Blogging From Death Row

Washington Post staff writer Eric Rich was online Friday, Jan. 27, at 1:30 p.m. ET to field questions and comments about Friday's article on a death row inmate's blog -- the leading edge of a strategy by death penalty opponents to use new technologies to reach a wider audience.

Read More: A Death Row Blogger's Advice for Life (Post, Jan. 27)

The transcript follows.

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Eric Rich: Hi. Eric Rich here. Ready for questions about the blogger form death row. The blog, by the way, which had 7,000 visits since it was set up in March, shows another 4,500 today alone. Good to see that newspapers still have readers! We have about an hour so fire away.

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Arlington, Va.: Have you found any reason to believe that the blog could somehow impact the inmate's stay on death row? Or somehow have a farther reach to impact how citizens generally feel about the death penalty? Thank you!

Eric Rich: Hello Arlington. I know of no evidence that a blog has actually impacted whether an inmate is executed. One of the goals is to build grass roots support for the individual inmate who is blogging or being blogged about. In individual cases, of course, this isn't supposed to impact anything that happens in court, since judges aren't supposed to be taking that into consideration. Theoretically, it could impact whether an elected official grants some form of clemency, which defendants about to be executed typically seek.

I think you accurately point out that another goal is to more broadly move public opinion about the death penalty in general.

Thanks for reading.

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Washington, D.C.: Can you provide some more insight into this process? For instance, if Vernon doesn't see the blog in it's true form, do you think he has a clear grasp of what it is he's doing? Do you think he has a lot of readers?

Eric Rich: Interesting question. Vernon hasn't seen the blog. He doesn't see all the questions, and he doesn't see all the comments posted on the blog in response to exchanges. What's more, he's been in prison for more than 20 years. I don't think he really understand the Internet, reality TV or blogs. He's lacking context in a big way.

His readership, as I mentioned in the story, is not particularly large by blog standards. That may be in part because the blog went inactive for some time. Many of his readers, interestingly, are from overseas, where opposition to the death penalty is more widespread than here in the U.S. The questions sent in in the past few months, not yet posted, include at least a couple from students from South Korea wanted him to respond for a school assignment.

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Anonymous: Do you see blogging - and/or other methods of technology/communication - becoming more commonly used to suit the purposes of those doing the blogging? Is this the start of something bigger?

Eric Rich: Every medium will eventually be thoroughly exploited by every interest - commercial, political, personal, you name it. Nothing stays underground for long.

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Houston, Tex.: Eric, thanks for the article. One of the goals in setting up Mr. Evans' blog was for people to "get to know him." From your perspective, how likely is this, given that the overreaching goal seems to be keeping him alive? Case in point, the webmaster editing out what may have been construed as angry comments from the response to a question.

It would seem to me that anything that would make him seem anything but safe and friendly would by necessity be filtered ...

Eric Rich: Thanks for the question. That's what made his blog more daring than most, and more interesting. There's a risk in it being relatively unfiltered. Most lawyers in death cases are trying to manage everything and all the details, and they don't particularly welcome unpredictable factors, and this is definitely one. You'll note that the activists were behind it, not the lawyers.

The edit is definitely a case in point. His advisors, knowing that the blog would get more traffic today than ever, did a little redacting. So will people get to him? A lightly edited version, I suppose.

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Washington, D.C.: Do you know more about Ginny Simmons' motivation in starting the blog? Is she affiliated with a local group, or just chose to do this on her own?

Eric Rich: Simmons told me she took her inspiration from two sources: the Live from Death Row events (where inmates call in and are patched through to address a crowd by speaker phone) and a friend of hers who was very into blogging.

She's now a member of an Amnesty International death penalty abolition group.

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Washington, D.C.: I'm a very strong death penalty opponent, having even helped out with Project Innocence a couple times, but it boggles the imagination for someone seen walking into a lobby where two people are shot, carrying a gun, and then leaving the lobby with a smoking gun, to claim that he is innocent. And his comments from that era seem to acknowledge his guilt. So why is he now claiming innocence? Does he think that's necessary to get his sentence commuted? I hate it that MD has gone back to state-sponsored killing, but it seems to me this is not helping things.

Eric Rich: As I understand it, he's claiming that he didn't pull the trigger, which the state disputes, of course. His girlfriend testified that she saw him carrying the smoking gun but that she didn't see him actually fire it.

Setting aside the issue of actual innocence, attorneys for Evans are challenging the method of execution - lethal injection - and trying to get a court to consider mitigating evidence about his upbringing that they say was not known at the time of his trial.

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Bowie, Md.: As a blogger myself (my blog is called Boxing Along The Beltway), I understand the power of this form of communication.

Do you think this will start a trend among people who are incarcerated to work on this form of communication?

Eric Rich: I think the trend is well underway. As I responded earlier to anonymous, I think that in time every group will press this form of communication, with varying degrees of integrity, into the service of their particular purposes. Witness corporate "blogs."

For many inmates, one twist that stifles the experiment a bit is the lack of Internet access.

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Washington, D.C.: What do you think could become of the blog once Vernon is executed? Will it become some sort of recording of death row used by death penalty opponents?

Eric Rich: The Canadians who maintain web pages for about 500 death row inmates say one of their goals is to create a record of the lives of these condemned people that will exist after they cease to.

In the case of Meet Vernon, the blog, who knows? Questions have been sent to him. Ginny Simmons, who maintains it, told me she'll post his responses if he has time to send them, which as she points out he may not.

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Fairfax, Va: Do the families of Mr. Piechowicz and Ms. Kennedy have blogs as well? It would be nice to know as much about them as I do about their convicted executioner.

Eric Rich: Not that I know of (I checked). One of the oddities of death penalty cases is that, in their late stages, because the victims have been gone for so long, and they may not have family members available, they can be lost, in a sense. More so than in the original trials, when victims loom large in every courtroom.

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Quantico, Va.: First, I have to agree with the poster to the blog who suggested that he take his punishment like a man; why do we care about what this guy Evans has to say? And do the victims' families have any unedited access to the blog? Finally, I detect something distasteful in the way Ms Simmons is pimping him out. She gets her name out there; the wretched Mr Evans just fades off into that dark night, followed undoubtedly by another doubtful poster child.

Eric Rich: Thanks for the question. People would disagree, as they did in the story, about whether what Evans has to say is of interest and worth hearing.

Only Ginny Simmons has access to the question and answer portion of the blog, and it would be up to her to post or not post questions from the victims' families, if there were any such questions. But judging from the spam on the comments sections, it appears that those posts go out live, unedited.

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Virginia: Does Vernon enjoy "blogging"? Is it giving him something to do, or does he realize its potential to make an impact and he's therefore doing it for a purpose - or both?

Eric Rich: According to one of his lawyers, Julie Dietrich, who relayed that very question to him yesterday, Evans enjoys the blog, liked the opportunity to reach out and was disappointed when it was suspended last year. She said Evans told her that he appreciated even the "negative" comments, and that people were entitled to their views.

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Eric Rich: Well, our hour is up and duty calls. For future reference, my e-mail is riche@washpost.com. Thanks for reading!

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