Kenneth Mosley is a very ordinary man. He grew up in a small rural community in Arkansas and when he was 18 he left home for the big city to earn money to buy a car to go to college. He was never out of work and eventually finding a very good job he decided it was too good to give up. He stayed and worked in that job for 16 years. He married and raised a child, a beautiful little girl. But illness struck this family. A dreadful illness in the shape of an addiction to crack cocaine. The word illness is used deliberately because that is what it is. "Crack cocaine is an extremely powerful drug. Crack cocaine addiction is inevitable; once an individual has tried crack they may be unable to predict or control the extent to which they will continue to use. It is probably the most addictive substance yet devised."

Ken battled hard to overcome this illness but as anyone can tell you who has watched a loved one battle such a disease it takes time and can take several courses of treatment to finally conquer. Ken worked hard to win but eventually his illness cost him his job. With his job went his medical insurance. Ken and his family tried repeatedly to get further help for his addiction but to no avail. You need money to get help. Alternatively you need to have committed a crime. Oh yes one clinic told him they could only take him in if he had broken the law. Would it not have been better for them to have helped him before he broke the law? Another clinic said they could take him into re-hab if he stayed clean for thirty days. Truly a "Catch 22" situation.

So as happens in such circumstances things went from bad to worse. Addiction like any illness does not simply disappear in the face of poverty. And when there is nowhere to turn to for help poor people who are addicted get sucked into crime. This is how addicts who are poor cope with their situation. (Rich people with an addiction have fewer social problems.) This is what happened to Ken. And one day a terrible accident happened in which Ken was involved and a man died.

Incredibly Ken was charged with murder, convicted and sentenced to death. And this is the point at which what is sadly a very ordinary story becomes extraordinary because in the Unites States less than 5% of people who have in some way caused someone’s death end up with the death penalty. There have been approximately 500,000 homicides in the USA since the re-instatement of the death penalty in 1977 and approximately 900 executions. There are currently about 3500 men and women on death rows across the country. Is it possible that any legal system devised by human beings, who by their very nature are fallible, can be so accurate as to determine correctly which 5% of people who have caused a death are the "worst" and which 95% who have also done so are "not so bad?" Is this possible?

People will tell you that that 5% is the "worst of the worst." This is a meaningless cliché. Kenneth Mosley is not the worst of the worst. People who know him would laugh at the idea. Kenneth Mosley is an ordinary man who at a time of his life when he was trapped in the direst of circumstances got caught in an accident. An accident with devastating consequences which resulted in someone’s death. The truth is that that 5% is generally made up of the poorest, those who cannot afford good defense lawyers. Approximately 99% of those on death row could not afford to hire a lawyer when they were tried. Justice William O.Douglas is quoted as saying "One searches our chronicles in vain for the execution of any member of the affluent strata of our society." Ken is no exception. Whether people like to admit it or not it was partly his poverty that determined his fate. First he had no money to get the medical treatment he knew he desperately needed. Then it seems he could not afford to hire an attorney to present his case adequately.

There is no denying Ken gave in to weakness and made rash decisions. He stole to cope with the addiction that was destroying who he was. He himself accepts that there is a penalty to be paid for that. But those who know him will tell you he never could and never will deliberately harm anyone.  A death sentence is excessive in the extreme.

Ken has lived for six years now on Texas death row. It is a harsh and sterile environment. There is constant noise, meals are served at strange times, he lives virtually in solitary confinement 23 hours out of 24. There is one hour of recreation - really just a different view from a different cage and there is outdoor rec twice a week - alone in yet another cage, no grass, no ball games. It is a loveless environment. Prisoners are not even allowed to hug their kids when they come to visit. Picture a two year old talking loudly and enthusiastically to his daddy, the telephone dangling uselessly at his knees, his smiling father gesticulating at it helplessly through the glass. Yes prison is punishment. That is what it is designed for. Ken endures in this environment in the hope of some relief from the appeal courts; and in the knowledge of many people understanding that there but for the grace of God