The Shabaka [Sundiata Waglini] story illuminates the most sordid defects of capital punishment. His blackness and poverty helped doom him. He was ruthlessly cheated; it was never his privilege to be granted - even for a phantom crime - the incarceration [i.e. instead of death row] that it meted out to others and that carries the possibility of redemption.
William Styron Connected to the Carolinas
Source
Essay, 'Death Row' [pub. New York Times Op-Ed Page, May 10 1987] - p.168
- work
- This Quiet Dust and Other Writings (1982)
- year
- 1982
- locator
- p.168
Cite this record
“The Shabaka [Sundiata Waglini] story illuminates the most so…” William Styron. Carolina Quotes, record CQ-4C8019E44B. https://carolinaquotes.com/quote/4c8019e44b
More from William Styron
Her thought process dwindled, ceased. Then she felt her legs crumple. "I can't choose! I can't choose!"
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I shivered in the knowledge of the futility of all ambition. My mouth was sour with the yellow recollection of death and blood-smeared fields and walls. I watched the girl slip away, vanish without a hand laid upon her. Who knows but whether we were not doomed to lose. I know nothing any longer. Nothing. Did I really wish to vouchsafe a life for the one that I had taken?