Death Row - Insights From a Motivational Speaker
What a death row prisoner taught me about the power of choice.
Explore the profound lessons I learned from Jimmy 'da Fuse' Filliagi, a death row inmate, about the nature of choices. Discover how a man condemned to life in a concrete coffin found profound insights on decision-making, even in the bleakest circumstances.
Jimmy 'da Fuse' Filliagi was a tough kid.
The worst thing you could do to Jimmy was get into an argument with him and poke him in the chest. He would explode. That's how he got his name, Jimmy 'da Fuse'.
That short fuse was lit in an argument with his ex wife. The powder keg went off and he pulled the trigger of a gun that was pointed at her head. She died instantly.
I went to visit Jimmy on Death Row at Mansfield State Prison in Ohio - a prison within a prison within a prison and a place of very few choices.
He was a big man of Italian origin. Handsome and charismatic one moment, cold and ugly the next.
We asked him about life on death row.
"I live in a 2m by 3m concrete coffin. I'm locked down for 23 hours every day, every day."
Try this.
Stand up.
Now walk 6 paces: 123456
Now stop.
He said
"During my one hour a day outside of my cell, the most I ever move in one direction is 6 paces."
He went on.
"You wanna know how freakin' messed up this place is in here?"
"There are guys in here who brag about choosing the chair, they choose to fry and pop in the chair - his words - just so they can say they they faced it like a man."
"But they haven't made the connection that he people they are bragging to people won't live to tell the story ... you wanna trade places with me?"
And I asked him what was the one thing he missed most of all.
"I y-e-a-r-n for choice."
"It's not till it's gone, that you miss it."
Then he very candidly told us about 2 choices he gets that very few people get to make.
This was in 2003 and many US states only offered lethal injection as an alternative. It wasn’t yet mandated law. So death row inmates had to choose between the traditional form of execution, which in Ohio was the electric chair or lethal injection
“How’s that for a choice, death or death”
Then he told us of another choice that - fingers crossed - you and I never have to make.
Ohio State had what was called the volunteer program that allowed death row prisoners to waive all appeals and, in essence, queue jump the line to the execution chamber.
On April 24, 2007, Jimmy da Fuse Filliagi got his choice to ‘volunteer’ realised. He got the needle and he got it early.
As Theodore Roosevelt said,
When faced with a decision
The best thing you can do is the right thing
The next best thing you can do is the wrong thing
The worst thing you can do is nothing
and even though Jimmy rarely made the right choice in his life
and we certainly know he made a very wrong choice
I have to give the guy credit because he didn't make the worst choice, to do nothing. Even with so few options left to him, he didn't say it was out of my hands.
So weirdly I've now got a murderer as a defacto mentor. Who would've thought?
#change #choice #motivationalspeaker
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If we haven’t met yet…
I never considered myself good at change until I went from
-average shot to army sniper
-home movies to National Geographic cameraman
-fumbling card tricks to a professional magician
-never swinging a hammer to building a home
-high school dropout to published author
-business illiterate to building & selling a business
-stutterer to motivational speaker
Turns out I know how to change, I know how to make it simple, and I know how to stand on stage & make it fun so others want to do it too.
