January 6-12, 2005

books

Wrongful Death

Sister Helen Prejean's continuing crusade against a broken system.

by Sam Adams

Illinois Gov. George Ryan's conversion could scarcely have been more dramatic. Once a hardline supporter of capital punishment, Ryan appointed a commission to study the state's death penalty after 13 men on Illinois' death row were found to be innocent. But Katy Chevigny, whose documentary Deadline climaxes with Ryan's eleventh-hour decision to commute the sentence of every prisoner on Illinois' death row to life, was careful not to overplay the role of innocence in raising questions about the death penalty. "In a way, innocence isn't dramatic," says Chevigny, who co-directed Deadline with Kirsten Johnson. "There's no tension as to whether or not an innocent person should be on death row. They shouldn't."

As evidence mounts that courts consistently convict defendants, most often poor and nonwhite, of crimes they did not commit, death penalty opponents have learned that innocence is a powerful tool for opening people's minds. Sister Helen Prejean, whose new book is titled The Death of Innnocents: An Eyewitness Account of Wrongful Executions (Random House), says innocence "shifts the debate. Before people who were against the death penalty had to give their reasons why they were against it. Now, you say to people, "Can you tell me why, with all these mistakes, seeing how the courts work, how poor people don't get a good defense, and the juries who condemn them to death don't have the information they need, and we have the alternative of life without parole to keep society safe — why are you for the death penalty?'"

The Death of Innocents begins with Sister Prejean's accounts of the executions of Dobie Gillis Williams, in Louisiana, and Joseph O'Dell, in Virginia. Though Prejean stops short of asserting innocence, she raises serious doubts about each man's conviction. O'Dell, who served as his own lawyer, was prevented from introducing DNA evidence that might have exonerated him, while Williams' trial was perilously close to a legal lynching. Prosecutors struck black jurors from the jury pool, contrived a scenario involving a naked perpetrator, and insinuated rape without providing evidence of it.

Growing evidence suggests that the death penalty is applied unevenly and unfairly, based not on the severity of the crime, but the accused's race, the race of the victim, the state in which the crime was committed, and the quality of legal representation, often tied to the defendant's economic status. Texas, with no statewide public defender's office, leads the nation in executions, while Colorado, with its well-funded defenders and capital-law specialists, has only a handful of inmates on death row.

Pennsylvania falls closer to Texas, with the nation's fourth-largest death row and a statute that allows judges to omit critical information when charging a capital jury: If the jury deadlocks during the sentencing phase or votes against death, a sentence of life without parole is automatic. As Sister Prejean points out, support for the death penalty drops below 50 percent when a true life sentence is offered as an alternative.

Chevigny and Sister Prejean agree that innocence is only part of the issue. Prejean's publishers had to convince her to use "innocents" in the title, while Chevigny points to the way the death penalty highlights problems in the justice system as a whole. But they agree that the growing number of exonerations, along with the work of organizations like the Innocence Project, the Center for Wrongful Convictions, and Murder Victims' Families for Reconciliation, has helped transform the debate. "Part of the reason people feel comfortable with execution is that the vast majority of Americans don't know somebody on death row," Chevigny says. "But once you start talking about innocence, it brings up the idea that it could be somebody you know, or I know."

The pace of executions continues to grow. In George W. Bush's five-year governorship, Texas executed more people than the entire nation did from 1980 to 1990. But Sister Prejean retains her belief that the tide is turning. "I can see the movement," she says. "I can see the change. Americans aren't any more vengeful than any other people, but they've been told the system works. The more we begin to ask the question not in the abstract, but adding up all the evidence, the more most people veer towards life."

Sister Helen Prejean reads Tue., Jan. 11, 7:00 p.m., free, Free Library of Philadelphia, Central Branch, 1901 Vine St., 215-686-5322. Scribe Producers' Forum with Katy Chevigny and Kirsten Johnson, including Deadline screening, Fri., Jan. 14, 7 p.m., $10, International House, 3701 Chestnut St., 215-895-6575.