A human face to the death penalty

According to Dostoyevsky, we can judge a society on how it treats its prisoners. If so, a new exhibition by the artist Claire Phillips, which opened at the Oxo Gallery on London’s Southbank last night, provides a bleak assessment of the condition of the most advanced nation in the world.

The aim of the project, supported by the charity Reprieve, is unambiguous: it wants to show us how crude, inhumane and unjust the ongoing use of the dealth penalty in America is. Yet the artist, who travelled to Miami, Atlanta and Mississippi, chose a wide range of subjects whose relationship with death row vary enormously. There are, as to be expected, current inmates (some who have already been executed) and their family members, as well as former inmates exonerated after long periods of incarceration. But there's also an executioner responsible for four executions; the foreperson of a jury that convicted and sentenced to death a man who was later proved innocent; and a congressman who voted to reinstate the death penalty in the 1970s and then subsequently pioneered the use of the lethal injection method. This lends the experience an unusual texture and nuance.



All of the pieces avoid explicit visual reference to the death penalty, instead capturing the ordinary, human qualities of each individual; at the same time, an accompanying soundtrack featuring interviews and a commentary from a 1984 execution in Georgia is played—providing a dark counterpoint to the rich, warm visual representations of the subjects themselves.

The devil is in the detail here: reading the accompanying commentary, we learn that one subject, Ryan Matthews, had his conviction for murder quashed 7 years after his arrest; upon his release his family had to pay $100 to have an electric tag removed from his ankle. Another received just $1.11 in compensation for each of the 9 years he was wrongly incarcerated on death row.

Many of Phillips's subjects have either been put to death or died of natural causes. One woman, however, whose face looks out towards the entrance of the gallery particularly catches your eye: Linda Carty, currently on death row in Texas. Linda's case, like so many depicted, was shambolic: read about her lawyer's shockingly negligent handling of the case here. Yet despite her almost non-existent legal representation and compelling evidence that she did not commit the crime (the case hung on the testimony of three career criminals who themselves avoided the death penalty by testifying against her), no appeal or retrial has yet been granted and her options are fast running out.

For more information on Linda's case and the work of British human rights charity Reprieve visit their website.

The exhibition will be free to view at the Oxo Gallery until Sunday, 5th July. Opening hours are 11-6 daily. It will then be touring the country, showing at:

The Capital Arts Centre, Horsham from 14th August until 9th October The Lewis Elton Gallery, University of Surrey from 10th until 26th November Worthing Museum and Art Gallery, from 19th December until 20th March 2010