A DEATH SENTENCE

 Two  weeks ago I stood next to a man who was sentenced to death.

Never did that before. Never want to do that again.

The circumstances of how that occurred are somewhat unique.

During the past two weeks friends in the courthouse who saw the picture of me next to the defendant and story in the Herald have been coming up to me offering words of condolences.

Nobody really understands the circumstances of how I found myself in court next to a defendant I had met only a few days before, acting as co-counsel as the court sentenced him to death  

The defendant was represented through trial, where he was found guilty, and through the penalty phase where the jury recommended death, by the Dade County Public Defender’s Office. After the penalty phase was concluded, a conflict developed and the Public Defenders had to withdraw. And when I use the term conflict, I am using it in the legal sense, not that the defendant was angry at his lawyers. He was not.

So the court appointed my trial partner Kellie Peterson and myself to essentially stand next to the defendant while the court handed down the sentence.If you know Kellie and if you know me, you know we were not going to just stand idly by. We filed what motions we could to stop the process, primarily relying on the fact that the United States Supreme Court is going to decide next October if Florida’s death penalty sentencing scheme, which allows for a non-unanimous jury to make a recommendation of death, is constitutional ( it is not constitutional-  a subject for another blog post, and  if Justice Scalia happens to read this, I will get that one up soon. Promise.)

So there Kellie and I stood as the trial judge went through the litany of very difficult facts of the murder in this case.  But I wasn’t standing right next to the defendant. Edith Georgi, who was the defendant’s lawyer through the trial and for the last several years stood next to her former client. She couldn’t technically represent him anymore, but she was there.

For those of you who don’t know Edith Georgi, let me make it simple- she is as fine a death penalty defender as there is in the United States. Period. She kicked my ass in a murder case when I was a prosecutor many years ago (I often wonder if she remembers that. I do. )

As the judge went through the specific acts,  she included in her sentencing order a fairly stirring and stinging  denouncement of the defendant's acts, Edith was there rubbing her former client’s back, whispering in his ear to be strong, and being as compassionate as a person-lawyer  can be.

I can’t get this scene out of my mind. The judge intoning the very horrible acts the defendant was convicted of committing, and Edith touching him and telling him to be strong and that it was going to be okay.

When the judge, in a biting comment, mentioned that the defendant had been a very religious person, leading bible classes in jail, and then said “but you forgot the commandant ‘Thou Shall Not Kill’ ”, I could feel the judge’s eyes burning into my client. I leaned over to Edith and whispered “She’s wrong. The sixth commandment says ‘Thou shall not commit murder’. The bible is full of instructions to kill.”   I briefly considered objecting, before deciding that in this instance discretion was the better part of valor considering that the defendant had in fact been convicted of murder. The death-sentence train was roaring down the track we were tied to. I could see it’s malevolent lights in the distance, growing stronger with each sentence of the judge’s order.

It’s easy to be compassionate to the most vulnerable amongst us- the homeless family, the sick child, an accident victim.  But how much harder is it to show human compassion towards someone who by all rights doesn’t deserve it?

But what Edith and Kellie and I know from a lifetime spent in these types of cases is that beneath the tattooed, hulking, frightening exterior of this convicted killer is a human being, who was once an innocent child, and who somewhere, in someway, went terribly wrong.

As Jesus said: “love the sinner, not the sin.”

Bless you Edith for those simple acts of compassion. I know they meant a lot to your client.

There is nothing heroic in defending the un-defendable. I reject that notion that some of my fellow criminal defense attorneys often wrap themselves in as they commiserate their losses. Quite frankly, it stinks. It’s awful. It wakes me up in the middle of the night and I stare at the ceiling in the darkness thinking sometimes of my client’s victims. Other times I wonder where my client went wrong- what moment in their life turned them from a normal human being who values life, into someone who committed a horrible crime?  And then invariably the questions about myself. Why am I representing them? Why don’t I just devote my trial skills to suing insurance companies? I could make a lot more money.

Each of us in this field has our own reasons for why we do what we do. I won’t speak for my colleagues. But in that windowless courtroom a few weeks ago, when I saw true humanity- a simple act of kindness by Edith Georgi, a remarkable lawyer and human being, I knew, despite all the pain, the impossible cases, the continuing stream of motions filed and denied,  that I am doing what I am best able to do. I am using whatever talents the good lord gave me, in the best way possible. And for now, (until my books get published ) that will have to be enough.