Sue Hartigan <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes:
I thought that this really gave an inside story on the DP...A Judge who
has to impose it, the DA who has to ask and fight for it, and the
defense attorney who has to try and prevent it. Their stories are
really good, IMO, and from people who know what it is like to have to
work with it.
Sue
Monday, April 20, 1998
(This is an unedited, uncorrected transcript.)
JUDGE ALEX KOZINSKI, US COURT OF APPEALS Sometimes
if people are evil enough, if you let them live, somehow
you’re insulting
the memory of the victims.
CHRIS WALLACE, ABC NEWS (VO) Even for a man who believes
in the death penalty, it’s terrifying and he’s the judge.
NINA TOTENBERG, Nightline CONTRIBUTOR (interviewing)
Have you ever been to an execution?
JUDGE ALEX KOZINSKI No.
NINA TOTENBERG Why not?
JUDGE ALEX KOZINSKI I’m afraid.
CHRIS WALLACE (VO) Then there’s the prosecutor.
BILL KUNKLE, SPECIAL PROSECUTOR Revenge, nobody
wanted to use the word revenge for years. I mean, how can you
suggest
civilized folk would want to take revenge. What’s wrong with
revenge?
CHRIS WALLACE (VO) And the defense attorney.
BRYAN STEVENSON, DEFENSE ATTORNEY The only people
who say that are the people who can never imagine that it
might be them
who spends six years on death row, who sits in a cell, you
know,
watching people march by their cell to be executed, who have
been in a
cell and actually had to smell flesh burning as somebody is
electrocuted in
the electric chair.
CHRIS WALLACE (VO) Tonight, life and death, three players on
the
stage of justice.
ANNOUNCER From ABC News, this is Nightline. Substituting for
Ted Koppel and reporting from Washington, Chris Wallace.
CHRIS WALLACE Now and then the case of someone in this country
sentenced to death grabs our attention. In February, it was
Karla Faye
Tucker, the first woman executed in Texas since 1863. And last
week, it
was Angel Breard, a Paraguayan citizen who was put to death in
Virginia
despite calls by the US secretary of state for a delay.
But what’s most striking is not the big cases. No, it’s the
steady stream
of executions. Since the death penalty was reinstated in 1976,
452
people have been killed and the pace is quickening. Last year,
there were
74 executions. So far this year, there have been 20, and three
more
people are scheduled to die on Wednesday.
There’s now a move in some places to make it even easier to
impose the
death penalty. In the wake of the Jonesboro schoolyard
shootings, one
Texas law maker wants to make it possible to sentence
murderers to
death at age 11. But while all the rest of us talk about it,
Nightline
contributor Nina Totenberg spent time with three people who
must
grapple with executions on a routine basis. You’ll meet a
federal judge
who supports the death penalty but is haunted by it and a
Chicago
prosecutor who is an ardent supporter. But we begin with the
defense
attorney, Bryan Stevenson, who spends his life getting people
off death
row.
BRYAN STEVENSON I think living in a society where there are
all of
these lawyers, we’ve got lots of lawyers, and then to be
presented with a
community of people who are literally dying for legal
assistance and
unable to get it effectively.
NINA TOTENBERG (VO) Jesse Morrison is one of many men Bryan
Stevenson has saved from execution. Stevenson will never
forget
witnessing the execution of a man who called too late to be
helped.
BRYAN STEVENSON Standing with him some 15 minutes before that
execution and we had this conversation that I’ll never forget.
And he was
telling me about how strange his day had been. And he was
saying to me,
he said Bryan, you know, it’s been such a strange day because
all day
long people have been saying what they can do to help. He said
when I
woke up this morning the guards came and said what do you want
for
breakfast. Then he said at midday they came and said what do
you want
for lunch. And then in the evening they said what do you want
for dinner.
And they, he was saying to me all day they’ve been saying can
we get
you some coffee, do you need water, do you need access to the
phone
to call your friends and family, do you need stamps to mail
your last
letters? I never will forget him saying to me in those last
minutes, he said
Brian, more people have asked me what they can do to help me
in the
last 14 hours of my life than they ever did in the first 19
years of my life.
SECRETARY Hello, EJI.
NINA TOTENBERG (VO) Since then, Stevenson’s office has handled
more than 100 cases and not yet lost a client. His most
stunning victory
was the case of Walter McMillan (ph), a man who spent six
years on
death row for a crime he did not commit.
BRYAN STEVENSON And to finally see him walk out of Alabama’s
death row was a real victory, but it’s a scary victory. And,
frankly, the
ease with which Mr McMillan was convicted and sentenced to
death and
the difficulty we had in proving his innocence and getting him
released
from death row I think would frighten any American that looked
at the
situation.
NINA TOTENBERG (interviewing) You know, supporters of the
death penalty say that the fact that 69 or 70 people have been
let off
death row because they’re innocent actually proves the system
works.
BRYAN STEVENSON The only people who say that are the people
who can never imagine that it might be them who spends six
years on
death row, who sits in the cell, you know, watching people
march by
their cell to be executed, who’ve been in a cell and actually
had to smell
flesh burning as somebody is electrocuted in the electric
chair. To go
through the torture and the condemnation that comes with all
of collective
society saying you are not fit to live and to have to
experience that for 18
years and then to say the system works because we actually
kept them
from killing you I think is grossly insensitive.
NINA TOTENBERG (VO) And one of the primary reasons the
system doesn’t work, says Stevenson, is race.
BRYAN STEVENSON It’s not uncommon to go into counties that are
40, 45 percent African—American where no person of color has
ever
served on a capital trial jury. There are cases that we have
handled
where prosecutors have referred to the defense of minority
defendants as
“niggeritis,” or otherwise used racial slurs in characterizing
the defense or
the members of the defendant’s family.
NINA TOTENBERG (VO) In a handful of states, including Alabama,
there is no statewide public defender system. In Alabama, for
those
unable to pay for a lawyer, the state provides a mere $1,000
for the
defense in a capital case.
(on camera) That means there is little money for investigation
or for
testing of crucial forensic evidence like DNA that can prove a
client’s
innocence. And in these cases, where the quality of the
lawyering may
literally determine life or death, $1,000 doesn’t buy much.
BRYAN STEVENSON We have cases where the lawyers called no
witnesses at the guilt phase, called no witnesses at the
penalty phase. We
have cases where the lawyer expressed to the jury a desire to
see the
client get the death penalty but then admitted because I’m the
defense
lawyer I have to ask you to give him life imprisonment without
parole.
We have cases where the lawyers made no closing arguments at
either
phase of the trial.
NINA TOTENBERG (interviewing) The crimes they have been
convicted for, however, are really, by and large, pretty
terrible crimes. I
mean why shouldn’t they die?
BRYAN STEVENSON Well, all crime is terrible. There’s no
question
about that. And I don’t ever argue that someone who is guilty
of murder
or some serious felony offense should not be punished. Of
course they
should be punished. That’s a legitimate response to violence
and
victimization. How they’re punished is the question.
NINA TOTENBERG Have you ever lost a loved one to a violent
crime?
BRYAN STEVENSON Yeah. My family has seen, its, probably more
than its fair share of violence. My grandfather was murdered
when I was
16. There’s nothing that can be done to bring him back or
anybody else
back who’s been the victim of a violent crime but there is a
lot that can
be done to create a society where the risk of violence, where
the
incidence of violence is less.
NINA TOTENBERG Have you never met anybody on death row who
was just evil?
BRYAN STEVENSON I’ve met a lot of people on death row about
whom I can say this person is dangerous, this person is
violent, this
person is ill, this person may never be in a position where
they can
function safely in society. But I’ve never met anybody about
whom I
could say this person’s life has no meaning, this person is
beyond hope,
this person is beyond redemption, this person’s life is
purposeless.
NINA TOTENBERG Is there any crime for which you think the
death
penalty would be justified? Hitler? Eichmann? Despots who’ve
killed
millions of people or hundreds of thousands of people in
Cambodia,
Rwanda?
BRYAN STEVENSON There are lots of crimes that deserve as much
punishment as we can muster. But I know that we’ve got 3,300
people
on death row in the United States and we could execute
everybody
tonight and nobody in Dallas or Los Angeles or Miami or New
York
would feel any safer walking the streets tomorrow. And so it
becomes a
question of who are we, not who are the people who committed
these
terrible crimes, but who are we. And I think we ought to be a
society, a
community of humans that are better than the worst crimes that
we have
seen.
CHRIS WALLACE In a moment, why one prosecutor believes
revenge justifies the death penalty.
--
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