Two Surprising Stories

It's been a while since I posted anything from Sose the Ghost, but this piece struck me. It compares the stories of David Allan Coe and Danny Trejo. I had not realized that both were at one point slated for the death penalty. 


You don't necessarily want to reason from outliers like these: most people who end up being nominated for the death penalty are unlikely to reform themselves and turn out to be great artists. Nevertheless both of these are cases in which the genetic background looks stacked against them: they came from poor backgrounds with early exposure to crime as a way of making a living, ended up in serious and repeated trouble with the law, and yet turned their lives around and became something grand. David Allan Coe is regularly featured here for his music. Trejo also appears occasionally, especially for his good heart and patriotic outlook.


'The race isn't always to the swift, but that's the way to bet.' Still, it's good to remember that sometimes the door swings the other way too.

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