According to Bolin the death penalty perpetuates a view of inmates as monsters beyond redemption or rehabilitation and has no place in a civilised society. "This grotesque system of ours is about stamping out irritants, similar to how you would a spider. It has nothing to do with so-called justice. It is barbaric revenge."

Such is Bolin's disgust with the death penalty that she walked out on her lawyer husband and four daughters and in 1996 married one of her clients, Oscar Bolin, a convicted killer and rapist, who had been on death row for five years. Their marriage was broadcast on national TV, she in a lace wedding dress, he on speakerphone behind bars. 

She is on record as saying it was meant to be a statement of "great personal sacrifice" that would draw attention to what she thought was a terrible injustice. It was never an infatuation: "People thought the wrong thing." The marriage never accomplished what she had hoped and has overshadowed her subsequent mitigation work. I have the feeling that Bolin, who spent years trying to prove her husband's innocence, regrets her grand gesture. 

Starke, near Jacksonville, has a population of less than 6,000. The vast majority is Southern Baptist, and most adults keep a licensed gun at home to protect them against intruders. At the Starke Rotary Club the members say grace and swear allegiance to the American flag before tucking into baked ham, corn bread and sweet iced tea. Mike, like the majority of Starke residents, has worked in the Floridian prison system. He was an engineer who helped maintain the electric chair, known in Florida as "Old Sparky". He tells me how he had tears in his eyes the first time he saw a death row prisoner prepare for execution. "But then the guard took me to one side and told me he had raped a little girl in front of her mamma and then filleted her like a fish," says Mike. "From that day on I felt nothing for them."