FindLaw | Legal News & Information
Reviewed by Doug Salvesen January 23, 2000
This week, Bobby Donnell and the rest of Donnell, Dole, Frutt & Young go on a road trip. (Actually, this episode - "The Spirit of America" - originally aired two seasons ago). The firm is called in by the Capital Defenders Project to represent death row inmate Randall DeWitt Jefferson, who is scheduled to be put to death by lethal injection in ten hours. The frantic process of trying to prevent Jefferson's execution is filmed by a documentary crew. It's The Green Mile meets The Blair Witch Project. Donnell and crew have to head south for this week's episode because Massachusetts is one of the twelve states that do not authorize the death penalty. The last execution here was way back in 1947--still a little too late for Sacco and Venzetti--and Massachusetts abolished the death penalty in 1984. For the past few years, death penalty supporters have made major annual efforts to restore it. In fact, two years ago, in a political manoeuver that only Massachusetts politicians could pull off and only Massachusetts citizens could appreciate, a death penalty measure seemed to win passage, only to fail the next day when a state representative was convinced to change his vote. Since I do not have any experience in dealing with a death penalty case, I am a little out of my element in critiquing this episode. Nevertheless, the one facet of the show that did not ring true was the amount of fact finding the attorneys did just hours before the scheduled execution. They were running all over the state - appearing at a clemency hearing, talking to Jefferson's trial attorney, interviewing the jailhouse informant, and tracking down the person who gave the informant a lie detector test - all in the space of a few hours. Equally unbelievable was that all of these people willingly talked to the attorneys. Of course, if the show were truly accurate, these incidents would have taken place over weeks or months and we viewers would have been bored silly. It is, after all, Jefferson's impending execution and the race against the clock that gives the show its drama. I think it would make a really great premise for a movie - maybe one starring Clint Eastwood? The rest of the show, which consisted of the lawyers standing around a motel room or in the cell with Jefferson, seemed accurate enough. The factoids stated by the lawyers throughout the show - that one-third of all people on death row presently have no lawyer representing them, that blacks constitute an inordinately high proportion of those on death row, and that the electric chair sometimes does malfunction - were true. Here are some additional factoids (not mentioned on the show) about the 3,600 people sitting on death row: * In Illinois (my birthplace), prosecutors recently dropped charges against Steve Manning, who had previously been convicted of murder and sentenced to die for the slaying of a trucking company owner. Like Jefferson, Manning had been convicted on the word of a jailhouse informant. Manning was the 13th inmate exonerated in Illinois, which has now exonerated more inmates than it has executed since the reinstatement of the death penalty. * The costs of enforcing the death penalty are significant. It costs Florida $51 million a year above and beyond what it would cost to punish all first - degree murderers with life in prison without parole. Florida has carried out 44 executions since 1976, so that amounts to a cost of $24 million for each one. * In 1991, New Jersey spent $16 million to impose the death penalty. The next year, the state laid off 500 police officers because it could not afford to pay them. * The average elapsed time from sentencing to execution is ten years and ten months. The average time an innocent inmate spends on death row before being freed is seven and a half years. * Eighty-five inmates have been freed from death row because of evidence of their innocence. * In an effort to pre-empt Supreme Court review, Florida's legislature sought to change the state's primary method of execution to allow inmates to choose between the electric chair and lethal injection. The legislature also sought to speed up executions by imposing strict filing deadlines and limiting appeals. Brad Thomas, Governor Jeb Bush's top policy adviser, had this to say about the new legislation: "What I hope is that we become more like Texas. Bring in the witnesses, put them on a gurney, and let's rock and roll." * In at least 46 cases in which a defendant was sentenced to death, the prosecution's evidence included testimony from a jailhouse informant - an exceptionally unreliable source. * Defendants who kill white victims are four times more likely to be sentenced to death than defendants who kill black victims. From a lawyer's perspective, this was a pretty good repeat. It goes to show you that when The Practice concentrates on The Law and eschews the breast-biting, grape jelly-smearing, penis-measuring, bug-crunching, sex-laden plots, it can still be captivating.
Doug Salvesen is an attorney with the law firm of Yurko & Perry in Boston. In his practice, Salvesen represents a mixture of clients, including businesses and individuals. A significant portion of his time is spent on pro bono matters, including law suits seeking to vindicate the civil rights of prisoners. He writes out each of his reviews of The Practice in long-hand. |
|||
