Well, He Kinda Pardoned Her

FIRST ANECDOTE

Several decades ago, I was invited to a meeting to help figure out how to prioritize and then advance the goals of an anti-death penalty organization.  

Should we, the group's conveners asked, be focusing on the risk and evil of executing the factually innocent? It seemed a simple question.  On the one hand, the answer was obvious. Of course factually innocent people shouldn't be executed; nobody disagrees with that.  But might that focus lead folks to adopt a simple carve out:  

Sure, save those folks.  But of course that acknowledges that we can feel good about killing the guilty ones.

SECOND ANECDOTE

Another time, a prosecutor and I were guest debaters in a law school class on the death penalty.  Who, the question arose, ought the death penalty be for?  

Well, we both agreed, the idea is that it should be reserved for the worst of the worst who did the worst things.  But, I said, how can you tell?  Where's the margin?  Oh, c'mon said the prosecutor.  It's easy.  Hitler,  Stalin.  Pol Pot.  Yeah, I said.  But you wanted the death penalty against my client who killed the clerk while robbing a carryout.  He wasn't Hitler.  Didn't kill millions.  What's the stopping point?  And that's if you think it's OK to be in the execution business in the first place.

THIRD ANECDOTE

Guy on death row, not my client, days before he's due to be executed, tries to commit suicide.  Guards find him in his cell.  He's rushed off to emergency medical care and then the prison hospital.  Why for godssake?  Hell, they want him dead don't they.  He's just helping them along.  But no the sentence isn't death, it's execution.  The government's job isn't to let him die.  It's to kill him.  And if we have to save his life so that we can kill him, well, that's just how it goes.

FOURTH ANECDOTE

Another client: 22 years old.  Got his conviction and death penalty vacated, he's sent back for a new trial.  The problem is that he is, and is incontestably, factually guilty.  And at the new trial they'll bring in evidence of another person he killed.  Goes to trial it's a sure thing he'll get another death sentence.  But he's offered a deal:  Plead guilty and accept a sentence of life without the possibility of parole.  You'll die in prison, but we won't kill you.  No, he says.  No. No. No.  

We argue with him for weeks.  Take the deal.  You'll be in general population which is less restrictive, less harsh, than being on death row.  And it's not like the one end will be fast and peaceful.  In the end, he takes the deal.

In this business, that sentence, Death in Prison but not killed there by agents of the government, is a win.

. . . . . . .

This business of deciding who should live and who should die.  This business of killing people in our name.  This business of insisting that the proper way of dealing with the worst of the worst who did the worst things, of pretending we can figure out who they are and never accidentally misidentify someone who's only nearly the worst of the worst, or who, frankly, we just don't like because he (it's almost always a he) is black or brown or yellow or has an ugly tattoo or if it's a woman wore transparent thongs and slept with people for money, and besides all that think about the drugs, and at trial had a  shitty lawyer who couldn't be bothered or . . . . 

Look, the system sucks.  And it's efforts, even the serious ones, to do better are hopeless and doomed to failure.  And that's if you're OK with the morality of the thing.

. . . . . . . 

All of which, 

well, probably I should tell you first about Tommy Lee Walker who was killed in the electric chair by the good people of the State of Texas on the 12th of May, 1956.  Walker, a 21-year-old Black man, was tried and convicted of raping and murdering Venice Parker, a young white woman.  He had a rock solid alibi, but hey, that was Dallas County, Texas, he was Black, she was White, and . . . .  

Or maybe I should tell you about Francis DeSales Grayson, Frank Hairston Jr., Howard Hairston, James Luther Hairston, Joe Henry Hampton, Booker T. Millner, and John Clabon Taylor, young Black men convicted of raping and beating Ruby Stroud Floyd, a young white woman in Martinsville, Virginia in 1949.  Six trials (2 were tried together) and six death sentences.  Four executions February 2, 1951, the other three February 5

Or maybe?  Nah, you don't need another of these stories.  You know how they go.  But here's what you need to know:  On August 31, 2021, Virginia's Governor, Ralph Northam, formally pardoned the Martinsville 7.  This year, on January 21, the Dallas County Commissioner's Court unanimously adopted a resolution exonerating Tommy Lee Walker.  None of these folks were brought back, but their actions made clear that what was done to them - not just the executions but the arrests and trials - were travesties of justice

ALL OF WHICH is a prelude to the news today from across the pond.

Again, I have to take you back.  This time to Easter Sunday, April 10, 1955, that was the day Ruth Ellis shot and killed her lover, David Blakely.  She never denied it.  As she said on the witness stand, "[W]hen I shot him, I intended to kill him."

Ellis was, by all accounts, no saint.  But Blakely was worse.  He physically and mentally abused her.  When she was pregnant, he punched her in the stomach, causing a miscarriage.  But murder was murder, guilty was guilty, and mitigation didn't count.  Ellis was sentenced to death.  On July 13, 1955, she was hanged at Holloway Prison in London, the last woman to be executed in England.

But now, and here's where I've been heading with this, King Charles has granted her a pardon.  Sort of.

Per the BBC:

On Wednesday in the House of Commons, Labour MP Pam Cox asked Lammy for the pardon on behalf of her grandchildren, who were watching proceedings from the public gallery.

She said: "Her case serves as a haunting reminder of a time when our justice system ignored the realities of domestic abuse and coercive control.

"In the decades since, members of Ruth's family and supporters have campaigned unwaveringly for her to receive a posthumous pardon.

"Will the deputy prime minister agree with me that their courageous campaign, and the terrible lessons of Ruth's case, must strengthen the government's resolve to free women from devastating cycles of abuse?"

Lammy responded: "I have the honour to say that His Majesty the King has accepted our advice to grant Ruth Ellis a conditional pardon, the last woman to be hanged in the United Kingdom.

Hold on.  A "conditional pardon"?  What the fuck is that?  Oh, right.  The execution is off.  She's now sentenced to spend the rest of her life - which was ended by the crown some 70 plus ears ago - in prison.  Not execution, but death in prison.  Sort of makes you feel all giddy.

But as I said, it's not death.  So it's a win.

Fuck.