What President Obama could learn from Kathleen Hawk Norman

Remembering the life of the heroic founder of Jurors for Justice.

Kathleen Hawk Norman was appointed foreperson, and lead the charge as the jury imposed a death sentence for Daniel Bright III in 1996.

The case seemed open and shut, and the entire penalty phase was over by lunchtime. It was an awful act; the worse because Dan Bright turned out to be innocent.

Kathleen died unexpectedly last Thursday night, aged 54. Her obituary could teach President Barack Obama a thing or two.

When it comes to another tragic mistake – the recent predilection for torture -- Obama tells the world that we should “look forward, not backwards.” It is not the fault of the CIA agents, the argument goes, that they followed the law as the White House lawyers described it. Even though they might have wondered whether abusing prisoners was wrong, they were just doing as they were told, and we should not hound them now. For the security of the nation, the CIA must be allowed to get on with its job.

As Kathleen would have told Obama, she did not ask to sentence Dan to death; she was summoned by the court. Her father was a railwayman, and all her life she worked with the railways. When it came to jury service, Kathleen did as she was told, and followed the law as it was given to her. She considered the facts that the prosecution presented. Dan’s alcoholic defence lawyer did nothing, so she assumed that there was nothing Dan could say.

Kathleen believed beyond a reasonable doubt that Dan committed murder, and was another guilty foot soldier in the war on crime; no doubt many CIA agents scoffed at their prisoners’ claims of innocence in the war on terror. She was told that the death penalty would make society safer; just as some CIA agents perhaps thought that a spot of torture might secure America from another terrible attack.

Sad to say, Obama is afraid that if he looks too closely at the people who got us into this mess, he’ll lose a lot of friends. Had Kathleen taken Obama’s line, Dan Bright might still be on death row. I well remember the first time I met her: she was aghast that the government might have misled her. The FBI hid a statement that not only exculpated Dan, but identified the real killer. From that day forward, she knew she could not move forward until she had looked closely at her past – why had this happened? How could she set it right?

One of her first acts was to apologize. Dan sent her a message, telling her not to blame herself, she had only been trying to do her civic duty. But this was not enough for Kathleen. “I felt so riddled with guilt,” she said. “So embarrassed that I had been duped.”

She appeared in court every time Dan’s case came up, a red-haired woman with glasses who would bring an entourage of influential friends with her to ensure that justice was done. “She kept going, and going, and going and wasn’t going to stop until I was free,” said Dan. “She was my hero.”

In 2004, finally Dan Bright was set free. But Kathleen did not stop there. She set about helping him rebuild his life. She established an organization, Jurors for Justice, as a focus for others who had been deceived by the legal system.

It only takes a few honest people, like Kathleen, for the truth to seep out. This is a lesson that Obama should take to heart. First, we learned about the torture memos. This week we discovered that waterboarding was not used in the very limited way that had previously been suggested; it was used at least 266 times, including 183 times in just one month on Khalid Sheikh Mohammed alone. Can you imagine? Pushing him ever closer to drowning, 183 times in 30 days!

And on Wednesday of this week, the British courts will consider again whether to reveal a small slice of truth about the torture of Binyam Mohamed.

Obama’s slogan is bizarre. How should the victim of torture feel when we tell him that we are going to look only forwards? We won’t admit what we did to him, and we won’t even say we’re sorry?

And how with our children feel when they repeat our mistake, when they fail to learn from history because history got shuffled under the carpet?

Kathleen Hawk Norman was a hero Dan Bright, a hero to justice, and a hero of mine. Never too proud to admit her mistake, she lead by example.