Just returned from a visit to Bangkok's notorious Bang Kwang prison, Toshi Kazama is ready to talk about criminal justice. On a rainy evening at the Foreign Correspondents' Club last week, the Japanese-born photographer shows slides of his photographs of juvenile offenders and speaks about the complexities of capital punishment. He has been photographing young people on death row since 1996, mostly in the US, where he has lived since the age of 15, and more recently across Asia.
HOT SEAT: ‘Yellow Mama’, Alabama’s electric chair. — Photographed by Toshi Kazama, Copyrighted, All rights reserved
Now a young looking 54, he photographs not only the inmates, but many details of each case. He takes pictures of the families of victims and inmates, crime scenes, prison exteriors and execution chambers. He describes aspects of the photos in detail _ the burn marks on the electric chair, the leather patch used to keep the eyes from popping out, the bed where prisoners are strapped in before injection, the levers and switches that end lives.
He also carefully describes the process. Shaving the head to improve conductivity for the electric chair. Not suffocating a person during a hanging, but breaking and extending the neck. The black sand used to disguise the traces of blood and bullets after death by firing squad. That after the 15-minute lethal injection process, the lungs emit an audible pop when they collapse. "It's the sound of death," he says.
Kazama doesn't attempt to excuse the crimes, instead describing them in detail _ how one victim's head was crushed with a rock, one body chopped up with an axe, a vagina mutilated _ but equates the brutality of the crime with the brutality of state-ordered execution.
He says he often finds guards, executioners and wardens supportive of his work and its purpose, since capital punishment is heavily politicised and arbitrary, and those who vote for it or sentence people to death are far removed from those who have to strap the inmate down and flip the switch or inject the needle that ends a life.
UNAWARE: Michael Shawn Barnes on death row. — Photographed by Toshi Kazama, Copyrighted, All rights reserved
This issue for him all began, he says, at the movies. New to the US at 15, he went to see an action film. When the good guy killed the bad guy at the end, the cinema erupted in cheers. It made him begin to question the popular notion of justice. "And that question mark never diminished," he says
Through prison visits over 16 years, he has faced the issue of capital punishment head on, and seems to leave an impression on the families and prisons he investigates. A positive word from one prison warden opens up doors in other states. Speaking then about his experiences in public forums, he is invited farther afield, to Taiwan, Japan or Malaysia, where he continues to photograph the implements of execution and the young people who have the prospect of death hanging over them.
THE FIRST PRISONER
Already a professional photographer in New York, in 1996 Kazama decided to visit a 16-year-old mentally handicapped boy who had been sentenced to death for murder. Michael Shawn Barnes was being held at the maximum security prison in Alabama, and Kazama "a little naively" simply called the warden to ask for access.
The warden, he says, was flabbergasted by the request and launched an expletive-laced tirade. "Don't ever call me again!" he said, shouting "F*** you!" before hanging up.
Undeterred, Kazama immediately called back, getting much the same response. Over the next eight months, though, through lawyers he contacted the prison commissioner, threatening legal action, before finally gaining access and coming face to face with the warden who had shouted abuse on the phone.
In person he found him to be surprisingly nice and helpful, and later his support helped Kazama access other prisons across the southern United States.
And the youth on death row, he discovered, "was not a monster, just an ordinary boy I might find in my son's class".
DOCUMENTING DEATH: Photographer Toshi Kazama.
While shaking the boy's hand, he couldn't stop himself from hugging him. "Hugging is a big thing," he says, "because he won't be touched by his family or in kindness until he's executed."
Barnes' reaction, though, was to say "I'm not a b****."As a 16-year-old in a prison with hardened criminals, he was a constant object of sexual harassment, terrified of the one hour each day he had to spend outside of the cell.
Barnes had an IQ of 67 and partial brain damage. "He didn't even understand his sentence."
Likewise, Kazama says, he may not have understood the questions police asked everyone in town when two murder victims in their seventies were found. The crimes Barnes admitted to under interrogation were held against him despite conflicting evidence, and a jury found him guilty and sentenced him to life in prison. The judge overruled the jury's decision and imposed the death penalty.
"Police only want to close the case. Prosecutors only want to win the case. And the judge's job is to reassure the public."
That the system could be so rife with miscarriages of justice was mind-opening. "I'd trusted people to do their jobs," he says.
THE SCAR THAT NEVER HEALS
One case that was to prove very influential in Kazama's life and work was that of Rogers LaCaze, a young man on death row in Louisiana. LaCaze had stood guard outside a Vietnamese restaurant in Louisiana while a policewoman shot her police partner and the entire Vietnamese family that owned the eatery, except for one woman who survived by hiding in the kitchen. Although LaCaze didn't kill anyone, under Louisiana law he could be sentenced to death as an accomplice.
"Toshi, the scar in my heart never goes away," the surviving member of the Vietnamese family told him. "But I can change how I look at my own scar."
The wife of the police officer who had been killed gave birth a week after the crime. The two survivors helped each other to raise the baby not with anger and sadness but with care and love. "That's what she meant," he says, "by the way she saw her scar."
Victims' families, from his experience, never say that the execution of the perpetrator gives them comfort or closure. He cites one study that says only 15% of the families of victims of the 1995 Oklahoma City bombing now support the death penalty. Shortly after the crime that figure was over 80%.
LAST BOY: Sean Sellers, the only person executed in the US since 1976 for a crime committed while under 17. — Photographed by Toshi Kazama, Copyrighted, All rights reserved — Photographed by Toshi Kazama, Copyrighted, All rights reserved
He describes one anecdote told to him by prison guards in Louisiana. The execution chamber had a telephone hotline connected to the governor's office. When the phone rang five minutes before an execution, the executioners, prison guards and onlookers _ "everyone cheered because they didn't have to kill that day". But on the line was the governor, sounding extremely drunk, saying, "Just carry on."
The guards couldn't believe it, saying, "How can he do that? It's a piece of paper to him."
In a way, Kazama argues, we are all governors. "It [the death penalty] is a distant event in our lives, a piece in the newspaper.
''War is similar. Those who make the decisions are far removed from the battles. If there is the death penalty in our country, we are all guilty by allowing it to happen.''
ATTACKED BY A MADMAN
Eight and a half years ago, Kazama became a victim himself.
After picking up his daughter from school he was attacked by a stranger, who choked him from behind and smashed his head into the pavement.
He was sent to intensive care and the doctor told his wife that his chances of survival were slim, and that if he did survive he might be confined to a wheelchair for the rest of his life.
''I woke up four days later,'' Kazama says. ''The children were full of worry. I told them, 'I'm going to be OK. Be angry at the violence or the crime, but don't hate the person.'
''I hope this perpetrator is never found,'' he says. ''I hope he receives unconditional love from somewhere. When you receive love you start to like yourself.''
His hearing and the right side of his brain were damaged in the attack, but the Vietnamese woman's response to losing her entire family altered his perspective on the crime.
Kazama is the Asia programme director of Murder Victims' Families for Human Rights, an NGO of family members of those murdered or executed, all of whom oppose the death penalty. He also founded Ocean, an affiliated organisation in Japan.
STIGMA IN ASIA
In Asia, he says, ''if the victim's family opposes the death penalty they can't say so. They can't say 'My brother is innocent,' because admitting the brother is on death row will cause a public backlash.''
In some Asian countries he was not allowed to photograph inside prisons. But the images he took of Taiwanese prisons are striking. The execution chamber is a room of black sand.
Inmates have to buy their own sheet to stand and die on, and the last meal is served on-site, with a view of the black sand and a picture of Buddha.
Prior to the execution inmates burn incense, not for their own peace of mind but so that the soul will be guided and won't end up haunting the executioner.
Prisoners' wrists and ankles were covered in bruises. ''Like in Thailand, inmates get shackled every day.''
He visited one death row prisoner and brought him a Polaroid picture of his mother. ''Tears were running down his cheeks,'' he says, though he wasn't allowed to photograph the prisoner's face.
REVERSALS OF FORTUNE
He shows us photographs of juvenile inmates whose convictions were later overturned, such as Shareef Cousin, who was seen playing basketball at the time of the crimes. Police and prosecutors later admitted that ex-offenders gave false statements during the initial trial. ''But why was he on death row in the first place?'' Kazama says. ''He was clearly the wrong guy.''
It was a case, again, he says, of police trying to close a difficult case and prosecutors just wanting to win, successfully duping the jury.
Another young man pleaded guilty to a crime his sister committed. To the judicial system, it didn't seem to matter as long as they could convict someone, and he was sentenced to death. Kazama tracked down the sister in Elk City, Oklahoma, to find her working as a prostitute. ''While her brother is sentenced to death, she has a free life, but she spends it like this?''
Another Oklahoma inmate was Sean Sellers, housed in an underground prison with no natural light, and in the photo his hair is balding, like that of many at the facility, due to the lack of sunlight. He was on death row because of murders committed when he was 16. When the execution date neared, he wrote again to Kazama, asking him to witness his execution, ''as my friend''.
''He clearly didn't have many friends ... he was executed in front of me.''
Sellers remains the only person executed in the US since 1976 for a crime committed while younger than 17.
Some of the crimes perpetrated by other photographic subjects seem unspeakable. One young woman smashed the skull of a romantic rival and mutilated her body. One young man, Damien Echols, was convicted of being a satanist who cut heads off three children and put them on spikes. (Echols was released last year after a plea deal and maintains his innocence).
''The original crime and the execution are both heinous,'' Kazama says. ''If he's killed, how can we learn how this crime happened or how to prevent it? Our society will never improve unless we can learn.''
And then there was the case of Christopher Simmons, which went all the way to the US Supreme Court. In 2005 it ruled that the execution of those under 18 was unconstitutional _ a ruling that saved the lives of many other juvenile offenders, such as Michael Barnes and Rogers LaCaze, whose sentences have since been commuted to life.
All the perpetrators he met, he says, were poor and poorly educated, and clearly suffering from a lack of love from their families. ''I've met many inmates' families. At best, they had a single parent.
''If you're rich,'' he says, ''you'll never be sentenced to death, anywhere in the world.''
He says there is much debate over which execution method is the most humane. Some choices make people feel less responsible, but in the end there is no humane way.
Two of the worst offenders, he says, are Texas and China. Texas has the most death row inmates in the US, and before the Supreme Court ruling on juveniles was considering lowering the death penalty to cover even 11 year olds. ''China executes 5,000 to 10,000 people a year,'' he says. ''It's big business; if you need an organ, go there. You can bribe the judge with US$4,000 [127,000 baht], which is the price of the organs.
''You can tell a lot about a country by its prisons,'' he says.
Has he ever thought about living in a country without the death penalty? It has crossed his mind, he says. ''But then I'd be running, and once you start running you never stop.
''I want a better, safer society for my family,'' he concludes. ''And that is only possible by abolishing the death penalty.''
MUTED: Taiwan’s execution chamber with a floor of black sand. — Photographed by Toshi Kazama, Copyrighted, All rights reserved
CAPITAL PUNISHMENT IN THAILAND
According to current figures issued by Hands Off Cain, a death-penalty abolition group, of the 194 UN-member countries and states that have UN observer status, 98 have abolished capital punishment. Seven have kept it for exceptional circumstances such as times of war, and 49 permit its use but haven't implemented it for at least 10 years. Forty countries still have the death penalty and use it. Common methods include beheading, electric chair, hanging, firing squad, lethal injection and the gas chamber. Since the 2005 US Supreme Court ruling, only Iran and Saudi Arabia have executed offenders who were under the age of 18 at the time of their crimes.
Thailand is among the 40 countries where the death penalty is still active. The method here since 2003 is lethal injection _ an application of three chemicals, five minutes apart, that takes 15 minutes and causes muscles to shrink and the lungs to collapse
According to Danthong Breen, president of the Union for Civil Liberty, citing figures quoted as of June 19 by the Corrections Department, 726 people are currently on death row in Thailand. The most recent executions were of two men in 2009, following four in 2003 and 11 in 2002, the last year that death by shooting was implemented.
Despite a royal pardon on HM the King's birthday last year for women on death row, of the 726 currently on death row, 72 are women, according to Amnesty International Thailand. Of the total cases, 337 are because of drug trafficking, 389 due to murder and other charges.
The organisation also notes that capital punishment cases usually take at least three years to process, most going through the Court of Appeals or the Supreme Court.
Deputy Prime Minister Chalerm Yubamrung, however, recently asked the Justice Ministry to prepare for fast-track implementation of the death penalty, reducing the appeals period to as little as 15 days for convicted drug traffickers.
The Kingdom also established the second National Human Rights Plan in 2009, set to expire in 2013. Abolition of the death penalty has been prescribed as part of the plan, though left untouched for the past three years.
It is a duality of forces petitioning the Justice Ministry that Mr Breen considers typical of Thai politics.
In the region in recent years, the Philippines and Cambodia have abolished the death penalty. Motivations for eradicating the death penalty cited by activists, such as former president of the Philippines senate Aquilino Pimentel in a Bangkok symposium in March, include the evidence that it has no deterrent effect, the possibility of wrongful conviction, removing the possibility of redemption, and that those executed are most likely to be poor and have little education or access to legal help. Mr Breen said the case for abolition also boils down to John Donne's famous line from 1624: "Any man's death diminishes me, because I am involved in mankind."