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European Women Marry U.S. Death Row Inmates
Reuters, Aug. 5, 2002
http://www.reuters.com/
By Alan Elsner
WASHINGTON (Reuters) – Hester Patrick has been married for five years but she has never hugged or kissed her husband, or even touched him.
She may never do those things because Jesse Patrick is on death row in Texas with a September 17 execution date.
The 47-year-old British stage designer may have an unconventional marriage but she is far from unique. Although there are no statistics, authorities in several states say it is not unusual for men on death row to marry, often to women from Europe.
According to Death Penalty News, a newsletter published by death penalty foes, 10 women have married men on Florida’s death row alone since 1997. Hester Patrick knows of three other women, all of them Europeans, married to inmates on Texas’ death row.
Marriages between condemned men in America and women from Germany and Scandinavian countries, where opposition to the U.S. death penalty is strong, seem to be particularly common.
Like many of these women, Patrick met her husband through a pen pal club that matches correspondents with some of the 3,650 men facing death sentences in the United States. There have been 37 executions so far this year.
[...]
Even death penalty opponents say they cannot understand what would impel women to marry men on death row.
“I know of several cases but I don’t know if I can explain it,” said Abraham Bonowitz, director of Floridians for Alternatives to the Death Penalty.
“Although some women may be looking for notoriety, most seem to have genuine feelings. They start corresponding with an inmate to provide comfort and support to someone in a terrible situation and it goes from there,” he said.
One defense lawyer, who asked not be named, said some women who might lead dull everyday lives, seemed to be attracted by the thrill of danger and the glamour of being associated with a convicted killer.
Hannah Floyd, a Danish mother of three, started writing to an inmate on Florida’s death row in 1997. After a year of correspondence, she decided to visit him.
“I went home after that first visit, packed my bags and went back to Florida with my two youngest kids. I knew it was the right thing to do. It was God’s will,” said Floyd, a committed Christian who converted her husband from Islam and says he has “found an inner glow.”
Unlike Texas, in Florida death row inmates are allowed to meet their wives every weekend for six hours, during which they can hold hands, eat together and walk around in a room. But they are never alone together.
[...]
Andrea Faust, a 37-year-old divorced mother of two living in Germany, plans to marry an inmate on Florida’s death row soon. She too is a fierce opponent of the death penalty.
“I could never understand implementing such a cruel, inhuman and barbaric sentence,” she said in an e-mail exchange, in which she asked for her fiance not to be named.
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