At 17, She Gave Up Her Son. Sixty Years Later, She Found Him on Death Row.

Sandra never knew what happened to the child she had at Growing up in a respected church-going middle-class family in the South her parents were dismayed when she explained them she was pregnant This was the early s To get pregnant out of wedlock and while you were still that young was a stigma Sandra commented A baby also threatened her future ambitions She was an outstanding learner a top basketball athlete and lead clarinetist in her school band Her parents were firm the child should be given up for adoption I wasn t going to fight it she mentioned The family kept the baby a secret sending Sandra to New York City to give birth She stayed at a home for unwed mothers and on January delivered a boy at the municipal hospital in Queens He weighed pounds ounces according to the birth records an alert and responsive baby with curly black hair dark brown eyes and a medium complexion She named him Barry Then he was gone For the next several years Sandra didn t dwell on the child she gave up Or maybe I purposely put it out of my mind so that I could move on she explained She graduated high school went to college and got married choosing her career over raising children At a time when minimal women were working on Wall Street let alone Black women she detected success in international banking I was good at it she explained And it gave her a chance to journey the world Nevertheless as she approached her th birthday in Sandra determined herself yearning to know what had happened to her child The adoption remained a closely guarded secret even within her own family She agreed to be interviewed on the condition that she would not be identified by her real name But she did tell her husband And he solicited me would I like to find him Sandra called the group home and the hospital in Queens But New York s stringent adoption record laws blocked her at every turn It was not until decades later in that the state would amend its adoption regulations giving adoptees a right to obtain a copy of their birth certificate upon turning By then Sandra had long left the city and moved back south On October she heard a knock at her front door As she recalls she was in the process of booking a vacation her first big trip since losing her husband of years I had just started to get myself together she commented But her world was about to turn upside down again The visitor was an investigator from the Capital Collateral Regional Counsel s Office in Florida She carried a copy of her son s birth certificate along with a handful of other records She explained Sandra that her son wished to be in touch with her Was she open to that Elated Sandra commented yes It was only when they sat down at her breakfast nook that the woman notified her that her son was in prison His name was Richard Barry Randolph and he was on Florida s death row Three years later Sandra still struggles to find words to describe that moment Her excitement turned to shock then disbelief then horror Before leaving her house the investigator warned that if Sandra planned to read news coverage of the crime she should keep in mind that it did not reflect the whole story Her son was no longer the same person he d been Sandra went online soon afterward That s when I lost it she commented The news stories declared that he raped and murdered a -year-old woman at a Florida convenience store in The more she read about his incident she confessed I wasn t sure I wished to know him I ve never had anyone in my family do anything like this Never had anyone in my family incarcerated definitely not on death row she noted The violence of his crime made her want to disavow him For me to say That s my child was like Oh no And that s just the way I felt at the time I ve since changed my mind A insufficient weeks later Sandra got a letter from her son in the mail It was handwritten and read like he had attentively planned what to say He wished her to know that he wasn t angry at her for giving him up but he did want to know why His childhood had been painful Occurrence records described his adoptive parents as ill-equipped to raise him his mother drank heavily and his father was physically abusive But he yearned to make clear that he didn t blame Sandra He noted that he didn t hold it against me she explained The idea of giving him up for adoption was so that he would get a better home Sandra announced Instead he d been traumatized According to the lawyers her son had developed a serious issue with crack cocaine which helped pave the way to his crime But the explanation felt inadequate Plenty of people struggled with addiction without committing such violence she thought I don t know what caused him to do that she announced Yet she revealed herself thinking What can I do to help you In October a meager days before her th birthday Sandra answered a call from her son By then they had been talking for nearly three years They just signed the warrant he mentioned and she knew from their previous conversations what this meant Florida s governor had set an execution date He was scheduled to die by lethal injection on November I want you to stay strong Sandra recalled him saying And then he apologized for it being my birthday week In the current era Richard Randolph is years old and has been on death row for nearly years He converted to Islam decades ago and took the name Malik Abdul-Sajjad Barring last-minute intervention he will die by lethal injection on Thursday night at Florida State Prison in Raiford the th person killed in the state s execution chamber this year Florida has led a resurgence of executions across the country in Since May it has averaged about two executions per month far outpacing any state in the country Although Florida has consistently been a leading death penalty state it has the second largest death row in the U S the current execution spree is unprecedented We had one last week and then this week and then there s another one in December explained capital defense attorney Maria DeLiberato former executive director of Floridians for Alternatives to the Death Penalty in a phone call on Monday On Tuesday night Florida stated yet another execution date for December If all the executions go through the state will end the year having killed people more than the previous years combined Related The Florida Supreme Court Is Radically Reshaping Death Penalty Law The execution spree is the handiwork of Gov Ron DeSantis who has presided over a systemic dismantling of the legal framework that once governed Florida s death penalty He has transformed the state Supreme Court handpicking judges willing to discard long-standing precedents including critical guardrails to prevent wrongful executions Meanwhile DeSantis s position gives him more power than greater part to carry out death sentences While other states require courts to schedule execution dates at the request of a state attorney general or local district attorney in Florida the governor can do it himself He just picks somebody DeLiberato says and then days later they re dead The executions have been driven by politics DeSantis reactivated Florida s death chamber in just a minimal months before announcing his run for president It was part of a broader death penalty push triggered in part by the long-awaited conviction of Nikolas Cruz who slaughtered people at a high school in Parkland Florida in Prosecutors had refused to allow Cruz to plead guilty to avoid the death penalty insisting on a costly protracted capital trial only for jurors to reject a death sentence opting instead for life without parole Currently Florida only requires eight jurors to send a defendant to die DeSantis seized on the backlash Florida had only in recent times reformed its death penalty law to require juries to unanimously agree on a death sentence For much of its history a defendant could be sent to death row by a vote of just to But in the state Supreme Court declared the statute unconstitutional and lawmakers reformed the law to bring Florida in line with other states requiring all jurors to agree After learning that three jurors held out against a death sentence in Cruz s situation conservative lawmakers accused the holdouts of derailing the full administration of justice and DeSantis vowed to change the law back to the way it was before In he signed act to lower the threshold In current times Florida only requires eight jurors to send a defendant to die Donald Trump s reelection has since generated what DeLiberato describes as a perfect storm U S Attorney General Pam Bondi has spent the year carrying out orders to aggressively pursue the death penalty on all fronts with her home state quick to comply Florida is now making a name for itself as the deadliest state in the country DeLiberato reported And that s just something they ve decided to own Florida s capital defense lawyers have been unable to hold back the tide of DeSantis s execution spree For Malik s attorney Marie-Louise Samuels Parmer a veteran lawyer at the Capital Collateral Regional Counsel his death warrant came just weeks after the execution of her longtime client Victor Jones the th man put to death this year Notice of the warrant arrived at p m on October The Florida Supreme Court set an expedited scheduling order to fast-track any final litigation Whereas other states provide months or even years from a death warrant to execution Florida gives days Samuels Parmer was comparatively new to Malik s circumstance when her client learned the identity of his biological parents in She hoped the discovery might give him a shot at getting back into court based on new evidence The adoption records unlocked a story that his jury never heard Although the sole witness at his sentencing trial testified that Malik had been adopted the witness erroneously announced his birth parents were college students and that s as far as we know about his early life To Samuels Parmer it was clear that her client s traumatic childhood set him on a tragic path She firmly thought that if he d been raised in a family more like Sandra s he never would have ended up on death row she reported There was a lot that Malik s trial attorney could have learned about his client s upbringing if he d had the time or motivation to investigate it If Malik s development were to be tried currently it would likely take at least two years to go to trial and his defense association would include at least two lawyers and a mitigation specialist who would investigate his early life for any signs of trauma neglect abuse or mental illness But that s not how things worked in Malik was tried five months after the murder and represented by a court-appointed attorney who insisted on working alone At a post-conviction hearing years later the lawyer conceded that he presented not much of a defense at all Yet the jury was split on his punishment voting to in favor of the death penalty The jury was majority white with only four Black jurors although it is unclear from the available record whether this included alternates In their challenges to Malik s death sentence his attorneys have pointed to the divided vote as proof that his life could have been spared if not for his defense attorney s failures But Florida courts have disagreed As Malik s execution nears there is no remaining venue to ask for mercy Any decision to spare his life would have to come from DeSantis the same man who set his execution date in the first place While other states give the condemned a chance to file a clemency petition close to their execution date with certain clemency hearings open to the society this is not the episode in Florida In fact plenty of of the people now facing execution had their clemency review years even decades ago Mr Randolph is not the same person who was sentenced to death in Malik s clemency application was submitted in Since then his attorneys argue the situation for mercy has only become stronger Mr Randolph is not the same person who was sentenced to death in Samuels Parmer wrote in a legal filing last month He is a model inmate with no rule infractions over more than years He is also a mentor among the younger men on death row And he has family who supports him including his newfound relatives In addition to his birth mother he in the last few days connected with a younger brother on his biological father s side That brother was willing to voyage from California to meet Malik this week But the prison denied his visit Florida s execution assembly line has left little opportunity for the community to learn about the individuals being killed in its death chamber But the cases are emblematic of the death penalty as a whole While Malik s story is unique in various procedures the problems in his episode are all-too familiar hallmarks of a modern death penalty that remains stuck in the past Richard Barry Randolph in an undated photo Courtesy of the legal unit of Malik Abdul-Sajjad The city of Palatka sits on the St Johns River specific miles south of Jacksonville a rural band of the state that is reminiscent of the South of the s as one news article put it in Once known for its paper mill a -acre facility that provided critical jobs while filling the river and air with pollutants the population in was roughly people about half of them Black A -foot Confederate monument stood on the lawn of the county courthouse with an inscription on its base The principles for which they fought will live eternally In August of that year -year-old Minnie Ruth McCollum arrived at the Handy Way convenience store in East Palatka across the river from downtown She usually arrived at a m to open the store at going out to prepare the gas pumps before customers started to arrive But when employees got to the store just past that morning they located the doors locked Police would force their way in to find McCollum in a pool of blood and undressed from the waist down She was alive but had been badly beaten and was unable to speak beyond a moan She died at the hospital several days later A suspect was identified almost at once -year-old Richard Randolph known as Barry He once worked at the store and was seen by three observers leaving that morning His girlfriend who later testified for the state noted he had shown up at her house later that morning driving McCollum s car According to the circumstance records Malik gave two statements confessing to police that same day The interviews were not recorded Instead officers took notes on what he explained Investigators disclosed he rode there on a bike that morning with a plastic water pistol and a plan to rob the store He waited until he thought McCollum was at the gas pumps to dash inside but ran into her unexpectedly He savagely beat her then sexually assaulted her giving a nonsensical explanation for the latter No one would believe he was capable of such a thing I m not sure what to say I m ashamed he reportedly described police McCollum s murder took place amid a contentious referendum season in Palatka the seat of Putnam County The local sheriff who had been in office since the s was running for reelection while mired in a sexual harassment controversy According to media stories at the time he gave a press conference after McCollum s murder that would raise the ire of the NAACP He explained he had been demanded whether the murder in Palakta might be linked to a convenience store robbery elsewhere in the county Claiming to quote a Black man the sheriff answered It don t make no difference those Puerto Ricans and n-ggers is all alike anyhow As the trial approached in February newly elected Florida State Attorney John Tanner informed that he would personally prosecute Malik calling the murder a scenario of major impact on the county Tanner a former defense lawyer and bombastic born-again Christian had been elected the previous fall on a vow to go after drug dealers and pornography while pledging that his office will not be used for political purposes But he straightaway came under fire for his unlikely relationship with Ted Bundy whom Tanner had visited on death row dozens of times as part of a prison ministry scheme As Bundy s January execution approached Tanner was accused of trying to delay the execution leading to rumors of a recall Several questioned his commitment to the death penalty itself Malik s affair became a shield against the political attacks We re putting the thugs on notice if they harm or rape a convenience store clerk or any other citizen we re going to seek the maximum punishment Tanner publicized at the trial If they kill their casualties we re going to put them in the electric chair Malik s event became a shield against the political attacks Like countless death penalty defendants in that era Malik was represented by a lawyer who would become notorious in his own right assistant citizens defender Howard Pearl Pearl presented no bystanders during the guilt phase of the trial when it came time for his closing message he repeatedly conceded his client s guilt prefacing his remarks by expressing admiration for Tanner We ve been friends for years he revealed and he has certainly acted in this affair in a gentlemanly and professional manner Post-conviction attorneys would later find evidence that Pearl enjoyed an uncomfortably cozy relationship with law enforcement agencies At the time of the trial Pearl had been designated as a special sheriff s deputy in a nearby county a position he d held since Although Pearl explained that the sole purpose was to be allowed to carry a concealed weapon he did not disclose his position to his clients Pearl announced that he deliberately chose to work alone rejecting any need for a second lawyer which is standard in currently s capital matter But majority devastating for Pearl s clients was his approach to defending them in the courtrooms where they went on trial for their lives At a post-conviction hearing in Malik s occurrence Pearl revealed that he deliberately chose to work alone rejecting any need for a second lawyer which is standard in at present s capital cases I was sole counsel he declared No one ever sat with me I did not permit it Pearl did not investigate Malik s matter for mitigating evidence Instead he followed his usual modus operandi Rather than put spectators on the stand who might do a poor job on cross-examination he relied on a psychologist to interview his client get names of people who might be critical and incorporate any information they might provide into his own testimony He selects those things which he feels are relevant to the testimony he wants to give Pearl explained Such an approach is shockingly inadequate compared to the mitigation investigations in most of modern death penalty trials Inquired at the post-conviction hearing if he considered sending an investigator to learn more about his client s life with his adoptive family in New York Pearl mentioned no I have never done that And I would not If I thought it was that vital I would have gone myself Yet his assessment of what counted as significant evidence in the development was dismissive There were questions surrounding the sexual assault a major factor in the scenario especially in a prosecution of a Black man charged with killing at white woman But Pearl didn t seem to agree Given the violence of the rest of the crime whether or not he raped her was not really all that fundamental As Sandra got to know her son over the past sparse years she realized there were times when they lived within a meager short miles of one another in New York City He could have seen me and I could have seen him and not known she explained Malik s adoptive father worked as a cab driver in the city while his mother worked at an insurance company Although they d been thrilled to bring a baby home it was an unhappy household There was chaos there was confusion there was abuse one expert witness testified at Malik s post-conviction hearing Development records show that Malik struggled emotionally from the start having trouble sleeping throwing temper tantrums and biting his fingers and hands The trauma that stems from adoption was not as well understood as it is in the modern day According to Malik s adoptive father who testified at the hearing he and his wife explained Malik that he was adopted at the direction of a book recommended by the adoption agency But the revelation was devastating and his parents struggled to handle the fallout They divorced when Malik was After living with his mother for a time he moved in with his father who is described in episode records as demanding and brutal in his discipline tying him and beating him with his hands a broomstick and a belt A bright spot in Malik s life was his brother Jermaine who was born after his father remarried Despite their age difference the two formed a tight bond Jermaine remembers looking up to his brother in a phone call he declared Malik instilled in him a love of music which inspired him to become a DJ for awhile And while Jermaine remembers Malik starting to get in trouble as he got older he also tried to set a good example He invariably did that away from me he disclosed Consistently taught me the right and wrong things to do Malik eventually left New York for North Carolina where he met the girlfriend who would later testify against him at trial As she would tell the jury he was a nice young man when they met But things changed when they moved to Florida where he started hanging out with the wrong crew she stated I don t know what happened to him He became quick to anger wanting to fight Addiction was a big part of the obstacle Although his trial expert testified that Malik struggled with crack cocaine post-conviction attorneys unearthed further evidence showing that he had been on the drug the morning of the murder His adoptive father who also moved his family to Florida upon retiring in recalled finding Malik asleep in his car one morning and knowing something was wrong He testified that he would have been willing to take the stand at the trial in a heartbeat But Malik s lawyer never contacted him Jermaine concedes that their father was harsh with Malik But he also remembers him being devastated by the death sentence Jermaine was years old when he attended the sentencing in with his father and uncle a New York police officer We drove up to Palatka and heard the verdict he stated And that was the first time I ever seen my dad cry Jermaine has visited and kept in touch with Malik over his years on death row They talk about their families and follow sports After the New York Knicks were eliminated from the NBA playoffs last year he recalled chortling I got an email with nothing but sad emojis on it Florida does not allow family of the condemned to witness the execution Jermaine s last visits with his brother have taken place behind glass He could not attend the execution if he wished to Florida does not allow family of the condemned to witness In the hours leading up to the execution he ll be at the country club in Lakeland Florida where he works as a chef the same place he was where he heard about the warrant Meanwhile Malik will never have a chance to meet his other brother the son of his biological father Hayves Streeter Sr As with Sandra Malik s lawyers tracked down Streeter in California but he fell out of touch His son Hayves Streeter Jr was at work in San Diego last month preparing for an all-hands meeting with his staff when he got a phone call from a member of Malik s legal club asking about his father And that s how he learned he had a brother on death row Whatever I was doing he explained I was stuck in that spot His father a nuclear engineer who married three times had never announced anything about having another son It was not until he was in the throes of an aggressive form of dementia that he made a comment that struck Hayves as bizarre He made mention that Hey you might have a brother he mentioned I kind of laughed it off His father mentioned that the man was in jail which made Hayves worry that he might be getting scammed for money But then he explained his father was saying a lot of things that didn t make sense at the time We ve got to get years of information to each other in this short amount of time On the phone with the legal organization Hayves realized what his father was saying had been real In the weeks that followed he received phone calls from Malik They questioned each other questions and shared whatever they could He tried to get permission to visit Malik before his execution but was denied In one of their last phone calls they were allowed to talk longer than usual minutes and covered as much ground as practicable We ve got to get years of information to each other in this short amount of time he declared So we re just shooting questions off left and right trying to make the preponderance of it because neither one of us knew when the guard was gonna say All right it s time Related The Death Penalty s Other Casualties Sandra once hoped to meet her son in person too As his execution approached she was still grappling with the question of why his life turned out the way it did It is especially painful when she looks at her nieces and nephews They re accomplished happy married with their own families she stated She doesn t expect to find an answer But it will be harder once the state takes her son s life Malik s lawyers arranged for Sandra to visit him before his execution She planned to fly out this week But she canceled the visit days before saying she was having healthcare issues In our phone call she noted she did not want to see him on the day he was scheduled to die and he did not want her to see him like that either Last night on the eve of the execution Sandra was at home instead I don t want to think about it she noted But I know I m going to have to She knows it will affect her but she s afraid to find out how I really don t want to think about it The post At She Gave Up Her Son Sixty Years Later She Located Him on Death Row appeared first on The Intercept