The Final 5 Days of My Parents’ Lives: Tuesday

Early Tuesday morning, June 16th, Ben Bach drove us to meet our parents’ attorney, Manny Bloch, in Manhattan. From there Manny took us to Sing Sing prison, 30 miles to the north, for what would become our last visit with our parents.

This was the only prison visit where we saw both our parents together at the same time. My brother wrote in We Are Your Sons, “[T]hey sat at opposite ends of the table. Robby and I wandered around the room, hugging them and listening” while they talked strategy with Manny.
I did not understand that with the executions scheduled for Thursday, it was probable that we would never see them again, but Michael did, and at the end of the visit he started to wail, “One more day to live. One more day to live.” They hurriedly said goodbye before we all broke down.

While we were all visiting at Sing Sing, unbeknownst to us, two attorneys who had not been involved in the case previously presented a petition to Justice Douglas as he left for vacation. The new lawyers claimed my parents had been tried under the wrong law, and that under the correct law the death sentence was illegal. Douglas decided to postpone his vacation one day to consider the request.

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(Check back each day this week for a new posting leading up to Friday, June 19th, the 56th anniversary of my parents’ execution. To be notified whenever there is a new post to Out On a Limb Together, subscribe to the blog here.)