This is always a difficult day for me. Twenty years ago my mentor and best friend Casey Kaddish Cohen died. He is on the far left of the photo. At that time he was considered to be the foremost authority on the death penalty phase, working on cases with the likes of power attorney Leslie Abramson. The BBC did a documentary on him for their Everyman series. His last case was Jeremy Stromeyer, the young man who took the little girl into the bathroom at a Reno casino and strangled her. He took that case with Leslie because he told me I had given him a reason to go on living. He would travel anywhere, to some dark alley or across the planet, to find out the story of a murderer's life, to humanize them so that the attorney could fight against them being condemned to death. He was an athiest and passionately against the death penalty. He told me there is always a story, always a reason why people do what they do. I never met anyone with more compassion or a greater sense of justice. When I met him I had started InsideOUT Writers. Sister Janet Harris introduced him to me. The first time we talked on the phone we had a deep connection and that connection only grew over time. He helped me realize that I was worth everything and if any man disrespected me, even once, I should cut him out of my life. The unbearable thing was, the first conversation we had, he told me he was dying of cancer. Every day we had together, every conversation, was golden because we never knew when it would end. I only knew him for three years and I miss him every day since. Sister Janet ended up being anything BUT my friend. A betrayer of everything friendship stands for. But I will always thank her for giving me the gift of Casey Cohen. The love of my life. Forever. Shortly before his death he gave me a series of fantastical letters written to death row inmate Maureen McDermott and asked me to please follow the trail of the letters and write about them. This I did, even making the journey to visit Maureen on death row. I have 500 pages of this story, Letters from Purgatory. #justice #deathpenalty #writerslife #truth
