The Clinton Correspondence

About the Book

Several years ago at a poetry reading I sat next to a man who had been on death row in New York state and who had been set free when the Supreme Court required the states to reexamine their laws about capital punishment. He had evolved a career as a teacher working with prisoners, teaching them how to write. The window of armistice for those on death row was too brief, in a few years we once again were executing people in America to the horror of the rest of the Western world. When I was a young man a slight majority of Americans favored banning capital punishment. By the end of the century most Americans were in favor of state executions. New York elected a governor who saw to it that he signed a bill returning the death penalty to the state. This passion for severe punishment floated on a sea of harsh sentences for most crimes and a turning away from efforts to rehabilitate criminals or to work with the societal and psychological roots of crime. In America you could spend decades in jail for selling a little marijuana and be electrocuted for shooting the dealer who sold you drugs. The public wasn’t concerned about these citizens and politicians soon realized that in order to be elected they would have to support these regressive measures.

About the Author

David Tinling is a mind-body physician who lives in Vermont teaching workshops on enhancing creativity. He writes poetry and fiction and makes conceptual art.