..  ..Jack Foster Outten, Jr. ...No 180640 ...Multi-Purpose Criminal Justice Facility ...Wilmington, Delaware ...Year of Birth 1966 ...Marital Status single ...Children one ...Date of offense January 12, 1992 ...Sentenced to death April 30, 1993 ...Status under appeal . Click on the image to view a larger version. Scroll below for an account of the session.

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On January 11, 1992, Jack Foster Outten, Jr., spent the afternoon drinking beer with two cousins, Nelson & Steven Shelton, & Nelson's girlfriend, Christina Gibbons. That evening, at a bar in New Castle, Delaware, they met sixty-four-year-old Wilson Mannon. The group left the bar with Mannon, whose body was found the next day, beaten to death with the top of a washing machine. At trial the state's principal witness was Gibbons, who claimed at first that Steven was uninvolved in the murder. All three men were sentenced to death. It isn't etiquette to cut anyone you've been introduced to. Remove the joint! -Lewis Carroll The guard pointed to a doorway almost fifty feet away, at the far end of the control module. It was so dark I could barely make out the room. In the confusion I walked closer to the open door & whispered, "Jack? Jack Outten?" Suddenly a hand thrust out of the darkness to meet mine. We mumbled back & forth for a few minutes; I motioned Lorie over to help relieve the tension. I still could not see his face. A guard spirited me away, wanting to talk about the logistics of our photographs. He seemed unconcerned that he was leaving a male prisoner with a young woman. I did not take my eyes off the door to that room. What other dungeon is so dark as one's own heart! What jailer so inexorable as one's self! -Nathaniel Hawthorne The Multi-Purpose Criminal Justice Facility (MPCJF) had a power failure just before we arrived. The jailors had not known what to do with us. We were worried we would be denied entry. It was visiting day, & they had to turn away friends & relatives-people who had traveled a long way to see their loved ones. You will find it shall echo my speech to a T. -Thomas Moore

In the light, Jack Outten at first looked like a tough guy. Tattoos covered his hands & arms. One in particular stood out -SWP; it proclaimed his membership in the racist organization Supreme White Power. At the MPCJF, death-row inmates live among the general prison population. They have the same privileges & the same restrictions. The facility is crowded well beyond the capacity for which it was designed, 720 prisoners (At the time of our visit it held over 1100). Jack shared his cell with multiple roommates, with whom he must play musical beds. Some prisoners are forced to sleep in waiting & interview rooms. Although Jack had been convicted with two cousins, they were kept in different prisons. I later photographed one of his cousins, Nelson Shelton. Outten rambled on about his past. His father had been hard on him. Before his arrest, Jack had been a carpenter, working seven days a week. He'd fathered two children, one of whom had died in infancy. Their mother visited him nearly every week. He had some previous run-ins with the law-he claimed to be a thief by nature-& had spent two years in jail for various offenses. He hadn't given the death penalty a thought in those days. Goddammit, look! We live here & they live there. We black & they white. They got things & we ain't. They do things & we can't. It's just like living in jail. -Richard Wright Jack said he knew exactly what had happened the night of the murder, but would not say. We prodded him gently, but he would tell us no more than what he had said in court. There I was, a Black photographer talking intimately with a white murderer who swore allegiance to a white-supremacist group. If we had met at a party, we might not have talked to each other. Here we tried to be friends.