Just Mercy (39 page)

The cases generated a lot of national media attention. When we filed our brief in the U.S. Supreme Court, national organizations joined us and filed amicus briefs urging the Court to rule in our favor. We received support from the American Psychological Association, the American Psychiatric Association, the American Bar Association, the American Medical Association, former judges, former prosecutors, social workers, civil rights groups, human rights groups, even some victims’ rights groups.
Former juvenile offenders who had later become well-known public figures filed supporting documents, including very conservative politicians like former U.S. senator Alan Simpson from Wyoming. Simpson had spent eighteen years in the Senate, including ten as the Republican whip, the second-ranking senator in his party. He had also been a former juvenile felon. He had been adjudicated as a juvenile delinquent when he was seventeen, for multiple convictions for arson, theft, aggravated assault, gun violence, and, finally, assaulting a police officer. He later confessed: “I was a monster.” His life didn’t begin to change until he found himself imprisoned in “a sea of puke and urine” following another arrest. Senator Simpson knew firsthand that you cannot judge a person’s full potential by his juvenile misconduct. Another brief was filed on behalf of former child soldiers whose terrifying behavior after being forced into violent African militias made the crimes of our clients seem much less aggravated by comparison. Yet these former child soldiers, rescued from their armies, had mostly recovered and been widely embraced at American colleges and universities, where many of them had thrived.

In November 2009, after the briefs were filed in Joe’s case and the
Graham case, I went to Washington for my third U.S. Supreme Court oral argument. There was a lot more media attention and national news coverage than in any of my earlier cases. The Court was packed. There were hundreds of people outside the Court as well. A wide assortment of children’s rights advocates, lawyers, and mental health experts were watching closely when we asked the Court to declare life-without-parole sentences imposed on children unconstitutional.

During the argument, the Court was feisty, and it was impossible to predict what the justices were going to do. I told the Court that the United States is the only country in the world that imposes life imprisonment without parole sentences on children. I explained that condemning children violates international law, which bans these sentences for children. We showed the Court that these sentences are disproportionately imposed on children of color. We argued that the phenomenon of life sentences imposed on children is largely a result of harsh punishments that were created for career adult criminals and were never intended for children—which made the imposition of such a sentence on juveniles like Terrance Graham and Joe Sullivan unusual. I also told the Court that to say to any child of thirteen that he is fit only to die in prison is cruel. I had no way of knowing if the Court had been persuaded.

I had promised Joe, whose name and case were constantly being discussed on television, that I would visit him after the argument in the Supreme Court. At first Joe was very excited by all the attention his case was generating, but then the guards and other prisoners started making fun of him and treating him more harshly than usual. They seemed to resent the attention he was getting. I told him that now that the argument was over, things would calm down.

For weeks he’d been working on memorizing a poem he said he’d written. When I asked if he had really written it, he acknowledged that another inmate had helped him, but his excitement about the poem was undiminished. He had repeatedly promised that he would recite it for me when I visited him after the argument. When I arrived at the prison, Joe was wheeled into the visitation area without any difficulty.
I talked to him about the argument in Washington, but he was much more interested in preparing me to hear his poem. I could tell he was nervous about whether he’d be able to do it. I cut short my report about his case so I could hear his poem. He closed his eyes to concentrate and then began to recite the lines:

He couldn’t remember the last line. He looked up at the ceiling, then at the floor straining to remember. He squeezed his eyes, trying to force the last words to mind, but they wouldn’t come. I was tempted to supply him a line just to help him get through it—“so be happy for me” or “now people will see.” But I realized that creating a line for him wasn’t the right thing to do, so I just sat there.

Finally, he seemed to accept that he wouldn’t remember the line. I thought he’d be upset, but when it was clear that he wouldn’t remember the last line, he just started laughing. I smiled at him, relieved. For some reason it became funnier and funnier to him that he couldn’t think of the last line—until he abruptly stopped laughing and looked at me.

“Oh, wait. I think the last line … actually, uh, I think the last line is just what I said. The last line is just ‘I’m a good person.’ ”

He paused, and I looked at him skeptically for several seconds. I said it before I thought about it. “Really?”

I should have stopped, but I continued, “We’ll have fun with our friends and others will see, I’m a good person?”

He looked at me for an instant with a serious expression, and then we both broke out simultaneously in wild laughter. I wasn’t sure I
should be laughing, but Joe was laughing, which made me think it was okay. Honestly, I couldn’t help it. In a few seconds we were both in hysterics. He was rocking in his wheelchair from side to side with laughter, clapping his hands. I couldn’t stop laughing, either; I was trying hard to stop but failing. We looked at each other as we laughed. I watched Joe, who laughed like a little boy, but I saw the lines in his face and even the emergence of a few prematurely gray hairs on his head. I realized even while I laughed that his unhappy childhood had been followed by unhappy, imprisoned teenage years followed by unhappy incarceration through young adulthood. All of a sudden it occurred to me what a miracle it was that he could still laugh. I thought about how wrong the world is about Joe Sullivan and how much I wanted to win his case.

We both finally calmed down. I tried to speak as sincerely as I could manage. “Joe, it’s a very, very nice poem.” I paused. “I think it’s beautiful.”

He beamed at me and clapped his hands.

Walter’s decline came quickly. The moments of confusion got longer and longer. He started forgetting things he had done just a few hours earlier. The details of his business slipped away from him, and managing work became complicated in ways he couldn’t understand, which depressed him. At some point I went over his records with him, and he’d been selling things at a fraction of their worth and losing a lot of money.

A film crew from Ireland came to Alabama to make a short documentary about the death penalty that would feature Walter’s case and the cases of two other Alabama death row prisoners.
James “Bo” Cochran had been released after spending nearly twenty years on Alabama’s death row; a new trial was awarded after federal courts reversed his conviction because of racial bias during jury selection. At his new trial, a racially diverse jury found him not guilty of murder, and he was freed. The third man featured in the film, Robert Tarver, also adamantly maintained his innocence. The prosecutor later admitted that his jury had been illegally selected in a racially discriminatory manner, but courts refused to review the claim because the defense lawyer failed to make an adequate objection, so Tarver was executed.

We hosted a premiere of the film at our office, and I invited Walter and Bo to address the audience. About seventy-five people from the community gathered in EJI’s meeting room, where we screened the film. Walter struggled. He was more terse than usual and looked at me frantically whenever someone asked him a question. I told him that he wouldn’t have to do any more presentations. His sister told me that he’d started wandering in the evenings and getting lost. He began drinking heavily, something he’d never done before. He told me that he was anxious all the time and that the alcohol calmed his nerves. Then one day he collapsed. He was at a hospital in Mobile when they reached me in Montgomery. I drove down to speak with his doctor, who told me that Walter had advancing dementia, likely trauma-induced, and that he would need constant care. The doctor also said the dementia would progress and that Walter would likely become incapacitated.

We met with Walter’s family at our office and agreed that he should move to Huntsville to live with a relative who could provide consistent care. It worked for a while, but Walter became agitated there, and he was out of money, so he moved back to Monroeville, where his sister Katie Lee agreed to watch him. For a while, he did much better in Monroeville, but then his condition began to deteriorate again.

Soon, Walter needed to be moved into the sort of facility that provided care for the elderly and infirm. Most places wouldn’t take him because he had been convicted of a felony. Even when we explained that he was wrongfully convicted and later proved innocent, we couldn’t get anyone to admit him. EJI now had a social worker on staff, Maria Morrison, who began working with Walter and his family to find a suitable placement for him. It was an extremely frustrating and maddening process. Maria eventually found a place in Montgomery that agreed to take Walter for a short stay—no longer than ninety days. He went there while we figured out what to do next.

The whole thing made me incredibly sad. Our workload was increasing too quickly. I had just argued Joe Sullivan’s case at the U.S. Supreme Court, and I was anxiously awaiting that judgment. The Alabama
Supreme Court had scheduled execution dates for several death row prisoners who had completed the appeals process. For years we’d been fearing what would happen when a sizable number of condemned prisoners exhausted their appeals. More than a dozen people were now vulnerable to execution dates, and we knew that it would be extremely difficult to block those executions given the current legal climate in Alabama, combined with the limits on federal court review in capital cases. I met with our staff, and we made the difficult decision to represent all of the people who were scheduled for execution and didn’t have counsel.

A few weeks later, I found myself deeply distressed. I was worried about the execution dates that were set for every other month in Alabama. I was worried about what the U.S. Supreme Court would do with all of the children condemned to die in prison, now that it had the issue to consider. I was worried about our funding and whether we had enough staff and resources to meet the demands of our expanding docket. I was worried about several clients who were struggling. When I got to the Montgomery nursing home to see Walter a week after he’d arrived there, I felt like I had been worrying all day.

Walter sat in a common room with older, heavily medicated people watching TV. It was jarring to see him sitting in a hospital gown among people so compromised and infirm. I stopped before I walked into the room and looked at him; he hadn’t seen me yet. He looked sleepy and unhappy slumped in a reclining chair, his head rested on his hand. He was staring in the general direction of the television, but it didn’t seem like he was watching the program. He wasn’t shaved, and something he’d eaten had crusted on his chin. There was a sadness in his eyes I had never seen before. Looking at him, I felt my heart sink; a part of me wanted to leave. A nurse saw me standing outside the room and asked if I was there to see someone. I told her I was, and she smiled sympathetically.

When the nurse escorted me into the room, I walked up to Walter and put my hand on his shoulder. He stirred and looked up, then gave me a broad smile.

“Hey, there he is!” He sounded cheerful, and suddenly he looked like himself. He started laughing and stood up. I gave him a hug. I was relieved; he hadn’t recognized some family members recently.

“How you doing?” I asked him while he leaned on me slightly.

“Well, you know, I’m doing okay.” We started walking to his room where we could talk privately.

“Are you feeling better?”

It was not a sensible question, but I was a little unnerved seeing Walter like this. He’d lost weight, and his gown wasn’t tied in the back, which he didn’t seem to notice. I stopped him.

“Wait, let me help you out.”

I tied the strings on his gown and we continued to his room. He moved slowly and cautiously, sliding his feet in his slippers across the floor as if he’d forgotten how to pick them up. He grabbed my arm a few feet down the hall and leaned on me as we slowly made our way.

“Well, I told them people I got plenty of cars, plenty of cars.” He spoke emphatically, with much more excitement than I’d heard from him in a while. “All different colors, shapes, and sizes. The man say, ‘Your cars don’t work.’ I told him my cars do work, too.” He looked at me. “You may have to talk to that man about my cars, okay?”