A Letter From Death Row

Background for "The Garden Where Nobody Goes"

Hello friends, my name is Tom Provenzano. I’m living in a cell next to Terry Sims on one side, Tony Bryant on the other, right next to the electric chair. I just got done visiting with my only sister Catherine and her daughter Charlene on Sunday, with a glass set between us. It was very nice.

I am much more sick than they know, from all the three times in a row that this state come within hours of putting me into the chair. I have always been ill mentally since long before my first trial. But now, I’m taking medicine every night because it is worse now.

I hear voices and see things down here in my cell, the prison psychiatrist doctor gives me medicine to go to sleep and it does not help the voice sounds or things I see. My sister just told me today that the state will be taking me to sit in on some kind of courtroom hearing next Tuesday and all kinds of doctors will be there to talk about me. I hope I get put into a hospital before that time because I can’t make it like everyone else does.

Yes, I did go through a hell the last three times they went to put me in that old electric chair and my sister and family were scared for me so much it scared me. I still see psychiatrist doctors now and take medicine for it.

My attorney did try to ask the governor for a clemency whatever that is, but they told me he said he would not give me one because we had one already. I always was innocent and I still am. All the psychiatrists are helping to tell the courts this to the judges too. I need your help, if you can give it. I don’t have any canteen money or stamps.

I don’t know why they are doing this to me, I don’t understand. I never could help my legal attorney with any of my case. There never were and still are no eyewitnesses to whoever was killed in my case. After a shootout inside of an Orange County Courthouse I woke up in a hospital and a man told me of a killing. I blacked out and passed out when someone shot me with a handgun or something through my breathing lung.

When I woke up I was laying in a hospital. They told me someone was killed, I still don’t know how. My attorney and me are on our way to a hearing in court. I can’t write very well but what I do write will be the God’s honest truth. You can count on that.

This is from your friend, Tom Provenzano 094542, Cell Q-2102, Florida State Prison in Starke, Florida.