Praise and Blame

I have occasionally on this blog taken the opportunity to praise a prosecutor for exemplifying the role eloquently described by Justice Sutherland in Berger v. United States.

The United States Attorney is the representative not of an ordinary party to a controversy, but of a sovereignty whose obligation to govern impartially is as compelling as its obligation to govern at all; and whose interest, therefore, in a criminal prosecution is not that it shall win a case, but that justice shall be done. As such, he is in a peculiar and very definite sense the servant of the law, the twofold aim of which is that guilt shall not escape or innocence suffer. He may prosecute with earnestness and vigor-indeed, he should do so. But, while he may strike hard blows, he is not at liberty to strike foul ones. It is as much his duty to refrain from improper methods calculated to produce a wrongful conviction as it is to use every legitimate means to bring about a just one.

Or, as David Prater put it (see below), 

Prosecutors must be different than any other type of attorney.  We are not simply advocates, but are charged with a ministerial duty within the criminal justice system.  We are duty-bound to seek justice, period. That duty includes protecting the constitutional and substantive rights of criminal suspects and criminal defendants.  We must never abrogate that duty to the justice system we are privileged to serve.

So I've had nice things to say about Nicole Habersang and about Sheila Polk (to whom I hereby apologize for calling her Sharon a couple of times; I promise to go back and fix those entries one day soon).  And if I haven't yet gotten around to saying nice things about Dallas D.A. Craig Watkins for setting up and then actually providing resources and supporting his Conviction Integrity Unit (I just did a quick search of the archives; it seems I haven't), that's an oversight I'll be correcting soon.

Anyway, it's fitting that I should join a number of other blawggers in paying homage to David Prater of Oklahoma County, Oklahoma who not only talked the talk but walked the walk.  Fine words are easy. When he learned of a Brady violation by members of his staff, well, he did more than just say, "Gee, it won't happen again."  Here's the whole press release laying out the actions (yes, plural) he took to undo the harm and actually . . . . Aw hell.  Just read the thing.  It's not that long.

Prater Press

But if we're going to say nice things about Prater, and I just did (as have others, see, for instance, Balko and Bennett (who rightly notes that while what Prater did is "huge and unprecedented," he could have done even more) and Greenfield (who makes essentially the same point).

Equivalence demands that where there is praise for the men and women in the black hats who act with uncommon (at least in their profession) decency and integrity, so there should blame for the folks in the white hats who betray their clients.

I'm not talking about those who are incompetent, who act out of hubris and stupidity.  I'm talking about outright betrayal.  I'm talking about the Fish and David Martin and the Jefferson Parish Indigent Defender Board.  And now, I'm talking about the attorneys for Harry Bostick.

Bostick, a retired IRS investigator, is one of the guys pardoned by outgoing Mississippi Governor Haley Barbour.  His offense?  A DUI.

Rich Phillips at CNN gives some of the back story.

Barbour granted Bostick a full pardon in January for a felony drunken driving offense in March 2009. It was Bostick's third drunken driving arrest in a little more than year. The full pardon gave Bostick back the rights that were taken away as a felon, such as voting, but his two other DUI convictions remain on his record, according to the state attorney's office in Lafayette County.

Bostick was still going through a court-mandated drug rehab program when he applied for a pardon last summer. On September 30, the Mississippi Parole Board sent its review of Bostick's application to Barbour, recommending a full pardon in a 3-2 vote.

Except, see, on October 7 (which is just a week after September 30 but several months before the  January pardon, if you're trying to keep this straight)

Bostick was driving under the influence again, according to the Mississippi Highway Patrol. Charity Smith attempted to pull out onto a highway just outside Tupelo when Bostick's truck slammed into the side of her car.

Charity Smith was killed, and her older sister suffered serious injuries. Bostick was jailed for violating his probation from his previous DUI cases.

When he received the pardon in January, the convicted DUI felon still sat in an Oxford, Mississippi, jail cell, awaiting formal charges for his fourth drunken driving arrest.

Yeah, the cops say he wasn't responsible for the accident, which may or may not be true, but which certainly doesn't make Charity Smith's mom, Linda, feel any better.  Anyhow, it's not clear whether Barbour knew of Bostick's fourth DUI (or Charity's death) before issuing the pardon.  It is clear, though, that members of his staff knew.  One way they knew (and now I'm getting to the point of this tale), is that Bob Whitwell passed the word on.  Don't cut him loose, Whitwell said.  Which in itself wouldn't be interesting, except that Whitwell's law firm represented Bostick.

Phillips again.

Bostick is a friend. He was a very good agent and worked a lot of drug cases and money laundering cases for me," Whitwell told CNN. "He was an outstanding officer. I knew him as a friend."

Whitwell, an attorney in the firm that has represented Bostick in his DUI cases, said he called Hosemann, his old law school friend, to help with the pardon, even though the secretary of state's office has no official authority to issue pardons. After the October crash that killed Charity Smith, Whitwell reached out to Hosemann in an October 11 e-mail, asking him to back off on the pardon.

"You asked me if he was straight and I gave you my word yes. For this I give you my sincere apology. I had no idea he had messed up. Therefore. Hold up on helping him. All of us are in shock. Sorry," Whitwell wrote.

He signed the letter, "Your friend bob."

In the legal ethics biz (yes, Virginia, there are legal ethics), this is a no no.  A major conflict of interest.  You cannot (unless you're the Fish or David Martin or the Jefferson Parish Indigent Defender Board) turn on your client (your firm's client is yours for purposes of the ethics rules).  You can't, that is, fuck your clients.  That's the job of the cops and prosecutors and the courts.

Bostick may not have been acting as a member of the firm.  Doesn't matter.  He may have been sincere in trying to correct an error.  Doesn't matter.  He may have been genuinely distressed that he felt the need to betray his old friend.  Doesn't matter.

There's what you do in this business and what you don't.

What you don't is betray your client (or your firm's client).

Ever.

It's the duty of loyalty, and it's basic.

Except to all those folks who don't get it. 

h/t Kindley

But It Was My Lawyer's Fault

Your 93-year-old dowager aunt Nell dies but there's a real issue about whether her museum-quality collection of corrugated cardboard crates and the castles in Castille and Kensington where she has them catalogued should go to you or to M.T. Assets, the ne'er-do-well 24-year-old gardener with whom she's been carrying on a clandestine affair for a couple of years.

You hire the law firm of Dudley and Doright to defend your interest in the estate.  He hires Snidely and Whiplash.  Dudley files an incompetent response to Snidely's summary judgment motion and you're out on your ass, forced to leave in a flea bag hotel in Chelsea while M.T. suns himself on the Riviera.

You appeal, of course, now represented by Rock & Bull Winkle, but the case is tossed almost immediately.  You chose to hire D & D.  You pays your money and you takes your chances and you got fucked. (No, I'm not doing the joke).  That's because when you hired D & D as your lawyers, they became your agents and you're bound by what they did as long as it was within the scope of what you hired them for.  That they did it incompetently doesn't do squat.  No do over, sorry.

Sigh.

Now what?

Of course.  You sue Dudley for malpractice.  And because he was so obviously incompetent, you win.  Sure he was your agent, and for purposes of the agency (beating off M.T. and getting hold of Nell's boxes) you're bound by what he did.  But he was supposed to do it competently, and he didn't.  So he gets sued and you get millions (though Rock and Bull take a share).

At least that's the idea.  You made your legal bed, now lie in it.  But if the lawyer screws up you can sue and recover what you lost.  

Which has its problems as a system that purports to be fair, but there's a certain logic to it that's built around the law of agency.

Thing is, agency law doesn't work so well when the lawyer/agent is representing someone charged with a crime.  See, when the issue is something really important like money, it can be fixed by paying money.  It all evens out (sort of).

Doesn't work that way in a criminal case, though.  The defendant didn't just have to pay, he got to go to prison.  He lost his job and his family and his standing in the community.  Oh, maybe he can sue for malpractice, but so what?  Even a win won't get him back the years.

Or his life.

I've written about all this before, of course.  Repeatedly.  But now there's this from Adam Liptak writing the Forward to this year's book review issue of the Michigan Law Review (I've stripped out the footnotes).

If you were to ask a child whether it would be fair to execute a prisoner because his lawyer had made a mistake, the answer would be no. You might even get a look suggesting that you had asked a pretty stupid question. But judges treat the issue as a hard one, relying on a theory as casually accepted in criminal justice as it is offensive to principles of moral philosophy.
This theory holds that the lawyer is the client’s agent. What the agent does binds the principal. But clients and lawyers fit the agency model imperfectly. Agency law is built on the concepts of free choice, consent, and loyalty, and it is not unusual to find lawyer-client relationships in which some or all of these elements are missing.

Liptak goes on to discuss the development of the agency model (civil cases), its application to criminal law, and some softening of it - at least in truly extreme cases of abandonment like Holland v. Florida and Maples v. Thomas. 

But there are dangers, Liptak seems to accept, with taking this all too far.  If the client is never bound by the lawyer's negligence or incompetence, then the client may be better served to have a negligent or incompetent lawyer than a good one.  Which is, of course, silly.

The client, and especially the criminal defendant, is always better served by having a lawyer who does right from the start than by hoping he can convince a later court to undo a screw up after he spends, perhaps, a few years in the tender embrace of the prison system.

No, there's no serious danger in actually saying that the client shouldn't suffer - not even a little - for his lawyer screwing up.

But there's another problem, too, with agency law here - at least, in the criminal context where the vast majority of the clients don't choose their lawyer.  They're represented, instead, by public defenders or court appointed counsel or contract lawyers.  They're represented, that is, by lawyers chosen by the government, paid by the government.  They have (ordinarily) no say in who their "agent" will be.  They never agreed to let Doright do the case, let alone agreed to let him do it wrong.

Liptak puts it this way (footnote again stripped).

Now consider a client who is poor, uneducated, mentally troubled, scared, or imprisoned—or perhaps all of these things at once. And then add to this mix a lawyer who is not retained but a volunteer or assigned by the state. Does it still make sense to consider such a lawyer an authentic agent of the client?

Perhaps to the courts.  Maybe to some lawyers.  Not, I think, to ordinary folk.

The thing is, Liptak distinguishes that fairly ordinary circumstance from what he refers to as "the ideal case."  For that, he has us imagine

a sophisticated client with money. That client presumably chooses a good lawyer, monitors and controls the lawyer’s work, and fires her if she turns out to be disloyal or incompetent. The lawyer in that case really is the instrument of her client’s will, and so the client may fairly be tagged with the lawyer’s errors.

I'm sorry, no.  Because the lawyer doesn't suffer the risk of the error.  The lawyer doesn't suffer the consequence.  Not in the criminal arena.

At the end of the day, whatever the jury says about the client, the lawyer goes home.  However much the lawyer got paid, with whatever degree of care she was vetted and selected, however that works, the client is the one who faces a steel cot and a sink atop the toilet tank.  And maybe a gurney and a needle.

And if that's because the lawyer was negligent or incompetent, it's just wrong.

h/t Mark Godsey at the Wrongful Convictions Blog.

Abolition Now, Abolition Forever

Just waiting on the governor now, and he said he'll sign.

But the Senate voted last week, and the House on Wednesday, and once the governor gets it done, it'll be over.

That's the death penalty and the State of Connecticut.

It's history.

Sort of.  Because there's the great compromise.  Those 11 guys on death row?  Kill 'em.  But from now on . . . .

LWOP, which as I've said before is death in prison.  And a particularly nasty form of LWOP.  Peter Applebome explains for the Times.

The legislation will make life in prison without possibility of parole the state’s harshest punishment. It mandates that those given life without parole be incarcerated separately from other inmates and be limited to two hours a day outside the prison cell.

Lovely.  Here's Governor Malloy.

Going forward, we will have a system that allows us to put these people away for life, in living conditions none of us would want to experience. Let’s throw away the key and have them spend the rest of their natural lives in jail.

And Representative Patricia Widlitz.

I think in many ways, that is a death sentence, with no chance of parole, no chance of doing anything with your life.

So LWOP.  Which is life but also death.

Except for those 11 guys.  They can still be killed.  The proponents of death tried to make an issue of it.  Daniela Altimari in the Hartford Courant, gives an example.

House Republican leader Larry Cafero called the measure "a fraud on the public" because the repeal is prospective and would not apply to the 11 men currently on death row.
"How can you say in your heart and with your vote that it should no longer be the policy of the state of Connecticut to commit anyone to death and yet at the same time say, 'except for these 11 guys?''' Cafero said. "How do you justify that?"

Applebome quoted him, too.

Republican critics of the bill said the exemption for those currently awaiting execution cast a cloud over the vote, both because it undercut the moral argument of death penalty opponents and because future appeals or government action had the potential to spare the 11 men.

“Let’s not mislead the public; let’s not mislead ourselves” said the House minority leader, Lawrence Cafero Jr., of Norwalk. “If it is the will of this chamber that this state is no longer in the business of executing people, then let’s say it and do it. You cannot have it both ways.” 

But of course politics, as Bismarck was apparently the first to say, is "the art of the possible." Altimari again.

Rep. Gary Holder-Winfield, one of the most vigorous supporters of the repeal effort, didn't dispute Cafero's view that the prospective part of the bill was born as a compromise. "But the reality is I am in a room with 150 other people and I'm not so young that I believe … I know everything,'' said the New Haven Democrat. "Part of what we do here is, we figure out how do we make things happen."
Holder-Winfield said he favors complete abolition, even for the 11 occupants of death row. But, he said, "If I can't get the state to stop executing people that are already on death row, at least I can stop the state from executing people that may be on death row in the future."

Which is no small thing.  Even with a moral compromise along the way.

Megalomania in Maricopa

Yesterday, Andy Thomas was disbarred for being corrupt.  His response was to declare,

Today corruption has won and justice has lost.

A friend described that as "delusional hubris."

Of course, that was an off-the-cuff comment.  Now that he's had a full day to consider, his words are more measured. Michael Kiefer and Yvonne Wingett Sanchez in the Arizona Republic report.

"Someone has to fight for justice," Thomas said, comparing himself to Mahatma Gandhi and Martin Luther King Jr.

Really?  Gandhi?  Martin Luther King, Jr.? 

Another friend saw that and wrote

Delusional and paranoid is a bad combo.

Which led yet a third friend to respond.

Not to mention the fact that if either of them were active during his reign, he would have indicted both of them.

Me, I wondered if Thomas just forget to add that his suffering was like that of Jesus on the cross or whether some editor at the Republic deleted that reference?

In yesterday's comments, Thomas referred to a study of state corruption conducted by the Center for Public Integrity, Global Integrity and Public Radio International.  Arizona, Thomas said,

has some of the worst corruption in America.

It's true, maybe.  Arizona got a D+, putting it in the bottom half of the states.  Barely.  It actually ranked 27th out of 50.  (You can read the details here.)  In the Buckeye State, we did worse.  A grade of D, 34th out of 50.

Ohio has no shortage of ethics laws, but it has a history of state officials violating them. 

And our former attorney general, Marc Dann, resigned from office in disgrace, entered guilty pleas to ethics reporting violations, and is fighting not to have his license yanked for 6 months.

But that's for ethical incompetence.  Dann ran the AG's office like a frat house complete with pizza and pajama parties and sexual harassment.  And he screwed up his financial disclosure forms.  No excuse, but not exactly corruption in office, either.

Andy used his office to go after political opponents, really, to go after anyone who looked askance at  Sheriff Joe and his gang of thugs deputies.

And now he's a self-declared martyr.

One more time.

h/t Kathy G, Nick F, & Brian S

I Will Relive All the Pain All Over Again

Lynn Elliott

David Alan Gore

David Alan Gore was 29 on July 26, 1983 when he and his cousin Fred Waterfield picked up Lynn Elliott and Regan Martin who were hitchhiking their way to Wabasso Beach, Florida.  Instead of taking them to the beach, though, they put handcuffs on them and drove them to Gore's parent's house where they raped them.  Gore shot Elliott, then 17, to death while she was trying to escape.  14-year-old Martin survived.

Elliott wasn't the first woman he killed.  Here's Melissa Holsman in the Treasure Coast Palm.

On the eve of his death penalty trial for the 1983 abduction, rape and murder of a Vero Beach High School senior, David Alan Gore told authorities what they had long suspected: Lynn Elliott, 17, wasn’t his first killing.
She was his sixth, Gore, then 29, confessed to prosecutors in November 1983.
Gore, 58, admitted killing six women in Indian River County between 1981 and 1983. Most were sexually assaulted, some were tortured and others were dismembered and buried in hidden graves in citrus groves west of Vero Beach.

Waterfield is doing life.  Gore is doing life, too, but not for Elliott's killing.  For that, he's to be executed at 6 tomorrow evening by the people of the Sunshine State.  (Yeah, his lawyers are still filing stuff, but you probably shouldn't hold your breath waiting for some court to issue a stay.)

And execution in Florida isn't exactly big news around the country.  After all, they've killed 72 men and women there beginning with John Spenkelink in 1979.  Hell, Gore won't even be the first this year.  That was Robert Waterhouse, murdered on February 15.

So there's nothing special about Gore.  A brutal serial rapist and murderer.  Just another guy on the row.  His death will be, the 73rd execution in Florida, and number 1,290 since Gary Gilmore restarted executions in 1977.

But this post isn't about Gore.  Nor is it about Elliott.  He probably can't be saved.  She, surely, cannot be resurrected.  Nor can Gore's other victims.  "Shit," as testimony indicated that one of my former clients said while watching a news story on TV about a murder he'd recently committed, "happens."  And really and sadly, it can't be undone.

But then there's this special series on Gore and his crimes and the upcoming killing in Treasure Coast Palm.  And in particular, there are the stories of the others, those who are still around.  Family and victims. 

Consider Lynn's parents.  Russ Lemmon talked to them.

Jeanne Elliott says her stress level has gone up considerably since Feb. 28, the day Gov. Rick Scott signed Gore's death warrant.
That's not the case with her ex-husband, Carl Elliott.
"The closer it gets, the better I feel," he said.
. . .
They both plan on being in the front row for Thursday's execution.

Their son, Jason, may or may not be a witness, but he's thrilled for his parents.

"I'm looking forward to it for my parents," he said. "It's great that it's happening, but more so for them."

Then there's Martin, the one who survived.

Lee Martin also plans to witness the execution. She is the mother of Regan Martin, who was abducted with Lynn Elliott but survived the ordeal.
Regan Martin, now 43, is married with two kids and living in Georgia.
"I know that I am not going to witness the execution. I really don't want to see his face again," Regan Martin said. "My husband will be going in my place and of course my mother will be there.

And so it goes.  Lemmon spoke with the families the 6 women Gore killed and quoted them all on their plans and enthusiasm for the upcoming festivities.

He didn't speak to Gore's family, though.  Or at least he didn't report what they might have had to say.  My guess is that they aren't quite as enthusiastic as they are set to join all those others in losing a child/brother/father/uncle/spouse.  But then, we don't count them as victims.

We do, though, count Angela Hommell.  It was back in 1976 that Gore and Waterfield took turns raping her at gunpoint after she tried to get them to help with a pair of flat tires.  Melissa Holsman tells the rest.

Angela Hommell

What she believed was a friendly ride to work nearly turned deadly, she said, after the men took turns raping her while pointing a gun at her head, court documents state.
In 1984 sworn depositions, Gore admitted he and Waterfield devised a ploy to pretend to threaten her with a gun, as part of a plot to rape her.
"After I pulled out the gun, he was keeping the game going, that's when I told him 'Fred let's don't play anymore. Let's go ahead and do what we're going to do,' " Gore recalled during an October 1984 deposition.
He said he had a "snub nose" .22 caliber handgun.
They agreed to let Hommell go, he said, after she promised not to tell anyone what they had done to her. But at a hospital that night, she reported the incident and Gore and Waterfield were briefly jailed before being released. Both men claimed their sex with Hommell was consensual and they were never charged with a crime.

It's that last line.  Never charged with a crime.  Hommell figures that if they'd been prosecuted for her kidnapping and rape, they'd have been in prison and therefore the crime spree that included the death of Lynn Elliott, well, it just wouldn't have happened.   Maybe, maybe not.  But if she couldn't stop the other killings, maybe she can stop this one.

"I am writing to you to ask for clemency and/or a (stay) of execution for Dave Gore," Hommell wrote state officials in March. "I believe if they (Gore and Waterfield) would have been prosecuted for the rape against me they would have gone to jail and not be able to go on the killing spree that they did. I am not going to feel closure and/or justice for me if Dave is killed. Not in my name. . . . I am asking as a victim of Dave (and Fred) to stay the execution and give him life without the possibility of parole," she wrote. "If you do not stay the execution, April 12 will be a horrible day for me and I will relive all the pain all over again."

She told Holsman.

"I don't believe in the death penalty. I'm Roman Catholic and in Germany we think the death penalty is barbaric. . . . If he does get killed on (April) 12, that's going to be a bad day for me, or any day therefore, you know."

Rev. Bill Carmody, pastor at St. Dominic's Catholic Church in Colorado Springs, has counseled Hommell for a decade or so.  He knows she's serious.

"The reason she's doing it is to give David Gore one last shot at life," Carmody said. "In spite what he did to her, she's still going to fight for his life, which I find amazing."

Nobody's quite saying it, at least the Treasure Coast Palm doesn't say it, but killing Gore won't bring anyone back.  The dead stay dead.  There'll just be one more dead person.

Who will likely be mourned. 

And whose death will revictimize Angela Hommell.  Who's really suffered enough.

As I keep saying, it's not about him.  It's about us.

I should note that in 15 minutes the Connecticut House of Representatives will begin debating abolition.  And then there'll be a vote.  And it will just be up to the Governor, who says he'll sign.

That won't change anything for Gore, of course, or for the Elliotts or Regan Martin.  Or for Angela Hommell.

Smoke Slowly Curling Skyward

Today corruption has won and justice has lost.

That was Andy Thomas, former member of Joe 'n' Andy, former prosecutor in Maricopa County (they call the job "County Attorney").  Unrepentent sinner.  And, oh, yeah, former lawyer.

Most importantly, a man who's just wrong.  Today, and it may only be preliminary, and it may not last, and there's sure more to do, but today corruption lost and justice, whatever exactly that might be, pretty clearly won.

Yvonne Wingett Sanchez and Michael Kiefer in the Arizona Republic.

Former Maricopa County Attorney Andrew Thomas and his onetime deputy, Lisa Aubuchon, were stripped of their law licenses today as a disciplinary panel handed down the toughest sanctions possible for ethical violations in a case that attracted national interest.

The panel also suspended Rachel Alexander, another Thomas deputy, from practicing law for six months and one day for her role in filing a federal civil racketeering lawsuit against judges and county officials.

After the verdict, Thomas spoke only briefly [and with what a friend rightly describes as "delusional hubris."]

"Today corruption has won and justice has lost," he said. "I brought corruption cases in good faith involving powerful people, and the political and legal establishment blatantly covered up and retaliated by targeting my law license. Arizona has some of the worst corruption in America, according to a recent national survey. The political witch hunt that's just ended makes things worse by sending a chilling message to prosecutors: Those who take on the powerful will lose their livelihood."

Because today Andy Thomas was disbarred (it actually takes effect in 30 days, giving him time to appeal).  Law license yanked by a 3-member disciplinary panel appointed by the Arizona Supreme Court.  The panel examined 33 charges of misconduct against Andy and two of his deputies as "respondents."  They took weeks of testimony.  And then they decided.  

Andy Thomas Discipline

You should read the whole thing (yeah, right), but here's a snapshot from the last substantive paragraph of the 232 page opinion, written by the Presiding Disciplinary Judge, William J. O'Neil. It ends this way, with reference to the framers and the pledge of allegiance.

With time, a pledge was created to underscore the foundational principles of our great country. That pledge ends with four words. The words may be simple, but they are profound. “And justice for all.” This Panel is firmly convinced justice for all has occurred in this case. It is also firmly convinced Respondents never intended the same.

If that's not clear enough, maybe the 15 page concurring opinion by the public member of the panel, Rev., Dr. John C.N. Hall will make the point.

This is the story of three unethical attorneys, Andrew Thomas, Lisa Aubuchon, and to a lesser extent, Rachel Alexander. This is the story of County Attorneys who did not “let justice be done,” but rather, birthed injustice after injustice. This is the story of the public trust dishonored, desecrated, and defiled. This multi-year-wreck-of-a-ride, operated by Andrew Thomas and staffed by Aubuchon and Alexander, outrageously exploited power, flagrantly fostered fear, and disgracefully misused the law. By the time Andrew Thomas resigned, with his hopes of attaining higher public office and greater public trust, his legacy lay in a smoldering heap, its smoke slowly curling skyward like a prayer for relief.

Of course, this isn't the end.  There will be that appeal.  And Andy's real partner in all of this, Sheriff Joe, is still going strong.  But it seems that whatever justice is, for the moment it's prevailed.  Corruption, hubris, megalomania, the powerful struck down.

A first step.  Not a small one.  But just a step.

Pay attention.  Let's see what happens next.

We cannot confront darkness with darkness and expect to have light

New Jersey

New Mexico

Illinois

New York

Coming soon to Connecticut

It's abolition, and it's time.

Yesterday morning, Judge Frost told Ohio it could kill Mark Wiles.  Just after 2 o'clock this morning, the Connecticut Senate voted to stop sending people to their death.  Let's hear it for the Nutmeg State.

Word from there, from the Land of Steady Habits, is that there's no question the House will pass the bill and that the Governor has announced his intention to sign it.

Oh to be in Connecticut.

It's not perfect.  Kill the ones already on the row, they said.

But no more.  Never again.  Finito.

I've said over and over here that clemency isn't about them, it's about us.  That mercy isn't about the recipient, it's about the giver.  That grace is a gift, not a reward.

So, too, of the death penalty.  About us, not about them.

Senator Slossberg

Here's a small bit of what Senator Gayle Slossberg said during the debate on the Senate floor. (The whole statement is here.)

I want something better for our families. I want to know that in the face of terrible evil, we will hold on tighter to our humanity; that when our faith in each other is challenged, we will work harder to fulfill our obligations to one another as human beings; that we will stand for justice for all; that we will raise each other up, and not descend to the level of criminals. We cannot confront darkness with darkness and expect to have light.

She followed that, with this.

I hope that one day, when my children look back on this vote, they will view it with pride and know that today we took a step towards being a more civilized and just society for all. I am proud to support the repeal of the death penalty.

Which really is the point.

I didn't watch the debate.  Gideon did, with tears in his eyes by the end.

By the vote.  Which really does signal the end. 

Slossberg began her talk on the floor of the Senate this way.

A few years ago, I was waiting for the train to New York and I sat down on a bench next to an elderly man. We started to chat. Elections were coming up, so our conversation naturally turned to politics and the state of our country. We ran through the usual topics and then he turned to me and said something I have thought about over and over again ever since: He said that between the tough economy, the rise of hate crimes, the vilification of this group or that by otherwise good, moral people and the seemingly chronic need to blame someone for society’s problems, he said he was afraid – not for himself, but for our children. It is only a short step from here to there, he said – to think of some people as less than human. And once we think of people as less than human, it becomes okay to kill them and then what kind of society do we have?

Indeed.

Because it really is about us, not them.

As Judge Frost reminded yesterday, we're not there yet in Ohio where there's still too much belief in them.

But we really are heading that way.  And one of these days.