Conference Report 2020

This year, due to the COVID-19 pandemic and restrictions, we were unable to hold our usual Human Writes conference in London. Instead, we invited members to a virtual meeting via Zoom on 10th October and were pleased to welcome in excess of 120 attendees.

Our first speaker was our patron and well-known US defence lawyer, Clive Stafford Smith. Clive gave a fascinating talk 'My Death Row Journey' about his life and experiences through his many years of involvement in the US death penalty system, starting with his visits to prisoners on Death Row in Reidsville Georgia at the age of 19 before he went to study law at Colombia Law School, and taking us through to the present day and his work with the case of Bilal Abdul Kareem, a US citizen and freelance war correspondent in Syria.

When asked about books he had written, Clive spoke briefly about The Injustice System: A Murder in Miami and a Trial Gone Wrong - the well-known case of Krishna Maharaj and the flaws in the US justice system. He explained that Kris, despite being able to afford a good lawyer, chose the 'inexpensive' lawyer to represent him at trial because he knew he was innocent, so why waste money? In addition, the prosecutor had lied about a key witness having passed a polygraph test, whereas he had in fact failed it. Clive also spoke about the weakness of forensic science, such as that relating to hair analysis which has been proved to have a 50:50 chance of being correct – no more than tossing a coin.

Clive clarified that Kris Maharaj has now been wrongly imprisoned in Florida for 34 years. Recently, despite now being in poor health, Kris was confined in a dormitory with other elderly prisoners for sixteen days as three of them had been tested positive for COVID-19. Nineteen prisoners have died there since the pandemic started.

Speaking about the impact of COVID-19 in the US, Clive cited events in California and how, on 29th May this year, there had been almost no cases of COVID-19 in San Quentin. However, on that day, 120 people (dozens of whom were COVID-19 positive) were driven together in a bus 462 miles to San Quentin and housed with the prisoners there. Within thirty days, 2,000 people had become infected with the virus and ten Death Row prisoners had died - more than the state has executed in decades.

Clive concluded his talk by sharing his support and endorsement of Human Writes, clarifying how what we do helps to bring humanity to our US friends and tasking each one of us to recruit at least one new member within our own circles to join our network of penfriends.

Our second speaker was our patron, Erwin James. Erwin gave a very moving and inspiring talk entitled 'The Power of a Letter'. He spoke about his experiences as a former lifer in the UK, the chances that prison gave him, the people he met who cared for him and the opportunities which he was given, including taking an Open University course. He spoke about the importance of writing to prisoners and giving them hope for the future.

Fifteen years into his twenty-year sentence, Erwin had a chance to write for The Guardian newspaper. Initially the prison authorities had been against him doing so, but he managed to get permission from the Home Office to write a Guardian column called 'A Life Inside'.

Erwin then spoke about the monthly newspaper Inside Time, the UK's only newspaper for prisoners, of which he is the editor. He ended his talk by thanking Human Writes for the hope it brings and said how privileged he feels to be one of our patrons.

Following a ten minute break, during which a gallery of artwork by our Death Row friends was shown, attendees divided into their individual state groups for a thirty minute meeting with their state co-ordinators and fellow writers. Following this we had three short talks from Sue Fenwick, our founder, Caroline Dipple and Cath Casburn, about their Death Row visiting experiences. Sue spoke about the first execution she had witnessed in Texas, keeping a long- time promise to her penfriend that she would be there if the time came, which it did. Caroline emphasised the importance of checking the rules and regulations relating to meeting prisoners on Death Row and Cath spoke of her experiences in visiting Death Row in Ohio.

The final session of the day was the traditional lighting of two candles followed by a minute’s silence. Sue Fenwick then thanked Clive and Erwin for their excellent talks and also thanked Caroline Hayward who had organised the event and ensured its smooth running throughout the day. She also notified attendees that, due to the restrictions resulting from Coronavirus this year, the organisation will be continuing to mark its the twentieth anniversary into 2021 and that, all being well, we will look forward to welcoming members to our normal conference format at the Royal National Hotel, London on 2nd October 2021.