Executed on a Technicality: Lethal Injustice on America's Death Row

For those who have always wondered why we murder people as punishment for murdering people, this is a riveting read. Written for the lay person though somewhat dense and detailed, it is not always easy but well worth the effort. The overriding moral of this treatise is the death penalty is exacted mostly on poor people and, at that, not necessarily evenhandedly or upon those who are guilty. Dow writes clearly from illuminating examples and with detailed understanding of things as they unfairly are. This is an emotionally charged subject of a complicated act encased in a convoluted legal maze. The accused are victims of a society which values expediency over fairness. David Dow is their powerful advocate.

I feel like I know this guy, David Dow. Or I sure wish that I knew him after reading "Executed on a Technicality". Dow reveals real life situations that have convinced him that the death penalty is completely unfair. He believes it's not just that sometimes innocent people are executed, but it's that those executed are always poor, unable to pay for a good lawyer, and almost all the time they're under educated. OJ Simpson should have been convicted, but his great lawyers got him off from even conviction. He wants us to know that there are some very good public defenders, but often his state Texas has given certain individuals bad lawyers - possibly on purpose! He also provides evidence that murderers of white people are put on death row much more often, while those who murder blacks and Latinos are very much less likely. He doesn't excuse the horrendous crimes, but the death penalty is just plain unfair because some of the worst criminals are not put on death row. And by the way, death row is truly a place for "dead men walking". He knows for certain that innocent men have been put to death due to technicalities like their paperwork was one day late! The book was rather challenging for me to understand at times - I have no legal background - so I had to read and re-read certain points, but I liked that - I WANT challenging reading! This book will be appreciated by the legal novice as well as the experts. Excellent writer, thoroughly documented (1/8 of the book is detailed footnotes).

A woman recently died in our state prison. She had killed a half dozen people before she was caught and sentenced to life. She went to jail a dozen or more years ago. At the time there was a lot of comment that she should have gotten the death penalty. In fact, even after her death there were peole who said that she should have been put to death. I asked some of them why. She was locked up, she didn't hurt any more people, society was just as safe as if she had been killed, but we didn't kill her. They didn't have a good answer beyond "we just should have." The United States is right up there with all the other progressive countries that allow the death penalty: North Korea, Iran, Iraq, China, Vietnam, most of Africa and the middle East. Notably missing from this list include England, Germany, France, Finland, most of the civilized countries. I don't know why, but I guess that I had hoped that with an issue so important that our Government, our legal system would be very careful and lean over backwards to execute only the worst of the worst. Why do we allow people to be executed because a piece of paper was filed a day late? Why do we execute people when there is any chance at all that they might not be guilty? Why do ask the state to make our society a little more violent than it already is. This is a sad book that makes compelling reading.

There are no punches pulled here. David Dow doesn't shy away from describing his representation of the truly guilty or their crimes. But what will take your breath away are his descriptions of the brutally honest conversations that post-conviction counsel must have with their death row clients. It's not about asking "Did you do it" but advising the condemned that no matter how good the case or the lawyer, the death sentence probably will be carried out. Perhaps only oncologists for Stage 4 cancer patients know how it feels to be so brutally honest. Books on legal topics have a deserved reputation for being dense, dry, and mired in technical language. Dow avoids these traps with clear, compelling writing and delivers a work that is accessible to lay people and lawyers alike. For lawyers, the book is attractive for its well-argued and well-supported themes. The footnotes are worth the price of entry alone. For the lay reader, Dow develops his themes by focusing on the cases of some of the many death row inmates he has represented over the years. Along the way, he describes his personal journey from death penalty supporter to abolitionist. This is a worthwhile work for anyone concerned about our criminal justice system and the myriad ways in which the "machinery of justice" and the "machinery of death" do not mesh.

The author, David Dow, is a law professor at the University of Houston who has practiced as a lawyer representing death row inmates in Texas for over fifteen years. His book is unusual for several reasons. First, Dow is writing as an insider - an experienced death row attorney. Second, the book is not intended to elicit `amens' from like-minded activists: Dow once supported the death penalty himself, does not dismiss that view out of hand, does not indulge the sentimental fantasy that most death row inmates are innocent, and does not downplay the seriousness of the crimes the guilty ones have committed. Finally, Dow is one of those rare lawyers who can actually write. His prose is clear and unsentimental, but also colorful and peppered with strong judgments backed by proof. Using careful argumentation, Dow makes three main points. First, questions of innocence, while important, should not drive the debate on the death penalty. To Dow, the condemnation of innocent people, or people who are guilty but did not receive fair trials, is merely a symptom of a disease. That disease - a set of systemic problems with the capital punishment system - should be the real focus of study and reform. Second, the "endless appeals" that most people think ensure careful review often do nothing of the sort. Dow chronicles case after case in which courts and lawyers argue over the Byzantine technical rules to the defendant's appeal, only to have the courts eventually decide that they are legally barred from even hearing evidence as to whether the inmate's trial was fair. Finally, Dow argues that legions of judges, under the intense political and emotional pressure of death penalty cases, have given up on the rule of law. You may rub your eyes in disbelief at the federal appeals court which denied an appeal before it had even been filed, or the state court who kept a defense lawyer on the case even after he took a job with the district attorney, but these episodes really happened, and are only two of many Dow documents. Dow calls these incidents acts of judicial lawlessness, and concludes: "Murder is undoubtedly among the ugliest of crimes, but it is beyond ironic when our response to horrific crimes is to embrace the lawless tactics of the vigilante." The most gripping parts of the book, however, are surely the vivid stories of the many inmates and other people Dow met in his years of work, and his harrowing and emotional visits with inmates on death row. Stories like that of Cesar Fierro, driven insane by the 26 years he has spent on death row in procedural limbo, even though the state's evidence against him fell apart long ago and prosecutor who sent him to death row now admits there's no longer a case against him. Or of Johnny Joe Martinez, whose tearful and intense four-hour meeting with the woman whose son he murdered led her to write the parole board urging them to commute Martinez's sentence to life in prison. (He was executed after losing by