The nearly 60 year-old woman, white-haired and thin, held the lawyer’s hand and smiled while crying, saying that “I am so happy, my son is very healthy and is doing well in re-education. He has learned to dry anchovies.”

>> Diary of a son whose father is sentenced to death

>> When ‘I’ pronounce the death sentence

After unsuccessfully appealing against her son’s death sentence, the poor and desperate mother sent several amnesty applications to the State President pleading with him to mitigate the penalty.

She is Nguyen Thi My, whose son, Truong Van Tai, was sentenced to death by the Supreme People’s Court in Ho Chi Minh City for murder and robbery in 2009.

Before the case occurred, she couldt not even look at her son’s face as he left his wife and child to run after another woman. They set up house together for nearly ten years.

Tai eventually became jealous, and thought the woman did not love him anymore. In a spasm of anger, Tai stabbed her to death. After killing her, Tai hired a truck to transport all of the furniture they had purchased over 10 years to his house and ran away.

My said that she did not think that Tai would be sentenced to death, thus she tried to find him and convince him to turn himself in to the police.

However, Tai was sentenced to death at a mobile court opened in Go Vap District.

“I was floundering. After regaining composure, I stood up and intended to say something to the jury but they had left,” My said.

One day, while walking along a street, she saw a law office displaying a board announcing free consultancies for the poor. My asked if there was any way to save her son from the death sentence. The lawyer did not answer, but asked about her condition instead.

My explained that her house is less than 30 square meters in size and located in a poor hamlet in Go Vap. She trades scrap and waste material to feed her husband and 30 year-old son, who suffers from a nervous system disease.

After hearing about her family’s situation, the lawyer told My that there was no way to save her son.

She hopelessly went to Chi Hoa Prison to meet her son, but the visiting hours were over. She lay down on the ground near a tree and cried. Passersby asked why she was crying and guided her to a law office in front of the prison.

Lawyer Nguyen Kim Lien listened to her story and recommended her to lodge an appeal to lighten her son’s penalty. However, the appeal court refused her petition and kept the death sentence unchanged.

“She came to meet me, wept bitterly and said that there was no hope and earnestly asked me to take Tai’s body after he dies. She wanted to bury him near his grandparents in Cu Chi District,” Lien recalled.

Unceasing efforts

Lien then advised her to send an amnesty application to the State President to commute the death sentence to a life sentence. My thus prepared an application with the signatures of hundreds of her neighbors.

Lien flew to Hanoi and helped My submit the application, but there was no response. The second application, which My sent through the post office, went unanswered as well.

My thought there was no more hope, and when she visited her son they both cried. From then on, she went to Ba Chieu Post Office every week to send amnesty applications to the President.

While Tai was waiting for his sentence’s implementation, My still had to purchase scraps and waste material to earn a living for her family. When she passed by, people spoke in low voices, and some asked, “Has your son been tried, could you take his body?”

Such words hurt her deeply, she said.

Unexpectedly, My’s wish came true as the President agreed to mitigate her son’s death sentence to a life sentence.

She happily smiled and kept telling Lien, the lawyer, that she was so happy, and that she was unimaginably surprised.