“Please pass on to the governor how honored I would be to serve on the court.”
“I’ll do that, Judge.”
“And when you write up that recommendation for me—that’s something that will be disclosed publicly?”
“Not sure,” I said.
“Well, if it’s going to be—I’d like to take a look at it first. Make sure it works.”
“I’ll see what I can do.”
“Good.” The judge clapped his hands together. “And now we can say we met?”
“Now we can say that.”
He got up and extended a hand. I took it and gave him my strongest grip, just a quick but hard squeeze. And then my vaunted interview with the honorable George Henry Ippolito was over.
74
HAVING JUST CONDUCTED A SERIES OF SHAM INTERVIEWS
to name the next justice of the state supreme court, I now moved on to a sham meeting to hear the pleas of a number of people looking to spare the life of Antwain Otis. Madison Koehler had already told me that my assignment was to support the governor’s decision to deny clemency and let the state execute this inmate.
I’d read the considerable file on Antwain Otis twice now and drafted a one-page summary of its contents. His wasn’t a particularly original story. Eleven years ago, while a high-school dropout and member of the Tenth Street Crew street gang, Otis held up a pawnshop on Mayfair Avenue in Marion Park, a south-side community not very far from where I grew up. The owner, after Otis had left the store, ran outside with a firearm that was stowed under his counter and shot at him. Otis sprayed return fire and missed, but his shots killed a woman and her son crossing the street. Clearly, the mother and child were not his intended targets, but the law didn’t care about that. If you intended to fire the gun—which Otis clearly did—you were presumed to have intended to shoot whomever had the misfortune of being in the line of fire. In this case, the victims were Elisa Newberry, age thirty-two, and her five-year-old son Austin.
Otis was convicted of murder and sentenced to death. On direct appeal, the state supreme court upheld the conviction but vacated the death sentence because of improper argument by the prosecution. The high court sent the sentencing issue back to the trial court, where a new jury once again recommended death for Antwain Otis.
Otis couldn’t claim that he lacked adequate representation, as his lawyers had actually beaten the death sentence on the first go-round. Plus, for several years now, Otis had openly admitted to the murders, so legalese aside, no one was claiming a miscarriage of justice. This was no innocent man.
That, of course, was significant. The horror stories involving death-row inmates, the examples most often cited by death penalty abolitionists—a shoddy lawyer who fell asleep at trial or failed to call any witnesses; a prosecutor who withheld exculpatory evidence; a cop who beat a wrongful confession out of an accused—were not present here. Antwain Otis was not denied due process of law. He had good lawyers and a fair trial. And he even now freely admitted he was guilty of the murders. He was not wrongly convicted; in fact, it was entirely fair to say that Antwain Otis was properly convicted and sentenced to death.
The clemency petition filed by Otis’s lawyers did not claim that an innocent man was going to be executed. Their point was that Otis had been rehabilitated and had become a positive force within the prison system. Simply put, Antwain Otis had found God.
I heard that all the time when I was a prosecutor. People found God when their back was to the wall, after they’d lied through their teeth about horrific crimes they’d committed but now were facing a judge for sentencing. But I had to admit that Antwain Otis had a decent story.
With the assistance of local clergy, he started a new prison ministry called You Came to Me in June 2001. The file contained affidavits of twenty-four current and former inmates who’d served with Otis at Marymount Penitentiary, some on death row and others in general population, almost all of them violent offenders. The affidavits, predictably, attested to the impact that Otis and his ministry had made in their lives. Antwain Otis had brought them to God, had taught them the power of faith and forgiveness, had shown them a different path. Eleven of those twenty-four had since been released from prison, and none of them had been reincarcerated for subsequent offenses—a notable statistic, I had to say, given the high rate of recidivism, especially among violent offenders.
But none of that changed the fact that this was an election year, in which a Democratic governor would be sensitive to charges in the general election that he was soft on crime. None of that changed the fact that this man was undoubtedly guilty of the crimes of which he was convicted. None of that changed the fact that Antwain Otis was a black gangbanger who killed an attractive, young white woman and her young son.
The governor, while up in the city—which was most of the time, as far as I could tell; I wondered if he ever spent time at the mansion down in the state capital—had a number of offices at his disposal. I was directed to one of them, a long room with cheap furniture and mustard-yellow walls and uncomfortable chairs. Governor Carlton Snow and Bill Peshke were conferring quietly when I walked in. “Hi, Jason, sit by us,” said the governor, before continuing his deliberations with his press guy, Peshke.
“Okay,” he said, pounding the table and turning toward me. We formed a triangle, the governor at the head of the table and Peshke and I flanking him. “Antwain Otis. Did he do it?”
The question threw me for a moment. I thought it was a conversation starter but came to believe he was really asking me the question. He didn’t know anything about this case?
“Yes, he’s admitted to the crimes. He killed two people, a woman and her son, during a robbery.”
Peshke, with the plastic hair and polished expression, took a note of that and asked for details, names and ages. He was the guy they put out front with the press. He’d need this stuff.
“So what’s his deal?” said the governor. “Does he
have
a deal?”
“He’s preaching the Christian faith to inmates. The argument is that he’s making a difference, and we should let him stay in prison to keep doing it. A number of people have come forward who claim that this guy has changed their lives and given them hope for the first time.”
The governor seemed to be waiting for more from me. Then he looked over at Peshke. The two of them made eye contact. I wasn’t a mind reader but I didn’t think either of them found this impressive.
I still couldn’t believe these guys had no idea what was contained in the file.
“So, a double murder,” said Peshke. “Young woman and her son?”
“Yes.”
“No question of guilt?”
“None.”
“Mmm-hmm.” Peshke deliberated, jotted a few notes on a pad of paper. He held it up and cleared his throat before reading from it. “The governor’s obviously sensitive to these issues on a case-by-case basis. He takes no joy in this task, but he recognizes his constitutional responsibility and he’s given this case careful consideration. He’s reviewed the file and the clemency petition, and he’s listened at length to the people advocating clemency. There’s no question about the defendant’s guilt or about the fairness of the trial. Two innocent people were murdered, and the governor sees no reason to disturb the sentence imposed by the court.”
The governor nodded along. “Good, I like that.”
“Did I say anything in there that’s wrong?” Peshke asked me.
Other than the part about giving this case careful consideration?
“No,” I said.
“Great.” The governor looked at each of us. “Then let’s bring them in.”
75
HAVING PREDETERMINED THE OUTCOME OF THE CLEMENCY
hearing, we were now going to actually hold that hearing. I watched four people enter the room and immediately felt sorry for them, knowing their pleas would be in vain. Hey, I’m as cynical as the next guy. I know politics are going to dictate a lot of the governor’s decisions. And I know that much of the time when I walk into a courtroom to argue some motion or legal issue, the judge has already made up his or her mind before hearing oral argument.
But this wasn’t some routine, humdrum issue. The governor was deciding whether to spare someone’s life, and other than hearing my thirty-second summary of the petition, the governor was denying this guy’s plea for mercy without knowing anything about it at all.
A lawyer in a decent suit and bad haircut began the presentation. He made the intelligent decision to start by kissing as much ass as he possibly could—his admiration for the governor, his appreciation of the governor’s willingness to keep an open mind and hear this out.
“We recognize we’re asking you to do something that requires political courage,” he said. “Antwain Otis is guilty of the crimes he’s convicted of. He didn’t mean to shoot those people, but he shot them nonetheless, and he’s admitted his guilt. We are not asking you to set him free, Mr. Governor. We aren’t seeking a pardon. But we
are
asking you to commute his sentence to life in prison without the possibility of parole. He’ll never, ever leave prison.”
The lawyer glanced at his notepad, resting on the table. He shouldn’t need his notes this early on. His first minute should be the most powerful, and it should be eye-to-eye with the person he’s trying to convince.
“Prison. For many, it’s the end of the road. It’s the last stop in life. But not for Antwain Otis. For Antwain, it was the beginning. The beginning of a new life. The Lord came to him in prison. He opened up doors beyond the tall cement walls topped with barbed wire. He showed Antwain a life full of love and hope and meaning. You’ve talked, Governor, about your faith many times. I know you know what I mean.”
The governor perked up, nodding eagerly. I had no doubt he went to church every Sunday and waved to the cameras when he did so. But I had plenty of doubts about what it meant to him.
“But my point, Governor, is not that you should spare Antwain’s life because
he’s
rehabilitated. My point is that he’s rehabilitated so many others. He’s touched many, many people with his ministry. A good eighty percent of offenders become re-offenders. They don’t learn much in prison. If anything, they regress. They become more resentful of a society that has discarded them. They learn few valuable skills. And they leave prison with a major stain on their record, a felony conviction. These people have little chance when they get out, so they ultimately resort to their old ways. They re-offend and go back inside. It’s a revolving door of crime, prison, release; crime, prison, release.”
The lawyer paused and glanced at his notes again. I wished he wouldn’t do that. He should have been better prepared. You look at your notes and you lose some of the zing, some of the heartfelt sincerity, the connection to your audience.
“So what do we do? We build more prisons. We pass tougher laws. But do we rehabilitate? Well, maybe we try. We think we do, at least. We give money to the Department of Corrections for inmate programs. But we all know the kind of budget problems we have right now. What gets cut first? That’s not hard to figure. And that, Governor, is why someone like Antwain Otis is so important.
“Antwain is rehabilitating people. He’s offering inmates another path. Some of those inmates won’t ever leave the system, that’s true. They’re on death row or serving life sentences. Does that mean they don’t matter? Obviously not. We’re not that kind of society. But Governor, even more importantly, a lot of the people Antwain has reached will get another shot at integration into society. And this time, they’ll be prepared. We have affidavits from a number of former inmates who haven’t re-offended. They may not be CEOs of Fortune 500 companies but they’re working hard to make a life, and they’re making a life with Jesus Christ as their savior. They’re good, honest people. Let Antwain help more people, Governor. He’ll serve his life in prison for the crime he committed. But he’ll change the lives of so many more people if you let him live.”
I thought maybe all four of the people were going to speak, but apparently there was only one other, an African American dressed in black with a cleric’s collar. He was elderly and appeared frail as he stood up, but his voice was surprisingly commanding.
“Mr. Governor, I’ve spent my life counseling people and preaching the gospel. I’ve been involved in the correctional system for over thirty years. And I’ve made a difference, I hope. I hope I have. I hope so.” He opened his hands. “These young men who I see every day are haunted. They’re haunted by what they’ve done and by what’s been done to them. And what they see in me is someone who hasn’t walked in their shoes. What they see in Antwain? They see themselves. Yes, sir, they see themselves. What Antwain says to them is, ‘I’ve been there. Just like you. I’ve made the same mistakes. Maybe worse ones. And look how I’ve changed my life.’ Governor, there’s nothing more powerful to a young black man than to see someone else just like himself, with as little as he has, who has made something out of it. Something positive. Now, I’m not gonna talk to you about the Bible. I could. I could tell you that the death penalty is immoral, that it isn’t fair, that it’s against God’s will. I could cite twenty verses from the good book about helping those in prison. But I’ll just tell you one thing I always tell these inmates. I always say to them, ‘Don’t look backward. Look forward. You can’t change yesterday, but you can make today and tomorrow better.’ And that’s what I’m asking you to do, Governor. Look forward. I know Antwain—”