A FORMER Cirencester College lecturer is campaigning for the retrial of a convicted murderer on death row in Ohio, USA and he brings his campaign to the Sundial Theatre later this month.

During his performance, Dear Tim: Echoes from Death Row, Swithin Fry tells with humour and poignancy this story of two most unlikely friends.

Swithin is a white middle-class retired lecturer living in the Cotswold while his pen pal, Inmate A328139, was a working-class African-American “retired drug dealer”, 20 years younger than himself, living on death row hell in Chillicothe, Ohio.

When Swithin retired as a lecturer from Cirencester College in 2010, little did he think that he might return five years later to the college’s Sundial Theatre stage – campaigning for a retrial for a man on death row in America.

“I was shaken out of my somewhat-fusty retirement when I nervously met my pen pal, convicted-murderer Tim Coleman, face-to-face in this very draughty death row visiting block in 2012,” said Swithin.

“Tim’s a big, smiley man and he insisted on greeting me with a rib-crunching hug. Away went the nerves!”

They talked from 8am till 4pm.

“We had lunch together, if you can call an American prison hamburger ‘lunch’.”

Despite 15 years on death row, Tim was stoical, with a winning sense of humour.

“For nearly eight hours, Tim tried, punctuated with smiles and laughs, to explain his case to me in a fast African-American drawl.

“What he explained was that two years after his conviction another Row inmate admitted to the murder – but the courts insist it’s not strong enough evidence.

“I went in thinking the great American judicial system can’t be wrong, this man must be guilty.

“When I came out, well, my thoughts about the great American judicial system and Tim’s guilt were both startlingly different.”

Tim asked Swithin to help him win a retrial by publicising his case as much as possible. Believing it’s best to do what you like doing, Swithin, an amateur playwright and performer, won a bursary to get some mentoring from a London comedienne (“she was really brilliant”) and took to the stage.

“I really couldn’t understand why, with the other inmate’s admission, Tim was still on the row, said Swithin.

“I tried to make some sense of it but Tim writes like he talks, and the legal documents were worse, absolute verbose jargon. So I started emailing around – to the man who admits to the murder, to a lifer who admits to lying for the prosecution against Tim, and to some legal experts big in the anti-death-penalty movement – not really expecting replies. They all did.”

Often humorous, Swithin’s true-life story is thought-provoking and intriguing.

“Coming back to Cirencester College is pretty amazing. It’s the first big theatre that I’ve performed in,” he said.

“2015 is turning out to be a pretty amazing year – I’ve also been accepted to do three performances for the Brighton Fringe Festival in May.

Guess what the venue is: the Old Court Room – how about that?

I’ve told Tim all of this, of course – he’s as excited as I am.”

Swithin Fry is appearing at the Sundial on Wednesday, February 25 at 2pm and again at 7.30pm.

Book online at sundial-theatre.co.uk Sundial Theatre, Cirencester College, Stroud Road, Cirencester, GL7 1XA.

SKIP WALKER