Who is damien echols

Aimee Mann Narrator. Lorrie Davis. Quotes by Damien Echols. I intend to catch him in the act. It said "What is to give light must endure burning. I've been turning that quote over and over in my head. The truth of it is absolutely awe-inspiring. In the end, I believe it's why we all suffer. It's the meaning we all look for behind the tragedies in our lives. The pain deepens us, burns away our impurities and petty selfishness.

It makes us capable of empathy and sympathy. It makes us capable of love. The pain is the fire that allows us to rise from the ashes of what we were, and more fully realize what we can become. When you can step back and see the beauty of the process, it's amazing beyond words. I have heard them in the breathy voice of a song and seen them between the covers of a book. They have hidden in trees so that their faces peer out of the bark, and hovered beneath the silver surface of water.

They disguise themselves as cracks in concrete or come calling in a delirium of fever. On summer days they keep pace like the shadow of our shadow. They lurk in the breath of young girls who give us our first kiss. I've seen men who were haunted to the point of madness by things that never were and things that should have been.

I've seen ghosts in the lines on a woman's face and heard them in the jangling of keys. The ghosts in fire freeze and the ghosts in ice burn. Some died long ago; some were never born.

Some ride the blood in my veins until it reaches my brain. Sometimes I even mistake myself for one. Sometimes I am one. See all Damien Echols's quotes ». Topics Mentioning This Author. At some time or another it's crossed the mind of everyone here. Some make jokes about it, like whistling to yourself as you pass the cemetery. Others don't like to speak about it at all, and it can be a touchy subject.

Who wants to think about the fact that you're sleeping on the mattress that three or four executed men also claimed as their resting place? The silence on Death Row is something that seems to unnerve guards when they first get assigned here. That's because every other barracks sounds like a madhouse. There are people screaming at the top of their lungs 24 hours a day, it never stops.

Screams of anger and rage, begging, threatening, cursing — it sounds like the din of some forgotten hell. These are the "regular" prisoners. As soon as you step through the door of Death Row it stops.

Sleep deprivation is a direct result of the lights. They turn them off every night at Then they're turned right back on at 2. If you could fall asleep the moment the lights went out, then sleep through all the guards' activity, you would still get only four hours of uninterrupted sleep. It's not possible, though. Doors slamming, keys hitting the floor, guards yelling at one another as if they're at a family reunion — it all wakes you up.

You can never sleep very deeply here anyway, because you have to stay aware of your surroundings. Bad things can come to those caught off guard. One of the first things I learned when I arrived was how to cook on a watt lightbulb. This is accomplished in one of two ways. The first is by using the bulb directly, as a heat source. To use the bulb like an oven, you first cut the top off a soda can with a disposable razor blade.

You then fill the can with whatever you want to cook — coffee, or leftover beef stew, for instance. You make certain the can is completely dry, not a single drop of water on it, and then balance it on the lightbulb. After 20 or 30 minutes, whatever is in the can will be hot enough to burn your mouth. You have to be certain the can is dry, because the bulb will explode in your face if water drips on it. You can always tell when someone has made this mistake — the explosion sounds like a shotgun blast.

For a split second today I could smell home. It smelled like sunset on a dirt road. I thought my heart was going to break. The world I left behind was so close I could almost touch it. Everything in me cried out for it. It's amazing how certain shades of agony have their own beauty.

I can't ever seem to make myself believe that the home I once knew doesn't even exist any more. It's still too real inside my head. I wish I had a handful of dust from back then, so that I could keep it in a bottle and always have it near. Time has changed for me. I don't recall exactly when it happened, and I don't even remember if it was sudden or gradual.

Somehow the change just crept up on me like a wolf on tiptoe. Hell, I don't even remember when I first started to notice it. What I do remember is how when I was a kid every single day seemed to last for an eternity.

I swear to God that I can remember a single summer day that lasted for several months. Now I watch while years flip by like an exhalation, and sometimes I feel panic trying to claw its way up into my throat. Time itself has become a cruel race toward an off-coloured sunset. Forever can be measured with a ruler, and eternity is no longer than a stiff breeze. God, I miss the sound of cicadas singing. I used to sit on my front porch and listen to those invisible hordes all screaming in the trees like green lunacy.

The only place I hear them now is on television. I've seen live newscasts where I could hear them screeching in the background. When I realised what it was I was hearing I nearly fell to my knees, sobbing and screaming a denial to everything I've lost, everything that's been stolen from me.

It's a powerful sound — the sound home would make if it weren't a silent eternity away from me. Hearing the cicadas is like being stabbed through the heart with blades of ice. They remind me that life has continued for the world while I've been sealed away in a concrete vault. I've been awakened on many nights by the feel of rats crawling over my body, but I've never heard summer's green singing. A single letter would have been enough to kindle a tiny spark of hope in my heart, but I received hundreds.

Every day at least one or two would arrive, sometimes as many as 10 or I would lie on my bunk and flip through the letters, savouring them like a fat kid with a fistful of candy, whispering, "Thank you… Thank you," over and over again. I clutched those letters to my chest and slept with them under my head. I had never been so thankful for anything in my entire life.

I had been on Death Row for about two years when I received an odd letter, in February It was from a woman who loved movies and had recently seen the documentary about my case at a film festival in New York. Her name was Lorri Davis, and she did something no one else had ever done — she apologised for invading my privacy by seeking me out.

That really struck me, because I felt like I no longer had any privacy. My entire life had been exposed for anyone and everyone to examine and poke at with a stick. I was a fly that had its wings ripped off by a malicious kid. Every day I received letters from people who did nothing but ask questions about the most intimate aspects of my life. Here was a lady who understood courtesy. She said she felt horrible about what I'd been through and was compelled to contact me, but she didn't want to intrude.

I immediately wrote back to her, and ever since we have tried to write to each other every single day. Our letters to each other now fill up an entire closet. She was from New York, college-educated, a world traveller who'd been to South America and as far away as the Middle East, and an architect who had worked on projects for people I'd heard of only from Hollywood movies.

We wrote to each other obsessively, and we spoke on the phone for the first time a month or so after that first letter. I just decided to call her one day — I was terribly nervous, knowing I'd need to improvise the conversation rather than script it ahead of time. She always laughs now when she tells anyone about the first time I called her. She picked up the phone to hear a deep, Delta accent ask, "Are you OK? She said it nearly killed her.

Lorri came to visit me about six months later. I remember it was summer because she wasn't wearing a coat. It was a slow and gradual process, forging ahead together. I knew I was in love with Lorri when I started to wake up in the middle of the night furious and cursing her for making me feel the way she did. It was pain beyond belief. Nothing has ever hurt me that way.

I tried to sleep as much as possible just to escape. I was grinding my teeth down to nubs. Now, years later, it's exactly the opposite. Now there is no pain, yet she still makes my heart explode. For the first two years we knew each other, Lorri flew from New York to Arkansas about every other month, so, in addition to the phone bill, this was an extremely expensive relationship for her.

When she came to see me, there was a sheet of glass separating us. It was maddening, and we would often blow through the screen at the bottom of the glass just to feel each other's breath. Lorri and I weren't able to touch each other at all until December , when we were married.

After we were married, Lorri and I were permitted to be in the same room with each other, but every visit we had was chaperoned. Lorri had moved to Little Rock in August to start a whole new life and to be near me. She kept and still keeps every aspect of my life — and my ongoing legal case — neatly filed and managed. During the first two years of my incarceration, not one single thing was done by anyone on my behalf.

It was Lorri, and Lorri alone, who changed that.