Pete Russell was born on May 2, 1973 and sentenced to death on Feburary 26, 2003 for fatally stabbing a woman. While being on death row he rised above himself and became a yogi, but he also loves to read and write poetry and is currently waiting to be killed by the state of Texas.
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.