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WHO LIVES, WHO DIES, WHO DECIDES…? INNER TEMPLE YEARBOOK 2016–2017
End of the Road
enneth Reams sits in a tiny room working on
an installation in readiness for the opening
of his art exhibition in Little Rock, Arkansas.
He has had a difficult time getting materials, wholly
reliant as he is on donations in kind of paper, pens,
brushes, and at the mercy of institutional regulations
as to whether he is permitted access to them.
At times paper has been withheld from him for being
the wrong size, pencils for containing the wrong amount of
lead, and brushes for being the wrong length. For Reams is
no ordinary artist but an inmate on death row in the state
of Arkansas, US and in solitary confinement for 23 hours a
day in a cell 6 x 9 ft. He has been incarcerated in a maximum
security facility since 1993 for a crime committed when he
was 18. Against the odds, Reams has managed to produce
over 50 works of art – pencil drawings and acrylic paintings
and over five installations, including a model of gallows made
from matchsticks, and a ball and chain.
His exhibition opened to critical acclaim in Little Rock,
Arkansas in November 2014. In the autumn this year it will
come to Bridport Arts Centre in Dorset and then to the
Temple Church, London.
The images are striking and raw. There is an American
flag where the red stripes are nooses, from one of which
hangs a black man. There is a geometric painting with 11
large white circles and one black circle depicting the issue of
racial discrimination in the selection of jurors in the US. There
is a stylised colour painting of an electric chair with the words
“Martha” and date of 1899, a reference to the first woman
to die in the electric chair at Sing Sing Correctional Facility in
New York State.
Reams is emphatic that the art is not about himself or
even his personal experience but about broader themes
such as the history of death row in the US, about failings
in the American criminal justice system, about racial bias
and discrimination, and about poverty. However, the art is
absolutely and resolutely the product of someone who has
lived and breathed this system since 1993, when he stood
trial, and the product of someone who has spent over 20
years inside self-educating. And it is no coincidence that
Reams is a black man from a broken and poor family in a
troubled town in the US: Pine Bluff, Arkansas. Pine Bluff was
described in an article in 2013 as America’s most dangerous
little town.
Reams’ story is a compelling one and has been written
about at length in the press. His life story has recently been
made the subject of a political cartoon strip in The New York
Times. His mother was 15 when she gave birth to Reams and
she suffered mental health problems. His father refused to
acknowledge Reams was his and he had no contact with him
whatsoever. His young mother struggled to bring up a child.
John A Copeland
Gallows
She met another man and had two other children. There was
alcohol and substance abuse in the house.
Reams has had a talent for drawing all his life but
unfortunately it could not keep him from a descent into bad
company. He left home when he was 13. He fell into a group
of older children who were offending on the streets of Pine
Bluff. He had no parental control over him.
In 1993, aged 18, he was arrested with a friend in
connection with a hold-up at gun point at an ATM in which
the victim was shot dead by a single bullet. Reams did not
have the gun and did not pull the trigger. Both Reams and
his co-defendant were offered a plea bargain: a life sentence
without parole in exchange for a plea of guilty. Reams has
never denied his involvement but the fact that he did not pull
the trigger was irrelevant to him being charged with felony
murder. He stood trial, not considering that his role justified
a life sentence let alone one of death, while his co-defendant
accepted the deal. Reams was sentenced to death by a jury
with 11 white jurors and one black (three other black jurors
having been struck off the jury without any reason given, as is
in principle permissible under the US system of jury selection),
represented by an attorney who called no ballistic expert
witness and made no investigation to present favorable
mitigating evidence at sentencing. Despite a diagnosis of
Intellectual Disability, which would have precluded him from
being sentenced to death in most states, he was given the
ultimate penalty.
His case neatly illustrates the fundamental problem
of not having adequate representation at the time of
trial. By contrast, Reams has now had the fortune to have
his case picked up by the National Association for the
Advancement of Colored People Legal Defense Fund and
to have been represented on appeal by experienced death
penalty advocates.
Whilst his legal team considers the prospects of success
on appeal are very good, it has taken over 15 years to
have his appeal heard. Key issues in his appeal are the
constitutionality of a death sentence for someone who was
an accomplice; for someone with an IQ level that would
qualify as too low for execution in most states; ineffective
assistance of counsel; and racial bias in the selection of the
jurors. If he succeeds, at best he is likely to be required to face
a re-trial and will again enter the roulette wheel that is the
jury system in a heavily charged and racially tense atmosphere
of southern justice. It is also a salutary reminder, if one was
ever needed, of the difficulties presented by an underfunded
criminal justice system and the limitations of the not-for-profit
sector to pick up the pieces ex post facto.
I first met Reams in 2000. I was not long out of pupillage
and was working as an Amicus intern for one of Reams’
long-serving counsel, George Kendall, then counsel at the
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