Yasmin Tirado-Chiodini Quotes

The Porto Ricans at Harvard University believe that the crime was a horrible one and it should be punished, but death penalty would add to, and not detract from, its horrors," the Harvard students wrote. One of the student signatures on the letter was by Pedro Albizu y Campos who would later become a Puerto Rican promoter of ideals for the island's independence from the United States.

Her heart now pounding, a strange feeling of combined fear and happiness invaded her. She took a deep breath. Her lungs filled with fresh air. An invigorating rush of electricity all over her body overcame her.
"So, is this how falling in love feels?" she thought.
She knew the answer.

What to do now, Father? I am going to die like a killer, and I do not even remember killing."
"You can pray, my son. You are in the hands of God now," said the good priest.

In all criminal prosecutions, the accused shall enjoy the right to a speedy and public trial, by an impartial jury of the State and district wherein the crime shall have been committed, which district shall have been previously ascertained by law, and to be informed of the nature and cause of the accusation; to be confronted with the witnesses against him; to have compulsory process for obtaining witnesses in his favor, and to have the Assistance of Counsel for his defense. - Sixth Amendment, United States Constitution

Antonio could not stop thinking about Dean Fiero's words during his welcoming speech, "Look to your left; now to your right. One of you will not be here in 1915!" These words were used to intimidate freshman law students to draw their attention to the importance of being diligent in their forthcoming studies. They still are.

There is always hope for a reprieve, my friend," Stielow said. "You have to get the governor to pardon you if the courts fail on you. This is an unlikely thing, although possible. The last thing you hold on to 'til the last second is hope. Hope is what keeps us doomsmen sane, for the most part. A miracle.

Do you know who Samuel Langhorne Clemens is, Antonio?" Bessie asked.
"No, chood I?" he said.
"He is best known as Mark Twain, the author of The Adventures of Tom Sawyer," she said.
"I have herd of the story, but I hav not red the booc," he said.
"Well, you should read it," she said. "It is excellent reading. An American classic. Mark Twain worked in Schoharie for a while," she said.
"Is that so?" he said.
"Yes, he worked as a brakeman on the Schoharie railroad station on Depot Street the winter of 1879, three years after he wrote his famous book," Bessie said.
"Why would he do that, a famos author?" Antonio asked.
"A self-published author, I should add.

SHE RESEARCHED WHEN everyone slept. In the dead silence, her mind worked with more clarity. No interruptions, no worries. Sometimes she even imagined that her ancestors guided her. That they reached out from the past to share their stories.
"Hocus Pocus!" she thought, smiling. Her inside joke was a source of inspiration.
But her imagination was not far-fetched.
My second cousin, twice removed, is a family historian. She is also a lawyer. And this is why I chose her. I needed her to do me a favor. I chose her, although she is a business lawyer and not a criminal lawyer. That was fine by me. It's not like my lawyers did a superb job at defending me. I was wrongfully executed.

The physiological effects of an electrocution are severe and painful. Besides launching the body into violent convulsions, the electrocution of a human being causes massive destruction throughout the body.

In Sing Sing Prison, in a ghastly white room stands a chair. Its parts are heavy joinings of oak, riveted and screwed together; its strong legs fastened to the floor with teeth and claws of steel. It bites into the marrow of men with fangs of fire. For this is the faldstool of bloody human justice, the prayer-chair of man's vengeance upon man. Into it are strapped ... men who have killed other men. In it, for a high moral purpose, erring human lives are shocked across the barrier into night and the grave. - Edward H. Smith (1918)

The Death House back then was a self-contained unit, with its own hospital, kitchen, exercise yard and visiting room. The cells were inadequate, dark, and did not have proper sanitary facilities or ventilation. One window and skylight furnished the ventilation and light of the entire unit. Twelve cells were on the lower tier, six on each side, facing each other, with a narrow corridor between them. Five cells were located in an upper tier. There was an area the prisoners called the Dance Hall that housed a prisoner to be executed on his last day. The narrow corridor connected the Dance Hall to the execution room, where the Electric Chair resided. The prisoners named this corridor the Last Mile or the Green Mile, because this was the last walk a prisoner would take all the way to the small green riveted door at the end of the corridor, on his way to the execution room.

Antonio looked down, silent, as Shillitoni kept talking. There he was, among cold-blooded killers, talking to a gangster. A much different picture than a year prior.
"Can't trust priests, can't trust cops either. Can't trust nobody! Whaddaya say?"
"I am not like you," Antonio said. "I'm not like them, either. That's what I say. I am not a cold-blooded killer!"
"Ya killed, you a killa! There's not'ng more to it!" Shillitoni said.

Manuel acquired as much land as he could afford and refused to sell it to anyone, even if he was not planting anything on it.
"La tierra no se acaba" ("the land does not perish"), he often said.