There is a transatlantic drama playing out in Texas. It involves a man condemned to die and his wife, a French citizen who met him through her involvement in France’s movement to end the death penalty. From France’s Le Monde, this article give a sense of what it’s like for Sandrine Ageorges Skinner to stand by her husband Hank – who is fighting the state of Texas to administer a DNA test that he asserts will prove his innocence.
For Le Monde, correspondent Nicolas Bourcierm writes in part:
She would prefer to speak only of him and that we leave out their marriage and the intimacy of this impossible couple – between a French audio/video production manager and a Texas prisoner languishing on death row for fifteen years, and who only has a few hours left. And she would prefer that he remain himself: Hank Skinner, number 999143, convicted of a 1993 triple murder that he says he didn’t commit. He, a 47-year-old construction worker that she’s only been able to see behind the Plexiglas of a visitors room, who has become one of the iconic figures of a flawed system and who is today, more than ever, hanging on a hypothetical last-minute reprieve from the Supreme Court or the State Governor.
Upon reading Skinner’s first letter, Sandrine was moved. “I didn’t fall in love. I prefer to say that we immediately found ourselves.” She wrote long and very frequent letters. It followed a rhythm. For five years, they got to know one another. She – leader of the abolitionist movement in France; he – the “rebellious bohemian.”
From a legal perspective, the Skinner affair immediately presents all the elements of a bad thriller: a botched trial with proceedings marred by irregularities; and an incompetent and corrupt court-appointed lawyer. Hank Skinner has the perfect profile for a guilty man. A loudmouth and an alcoholic – he had already been caught up in the justice system for petty theft. Then the police found in his house, on the night of December 31, 1993, the body of his girlfriend, with her head smashed by axe-handle blows and her two children, stabbed to death.
Time is short. To date, Sandrine Ageorges lists eight post-conviction appeals: all were rejected. The years of legal procedure did nothing but mechanically draw Hank closer, step by step, to his execution. “An unbearable torture,” she says.
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