Shropshire man's death row pen pal executed in Florida

Jan Arriens, from Bishop's Castle, has been writing to convicted murderer Michael Lambrix for 26 years.

Lambrix was executed in Florida in the early hours of this morning by lethal injection.

On Tuesday Lambrix's lawyers asked the US Supreme Court to halt the execution, which was his fourth execution date.

The Supreme Court's deliberation took a number of hours, over Lambrix's execution time of 11pm UK time, which was postponed until 3.10am.

Mr Arriens, a retired translator, held a vigil in Bishop's Castle yesterday evening with 11 friends.

He added: "I'm doing ok, I knew in my bones it was going to happen.

"It happened in a very unfortunate way, there was an extra four hours while the Supreme Court decided on his latest appeal.

"The time up to his execution came and went and I heard nothing and it just happened that at 3am I checked my emails and found that they'd denied the appeal and he had been executed.

"The vigil was very supportive, I'm very glad we did that.

"I spoke to Mike on Monday night, they gave us half an hour on the phone which was decent of them as it's meant to be 10 minutes. They know how long we've been corresponding.

"We had a good long talk. He was ok, he was being realistic, he knew he was in a very serious situation.

"He was also pretty tired, he'd spent all Sunday night writing a hand written 25-page note to the Supreme Court.

"He got to see his family for two hours in a contact visit on Thursday, he gave them a hug and they took photographs together, but they had to leave hours before his execution.

"It's just unimaginable what they must have been through."

Lambrix, a father of three, was found guilty of two counts of murder in 1984.

He has spent 33 years on death row and in that time has exchanged about 500 letters with Mr Arriens, who has also visited him in person four times.

Mr Arriens founded LifeLines, which supports prisoners on Death Row through letters.

He said initially Lambrix, now aged 57, did not want a pen pal but that they ended up chatting and became friends.

Mr Arriens added: "I'm very surprised that the legal system never took Mike's claims of innocence seriously. He wasn't claiming total innocence, but claiming he acted in self-defence.

"There were no eye witnesses, no forensic evidence, it was just the state's account against Mike's account.

"Mike's case was a cliffhanger.

"He’s an exceptionally intelligent man with a very tragic story. If he’d had different circumstances it would have been so different.

"I'll be getting in touch with Mike's family now, I'm going to send them an email."