"My name is Sandrine Ageorges-Skinner, I am a 49-year old French national. I am a freelance production manager working for the film industry on feature films, commercials and documentaries. My work experience has given me the opportunity to work on numerous pictures for major studios in Hollywood over the past 21 years. I am the mother of a 22-year old daughter who is currently in Medical School in Paris, France.
My first contact with Hank Skinner was in the spring of 1996, when we started to write each other, and I began to visit him in 2000. From then on we visited on a very regular basis and I purposely took short work contracts which enabled me to be available to travel and stay in Texas; usually four times a year for 6 to 8 weeks each time.
Through our prolific correspondence and conversations during our visits, I began to dissect his case. Hank never kept documents away from me, even if some of them may not have played in his favor. Over all those years, he has consistently been transparently honest about his background and his errors in life.
We got married on October 3rd, 2008 firstly because we do love each other dearly and want to be together, but originally, when we discussed or raised the issue of marriage, we decided to keep this celebration as something to look forward to after his exoneration and release. However, in 2008, when the appellate courts began to seriously undermine the value of his claims, we felt it would be appropriate to get married then, and so we did. We are in fact married both under American and French law. I had never been married before, and this decision to make official the commitment we had already made to each other many years ago was truthful, honest and representative of our respective feelings."
Sandrine is a lifetime activist opponent of the death penalty. She is the wife of Hank Skinner, the Texan who was granted a last minute reprieve earlier this week from a scheduled execution in Texas. As you guess, she is a French citizen and through her unflagging advocacy and support, she has almost single handedly made Hanks case an international issue and was able to prod the State to finally reconsider the DNA evidence which might very well acquit her husband of the charges that have been used to condemn him to death.
His case and fight for his life is as convoluted and surreal as a Russian novel. It started in 2000 and it's resolution has been thwarted by four Republican District attorneys. To learn more about Sandrine and the details of the Skinner case, you might want to visit the Hank Skinner web site.
A brief recap of the case might read:
Texas attempts to kill Skinner without DNA testing that could prove his innocence or guilt. A TV talk show host shames the D.A. into partially testing the evidence. He doesn't like the results and halts further testing. The D.A. is ousted by a drug-addicted prosecutor who waits for court-ordered tests, but is first busted by the feds. The highest court in the land hands a defeat to the addict's protege, who still presses for Skinner's execution -- and almost succeeds.
The cast of characters would not be complete without mentioning Harold Comer, the Republican D.A. who preceded Mann, Roach and Switzer. D.A. Comer was run out of office and temporarily lost his law license for mishandling seized drug assets.
Comer's first lucrative gig as a reinvented defense lawyer: representing an indigent Hank Skinner in the trial of his life. Comer was appointed Skinner's lawyer, at taxpayer's expense, by the judge who would dispatch Skinner to death row.
It was Comer who decided not to have the crime scene evidence fully tested before Skinner's trial.
If the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals rules against Hank Skinner, and he is executed, there will be no shortage of blame to go around. But it shouldn't be directed solely at the quartet of Republican D.A.s who thwarted justice. The real culprit is Texas' machinery of death.
If Hank is finally acquitted and his life is spared, it will be a big victory for the anti capital punishment forces that are fighting the death row industry of Texas. It will be a big victory for human rights, because it will have set a precedent in Texas. What Sandrine has accomplished so far is unprecedented in Texas.
This woman is a real hero.
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