Death in both ears
Teresa de Simone – murdered
Sean Hodgson, also known as Robert Graham Hodgson looked fearfully at the tall, broad shouldered man standing at his cell door. The officer’s black uniform seemed to cast its own shadow, filling the room with despair. Sean shrank back into his bunk, pulling his knees up to his chest, rocking back and forth.
“I didn’t do it,” he whimpered, his voice breaking with choked back tears. “I didn’t fucking do it. Please don’t do this…”
“Come along, Sean,” the officer said in a deep, throaty voice, “be a man.”
He held out a leather gloved hand and touched Sean’s shoulder, softly at first, but then more firmly. His cold, blue eyes locked with Sean’s, his mouth a firm line of determination. Sean knew there would be no getting away, and in that moment he gave up.
They stood him up; hand and leg cuffed him, and then carried him into the next room, a room dominated by the inverted L of the gallows.
Sean stared at the priest with wild eyes, his mind scurrying around in his head like a mad mouse cornered by hungry cat. A dark suited man stepped forward and slipped a thick hemp rope over Sean’s head then everything went dark as a musty hood was pulled over him. He wet himself and managed to say; “I didn’t do..” before the floor opened and his head was jarred to one side, distending his neck and pulling its bones apart before severing his spinal chord.
The attending officers grimaced at the smell. “Oh fuck, he shat.”
Sean was executed in 1980 for the murder of Teresa De Simone, a crime he never committed. At least he would have been, Mister and Missus “Bring back capital punishment”, if you’d had your way. He would have been murdered by the state and it would have been your fault entirely, just as surely as if you had pulled the lever yourself. Let’s not kid ourselves here, you want to kill people. Obviously, your intentions are honourable – eye for an eye and all that, but this case illustrates once again, as if we needed to paint another picture, that mistakes are made.
Fortunately, we do not have executions in this country any more – neither does the rest of Europe and as a result, despite having spent half his life in prison, Sean Hodgson is still alive and will soon be free thanks to new DNA evidence which proves he did not commit the murder of Teresa De Simone. That’s no thanks to you – you would have had his blood on your hands – there’s no way back from death and if we get it wrong, then we have killed someone for no reason.
Put yourself in their shoes. Imagine it was you sitting there in that cell. You know you’re innocent, but the cold eyed, broad shouldered man in the dark uniform comes for you all the same.
