Marie Deans

Marie McFadden Deans (June 8, 1940 – April 15, 2011) was an American anti-death penalty activist who was committed to finding attorneys for men who were facing execution without legal representation. Marie's work began on death row began in South Carolina in the early 1980s and continued in Virginia for the next twenty years where she won reduced sentences for over 200 death-row inmates in Virginia and South Carolina.[1][2][3] A memoir of Deans' life and work, titled A Courageous Fool: Marie Deans and Her Struggle Against the Death Penalty, was released in 2017.

Marie Deans poses outside her office at the Virginia Coalition on Jails & Prisons

Early Life and Personal Life

Marie McFadden was born on June 8, 1940, in New Zion Township, South Carolina. Her parents were Joel Ellis McFadden II, a Charleston, South Carolina jewelry store owner, and Eva Alice "Hettie" Jackson McFadden. Married three times, Marie was the mother of Joel McFadden and J. Robert Deans.

Murder of Penny Deans

In 1972, four years after the marriage of Robert and Marie Deans, Robert's mother Penny was murdered in her home in Charleston, SC. Penny's murder was the beginning of Marie's anti-death penalty work. Deans recalled the moments just after she and her husband arrived to the crime scene, where "A young police officer, his uniform black in the night, came over and put his hand gently on my shoulder. 'Don't worry. We'll catch the bastard and fry him," he said. Deans was haunted by this officer's attempt to assuage her shock and sadness. She did not feel that "frying" the murderer would make her or anyone else feel better, or solve any other problems. "I had been like most people, not really thinking about the families of murderers," she wrote. But at this point, Deans began to put herself in the shoes of the killer's sister, and imagined the grief she would feel if her brother were killed by the state for committing a crime. She decided that the death penalty was wrong, and she was going to try to save people from the machinery of death.[4]

Anti-Death Penalty Work

Although Deans estimated that she saved over 250 inmates from their death sentences, she also lost 34 of the men she worked tirelessly to save. Deans "stood death watch" with each of these men, but could not emotionally withstand attending their executions.[4]

Deans founded Victims' Families for Alternatives to the Death Penalty in 1976, later renamed Murder Victims' Families for Reconciliation. This organization was formed by people who, like Marie, opposed the death penalty and needed support after having a family member murdered. Marie felt that the families of murder victims need a "safe place from which they could speak out" because of tension she perceived among the families, abolitionists, and attorneys."[4]

In 1979, Deans founded the Charleston chapter of Amnesty International.

In 1982, Deans made her first visit to Virginia's death row. One of the first inmates she met there was Joe Giarratano, who, in 1979 at age 21, had been convicted of allegedly murdering his girlfriend and raping her 15-year old daughter. Despite receiving a notably speedy trial with legal inconsistencies, prosecutorial misconduct, coerced confessions, and "evidence" from a poor investigation,[1] Giarratano was sentenced to six life sentences. Deans worked to convince the Virginia justice system, all the way up to then-Governor L. Douglas Wilder, that Giarratano may have been falsely accused. In 1991, with mere hours until Giarratano was scheduled to be executed, Wilder ordered that the sentence be halted. After retrials, Giarratano was given a life sentence with a chance for parole after 25 years of his 1979 conviction. In 2015, Giarratano was denied parole for the tenth time in ten years. [5][4]

In 1983, Deans moved to Virginia and founded the Virginia Coalition on Jails and Prisons.

In 1984, Deans met Earl Washington Jr. while visiting Virginia's death row. Washington had an IQ of 69 when he was arrested for allegedly murdering and raping Rebecca Williams of Culpepper, Virginia. It was not until 2000 that Washington Jr. would receive a full pardon by then-Virginia Governor James Gilmore after DNA evidence proved his innocence.

In 1994, the Virginia Coalition on Jails and Prisons shut its doors after funding ceased. Marie never made much more than $13,000 a year as the head of the Coalition, and in the final year of its existence she drew no salary at all. But Marie shouldered on, founding the Virginia Mitigation Project and continuing to work to bring justice and basic human rights to the men and women who faced death at the hands of the state. She lectured. She debated. She shared her expertise on mitigation. She never stopped fighting.[6]

End of Life

Deans paid a steep price for her advocacy. During the years she ran the Virginia Coalition on Jails and Prisons, she was a single mother who lived well below the poverty line. Sustained on a diet of caffeine and nicotine, Deans drove herself mercilessly — consumed by the fear that there was always something more she could do to save the lives of the condemned inmates. Many referred to her as a "saint" — a label she abhorred. "I'm no goddam saint," Deans would reply. She preferred to be known as a "courageous fool," someone who was too foolish and stubborn to abandon her struggle to defeat capital punishment. When she died at the age of 70, Deans was a physically broken woman — as much a casualty of Virginia's death penalty as the men who were strapped into the electric chair.[7]

On April 15, 2011, Marie Deans died after a long battle with lung cancer. Her memorial service was held on May 1, 2011 at St. Paul's Memorial Church in Charlottesville, Virginia. During the service, eulogies were delivered by the Reverend Joseph Ingle, actor and death penalty activist Mike Farrell, attorney Lloyd Snook, and sons Joel McFadden and Robert Deans. One of her pallbearers was former Virginia death row inmate Earl Washington, Jr., who Marie helped factually exonerate. Marie was buried back in her beloved South Carolina, now resting with generations of the McFadden family in the Sardinia-Gable Cemetery in Clarendon County.

References
  1. "A Local Life: Marie Deans, 70, defender of the condemned".
  2. "N MEMORIAM: Marie Deans, A Life of Commitment to Justice and Founder of Murder Victims' Families for Reconciliation". Death Penalty Information Center. Retrieved 13 February 2017.
  3. "Mary Deans RIP". Journey of Hope. Retrieved 13 February 2017.
  4. Peppers, Todd; Anderson, Margaret (2017). A Courageous Fool: Marie Deans and Her Struggle Against the Death Penalty. Nashville, TN: Vanderbilt University Press. ISBN 0826521614.
  5. The Richmond Times-Dispatch reported that Joseph M. Giarratano was paroled, out of Deerfield Correctional Center on Dec. 20
  6. Peppers, Todd. (2011). "Celebrating the Life of a Death Penalty Pioneer."
  7. Peppers, Todd C. "Todd Peppers column: Marie Deans' struggle against the death penalty". Richmond Times-Dispatch. Retrieved 2017-05-29.
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