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Articles by Clive Stafford Smith
The Quality of Mercy
Hollywood seems obsessed with Death Row these days. The plot
inevitably begins with a horrific murder, a suspect is identified,
and a death sentence imposed. Being Hollywood, the condemned
is generally innocent and, thanks to an inspirational young
lawyer, justice almost always prevails after an obligatory
courtroom climax.
Reality is more sober, as is the play Lorilei, staged by Reprieve
at the Edinburgh Fringe. Unlike Hollywood, there is no issue
of actual innocence here– simply the most compelling
of human stories.
The premise for the piece is a crime committed by a Death
Row client of mine – Ricky Langley. Ricky is a paedophile
who had already served a prison sentence for molesting children
when he was accused of murdering the six year old Jeremy Guillory
in February 1992. Society is easily lured into an uncomprehending
hatred of paedophiles, as most famously illustrated when the
News of the World published the names of purported paedophiles
– inadvertently inspiring a mob to assault the home
of a paediatrician. Perhaps the most hated sub-category of
all criminals is the paedophile who kills his victim. Ian
Huntley, for example, surely ranks among the most hated people
in Britain.
In 1994, I represented Ricky at his first trial, and he was
sentenced to death. I have accompanied clients to the execution
chamber six times to watch them die. However ugly that moment
may be, there is often a glimmer of humanity, often from surprising
quarters. The prison guards have often got to know the condemned,
and whisper to me in the hallways that they would rather not
take part in the execution. For me, far more depressing is
the moment when twelve jurors file back into the courtroom
and announce a death sentence. This represents the ultimate
failure: twelve people with a free choice, who choose death.
Ricky was the only client I represented who was sentenced
to death in 17 years of trials, and to have failed a man as
profoundly mentally ill as Ricky was almost unbearable. The
jurors said afterwards that they believed he was ill –
but that meant he was dangerous, and their priority was to
ensure that he would never harm another child. But I was myself
given a reprieve when an appeals court ordered a retrial for
Ricky in 2002. Once again a jury of twelve men and women would
decide whether Ricky should live or die. Lorilei is the story
of the person who convinced them to spare his life.
Lorilei Guillory is the mother of the victim. By the time
of the second trial, she had been living with the horror of
her son’s murder for almost a decade. By the time the
case was tried for a second time, the prosecutor’s promise
that the original death sentence would provide ‘closure’
for her had proven hollow, and Lorilei had struggled with
depression and addiction.
In the run-up to the second trial, Lorilei pored over the
evidence, much of which had been hidden from her ten years
before. Ultimately, she asked if she could meet Ricky Langley,
believing it would help her understand her loss. Ricky agreed
without hesitation, and she met alone with him in the jail.
Ricky first apologised, and then tried to explain his own
story.
When Reprieve sends interns over to work in U.S. capital defence
offices, their most lasting memories invariably involve meeting
the clients. Those who have met Ricky are intrigued by his
fascination with genealogy: he has traced his family back
through two hundred years, and has got as far as eighteenth
century church records in England. Ricky, like Lorilei, wants
to understand what led him to kill her child.
Before he was born, Ricky’s own five year old brother,
Oscar Lee, was killed in a car accident in which his mother
Bessie was badly injured. Unknown to the doctors, Bessie became
pregnant with Ricky while in a full-length bodycast. Ricky
the foetus floated in waters laced with narcotic medications,
exposed to his own private Hiroshima through his mother’s
regular X-ray examinations. Bessie wanted to abort the pregnancy,
but her husband refused. He wanted a son to replace the tousle-haired
Oscar Lee.
Ricky’s schizophrenia was almost inevitable, and was
documented back to the age of eleven when he first announced
on his school notice-board that he was his dead brother, Oscar
Lee. Oscar Lee evolved from an imaginary childhood friend
to his very real tormentor. Just as Ricky came to hate Oscar
Lee, so he came to hate himself – far more than a tabloid
journalist ever could. His own mother had told him she wished
he had never been born. Ricky cried when he later told me
that when Lorilei agreed to meet with him it was the kindest
act that anyone had ever shown him, his victim’s mother
showing more compassion than his own.
Lorilei came to believe that our defence was the truth: Ricky
had indeed been insane at the time he killed her son. “Ricky,”
she said at the end of their three hour meeting, “I’m
going to fight for you.”
And fight she did. This play is her story.
Lorilei’s struggle has little to do with black and white.
She does not forgive Ricky, but despite being shunned by her
family, and being put under unconscionable pressure by the
prosecutors, she did vehemently oppose his execution. Lorilei
insisted that she would testify for the defence at Ricky’s
retrial at the penalty phase, where the jury has already found
the accused guilty, and are faced with the choice between
a life sentence or death. She determined that she would ask
for life. In the first trial she had testified for the prosecution
at the penalty phase, but this time the prosecution successfully
filed an appeal seeking to limit her testimony as legally
‘irrelevant.’
As the trial progressed it became clear that we had a very
educated and sympathetic jury, and it was unlikely that they
would vote for capital murder. Lorilei now faced a far more
difficult dilemma: would she follow the logic of her new found
position to its end, and testify as to his guilt? She believed
that Ricky had not understood what he was doing when he killed
her six year old child. This would mean that he could be found
“not guilty by reason of insanity”. A person who
is found “not guilty by reason of insanity” does
not go to prison at all, but to a secure hospital.
Most important to Lorilei was that no other child should face
harm, and she was comforted by the fact that Ricky agreed
that he should never be released from a secure psychiatric
hospital. Ricky signed an agreement requesting that he be
hospitalised forever, as he wanted to become a sort of laboratory
animal, studied so that future generations “can avoid
another me.” Lorilei prayed, she agonised, and in the
end she announced that she wanted to testify at the guilt
phase of the trial.
At her request, I was to ask her only one question: “Ms
Guillory, do you have an opinion as to whether Ricky Langley
was mentally ill at the time he killed your child Jeremy?”
Her answer was the most powerful moment I have experienced
in a courtroom in more than twenty years of practice: “Yes,
as a matter of fact I do,” she replied. “I feel
like Ricky Langley has cried out for help many, many, many
times. And for whatever reasons, his family, society and the
system have failed him. I feel like he is sick. And even as
I sit on this witness stand, I can hear my child’s death
cry. But I too can hear Ricky Langley cry for help.”
Delivering the closing argument in a capital case ranks among
the most difficult burdens in life – trying to summarise
the case for compassion in a courtroom where the hatred for
your client hangs thick in the air. In Ricky’s case,
the task was simple. I merely had to remind the jurors of
what Lorilei had said. They acquitted him of first degree
murder, and found him guilty of second degree murder, removing
the death penalty from the table. Nevertheless, this meant
that the jury had rejected the argument that Ricky was “not
guilty by reason of insanity” and Ricky would be sent
to prison for the rest of his life.
In the United States, the criminal justice system sometimes
seems designed to inspire victims towards revenge. We are
told that to try to understand a criminal is to mollycoddle
him: Right is right, and the criminal is just plain wrong.
This is a desperately short-sighted approach for all concerned.
As Lorilei learned, vengeance does not salve wounds, but rather
makes them fester. She who hates becomes twice the victim.
Ultimately, the choice is a stark one: do we as a society
wish to foster compassion, or would we rather encourage revenge?
The answer may seem obvious, but it is still remarkable that
Lorilei should have found such depths to her compassion. Thankfully,
she is not alone. Murder Victims Families for Reconciliation
(MVFR) is one American charity that does inspirational work,
in helping those who have lost loved ones to forego vengeance,
and rather work to end capital punishment.
When dealing with a matter such as the death penalty, it is
important not to view the issue as a legal or criminal justice
issue, but always remember that we are dealing with human
beings. The death penalty exists because the world remains
ignorant of the true story, or the real people, behind each
case. Politicians and prospective jurors alike expostulate
on the need for the noose, but when faced with all the facts
and the human reality, few are willing to dish out the ultimate
penalty.
Reprieve works in the trenches, fighting for the lives of
people facing the death penalty, so what does an hour of theatre
count for in this cause? The answer is that the performance
of Lorilei tells the story on a much deeper level than simply
reading about a case in the headlines, or ploughing through
another rant of mine in the opinion pages. What makes this
play particularly compelling is that it was written using
Lorilei’s own words - the author, Tom Wright, wrote
the script using interviews recorded by Lorilei at the time
that she was making her momentous decision.
Lorilei’s story was originally heard by an audience
of twelve jurors in a courthouse in Calcasieu Parish in southwest
Louisiana. The story changed the lives of all who were present,
and restored Ricky’s right to his. Since then Anna Galvin,
the actor and powerful intermediary who plays Lorilei in this
production, has retold that story to hundreds more people
in Melbourne and London. Now the production has arrived in
Edinburgh and I invite Festival audiences to take the opportunity
to decide for themselves how they would have voted had they
been faced with the choice of life or death for Ricky Langley,
in the face of this mother’s testimony. |
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Reprieve
PO Box 52742
London EC4P 4WS
Tel: 020 7353 4640
Fax: 020 7353 4641
Email: info@reprieve.org.uk
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