Pauline Matthews Opinion Piece

My son, Ryan Matthews, is on death row in Angola State Penitentiary in Louisiana for a crime he was arrested for when he was just days past his seventeenth birthday. Last week I traveled to Rome with my daughter where we met with Vatican Official and Catholic human rights groups to address the issue of the juvenile death penalty. We were traveling with a delegation of family members of children who have received the death penalty and life imprisonment and had the honor of being specially seated at an audience with the Pope.

The experience taught me something that I did not learn during Ryan’s trial where I watched twelve people sentence my son to die - that the Catholic Church and almost every country in the world is opposed to giving children the death penalty for crimes committed before their eighteenth birthdays.

I feel like the trial where Ryan was sentenced to die was more like a lynching than a legal action. In fact, recently the Jefferson Parish District Attorney’s Office that prosecuted Ryan received international attention because its district attorneys were wearing neckties with images of nooses on them in court while seeking the death penalty against a person for a crime committed as a child. I could hardly believe my eyes when I read this in the paper and was saddened at the thought of this child’s parent seeing what a joke this whole process is to the district attorneys in Jefferson Parish.

To the families of the children facing the death penalty, it is not a joke at all but a life or death struggle. To us, these racist ties show the truth - that they seek the death penalty against our children because we are black, because we are poor.
In Ryan’s trial, there was only one black person on the twelve person jury despite the fact that nearly 30% of the population of Jefferson Parish are people of color. That jury then believed the weak evidence of two white witnesses and ignored evidence from black witnesses which could have proven Ryan’s innocence. Maybe we would have done better if we could have paid for a lawyer instead of having one appointed by the court. The lawyer who was appointed to represent my child met with me only once before the trial and spent scarcely more time with Ryan. My child was having the trial of his life and this was all the attention we got from the court appointed attorney. It was like we had no lawyer at all.

One of the members of our delegation was a woman named Rena Beazley, whose son Napoleon was the last person executed in the United States for a crime committed as a child. During the five days I spent with her, I saw her cry several times when talking about her child’s execution. Despite whatever her son might have done, it was difficult to see this innocent woman in such pain. I believe that if more people could see her tears, they would know that the juvenile death penalty is no joking matter and would end this practice.

Going to Rome to see the Pope and to meet with bishops, priests, nuns, and other Italian and international people confirmed for my family what we already know - that sentencing kids to die is simply wrong.