in especially egregious and/or heinous cases involving unsympathetic defendants there is an impulse, often irresistible, to bend the rules and change the law and/or facts in order to obtain the desired result. The problem with this, other than the intellectual dishonesty, is that once the Court scours out a new channel it cannot thereafter unring the bell and the resulting ripples spread outward, overwhelming everyone else (how's that for mixing my metaphors?)

Anyway, this Muhammad appellate decision is a reflection of this maxim. Virginia law explicitly states that (other than killing-for-hire cases) in order to receive a death sentence, you must be the actual killer (a "principal in the first degree"). I wouldn't even be on death row, for example, if my crime had occurred in Virginia. At any rate, Muhammad wasn't the shooter in this case. But, because this was such a high profile case (and certainly it was exceptionally cold, calculated & atrocious) it was predictable that the Virginia Supreme Court was going to indulge in whatever legal contortions and semantic gymnastics it deemed necessary in order to sustain this death sentence. Which is exactly what they did. If effect, the Court held that the law doesn't really mean what it seems to say and that you can be the actual killer without being the actual killer. The extent to which the Court bent over backwards to stretch the law's definitions to fit around the particular facts of this case would be laughable if the case wasn't so tragic and serious. Even on this very conservative Court, three of the seven Supreme Court Justices dissented. Now that the Court has "opened the door" in this single case, by stretching the law's definition of what constitutes an "actual killer" to encompass those that did not actually kill, the Commonwealth will, as certainly as water seeks its own level, now seek the death penalty in many more cases against defendants, who up until now, clearly were not eligible for a capital conviction and sentence.

I don't know if you've followed the recent rash of child abductions & murders down in Florida (little girls kidnapped, raped and murdered by convicted sex offenders living in their neighborhoods)? It's an old story, or I should say, it's a sadly common story. If there's one thing I've learned from my 35+ years in prison and reform schools, is that sexual predators do not stop or change. These guys are wired differently, and I mean that literally. A burglar, robber or a common thief, can wake up one day and decide to change, to turn his life around. A sexual predator, and especially a pedophile, cannot do this. Nowadays most people are coming to recognize this but I cannot understand why it's taken so long and why the Courts and legislators have been so reluctant to tackle this subject. You know, I was sentenced to life in prison at age 17 for a robbery in which nobody was hurt. I wasn't in prison very long before I learned what all convicts intuitively know: child molesters get every break inthe book and are routinely sentenced to probation or very short sentences. Like most people I detest child molesters and in my early years in prison I became very bitter over what I perceived as the widespread pattern of leniency accorded to all child molesters. While I was doing that life sentence, doing 5, 6, 8, 10 years, I'd watch particular child molesters come in, get out, come back, get out, come back, get out, over and over and over. Child molesters routinely got kid glove treatment from prosecutors, judges, prison officials, and the Parole Commission. It was so bad, and so widespread and consistent, that I came to suspect that perhaps there was a secret cabal of fellow pedophiles within the criminal justice system who made sure their fellow travelers got every break possible. It sounds crazy, but I could not otherwise explain what I was personally witnessing year after year after year. I'll tell you the message that I (and all other convicts) did get, loud and clear: that the citizens of Florida (speaking through their legislators and judges) cared a lot more about their money and property than about their kids. If you mess around and rob, steal or burglarize in Florida you will get a life sentence (or 99 years, another favorite sentence in Florida), but if you rape their kids, well, that's ok. This is a running joke within the prison system. Florida's prisons are chock full of guys doing Life for robbery or burglary, just as I was doing Life back in 1972. I served 15 years and during that same time I saw many, many pedophiles go through the system 3, 4 or 5 times. I cannot tell you how bitter that made me, sis. It also confirmed to me the apathy of the citizenry over their children. That sounds like a cold and cynical statement, but any objective observer knows that it's true. Florida has a long and rich institutional history of treating its children like trash, and there is a built-in institutional apathy that is immune to change. Every few year's there's another scandal at the Division of Child Services, and another blue-ribbon panel issues another report, but nothing ever changes. Then the public expresses amazement and shock when one of these abused kids grows up and begins cutting people's heads off...

I'm signing off, Sis. Keep your chin up & a smile on your face.
Love & Peace,
Bill

April 21, 2005

Dear Sis,
I just returned from the "Yard" ( a real misnomer inasmuch as our outside recreation consists of being placed in a series of fenced-in cages, or "dog runs" as I call them, each one about the size of our cells) and I'm in a good mood. The weather was beautiful, about 70 degrees, clear, blue skies, the air clean and fresh, and I threw bread to the gang of little sparrows that always seem to be waiting for me. They know me by sight & know they're going to be fed, the fat little suckers. We've got 3 or 4 large crows, though, that hang about & when the crows show up the little birds hide. Anyway, as I always do, I spent my 2 hours pacing back and forth, mostly talking with my neighbor, Bill. He's an ex-colonel in U.S. Army Military Intelligence, and a very interesting character. His case is very unusual and intriguing; I seldom say this about guys I meet on the row, and I don't say this lightly, but I'm pretty certain that Bill is totally innocent. Any thinking person who objectively examines this guy's case has to entertain the same thought. It's the kind of story you expect to see on 20/20 or Datleine or 48 Hours. He's very fortunate in that now he has a powerful and prestigious law firm out of Seattle representing him in his post conviction proceedings. The firm is Preston Gates & Ellis, and the Gates is Bill Gates, Sr. the father of that Bill Gates. If he would have had quality lawyers at his trial he wouldn't even be here; I just hope it isn't too late for him. At any rate, I'm relaxing for awhile, waiting on our supper tray (I heard it's hot dogs tonight). It's interesting how happy a couple of hours of "yard" can make me. It really doesn't take a whole lot to please me (or anyone) when you're on the row; life is reduced to the simplest of pleasures, a sunny day, a fresh breeze, a chirping bird, the swaying pine trees off in the distance. On the flip side, other than the state trying to kill me, I don't have a lot of worries either. No mortgage payments to sweat, no stressing out about bills, or insurance, or traffic jams, no moaning about a lousy job & an obnoxious boss. So, it all balances out, right. Here, like everywhere, there's a certain equilibrium to be found and maintained.

I thought I was reasonably knowledgeable about this type of thing, but I was surprised to read about an incident in 1958 where a B-47 accidently dropped an atomic bomb in a rural field in South Carolina. The high explosive content of the 4-ton bomb exploded, injuring a family and destroying their farm house and out buildings, while leveling an acre-sized circle of pine trees. The nuclear core remained on the plane, luckily. It fell while a crew member was tugging on a strap, trying to unjam a switch, and he accidently hit the "emergency release" button. It just goes to show you that no matter how many precautions you take, there's always the element of human error, and when the consequences are so severe it makes you wonder what we were thinking about in the first place (flying training missions with live nuclear bombs hanging by straps in the bomb bay). The whole world immediately learned of the incident & the Russians astutely pointed out that had there been an actual atomic explosion, it probably would have precipitated an all out atomic retaliation by America against the USSR, because we would have believed we'd been attacked by them. (That was the height of the Cold War and all sides had itchy trigger fingers back then). Wouldn't that be something, to have a simple accident like that initiate a nuclear holocaust? The end of the world because someone tugs on the wrong strap? That's a pretty good definition of insanity.

They say there's no education in the second kick of a mule, and that certainly seems to be the case with this nation when it comes to our gasoline/energy situation. Apparently we learned nothing from the gas shortages of the 70's which I still vividly recall. I watch the news and see everyone complaining about the high price of gas, but they better get used to it. We will never again see the bottom side of $2.00/gallon of gas. (Actually even @ $2.00 a gallon gas is now priced at historic lows, when inflation is factored in). The Europeans regularly pay $4.00 to 5.00 per gallon, which is one reason they're so far ahead of us on conservation and energy efficient technology. We Americans are so spoiled & shortsighted. In reality high gas prices are a good thing, a necessary cattle prod to make us change our energy-ignorant and energy-foolish habits and policies. The truth is that cheap oil has been our biggest problem for the last 30 years 'cuz it makes us complacent enough that we've not needed to (nor had the foresight to) make the necessary technological investments to wean ourselves away from oil. And of course that's just fine with the big oil companies who, along with OPEC, has America by the short hairs ( and apparently we like it, given our lack of a response or coherent energy policy). Hey, it's no accident that none of the oil companies have built a single new refinery in America in some 30 years. That self-imposed "lack of refinery capacity" is their twice-a-year excuse for their predictable price hikes (which generate billions in extra profits during the weeks these "spikes" last). Nobody ever questions why the industry refuses to build more capacity. Right about the time the crying gets really bad & questions begin being asked, the "crisis" suddenly eases and the spike falls back to relatively normal ranges & everyone changes the subject. It's a real dog & pony show done right in front of us, twice a year, like clockwork. I'm not a knee-jerk anti-business guy; I know that business is what makes this nation run. But I also know a hustle when I see one, especially one that's been running for decades, with a wink and a nod from politicians, and abetted by incredible public apathy & general ignorance of the subject. The oil compaies understand just where the equilibrium is, where the pain threshold is, how to keep prices high enough to reap major profits without angering the public enough to make them rebel and demand solutions and changes. You know, the best thing that could happen to America, in the long term, is to see permanent $100/barrel oil prices. It would be a bad blow to the economy but it would be the kick in the teeth we need to force us to take the necessary steps. Our lack of foresight and our unwillingness to sacrifice for a greater good is sad. Cowardly politicians are at least partly to blame; nobody wants to tell the public what they need to be told; they'd rather tell the public what they want to hear (Low gas prices! Drive big cars! Everything is fine!) Where the hell are the leaders?? But ultimately the weight is on the public's apathetic shoulders. We're the ones who vote these people in. When it comes to energy policy we've failed to understand the most basic laws of the Universe: you reap what you sow, and eventually all chickens come home to roost.

I didn't mean to preach! I'll wrap this up and post it. (I got the pics you sent, including Toby the tortoise! The house looks good & the red rock desert is beautiful!)

Love & Peace,
Bill

P.S. Did you ever watch the Extreme Makeover Home Edition? It's on ABC every Sunday evening; it's a program where a building crew finds a very deserving & needy family and they build them a new house in 7 days. It's really the best show on TV, period, and I dare you to watch an entire program without shedding tears.

April 17, 2005

Dear Sis

Meanwhile, back in the Commonwealth of Virginia, I've just finished picking at my supper (lukewarm spaghetti, boiled carrots, bread & applesauce, mashed into a small plastic tray), and I'm stretched out on my bunk, munching from a bag of canteen pork rinds, eyeing the setting sun's slanting rays angling in through my narrow horizontal slit window, watching them slide inexorably up my wall, bisecting a cloud of floating dust motes. Years ago I used to carefully pencil mark the rays on my wall, capturing the arcing pattern of the changing seasons, until it became just another pointless reminder of life passing me by. Hell, I'm edging up on my eighteenth year since my arrest, and over 16 years since I was sentenced to death. Who needs to be reminded of that? Anyway, I was laying here, relaxing, enjoying the relative solitude. (nobody screaming, banging or kicking their door, nobody flooding out their cell, and everyone else's cell in the process), debating how to spend the rest of my evening. Read? Write? Legal work? T.V.? Radio? Pace my cell? Meditate? Work out? Stare at the Wall? A pretty narrow spectrum of choices, huh? But, you've gotta work with what you've got. Some guys here just spend all their freetime watching cartoons & soap operas. If you live squeezed in a box long enough, immersing yourself in the tedious routines, the bland, numbing sameness can grind you down, erase your recollections of what it means to be free, until your only goal is to urge each dumb day forward. Day to week to month to year your mind will try to convince you that the tin can you inhabit is all that matters & all that there is until, if you let it, you've fooled yourself into believing it's real. It takes effort to shatter that dull existence, more than some guys can muster... At any rate, I voted to write.

Are you as glad as I am that the brouhaha over Terri Schiavo is finally past? It was a sad & tragic case, and ultimately a very personal issue deserving a serious reflection. But it sure didn't beong in the hands of grandstanding politicians. I think a fair number of those protesters had martyr complexes. Some of them were "professional protesters" (the ones with eyes as bright & wild as crazed cats) moving from hot button issue to hot button issue, simply for the sake of publicity. Down in Florida I celled next to Paul Hill for years, the anti-abortion lay preacher who gunned down an abortion doctor & his bodyguard in Pensacola, and I learned all about guys with martyr complexes. Most of those protesters at Terri Schiavo's place were consumed with projecting their own beliefs & convictions, validating themselves, rather than considering Terri's wishes and welfare. None of them would honestly want to exist like that, but they were eager to force Terri to do so, if they could. When I saw Terri's brain CAT scan, compared to a normal brain scan, it was clear to me that "Terri" was no longer there. You know, Americans seem to be profoundly uncomfortable with the subject and idea of death, as if they want to deny their own mortality, and fend off the grim reaper by any means necessary, even if it means existing hooked up to tubes and wires. They just can't bear to let go. As for all those protesters, the hypocrisy was like smoke in my nose. Most of them who were waving those signs about safeguarding "the sanctity of life" (one sign asked "What part of 'Thou shall not Kill' don't you understand?") are they very same ones showing up at prison gates for executions, shouting "Fry that bastard!" And the very same grandstanding politicians self-righteously preaching about the horror of "taking a human life" and about "erring on the side of life" are the same ones clamoring to execute ever more people at an ever faster rate. They don't even recognize their hypocrisy. At least the last Pope was resolutely consistent; he didn't believe in killing at either end of the spectrum.

Here on the row there's been a subtle ratcheting up of melancholyness (don't know if that's a real word). Five or six of the 23 guys here on the row have run out of, or will very soon run out of, legal options, which in this state means that their life is about to suddenly go wrong. In short, their executions have become imminent & inescapable. In Virginia, they're real serious about killing people. The execution process here is a well-oiled machine that grinds relentlessly and very quickly, without a backward glance. Other states have basic procedural safeguards that allow prisoners to at least raise issues of newly discovered evidence, such as DNA evidence. Florida, for example, leads the nation in death row exonerations, with most of those cases occurring after 10-15 years on the row. But in Virginia, those guys would be dead long before any such new evidence could be discovered (I'd be dead three times over if my case was out of Virginia). Here the machinery of death just plows on, without a hiccup. Unlike Florida and most other D/R states, in Virginia very few guys make it past the 5-year mark, and virtually nobody ever gets a stay of execution or any kind of legal relief once their death warrant is signed, which occurs even before the last step (certiorori petition to the U.S. Supreme Court) is reached. I've been here five and a half years and except for 3 guys I've outlived everyone who was here when I arrived. In my first 12 months here they killed 14 guys, including two who were juveniles when they committed their crimes, and each one was chained up and hustled off in front of me (all cells here look inward into an open, common pod) on their way to the death house in Greensville. The execution process here is very personal, immediate and in your face.

Well, next week is the NFL draft and I'm hoping that the Dolphins make some wise choices. I'm giving the new coach, Nick Saban, the benefit of the doubt. My gut instinct is that he'll be exactly what the Dolphins need.

OK, sis, that's it from south of the Mason-Dixon line. Give the dogs a pat on the head for me! Love & Peace, Bill.

Welcome!

Thank you for visiting this site. We offer a unique perspective into life on death row by hosting dialogue between death row inmates and anyone wishing to participate. The idea for this site came from my brother, William Van Poyck, who is on Virginia's death row. You can learn more about Bill's story on his website: www.deathrowwriter.com

Bill is now writing his opening post for this site which will launch the only blog in America directly from Death Row.

Again, thank you for visiting and stay tuned for insightful dialogue!