Letters from Death Row

Letters from Death Row is an attempt to visualize through typography, and journey through the mind of convicted killer, Mark Anthony Stroman.

America’s first revenge killer after the 9/11 attacks, Stroman was put on death row after a shooting spree against victims Stroman defined as “looking Arab”. The True American by Anand Giridharadas, is a riveting account and peer into two lives who intersect in tragedy. I was inspired by the book to create a personal project that would explore certain themes within sociology and understand why people are the way they are.

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Narrative

Stroman told police he was avenging the deaths of those who lost their lives on 9/11 and had singled his victims out because they looked like people “of Muslim descent”. A thug with a long record that included burglary, credit card fraud and theft, and an abusive childhood, Stroman was found to be a damaged man who had an abusive childhood, allegedly suffering from brain damage from drug abuse, and was prone to bouts of aggression.

Through his time in one of Texas’ harshest prisons, the Polunsky Unit, Stroman reveals himself to have a change of perspective and remorse. A man who was already seized with doubts about what he had done, Stroman was losing faith in the narrative he had built to explain his murder spree to himself. Totally isolated, living 23 hours in a cell sustained only by letters, Stroman was executed July 20, 2011 08:53 p.m by lethal injection after a nationwide plea and campaign by his only survivor, Rais Bhuiyan.

This project is an ongoing work-in-progress.

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More to be published….

Background

The True American by Anand Giridharadas invites the reader to deliberate how we define ourselves as citizens, as well as themes of hate and bigotry, religion, poverty, duty, generational change, and more.

The current aim of my project is to:

  • Give insight into two sides of the account

  • Humanize the perpetrator

  • Come to an understanding of why people are the way they are

References & Links

To visit Mark Stroman’s blog, click here.

The True American — Murder and Mystery in Texas by Anand Giridharadas.

Read about Filmmaker Ilan Ziv who met and befriended Mark Stroman on Texas’ infamous Death Row here.

http://www.clarkprosecutor.org/html/death/US/stroman1262.htm