2023/1/22 02:24 Lindy Lou Isonhood: A juror's reflections on the death penalty | TED Talk

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1,779,825 views | Lindy Lou Isonhood • TEDWomen 2018
A juror's reflections on the death penalty
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2023/1/22 02:24 Lindy Lou Isonhood: A juror's reflections on the death penalty | TED Talk

English

 00:01
It was a Thursday, June the 23rd, 1994.

 00:11
(Sighs)

 00:12
"Collect your belongings. You are free to go. When escorted outside, go directly to your car.
Do not talk to reporters."

 00:24
My head is spinning, my heart is racing, I can't get a breath. I just want out of there. When I
get to my car, I throw everything on the back, and I just collapse into the driver's seat. "I can't
do this. I can't go home to my family that I haven't seen in a week and pretend to be happy."
Not even their love and support could help me at this particular time.

 01:07
We had just sentenced a man to death. Now what? Just go home and wash dishes?

 01:20
You see, in Mississippi, the death penalty is like a part of our unspoken culture. The basic
logic is, if you murder someone, then you're going to receive the death penalty. So when the
jury selection process took place, they asked me, "Could you, if the evidence presented
justified the death penalty, could you deliver, rationally and without reservations, a penalty of
death?" My answer was an astounding "yes," and I was selected as Juror Number 2.

 02:14
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2023/1/22 02:24 Lindy Lou Isonhood: A juror's reflections on the death penalty | TED Talk

The trial started. From the evidence being presented and from the pictures of the victim, my
first response was, "Yes, this man is a monster, and he deserves the death penalty." For
days, I sat and looked at his hands, the ones that yielded the knife, and against his pasty
white skin, his eyes ... Well, he spent endless days in his cell, no sunlight, so his eyes were as
black as his hair and his mustache. He was very intimidating, and there was absolutely no
doubt in his guilt.

 03:09
But regardless of his guilt, as the days passed, I began to see this monster as a human
being. Something inside of me was changing that I just didn't understand. I was beginning to
question myself as to whether or not I wanted to give this man the death penalty.

 03:35
Jury deliberations began, and the judge gave us jury instructions and it was to be used as a
tool in how to reach a verdict. Well, using this tool only led to one decision, and that was the
death penalty. I felt backed into a corner. My head and my heart were in conflict with each
other, and the thought of the death penalty made me sick. However, following the judge's
instructions, being a law-abiding person, I gave up. I gave up and voted along with the other
11 jurors. And there it was: our broken judicial system at work.

 04:38
So here I am in my car, and I'm wondering: How is my life ever going to be the same? My life
was kids, work, church, ball games -- just your average, normal, everyday life. Now
everything felt trivial. I was going down this rabbit hole. The anger, the anxiety, the guilt, the
depression ... it just clung to me. I knew that my life had to resume, so I sought counseling.
The counselor diagnosed me with PTSD and told me that the best way to overcome the
PTSD was to talk about the trauma. However, if I talked or tried to talk about the trauma
outside her office, I was shut down. No one wanted to hear about it. He was just a murderer.
Get over it. It was then that I decided to become a silent survivor.

 05:54
Twelve years later, 2006, I learned that Bobby Wilcher had dropped all of his appeals, and his
execution date was approaching. That was like a punch in the stomach. All of those buried
feelings just started coming back. To try and find peace, I called Bobby's attorney, and I said,
"Can I see Bobby before he's executed?"
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2023/1/22 02:24 Lindy Lou Isonhood: A juror's reflections on the death penalty | TED Talk

 06:24
Driving to the penitentiary on the day of his execution, in my mind, Bobby was going to be
manic. But, surprisingly, he was very calm. And for two hours, he and I sat there and talked
about life, and I got to ask him to forgive me for my hand in his death. His words to me were:
"You don't have to apologize. You didn't put me here. I did this myself. But if it'll make you feel
better, I forgive you."

 07:07
On my way home, I stopped by a restaurant and bought a margarita.

 07:12
(Laughter)

 07:17
I don't think I could get one big enough --

 07:19
(Laughter)

 07:20
to try and calm down. My phone rang. It was Bobby's attorney. Within two minutes of his
execution, they had given him a stay. This stay gave me time to reach out to Bobby. And as
crazy as it may sound, we became friends. Three months later, he was executed by the
State of Mississippi.

 07:55
I'm here to tell you my story, because it was precisely 22 years later that I even wanted to
open up enough to talk about it, when a friend encouraged me. "Hey, perhaps you need to
talk to the other jurors. You've been through the same experience."
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2023/1/22 02:24 Lindy Lou Isonhood: A juror's reflections on the death penalty | TED Talk

 08:21
Uncertain of what I was after, I did need to talk to them. So I set out on my quest, and I
actually found most of them. The first juror I met thought that Bobby got what he deserved.
Another juror -- well, they just kind of regretted that it took so long to carry the sentence out.
Then one juror, and I don't know what was wrong with him, but he didn't remember anything
about the trial.

 08:52
(Laughter)

 08:54
Well, I'm thinking in my mind, "Jeez, is this the response I'm gonna get from everybody else?"

 09:03
Well, thank God for Allen. Allen was a gentle soul. And when I talked to him, he was genuinely
upset about our decision. And he told me about the day that the devastation really set in on
him and hit him. He was listening to the radio, and the radio had a list of names of men to be
executed at Parchman Penitentiary. He heard Bobby's name, and he then truly realized what
he had done. And he said, "You know, I had a responsibility in that man's death." Now here it
is, 20-something years later, and Allen is still dealing with that issue. And he's never told
anyone about it, not even his wife. He also told me that if the State of Mississippi wanted to
keep the death penalty, then hey, they needed to provide counseling for the jurors.

 10:12
Then the next juror I met was Jane. Jane is now totally against the death penalty, And there
was Bill. Bill said he had this crushing depression for weeks, and when he went back to work,
his colleagues would say things to him like, "Hey, did you fry him?" To them, it was just a joke.
Then there was Jon. Jon said his decision weighed on him, and it burdened him daily.

 10:46
The final juror that I spoke to was Ken. Ken was the foreman of the jury. When we sat down
to talk, it was apparent that he was deeply saddened by what we were required to do. He
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2023/1/22 02:24 Lindy Lou Isonhood: A juror's reflections on the death penalty | TED Talk

relived the day that he left the courthouse and he drove home and he went to put his key in
his door and unlock it, and he said he literally broke down. He said he knew that Bobby was
guilty, but the decision he made, he did not know if it was the right decision. And he said that
he played it over and over in his head. Did we do the right thing? Did we do the right thing?
Did we do the right thing?

 11:43
(Sighs)

 11:46
All those years, and I finally realized that I was not the only disillusioned juror. And we talked
about sharing our experience with potential jurors to give them some insight into what to
expect, and to tell them do not be complacent; to know what you believe; to know where
you stand and be prepared, because you don't want to walk in one morning as a juror and
leave at the end of the trial feeling like a murderer.

 12:30
Now, through this storm in my life, I did find some inspiration, and it came in the form of my
granddaughters. My 14-year-old granddaughter, Maddie, was writing an essay on the death
penalty for school, and she was asking me questions. Well, it dawned on me that this child
was being raised in the same eye-for-an-eye culture as I was, or had been. And so I
explained my experience to her this way: that I had sentenced someone to death as I served
on a jury. And I asked her, "Did that make me a murderer?" She couldn't answer.

 13:19
I knew then that this topic needed to be open for discussion. And guess what happened? I
got invited to speak, just recently, in an abolitionist community. While I was there, I got a T-
shirt. It says, "Stop Executions." Well, when I get home, my 16-year-old granddaughter was
there, Anna, and she says, "Can I have that shirt?" Well, I looked at her dad -- her dad is my
son -- and I knew that he is still dealing with this death penalty issue. So I turned around and
I looked at her, and I said, "Are you gonna wear this?" So she turned and she looked at her
dad, and she said, "Dad, I know how you feel, but I don't believe in the death penalty." My
son looked at me, shook his head, and said, "Thanks, Mom." And I knew it wasn't a nice
"Thanks, Mom."
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2023/1/22 02:24 Lindy Lou Isonhood: A juror's reflections on the death penalty | TED Talk

 14:25
(Laughter)

 14:27
So I learned that life had taught me some lessons. It taught me, if I had not served on that
jury, that I would still be of the same mindset. It also gave me confidence to be able to see
through the eyes of my granddaughters, that this younger generation, they're capable and
they're willing to tackle these difficult social issues. And because of my experience, my
granddaughters, they're now more equipped to stand on their own and to think for
themselves than to rely on cultural beliefs.

 15:20
So: being from a conservative, Christian family from a very conservative state in the United
States, I am here to tell you that the death penalty has new opponents.

 15:39
Thank you.

 15:40
(Applause)

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