On Wednesday night, I had the gift of hearing Sister Helen Prejean speak. The dinner was a benefit for Ohioans Against the Death Penalty. Sister Helen is the anti-death penalty, crusdading nun from New Orleans. She’s the best-selling author of “Dead Man Walking” and “Death of Innocents.” She was instrumental in causing the Catholic Church to solidify its anti-death penalty stance. She speaks throughout the country on wrongful convictions and abuses in our criminal justice system.
Sister Helen’s power is not just in her words, but in her presentation. She’s a little over five feet tall. She speaks in a thick Louisiana accent. She’s passionate, witty, and a little salty. And she speaks without a single note. When you speak from your heart, and your subject is your life, you don’t need notes.
As Sister Helen was speaking, I realized how proud I was be be Catholic. The Catholic Church desperately needs a second chance. It needs to restore confidence among many of its members. And it needs to regain the respect of the non-Catholic population. Headlines about sexual abuse by priests should make everyone cringe. The Church can help redeem itself by continuing its leadership against the death penalty.
One area where the Catholic Church has always been strong is social justice. And activists like Sister Helen are one of the reasons. Sister Helen’s books have been in circulation for over 15 years now. And at the same time, the public has been exposed to a steady stream of wrongful convictions. The tide is changing. Juries are imposing the death penalty less frequently. Indeed, the jury in the Cheshire murder trial took four days to finally decide to impose the death penalty. What is so significant about that length of time is that crime was one of the most depraved ever — three people were tortured, murdered, and then burned. If ever there was a poster child for the death penalty, it was Steven Hayes, the defendant who was sentenced to death.
The cynical could dismiss Sister Helen by saying that she’s a good person but what she says is irrelevant, that she speaks about isolated occurences, that this stuff doesn’t happen anymore, that people are just too sophisticated and too fair-minded to allow these abuses to continue. Wrong. I want to discuss three stories — three stories that broke this week alone. Those stories show that Sister Helen’s message is as relevant today as it was when she began her crusade over 15 years ago.
On Monday, the Dayton Daily News reported that the Court of Appeals reversed the conviction of China Arnold, the woman convicted of allegedly microwaving her baby. The Court cited prosecutorial misconduct. The prosecutor hid a key witness by putting her up in a hotel for months. And another witness was not allowed to testify that the person to whom the defendant allegedly confessed told her that she had fabricated the story.
On Wednesday, the same day that Sister Helen spoke in Cincinnati, PBS’ “Frontline” aired a segment called “The Confession” about the conviction of what are known as “The Norfolk Four.” The Norfolk Four are four navy men who were convicted of a rape and murder they did not commit. You need to watch this online because it is so complicated, so bizarre that I can’t adequately summarize it. Basically, one of the detectives coerced one suspect into confessing after hours and hours of interrrogation, hours which included bullying, false promises of leniency, feeding him information about the crime, and lying — like telling him he failed a polygraph when he in fact passed. It took almost 15 years to release these men from prison — and they still have not been fully exonerated.
And on Friday, the Texas Observer reported that DNA tests proved that Claude Jones was executed based on flawed evidence. Mr. Jones was convicted in 1990 based on a stingle strand of hair found at the scene of a robbery. At the time, technology did not exist which would have shown that the hair did not belong to Mr. Jones. Before his scheduled execution, Mr. Jones requested then-governor George Bush for a DNA test. That request was never conveyed to Mr. Bush — who, to his credit, believed in DNA testing and had granted inmates the right to have testing performed. So Mr. Jones died, steadfastly maintaining his innocence.
Fast-forward a few years. With the prodding of the Innocence Project, the hair was tested. Surprise. The hair belonged to the victim, not to Mr. Jones. Had a court been presented those results when Mr. Jones was fighting his death sentence, the court likely would have vacated the sentence. Sure, Mr. Jones probably would have been sentenced to a number of years in prison for robbery. But he wouldn’t have been executed.
It’s because of stories like these — China Arnold, the Norfolk Four, and Claude Jones — that Sister Helen soldiers on.
And the take-away is that everytime we hear one of these stories, we need to change the rules, bend the rules in order to prevent wrongful convcitions and undo wrongful convictions. If we don’t, some of these people will never get a second chance.
Zealous Advocacy 