BIRMINGHAM, Ala (WIAT) - Defense Attorney Richard Jaffe doesn't believe he will change minds about the death penalty with his new book out in February, Quest for Justice: Defending the Damned. But he does hope the public will at least begin to ask more questions.
Among those questions the cost of the death penalty and his belief that it does not deter crime. He also objects to the way death sentences are handed out, something he likens to a game of chance. "It's a lottery, a true lottery. You have no idea who gets it even if you knew the facts of the case first which end in execution and which don't."
Jaffe says we need to take a hard look at our justice system with 138 people let off death row after new trials. Jaffe has helped clear four death row inmates. His book profiles some of those cases. "We have to conclude others have slipped through the cracks and been executed we don't know about."
He predicts the Troy Davis case may point to the end of the death penalty. The Georgia man was executed despite widespread doubts about his guilt.
Source: CBS42.com, January 8, 2012
Excerpt:
Leroy White had fewer than ten days to live. I received the execution order, because for a brief period I represented Leroy on his direct appeal through the Alabama Supreme Court. My representation ended when lawyers from a Maryland law firm took over the appeal, similar in respect to Bo Cochran’s case.
I only met Leroy White a few times, well over ten years ago, but once was enough for me to conclude beyond all doubt that he also was not the “worst of the worst.”
Bruce Gardner was the deputy district attorney who prosecuted Leroy. His powerfully persuasive courtroom skills overtook Leroy’s court-appointed attorney, who now is very skilled, but then was very young and untrained in capital litigation. Bruce and I had talked about Leroy’s case many times over the years since we first met. We both felt the day would come when Leroy’s appeals would run out—and they did.
Leroy and his estranged wife Ruby had been embroiled in a domestic dispute. Emotionally distraught, drunk and armed, Leroy drove to the home he and Ruby once shared to see their daughter. When refused entrance, Leroy shot off the door lock and then fatally shot Ruby while she was holding their seventeen month daughter. He also shot his sister-in-law four times, though she survived.
When Leroy walked into the prison’s small attorney conference room, it seemed to fill up with sadness. Leroy was a thin twenty-nine-year-old man. His face displayed a kind, gentle look. The sadness seemed to pour out of his eyes. He carried his weight so that his body bent like an old tree, but Leroy was neither old nor sick. Like Benito Albarran, Leroy White exhibited true remorse for his actions. Although he did not want to die, I am certain he would gladly have traded places with Ruby, his deceased wife, if that would bring her back to life. He committed a crime of passion in a drunken, crazed state. In Alabama and most jurisdictions, crimes of passion are not death penalty offenses.
Unlike Seamus Duffy and his team, the Maryland lawyers never called me to testify but instead took my deposition. To demonstrate the arbitrary nature of Leroy White’s execution, it is significant to note that the jury recommended he serve life without parole rather than death. The trial judge dismissed that recommendation and sentenced him to death. I never heard anything about Leroy’s case again until the courts denied his appeals and set an execution date.
“Bruce,” I suggested, “it won’t do any good, but all you can do now is reach out to his current lawyers at EJI and go public with your perspective.” To Bruce’s credit, he did just that. He contacted the media and stated that the death penalty system was “absurd” and that Leroy White was a perfect example of that.
Leroy felt and expressed deep remorse for the permanent human destruction he perpetrated. Isn’t remorse the first essential step toward redemption? Do we, as a society, believe that we should eliminate a life and deprive a person of the opportunities to seek redemption? How do we know that someone won’t discover it in his heart with time? When, if ever, does any person give up the right to redeem himself? Who should decide?
Even if you believe the death penalty should be applied in some extraordinary cases, Leroy was certainly far from deserving it. The ultimate punishment was not enacted to punish him rather than Gary Ridgway, the notorious Green River killer of Washington, America’s worst serial killer. Ridgway murdered forty-eight innocent women, though he later confessed to killing seventy-one women. He is serving a life without parole sentence.
In fashioning the plea arrangement that avoided execution, Deputy Prosecutor Jeffery Baird stated, “At the end of the trial, whatever the outcome, there would have been lingering doubts about the rest of these crimes. This agreement was the avenue to the truth. And, in the end, the search for the truth is still why we have the criminal justice system…Gary Ridgway does not deserve to live. The mercy provided by today’s resolution is directed not at Ridgway but toward the families who have suffered so much.”
This prosecutor did not focus on the politics or the publicity he would garner by insisting on a trial. He knew the enormous costs involved and that Ridgway would never get out of prison with this plea. Instead, he focused on the victims. He knew that their interests would not be served by years of seeking Ridgway’s death, which would continuously aggravate the open wounds. He would not allow the victims to become tools of politics or an enhancement to his career.
He also knew that the thought of the death penalty never entered Ridgway’s demented mind and therefore did not deter him from his death hunts.
Nor did it enter the mind of Leroy White, who killed in an act of passion. The prospect of a life without parole sentence is more of a deterrent to a person setting out to commit such crimes. Many on death row have asked to be executed rather than live in a cage.
The sad truth is that a person who kills in a rage is not deterred by either the prospect or the extent of punishment.
Even sadder, the United States Supreme Court has never said it is unconstitutional to execute an innocent person, as long as he receives a fair trial. Recently, people from all over the world protested the execution of Georgia death row inmate Troy Davis, who was convicted of killing a police officer. Seven of the nine uncorroborated eye witnesses to the crime have recanted their testimony. His execution raises the question of whether the death penalty is ever appropriate when there is real doubt of a person’s guilt.
Excerpt from Quest for Justice: Defending the Damned, by Richard S. Jaffe, New Horizon Press (February 14, 2012), 336 pages. For more information on the book and more excerpts, click here.
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