Meet the interns!

Spring semester 2014 TAVP interns with faculty adviser Charlotte Nunes.

This semester's interns have been recruited through the 
Human Rights & Archives Working Group, affiliated with the 
University of Texas' Rapoport Center for Human Rights and Justice.

This semester, with a bit of serendipity, we have partnered with the Archives and Education strand of the Human Rights & Archives Working Group affiliated with the Rapoport Center for Human Rights and Justice at UT-Austin to welcome 5 dedicated interns who have pledged to help us process the TAVP collection. Dr. Charlotte Nunes, their faculty adviser and the point person for the Archives and Education subgroup, has been working closely with TAVP to, as she puts it, "offer a team of UT undergraduate interns a meaningful opportunity to learn about digital archives by building them." 

All of the interns study within the Bridging Disciplines Program at UT. We wanted to know more about these committed students so we asked them to share a little bit about themselves. Click "read more" to learn more about them. Look out for a separate post where our interns offer intriguing responses to "Why archives and human rights?" and "Why TAVP?" 

Without further ado, we introduce the interns (in alphabetical order by last name)
(click on "read more" to learn more about each intern)

TAVP in the blogosphere

As Sister Helen says in a recent interview with TAVP, speaking and listening go together when you are having real dialogue. It is hard to ignore the blogosphere if you are thinking about important contemporary spaces for communicating on all manner of topics. 

With that in mind, we hope the TAVP blog will extend the reach of our archive of oral histories on the death penalty in Texas, and so also extend opportunities for listening and for dialogue. 

Our blog hosts some features that supplement the oral history interviews with analysis and reflection: this semester, we've added a new series by interns from UT-Austin documenting their experience archiving TAVP oral histories, as well as a series where we share interview reflections by a range of individuals involved in the process, including narrators, interviewers, videographers and others. Audio and video clips will appear in many of our posts as illustration, but we will also have a dedicated series in which we post podcasts and short videos as they come available. Finally, look out for occasional book and film reviews, and for the First person series, where we'll profile present and former staff members, board members, volunteers, interns, donors, and other collaborators so you can learn more about the people involved in the work of TAVP.

Witnessing an Execution in Texas

After lots of hard work, here is the first Texas After Violence Podcast, which describes the experience of witnessing an execution from the perspective of friends and family members of executed persons. The full post includes the embedded podcast, as well as a complete transcript of the podcast. Just click on "read more" to access this material.

  

Witnessing an execution in Texas

Produced by Maurice Chammah and the Texas After Violence Project

MAURICE CHAMMAH:  This is the first in a series of podcasts by the Texas After Violence Project, which works to create a foundation for public dialogue on violence in Texas through interviews with individuals affected by murder and execution. The podcasts include clips of interviews with friends and family members of murdered and executed persons, as well as lawyers, law enforcement, and others connected to the criminal justice system in Texas. My name is Maurice Chammah.

In this podcast, we hear the experiences of people who have witnessed an execution. We will hear accounts of final visits, phone calls, and meals, followed by the time in the execution chamber, and finally the aftermath.

Jim Willett, Former Warden of the Walls Unit

Jim Willett never expected to be the subject of countless interviews with foreign press, never expected to be asked by a publisher to release memoirs, and certainly never expected to be the public face of the death penalty in Texas. But upon retirement, the mild-mannered, grandfatherly warden found that his several years as warden of the “Walls” Unit, where he oversaw eighty-nine executions, were a constant source of interest to outsiders.

Willett, who graciously gave us a personal tour of the Texas Prison Museum and an interview, explained to us how he worked his way up slowly through the prison system, eventually promoted to the position of warden of the Walls, despite his misgivings about having to oversee executions.

The three years he held that position were unusually busy when it came to the death penalty, even for Texas. As we chatted with Willett in his small office at the back of the museum, I was curious to hear about the process through which the executions became a routine. Did he remember all of them individually? Did they blur together?

Here is a clip of Jim Willett discussing a time in the 1990s when executions became routine:

"You think it doesn't get you down like that, but it does if you do a bunch of them."

Douglas Becker and the responsibilities of leadership

Douglas Becker and the responsibilities of leadership 

by Maurice Chammah

I listened to Douglas Becker on a chilly December morning, seated behind both my camera and his massive, imposing wooden desk, originally designed for partnered lawyers--one on either side--but now comfortably placing Mr. Becker a good five to seven feet from me or, on a different day, a client. The desk was one of many features of this stately office that unpretentiously indulged many of the standard trappings of the legal profession. His wife’s darkly hued painting of the Alamo sat on one side of the room, while on the other, a stick figure version of Becker, drawn by his seven year old stepson, featured big triangular ears, a goofy little briefcase, and the words “Wolf Lawyer” scrawled across the length of the construction paper.

TAVP at SXSW: A Review of Incendiary: The Willingham Case

TAVP at SXSW: A Review of Incendiary: The Willingham Case
by Maurice Chammah

I often forget in the course of the work we do that narratives surrounding the death penalty are not always the stories of those involved as direct participants. A unique set of famous cases take on a cultural life more a matter popular folklore than legal or social history. Many remember Gary Gilmore not for himself or the direct witnesses to his life, but rather for Tommy Lee Jones' depiction of him in the film The Executioner's Song. Randall Dale Adams shows up in the documentary about his wrongful conviction, Errol Morris' The Thin Blue Line, but in that film Adams becomes an almost fictionalized protagonist, journeying through the fallibility of eyewitness testimony, the problems associated with the investigation of murder cases, and the corruption of Dallas' law enforcement. Karla Faye Tucker's life, in the media, has become the mythic story of competing forces of Born Again mercy and distrustful retribution. The cultural phenomenon fuels the story, invents holy grails (justice, innocence, madness, the death penalty itself), and follows the persona of the convicted through their trials and tribulations.

Reading Empathetically: A Review of David R. Dow's The Autobiography of an Execution

Reading Empathetically: A Review of David R. Dow's The Autobiography of an Execution 

by Maurice Chammah

Although the phrase "listening without judgment" has a noble, gentle ring to it, enacting it practically and living it physically seldom feel like "gentle" tasks. The urge to respond to a lawyer, an activist, and even at our weakest moments, a survivor of violence, and shout "That's not what I would have done!" can be more than just a nagging sensation. It can be, two hours into a harrowing narrative, all consuming.

At the same time, the sheer complexity of the death penalty system in any state, and certainly Texas, can make it similarly easy to shut down and throw one's hands up in the air in a kind of informed apathy. The process of litigation, as it unsteadily lopes through state courts, federal courts, the executive branch, and multiple other offices is so complicated and aggravating that all of the emotional aspects of the process, the fact that it is fundamentally about retribution for a murder, can get lost in the language of "evidentiary limits," "procedural requisites," hearings, briefs, stays, and a whole mess of Latin.

Salon on the Death Penalty and Religion

Southwestern University in Georgetown, Texas

The Southwestern University chapter of Amnesty International presents The Identities of Faith Salon Series. This event seeks to provide an opportunity for meaningful conversations on themes and topics related to belief, faith and practice. The Salons are designed to engage multi-faith perspectives and experiences as a way of deepening participants' understanding of themselves, each other and the evening's theme or topic.

The upcoming Salon on March 7 is on the death penalty, but deeper than that, we hope the conversation will explore how faith motivates, enables and disables social justice change. The salon "conversants" will open the conversation after the Texas After Violence Project (TAVP) presentation. The conversation will be set up "in the round." After about 30 minutes of introduction and opening conversation, the dynamics of the conversation will shift to include respondents and then all who are in the room. Refreshments will be included.

Monday March 7, 7-9 pm. Mood Bridwell Atrium at Southwestern University. See the Facebook event for more information.