Doubling down

For those of you within hiking distance of New Orleans, you can catch Sister Helen and me together with Elizabeth Vertkessian, at the Garden District Bookshop on Tuesday the 11th at 6pm.

At a time when othering is government policy and we are exhorted to dehumanize those who are not of “our group”, Liz’s book, The Deserving: What the Lives of the Condemned Reveal About American Justice, takes us deeply in the opposite direction.

For twenty years Liz has done the hard work of mitigation. On criminal defense teams, it is the mitigator’s job to investigate their client’s life history, mental health, and background to uncover factors such as childhood trauma, abuse, or psychological disorders that give context to their actions and reduce criminal culpability during sentencing.

I think of mitigation as the deepest dive into the humanity each one of us shares.

Come along and hear us talk with Liz on Tuesday. There’ll be time for questions and book signing. If you can’t make it to the Garden District Bookshop, you can buy a copy of Liz’s book here.

On July 28, Florida executed James Duckett and Dominick Occhicone on the same day. James was 68 and Dominick was 80. They became the 11th and 12th men executed by Florida this year.

The executions were performed within six hours of one another, which had me wondering whether the same prison personnel were on those two strapdown teams. There’s no way to know, because Florida, like most states that have an active death chamber, keeps a lid on its actions.

Florida governor Ron DeSantis is steadily working his way through the 239 men and 2 women on the state’s death row. Since 1973, 30 people have been freed from Florida’s death row after being exonerated.

Florida now joins Texas and Arkansas as being the only states to have performed back-to-back executions on the same day since 2000. DeSantis gave no reason for why there was a need for such scheduling.

Put a pin in this one; I’ll be revisiting it soon.

I’m delighted to report that my friends Calvin Duncan and Sophie Cull, co-authors of The Jailhouse Lawyer, have been awarded the American Bar Association’s Silver Gavel Award.

The Silver Gavel Awards for Media and the Arts recognize outstanding work that fosters the American public’s understanding of law and the legal system.

That sounds a little dry, which The Jailhouse Lawyer most definitely is not!

Calvin was wrongfully convicted of murder and spent 28 years in Louisiana State Penitentiary before finally winning release. While he was in Angola Prison, Calvin taught himself constitutional law and served as an inmate counsel. He dedicated his life to fighting his own case and helping hundreds of others to challenge unjust sentences.

The Jailhouse Lawyer is both horrifying and inspiring. As Calvin says, it’s a story of a group of Black men who worked together to challenge a system designed to keep them down.

Calvin is a force of nature. So, too, is Sophie. Although she tries hard to stay in the background, it is Sophie who toiled for years to ensure that Calvin’s story was told, and told in a way that would leave you astounded.

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