“I suddenly felt sad, reading it,” Clare wrote, “because it occurred to me that maybe he had always been good at learning.”īorn on June 4th, 1956 in Muskegon, Michigan, Romell grew up in Ohio, where he moved with his mother when he was about five years old. His writing began to pour out of him, producing deep, insightful, and artful reflections on his life and learning. Clare, a writer and prison penfriend, noted in their book that he “learned skills in various trades - printing, hairdressing, sewing and others - from fellow in prison, and learned welding after he came out.” When Romell sent draft entries for the book, Clare was astounded by how quickly he absorbed her style prompts. Playing the guitar was just one of the skills and talents he tried to master over the years. I am still learning about God, and about the things that the guitar can do.“ Romell loved the Blues, called it “his music,” but also had a passion for old Soul and Rock’n’Roll, especially of the late ’60s and ’70s. It’s like that with God too - there is so much to learn. “I have only been playing guitar for six years, since I was 47, and I can play pretty good but I still can’t do all the things I would like to do. “I like art, I do some drawing, like music - I love music - and I play the guitar,” he wrote in 2013 in the book, Survivor on Death Row, co-authored with Clare Nonhebel. Romell Broom was a keen and dedicated learner. When traveling to the heart of darkness, terror is not an emotion, Things are very difficult, I have no peace within, Hold everything that I was feeling inside. I had to hold my emotions in, because I would have been out of controlĪnd I did not want to give them reason to put their hands on me They were acting as if nothing had happenedĪnd I was feeling as if I had to act the same way,Īfraid that they was going to do something to cause my death, It was terrifying being around people who were just trying to kill me. Poking around for blood, never pulling the needle out, They would stay inside my vein in my arm in the same hole, The pricks was painful but it became worse when they could not find a vein, I was pricked more than 18 times, until I die. Knowing that these people was not going to stop I was ready to die, because of the trauma and pain, The stress was so bad I attempted to help them end my life. This is a poem Romell wrote about the 2009 attempt to execute him by lethal injection. He contracted Covid and died in hospital on December 28, 2020. In 2020 Romell was offered a private deal by the court to be taken off Death Row if he dropped his petition, but persisted in claiming his innocence and the right to a new trial. His book “Survivor on Death Row” (published on Amazon) opened many people’s eyes to the reality of the death penalty and of the human lives behind it, and included his account of the horrific two-hour execution attempt he survived in 2009.įollowing the botched execution, the State set another date to execute him, postponed till 2022 by Ohio governor Mike de Wine. Romell Broom was on Ohio Death Row for 35 years, appealing for a retrial and for lawyers to present his innocence claim.
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