How a Pen Pal saved a Life
By Jack Woolf
Lucy McCance just saved a life. In what seems to be a first for the American legal system, Lucy took the stand and testified in the defence of a death row inmate, Cecil, in her capacity as his pen pal. Her testimony was crucial in reducing his sentence from death to life in prison.
Lucy McCance
What ended as a life-saving friendship began in empathy. Lucy, a married mother of three from Devon, came across an article on the BBC about the organization Lifelines, which sets up death row inmates with pen pals. Lucy, as a cancer survivor, said, “I felt I could relate to being in the waiting room between living and dying.’
She contacted the organisation and appealed to be a penpal so that she could ‘bring a little humanity into somebody’s life.’ When accepted, she was set up with Cecil, who was in death row in Florida for a brutal murder in 2009. She found the initial experience difficult. ‘How do you be relevant to somebody who lives in a nine by thirteen foot cell and has two hours out of it a week?’ she said.
They quickly developed a rapport however, due to a surprising amount of shared experiences. ‘We talked about his mother, who died of breast cancer, and his level of education. We built a friendship,’ she said.
Lucy was aware that she couldn’t fully trust the person she was speaking to, at least initially. ‘It’s in his interests to form a relationship, he gets outside information, a view outside his cell. A conversation that punctuates the dreariness of death row. So I quickly learnt to take everything he was writing to me with a pinch of salt,’ she said. But she didn’t see the friendship as too transactional. ‘He never asked me for money, he never asked me for anything.’
Lucy’s friendship with Cecil soon became a family affair. Her husband Andy would suggest books for Cecil’s birthday, her daughter Connie began to send letters to Cecil as well, even saying that ‘Cecil is her pen pal that she allows Lucy to write to.’ Connie has learning difficulties, and Cecil adapted quickly, writing in simple language about things she would enjoy and even drawing pictures of horses for her. “I preview everything he writes to her and she writes to him, it’s never been anything but appropriate and empathetic,” Lucy said.
Lifelines advises that pen pals don’t ask about the crime, and Lucy didn’t for a while. Eventually she couldn’t help it. “I’m a curious human being,” she said. Cecil told her he was innocent but Lucy told him that wasn’t relevant to her. It was always about him being on death row, not innocence or guilt. But she did concede the nature of the crime disturbed her. “I have massive empathy for the family of the victim, what he was convicted for is horrific,’ she said.
Six months ago, Lucy was contacted by one of Cecil’s solicitors, asking if she would be willing to give a reference for him in court. Cecil’s original jury gave him the death penalty in a ratio of 8-4, and Florida, unlike other US states, doesn’t have to have unanimous consent to sentence death. Briefly last year, this law changed, giving Cecil’s team just enough time to file for a resentencing before the law quickly changed back.
Lucy attended a deposition via Zoom soon afterwards to get an idea of what she’d say in court. There the prosecutor, famed death penalty advocate Bernie de la Rionda, asked her questions about her relationship with Cecil. All were intending to suggest Lucy had some sort of inappropriate fascination with prisoners, asking her questions like ‘Do you write to any other prisoners’ or ‘have you ever visited any prisoners.’ “All trying to establish if I was some kind of prison fetishist. Obviously I can say no. I have no interest, no kind of fascination with prisoners,” she said.
Bernie de la Rionda is an interesting case himself. He has established a reputation as big character, famously so when he unsuccessfully tried to prosecute George Zimmerman for the Trayvon Martin murder. Rionda, as of 2016 and according to the New York Times, has achieved more than 25 death sentences over his career. He was also described as one of the ‘deadliest’ trial lawyers in the country according to the Fair Punishment project. He has no compunction about seeking the death penalty, and even attended the executions of some of those sentenced.
Bernie De La Rionda during the Zimmerman Case
The resentencing took place just over a week ago. The Jury makes a decision without knowing the current sentence of the prisoner, so they had no idea he was on death row. Lucy was asked to take the stand first by the defence. They asked her about her friendship with Cecil, how it began, his relationship with her family. “We were finding redeeming qualities for him, something he contributes to the world to make him worth saving in the eyes of the jury,” she said. Lucy talked about the positive impact he has had on her family, how valuable an experience for her girls to speak to somebody in such a different world to theirs. “That is a very important part of how I brought up my children, to have awareness of others,” she said.
Then she was formally questioned by Rionda in front of the jury, he repeated some of his prior questioning, trying to indicate she was fascinated with prisoners. He suggested that Cecil only continued the correspondence with Lucy so that she would eventually say something nice about him in court. “I could clearly say that wasn’t the case, we’ve been corresponding for 4 years at this point, this resentencing process was not in place or even thought of until very recently,” she said.
The questioning continued, and Rionda suggested that Lucy was only interested in prisoners and ‘did not even consider the victim and had no experiences with the feelings of the family of the victim.’ “He shot himself in the foot there, as I’ve been a support worker on the phone for Devon rape crisis,” Lucy said. She continued, “He tried to make me out as a single minded prison nutjob rather than a well-rounded, considered individual.”
Lucy’s testimony ended, there was a further witness, and then the jury went into deliberations. They came out hours with a decision, Cecil would be resentenced to life in prison. He would no longer be on death row. The defence contacted Lucy afterwards, telling her that her testimony was extremely influential in Cecil getting life rather than death. Lucy described feeling an enormous sense of relief. “What if I’d missed saying something and he’d got the death penalty? I felt very responsible for somebody’s life,” she said.
Despite being thought the first of its kind, Lucy believes that penpals testifying in these cases will become common practice. “I think this is a new thing, if it’s considered to have made a difference, I’m sure defence lawyers will do it again,” she said.
Lucy ended by explaining her exact problem with the death penalty as a concept. “The state should be setting an example. It lacks humanity, it lacks compassion. It’s really important for people in our society to have modelled compassion and empathy rather than killing,” she said. Citing Cecil as an example. Lucy concluded by saying, “If you go to put somebody to death you have to know there’s no chance of redemption, no redeeming quality to that person.” According to the Death Penalty Research Centre, there are over 2,400 prisoners on Death Row in the US. Perhaps if more penpals were to come forward like Lucy, that number might be reduced.