Chris Young was 21 years old when he fatally shot a shop owner during a confrontation. He was sentenced to death in 2006, and despite objections from the victim's family, executed on July 17th, 2018. He has repeatedly expressed remorse for the shooting and mentored kids during his time in prison. This book is his legacy for people to learn from his experience.
Stefan Heikens is a German activist against the death penalty.
He has made it his mission to give the inmates of death row a voice and does this in addition to his work with letters from soldiers in WWII. In doing so, he makes no distinction between guilt or innocence and allows each inmate to speak for himself, because he lives by the principle: "You can tell the value of a society by how it treats the weakest of its members." There are certainly few people society looks down on more than death row inmates and that's exactly why they should be listened to! Not every story is black and white and we could all love someone who ends up on death row due to adverse circumstances.
Stefan Heikens lives and works in Germany.