Why?
A 32 year-old Chicago woman has been granted a license to marry Tom Nissin, who is serving life in prison for the murder of Brandon Teena and two others in 1993. They have never met in person. Their knowledge of each other consists solely of letters and short phone calls, not to mention a movie called "Boys Don't Cry":
When she saw the film, Mirth said, she identified with the characters who played Nissen and his co-defendant, John Lotter, who is on death row. She had grown up "in a small, stupid town in Indiana," she said, and escaped by running with a rough crowd.
"These were people I would hang out with in real life," she said.
Never mind the whole psychological fuck-upedness of people who enter into this sort of thing. Right now all I want to know is: Why can a convicted felon enter into a contract while serving their term?
for the NNAF
4 comments:
If my memory is correct, I believe Ted Bundy not only married, but also had a son while he was imprisoned/on death row for murdering women from the northwest corner of the US down to the southeast.
Your point is well-taken. We should be against cruel and unusual punishment while incarcerated. Somehow, I don't think disallowing marriage is cruel or unusual.
ARGH.
Wha? Why? How the hell could you identify with the rapists? What's going on here? People never cease to amaze me in their stupidity.
Burrow, it's hard to grasp. I once knew someone who did the phone call/letter/care package thing, and she planned to marry him and move her and her kids across the country (he'd be out in 12 more years after serving his sentence for murder). She knew him when they were kids. I thought it was nuts, but I couldn't push too much or she'd get defensive. (Type of person here: raped by her step-dad, lots of mental problems and PTSD, horridly low self-esteem).
She flew across the country to visit some people, and wanted to visit him in state prison for the first time. I privately decided it's exactly what she needed to see so I drove all day to take her to the prison for a Saturday visit. It worked. After the visit she absorbed, then we talked. It hit her seeing him in there that no matter what, she was giving up everything to gain nothing, and why would he want that for her? The other women in there really got to her, this is what they did every weekend, riding the bus from the city, sneaking feels and kids running around unattended, it was like seeing the future and that really did it. She said goodbye and didn't look back.
spotted, good point about it certainly not being cruel and unusual. There are lots of privleges you don't get, all I can think is that the system thinks links to people outside like this are good for the prisoner. I'm sure that's true in some cases with existing family, but I can't see it in a situation like this. Not at all.
we let people get married for the same reason some states let them vote. as for the woman, sounds like homophobia to me.
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