Shirley Dicks

By C.W. Gortner
Heart-breaking, and at times infuriating, in its depiction of the ruthless machinery of our courts, “A Mother’s Torment” by Shirley Dicks is both a mother’s impassioned plea for a fallen son and a scathing commentary on the terrifying vulnerability that so many people without means in this country suffer while enmeshed in the criminal justice system.
Jeff Dicks, the twenty-two year old son of an impoverished Tennessee mother, was convicted of murder and sentenced to die, despite an overwhelming lack of evidence to support the claim that he did not participate in a store robbery that resulted in the death of the storeowner. His mother Shirley’s desperate fight to exonerate him and her unrelenting crusade against the men, and the system, that she believes unjustly condemned her son, is the basis of “A Mother’s Torment”. The book takes the reader on a journey from Ms. Dick’s poverty-stricken youth and struggles to raise her children to the fateful day that Jeff Dicks was arrested for murder; but it could be, in truth, any mother’s story – and it is this fact that makes Ms. Dick’s account so powerful.
Though the often grinding pace of her narrative might lead an impartial reader to wish for less, Ms. Dick’s drive to save her son can, in the end, only humble even the most rational. Having experienced a lifetime of penury and hardship, Ms. Dicks did not spare her own self from confronting, and breaking, the law in order to keep Jeff alive. Her daily invectives and demands for justice are, at moments, difficult to read—until one remembers that every day, somewhere, someone in the nation rails with equal rage for a loved one to no avail. Ms. Dick’s most gripping legacy in the book indeed arises from the contemplation that while Jeff sat in prison and his trial turned into an unbelievable travesty with only one possible outcome, it is a scenario that has no doubt played countless times throughout the United States, exacting as its toll the anguish of countless mothers and sons like Ms. Dicks and Jeff.
The loss of Mr. Dicks and her family is unimaginable. Yet from the devastation, she has had the courage and strength to pen this tremendously candid and passionate account, in the hope of saving others. Her book is one every parent, and every person working in the criminal justice system, should read—a testament to the unbreakable bonds between a mother and a son, and to the indomitable will of the human spirit.… (más)