George Cordova
Executed by Lethal Injection
February 10th 1999

Excerpt of Roy's letter, # 999245, death row prisoner,

Correctional Center of Ellis Unit One,

Huntsville, Texas, USA, to Isabelle, Swiss penfriend, on January 4, 1999

The sun has not yet risen on the prison of Ellis Unit and its death row.
All is calm, the prisoners are sleeping.

Even so,
voices can be heard in two cells,
a quiet conversation between two men.
( Then suddenly,
from the back of one of those long cages of 1.5m x 2.7m
a man burst into tears,
the desperate sobs of an anguished man.

In the next-door cell,
A man is sitting,
listening to his friend near the heating ventilation.

He is opening his heart to the infinite wave of emotions
which overwhelms his companion of suffering.

Their cells are disposed in such a way that they cannot see each other,
one way of communicating is the heating ventilation system.

So, after years of silence, of withdrawal into oneself
for fear of critical judgements,
one of these men got overwhelmed by a wave of emotions he cannot control.
He must talk to someone.
He cries his anguish,
he tells his deepest fears:
the days go by and slowly the 1Oth of February inches closer:

this day is his date *

Distressing, cruel and intolerable vision
of two men whose lives run at a parallel at times.
Both know what suffering is about

Yet, walls and bars isolate them
preventing the little human contact they could wish to have
in those terrible moments of reprieve between
life (life, really ?) and death,

their death planned in cold-blood,
legalized by
an archaic and inhuman system.

* Jorge Cordova was executed on February 1Oth, 1999

Copyrights Lifespark Case postale 4002 Bale / 05/03/99

SOURCE