Statement from Christa Pike

 Reposted from Tennesseans for Alternatives to the Death Penalty:

Statement from Christa Pike as dictated to her legal team.

One month ago on September 30, I walked into the execution chamber at Riverbend men’s prison prepared to die. I had made my peace. I had told the people who loved me, supported me and stood by me through the years I was grateful for them. I had also told the people in the room and who were there to witness my execution that I was leaving them in loving kindness. Several days later I woke up alone in a hospital confused and in pain.

There hasn't been a moment since that night when I haven't been in pain. My body hurts. My arms hurt. My hands hurt. My throat hurts. I still struggle to speak. And the pain isn't just physical. There is pain in my mind and in my soul. I had not contemplated life beyond that night, and I’m deeply hurt by the incompetence that has put so many people in this terrible position. I continue to think about my victim’s family and the terrible pain and loss they have endured.

I am recovering, and I know that I am getting stronger. But healing is not the same as being okay. Since that night, I have been largely isolated in the prison’s medical ward, away from other people and the human connections that mean so much to me. That isolation brings its own kind of pain. I spent 28 years in solitary confinement and much of what I am experiencing today is a repeat of that condition.

I am searching for meaning in what happened to me. One thing that has given me strength is the extraordinary love and support I have received from people around the world. I am overwhelmed by the kindness and prayers of people I have known for years and complete strangers who have never met me. To know that so many people care about me, that they see me as a human being whose life matters, is something I cannot fully put into words. It is humbling, and it has touched me more deeply than I can explain.

I also want to thank the first responders, doctors, nurses and everyone at the hospital who cared for me. They treated me with compassion, dignity and respect. I will never forget their kindness. I also want to thank my attorneys and everyone who has fought for me, stood beside me and refused to give up on me.

I don't know why I survived that night. I don't know what comes next. Some days, finding hope is harder than others. For now, I am trying to heal, one day at a time. And I am holding on to the love and kindness of so many people who have reminded me that I am not alone.

A Bit of Self-Promotion

 I haven't written much here for a number of years now.  I'd like to think I'll get back to it on something like a regular basis, but I'd been liking that thought for some time and . . . . Crickets.

Well, I'm retired now, still involved with criminal law and the death penalty but that takes a back seat. As you may know, my first career was English prof.  Reading and talking about books has always been my main leisure activity.  And so in retirement, I've started a Substack about books and words and language and who knows what all else.  But not law.  

I invite you to take a look, and if you're so inclined, subscribe.  It's free.  

https://jeffreygamso.substack.com/

The Deserving

It's been decades since I underlined or wrote in the margins of books, really dating back to some point when I was in college and began instead writing notes on bits of paper and stuffing them into the binding.  These days I use sticky arrows reaching out beyond the edges of the page pointing to what I'd once have underlined and post-it notes to take the place of marginalia.  That's all personal preference for keeping books in pristine condition.  

And, of course, it's a moral obligation when I'm dealing with borrowed books whether from friends or, more often, libraries.  

Either way, when I've finished the book, I'll review the notes and marked passages to decide whether to keep them in place if I'm going to hang onto the book, or, if the book is borrowed or going to be passed on to a friend or colleague, whether to copy and save them.  Mostly they get tossed.  Helpful for focus when reading and sometimes reviewing, but not demanding to be kept in perpetuity.  Except sometimes.  Like now.

Which brings me to Elizabeth Vartkessian.  She's a mitigation specialist.  She works with lawyers in (mostly) death penalty cases digging out everything there is to discover about the history and background of the accused or, often, the already condemned and his (mostly his) family and circumstances.  Going back generations.  She'll spend hours and hours - over the course of years or even decades, getting to know and connect with the guy (again, it's mostly guys) and his parents and siblings and classmates and teachers and counselors and prison guards and . . .  basically with anyone and everyone who might have something, anythinbg she can learn about not just what he (there's that mostly correct pronoun again) did but about who and what and why and how and from where and . . . .

The idea is to be able to show the jury or a court or a parole board or governor (or President) why despite having done something awful, there's value in the person - enough value to prevent - or reverse - a death sentence.  

To advance that work, Vartkessian founded Advancing Real Change, Inc. which is described this way on its website (advancechange.org):

We unearth the true histories of people accused of crimes and share their stories with decision-makers to foster empathy and understanding. We aim to take what we learn through this work—mitigation investigation—and uplift those experiences to reshape and rebuild social systems so that communities and individuals may truly flourish. Our vision is the transformation of the criminal legal system and all social systems into systems that deliver true justice.

.  . . . . . .

Vartkessian is, as I suppose is obvious from what she does, opposed to the death penalty.  If you somehow didn't know it before, you certainly would after reading her quite amazing and wonderful new book, The Deserving: What the Lives of the Condemned Reveal About American Justice.

Start with me.  I'm known in some circles, as the atheist who believes deeply in mercy and grace.  Mercy is not something earned, I say, it's something given.  And grace, like mercy, is about the giver, not the given.* (Or maybe sometimes both, but don't quibble.)

And there's Sister Helen Prejean who says (and who, as it happens, wrote the Foreword to Vartkessian's book where she in fact repeats it though phrased a bit differently),  "We're all better than the worst thing we've ever done."**

And so Vartkessian tells us (with an assist from my post-its):

[W]e cannot incarcerate our way out of violent crime. (p. 18)

William's words hung in my mind.  Have a good life.  His lawyer would, and so would I.  We would have those lives simply because we were lucky enough to be born to parents whom society valued more.  It wasn't fair.  (p. 109)

American culture[***] considers inhumane treatment part of the punishment.  We take freedom, but we also take a person's humanity.  And by allowing ourselves to treat others as something less than human, we take the humanity of everyone involved in the enterprise of housing the incarcerated. (p. 191)

It's about us, not them. (post-it)

So many moments in a life when, had the focus been genuine care and concern, the scales might have balanced differently.  That wasn't something I knew until I started working with people who had killed; how grace and love did more to transform a person than anything.  Genuine human conncection- authentic, messy, hard - is the most powerful and restorative force in human existence. (pp. 205-206)

Wes caused a great deal of suffering.  He also gave a tremendous amount of love.  When we take a life, we take the whole life, including the good, which exists in every single human being and just needs the right conditions to emerge. (p. 214)

[T][he criminal legal system cannot deliver an end to suffering.  But we cvould have build a society that prevent it in the first place. (p. 221)

I could go on.  Hell, I could quote the whole book (though I suppose I could also get sued for copyright infringement).  Instead, I urge you to read it.

Those of us who toil in the trenches of criminal defense - and especially death penalty defense - know all of this.  But the reminders, the stories Vartkessian tells, the reminders that we must care, that it takes a village and we're all in it together, and yeah, the tears she jerks, they make it worth our reading.

And, really, others should read it too.  To learn.  To understand.  To grow they're own compassion.

You know.  Mercy and grace, about the giver, not the given.

The Deserving?  It's all of us.

----------

*That's from one of the post-its I put in the book.

**She doesn't add my corollary,  "We're all worse than the best thing we've ever done."  But it's her quote and the point she regularly, and rightly, wants to make.  (Another post-it I stuck in the book, by the way.)

***As opposed, she points out, to Scandanavien culture.

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.

Bernie Goetz Is Not the Subject of This Post (though when I've finished the book I might review it here)

So this retired criminal defense lawyer is sitting in his recliner one summer evening in Phoenix, Arizona (10 pm temperature a nippy 92 after a high today 106) reading Fear and Fury, which if you're old enough to remember and even if you aren't is a book about Bernie Goetz and the shootings and the aftermath and well, I haven't finished it so I'm not sure just where it will end up, though the subtitle Is "The Reagan Eighties, the Bernie Goetz Shootings, and the Rebirth of White Rage." 

Anyway, I'm reading this book (yes, I'm that retired criminal defense lawyer, which I figure you really didn't need me to tell you) and suddenly there's this guy, a lawyer, name of Scott Greenfield being quoted. And I know Scott.  And I have some vague recollection that he had something to do with one of Goetz's victims.  So I check the footnotes to see if he'd been interviewed by Heather Ann Thompson.  And no, he hadn't been. The quotes came not from an interview but from a blog post, "Remembering Troy," on Simple Justice which I'm sure I read 8 plus years ago when Scott posted it.  

And, even if I hadn't read it then, I [re?]read it now.  Because that's what we did back in the day, read each other's blawgs and commented on them and argued about them and with each other and damn I miss that, though I'm partly to blame my own blawg (this one) being essentially fallow now.

But I'm writing this both to let Scott know in case he doesn't that he's quoted in the book.  And to remind myself that what we write (and wrote) has some life and significance at least occasionally beyond our little stables of readers. And, finally, as a reminder to myself that I'd really like to get back at doing this regularly.  

Except that being retired takes up so damn much time.

Until They Are Dead

 Back in the day, when I was writing this blawg on a regular basis, I wrote often about lethal injection.  (You can click the link on the "Labels" section at the top right if you want to bury yourself in those posts.). I thought I knew quite a lot about it:

• how the drugs were basically unavailable
• how the states went out of their way to ensure that nobody could know what they were doing or who in particular was doing whatever it was they were doing
• how whoever those secret folks were who were doing whatever it was they were doing were often grossly incompetent and unable to do whatever it was
• how . . . . 

You get the idea.

Hell, I'd talked with experts.  I'd read the books.  I followed all the litigation.  I'd even gotten a court to declare that the Buckeye State's method of killing by injection was unconstitutional and had to be changed.*

And I followed the sad saga of lethal injection as it got screwed up over and over, as it tortured and tortured and failed to live up to the promise that it would, as the Ohio statute mandated, "quickly and painlessly cause death."**  So, as I said, I thought I knew quite a lot about it. And about how screwed up it was.

Boy was I ever wrong.  

Corinna Barrett Lain, a law prof at the University of Richmond, makes it clear in her new and powerful and frankly terrific book, Secrets of the Killing State: The Untold Story of Lethal Injection.  

Lain has scoured the country, pored over the protocols (when she could find them), studied the cases, reviewed the autopsies, spoken to the litigators and the experts [disclosure: not me, though my case is footnoted a couple of times], read the books and articles, listened to the folks who invented lethal injection, those who oversaw and those who performed and those who witnessed it.  

And, not incidentally, she looked closely at the folks on the gurneys.  She heard (OK read about) their choking and their gasping, their twitching and their reaching and their clutching their fists and their desperate but futile efforts to get a breath or get up off the table. Or even to advise the incompetents about how to get a needle into them, or just how to get it done.  She examined their last words.

She's done, that is, a deeply thorough and exhaustive exegesis of how and why it's totally and beyond repair fucked up.  And how the states that kill don't really give a rats ass about any of that because all they want to do is ensure that the guy (it's almost always a guy) ends up dead.  And then they'll declare that all went according to plan and smoothly and kindly, quietly and peacefully - and humanely forgodssake - despite all the evidence to the contrary.

And finally there's this, from her Epilogue:

This project has offered (insisted upon even) a front row seat to who these people are.  Many, too many to count, found redemption on death row, and prayed to their Lord and Savior, Yahweh or Allah, as they died, some after starting prison ministries.  As Saul became Paul, so it is for many on death row.  Others were just deeply broken people, desperate to go back to their younger selves and warn them to stop before it was tragically too late.  Over and over, this was a theme in the last statements I read.  A few went out defiantly, but very few.  For the vast majority of these prisoners, it was evident that the person who committed that terrible crime just wasn't there anymore.

(Endnote citation to the biblical story of Saul becoming Paul omitted)

Yeah.

------------

*The state ignored violated that order, and a couple of months later an appellate court declared that it wasn't a real order anyway and so didn't count.

**That's from Section 2949.22(a) of the Ohio Revised Code.

Today in History

Today is Juneteenth, the newest, most recently enacted federal holiday.  That's the date in 1865 when federal troops arrived in Galveston, Texas, with the news that slavery was over.  

But dates are tricky things.  And as we rightly celebrate liberty and freedom today, so, if you know me, you know there's also a dark side to the day.

June 19, 1953, 72 years ago. Julius and Ethel Rosenberg, convicted of spying for the Soviet Union, including providing secrets of the atom bomb, were executed.  Strapped in the electric chair at Sing Sing prison in New York.  Killed by our government, in our names, on our behalf.

Some say they didn't do it.  There's pretty overwhelming evidence that Ethel really didn't. And that the government knew it.

But, you know, dead is dead. Evidence and innocence be damned.

 Oh, maybe it's better to remember them this way.