Love Lived on Death Row

“But, how do they justify that?” This was the question posed by a rather stricken law student after she had watched Love Lived on Death Row, about capital punishment in the USA.

I attended the screening at the request of Abolition UK, a volunteer campaign group. Love Lived was a deeply moving film which showed in the most tragic of ways exactly how the death penalty does nothing other than cause pain to innocent family members and friends of a person sentenced to death. Love Lived told the story of the Syriani family in North Carolina.

In 1990 Elias Syriani killed his wife, the mother of their four children. In 1991 he was sentenced, by a North Carolina court, to die by lethal injection. At the time of the crime and conviction Elias’ four children - Rose, Sarah, John and Janet - were all under thirteen and had no real conception of the reality of their father’s situation. All they knew, of course, was that he was the reason their mother was no longer around. Somewhat coerced by the District Attorney at the time they ‘supported,’ to the extent that children all under the age of 13 can, a sentence of death for their father. Hurt, angry and isolated they cut him out of their lives. In 2004 Elias’ children made the first visit to their father since the crime. And so began a long, difficult but ultimately hugely rewarding journey of healing and redemption.

The children discovered the trauma and extreme upheaval to which their father had been subjected. Time and time again those people who commit the most extreme crimes, and end up facing a death sentence, have been subjected to the violence and forced migration involved in war and state formation. Elias was yet another example of this. Born into what was at the time the British Mandate of Palestine, his community was absorbed into the newly created state of Israel. Elias’ father was imprisoned by Israel and then released to Jordan two years later. While in prison his father suffered a mental breakdown that left him unable to work and meant that, as the eldest son, Elias stepped in to support the entire family as a machinist before serving in the Jordanian army for nine years.

Only when Elias’ children met their father again after so long were they able to forgive; to move on with their lives and to find some happiness. It was extremely moving seeing the children talk about how much joy they got from being with their father again, from being able to meet with him, even under the most limited circumstances, and for him to be a part of their lives.

Life Lived followed the four children as they advocated publicly and relentlessly for their father’s life to be spared. They appeared on Larry King Live and Good Morning America. After an execution date had been set they had a face to face meeting with Governor Easley, the only man who could save Elias’ life. Despite their pleas the Governor refused to grant clemency. Elias Syriani was killed by the state of North Carolina on November 15, 2005.

Watching Elias’ four children describe their total and utter devastation at this news was heartbreaking. Having been through so much already they then had all that they had regained through hard work, compassion and forgiveness, wrenched away from them. As they told Governor Easley they had "lost the most when their mother died... but now they have their father back, and they have the most to lose again." It is they, Elias’ innocent young children, who will live in pain forever.

At the end of the film I answered some of the student’s questions about the US death penalty. I told them that, shockingly, it is not unusual for a person facing a death sentence in the US to have an absent, and often absent-minded, lawyer. Or worse. I told them how capital juries are hand-picked and that for a person to serve on a capital jury they must be “death-qualified” i.e. say that they would be willing to hand out a death sentence. I told them about the racial prejudices and injustices ingrained in the system so that in Nevada, for example, 4% of the state-wide population is African-American but African-Americans constitute 50% of the death row. And, they saw for themselves while watching the film, how people like the Syriani family are condemned to suffer for the rest of their lives when a loved one of theirs is executed.

How do they justify it? How, indeed.