Survived by One: The Life and Mind of a Family Mass Murderer

11. Moratorium and Commutation

151 11 Moratorium and Commutation I began painting as a method of meditation. I also began to try to educate myself, psychologically, in order to try to understand myself. Introspection was new to me. I tried to figure out why certain things took place and why I did what I did. I read about family dynamics, dysfunctional families, and guilt. I read Freud and Erickson, and anything else I could get my hands on to help me understand myself and try to come to terms with my crime, which haunted me and compelled many of my closest relatives to loathe me to the point of praying for my execution. In the wake of the moratorium, Tom Odle began a long period of self-examination as well as self-expression. The change in his perspective on his past, and his future, was reflected in an interview he gave to Punk Planet, a small, independent magazine, in an article titled, “Finding Life on Death Row” in April 2001. Tom begins the interview by saying, “[I]t’s hard waking up every day knowing you’re going to die, especially by the hand of the state.” While the moratorium was a glimmer of hope, his future was still uncertain. To cope, he said, “I try to stay focused on other things. I try to stay in shape, listen to music, watch TV, paint, draw. I just try to keep very, very busy and make sure that time passes.” His interviewer, clearly sympathetic toward Tom’s situation, imagined he would be a lot angrier. But the time Odle had already spent in prison Moratorium and Commutation 152 had taught him some valuable lessons: “Where is anger going to get you? It’s not going to get you anywhere but in more trouble. . . . You have to divert your anger into other, more productive things. . . . If you’re an artist, maybe you want to put your anger onto a piece of canvas or a piece of paper; or maybe you want to [physically] work it out in a workout. “With age comes maturity. You’re able to deal with your anger a lot easier. You know how to deal with it once you’ve gotten a little older.” When the interviewer said he found Tom’s description of his day-to-day life behind bars “inspiring,” Tom was quick to set him straight. “Inspiring? My life is disappearing. All of my 20s are gone. Half of my 30s are gone. Should I ever get released, I will have to start at a time when most people are settling down. I’m losing my life.” Still, the interviewer insisted, Tom was surviving “amazingly well.” Tom responded, “I have to survive. I have to survive because if I break down and become insane, or if I break down and still stay uneducated, or let whatever talent I may have go to waste, then wouldn’t you say that they win? They break me. They can keep me locked up, but mentally I’m not locked up. I refuse to allow them to lock me up mentally” (Staff, 2001, April). Following the tragic death of Tom’s lawyer, Richard Cunningham, who was stabbed to death by his mentally ill son on March 1, 2001, Aviva Futorian , a longtime death-row lawyer, became Tom’s sole legal representative in his ongoing appeals. Futorian was an organizer for the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee in Mississippi during the civil-rights movement in the 1960s and cofounder of the Long Term Prisoner Policy Project, an initiative focused on prisoners’ rights and Illinois prison-reform issues. She had represented other death-row inmates during the postconviction stages of their appeals. In 2002, Futorian filed a petition for clemency from the death penalty on behalf of Thomas V. Odle in return for life without parole. Among her arguments, Futorian said: • Odle was represented by defense counsel who did not meet the training , experience, and certification requirements of the Supreme Court amendments (Rule 714). The result was that his counsel provided seriously inadequate representation. • They relied on an insanity defense, even though both of their mental -health experts told counsel before trial that they could not state that Odle was insane. • Defense counsel failed to present a systematic history of the defendant ’s extreme emotional and physical abuse at his hearing, though the Moratorium and Commutation 153 same mental-health experts have stated that...