Chronicle of a Death Foretold
Why am I here? It’s a fair question considering that fighting the death penalty was never a cause I championed, nor does it have anything to with my previous career. Besides the obvious answer of wanting to be in a new and exciting place, some experiences I’ve had over the last few days capture the reasons why I felt like working in Montgomery was the right choice for me.
My first project involves helping to prepare a petition of certiorari to the Supreme Court (to get the Court to review the defendant’s conviction/sentence) in a case that features a murder committed by an African American who suffered significant and continuous abuse from the time he was a young kid to the time he committed murder at the age of 19. He also witnessed or experienced the deaths of all 4 of his caregivers - his mother, both his grandparents and his uncle - within a relatively short period of time.
Is justice being served by sentencing a 19 year old with such a history to death? Take away one of those factors - his race - and his chances of getting a lighter sentence rise considerably in this state. Take away the years of abuse he endured and he would have been less disposed to even thinking of such a crime. Take away the fact that he was charged as an adult and you have a young 19 year old who has maliciously taken away another individual’s life, but who also has a lifetime to repent for his actions and to evolve into a contributing - or at least non-threatening - member of society. To me, justice is clearly not being served in this case by killing the defendant. Yet, his chances of living right now are slim to none. My work - and the uphill battle associated with it - is one of the reasons I came here for the summer - to shatter the idea that America’s democracy needs no repair and to find out ways that I can truly help fix it.
Yesterday, I had the opportunity to travel to Atlanta to the Eleventh Circuit Court of Appeals to hear attorneys argue on behalf of their death row clients. Going to the court was really interesting and was an experience in it of itself - from hearing the court clerk open the session by asking God to show His Grace upon the court, to seeing the judges grill the attorneys on the finer points of their cases. But what really captured the court field trip for me was the realization that these cases don’t just involve a description of the actual crime surrounded in a legal brief by a whole bunch of legalese. On the contrary, these cases involve real people getting killed on both sides of the table.
I apologize for being graphic, but this is part of my point - in Case #1, the defendant killed the woman he was dating, who was deaf, and strangled her two sons, ages 5 and 4 respectively. In Case #2, the defendant was convicted of getting drunk and then taking a knife, stabbing his victim repeatedly, slitting her throat and disemboweling her. Even sitting in a court room hearing lawyers argue dispassionately about the facts of such horrific crimes was difficult for me to stomach. I could talk myself blue in the face about how the death penalty does nothing to deter future crimes, but when it all comes down to it - if I was a witness to the crime or a relative of the victims, could I honestly say that I would not want to see the defendants’ lives taken in exchange for the lives they had no right to take?? Would I care that an African American defendant would have a higher chance of getting capital punishment than a white defendant? Or would I care that the defendant was subjected to a history of abuse or mental illness??
In an ideal world, I hope I would, but realistically I think I’d be too caught up in the grieving process to say that I had such priorities. This question brings to mind Presidential candidate Michael Dukakis’s infamous flub when he was asked whether he would support the death penalty for someone who raped and murdered his wife. He said no, and then segued into talking about how effective his state’s crime policies had been. Is that all he could think of when asked how he would react to someone killing his wife?? What would I do??
Though I’ve already had one nightmare on this topic, and I’m sure that more are in store for me, one of the reasons I’m here this summer is to challenge myself to think about what my answer to the question is; to answer what I would be willing to personally sacrifice for a system of justice that I support; and to wrestle with uncomfortable, but truly important, dilemmas.
My first project involves helping to prepare a petition of certiorari to the Supreme Court (to get the Court to review the defendant’s conviction/sentence) in a case that features a murder committed by an African American who suffered significant and continuous abuse from the time he was a young kid to the time he committed murder at the age of 19. He also witnessed or experienced the deaths of all 4 of his caregivers - his mother, both his grandparents and his uncle - within a relatively short period of time.
Is justice being served by sentencing a 19 year old with such a history to death? Take away one of those factors - his race - and his chances of getting a lighter sentence rise considerably in this state. Take away the years of abuse he endured and he would have been less disposed to even thinking of such a crime. Take away the fact that he was charged as an adult and you have a young 19 year old who has maliciously taken away another individual’s life, but who also has a lifetime to repent for his actions and to evolve into a contributing - or at least non-threatening - member of society. To me, justice is clearly not being served in this case by killing the defendant. Yet, his chances of living right now are slim to none. My work - and the uphill battle associated with it - is one of the reasons I came here for the summer - to shatter the idea that America’s democracy needs no repair and to find out ways that I can truly help fix it.
Yesterday, I had the opportunity to travel to Atlanta to the Eleventh Circuit Court of Appeals to hear attorneys argue on behalf of their death row clients. Going to the court was really interesting and was an experience in it of itself - from hearing the court clerk open the session by asking God to show His Grace upon the court, to seeing the judges grill the attorneys on the finer points of their cases. But what really captured the court field trip for me was the realization that these cases don’t just involve a description of the actual crime surrounded in a legal brief by a whole bunch of legalese. On the contrary, these cases involve real people getting killed on both sides of the table.
I apologize for being graphic, but this is part of my point - in Case #1, the defendant killed the woman he was dating, who was deaf, and strangled her two sons, ages 5 and 4 respectively. In Case #2, the defendant was convicted of getting drunk and then taking a knife, stabbing his victim repeatedly, slitting her throat and disemboweling her. Even sitting in a court room hearing lawyers argue dispassionately about the facts of such horrific crimes was difficult for me to stomach. I could talk myself blue in the face about how the death penalty does nothing to deter future crimes, but when it all comes down to it - if I was a witness to the crime or a relative of the victims, could I honestly say that I would not want to see the defendants’ lives taken in exchange for the lives they had no right to take?? Would I care that an African American defendant would have a higher chance of getting capital punishment than a white defendant? Or would I care that the defendant was subjected to a history of abuse or mental illness??
In an ideal world, I hope I would, but realistically I think I’d be too caught up in the grieving process to say that I had such priorities. This question brings to mind Presidential candidate Michael Dukakis’s infamous flub when he was asked whether he would support the death penalty for someone who raped and murdered his wife. He said no, and then segued into talking about how effective his state’s crime policies had been. Is that all he could think of when asked how he would react to someone killing his wife?? What would I do??
Though I’ve already had one nightmare on this topic, and I’m sure that more are in store for me, one of the reasons I’m here this summer is to challenge myself to think about what my answer to the question is; to answer what I would be willing to personally sacrifice for a system of justice that I support; and to wrestle with uncomfortable, but truly important, dilemmas.
posted by Ariel Glasner @ 4:48 PM
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