In This Timeless Time

In This Timeless Time: Living and Dying on Death Row in America is the title of a new book by Bruce Jackson and Diane Christian.  It's published by the University of North Carolina Press.  The book is also available from Amazon.

In this stark and powerful book, Bruce Jackson and Diane Christian explore life on Death Row in Texas and in other states, as well as the convoluted and arbitrary judicial processes that populate all Death Rows. They document the capriciousness of capital punishment and capture the day-to-day experiences of Death Row inmates in the official "nonperiod" between sentencing and execution.

In the first section, "Pictures," ninety-two photographs taken during their fieldwork for the book and documentary film Death Row illustrate life on cell block J in Ellis Unit of the Texas Department of Corrections. The second section, "Words," further reveals the world of Death Row prisoners and offers an unflinching commentary on the judicial system and the fates of the men they met on the Row. The third section, "Working," addresses profound moral and ethical issues the authors have encountered throughout their careers documenting the Row.

Included is a DVD of Jackson and Christian's 1979 documentary film, "Death Row."

Publishers Weekly provides a review of In This Timeless Time. 

In this comprehensive, well-crafted book, published in association with the Center for Documentary Studies at Duke University, SUNY-Buffalo professors Jackson and Christian build upon the photographs and interviews from death row in Texas that yielded their 1979 book and documentary Death Row (DVD included). Here, photos and text reveal inmate life, discuss capital punishment, and share the fate of each man: execution, a commuted sentence, parole, or after more than two decades, an innocent verdict. Organized into three sections (“Pictures,” “Words,” “Working”), 113 duotone photos form the bulk of the book: Jackson’s original black-and-white images from the 1970s show mealtime, exercise rituals, and inmates socializing in the dayroom and passing time in their cells, with detailed captions about the procedures and inmates’ lives.

The University at Buffalo, where Jackson and Christian teach, has issued a press release, "After 32 Years, Buffalo Authors Revisit the Tragic World of Death Row."  Here's an excerpt:

In its pages, Jackson and Christian also discuss how they completed the book, the access problems they encountered more recently with the Texas Department of Criminal Justice and their stance on ethical issues and studies related to the death penalty, prison reform and relevant Supreme Court decisions.

The couple describes the treatment of the prisoners as "remedial torture." They recount dehumanizing conditions death row inmates were -- and often are -- forced to endure, in a state proud of the number of people it executes every year. The replacement of the cells' glass windows with frosted glass illuminates this treatment. It not only prevented prisoners from seeing the outside world, but caused the development of chronic optical myopia because they could not exercise their distance vision

Jackson's and Christian's work has been influential in many quarters. An investigating officer in the notorious Gary Gilmore case was pleased to witness his execution, for instance, but changed his mind after seeing the film "Death Row." The late French President Francois Mitterand used it to explain and justify his abolition of the death penalty in France, and it has been praised by many other scholars, legislators and political activists for decades.

Related posts are in the books and documentary indexes.