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Articles by Clive Stafford Smith
Death Row Hopes Washed Away?
I have spent much of the last three days sifting through photographs
on the internet of the destruction wrought by Hurricane Katrina,
looking for clues as to what has happened to The Justice Center
at 636 Baronne Street, New Orleans.
This was the home of the Louisiana Crisis Assistance Center
(LCAC), the charity I founded in 1993, and that I left behind,
thriving, when I returned to England, almost a year to the
day before Katrina struck. The LCAC, which provided legal
representation to poor people facing the death penalty, was
the last hope for scores of people facing the death penalty
in the Deep South, including Britons such as Nicky Ingram,
Krishna Maharaj, Kenny Richey and Jackie Elliot.
The building was universally known as ‘636’, even
though that sounded less like a law office than a nightclub.
It was an extraordinary place to work. We started hunting
for a building to buy when our rented space banned dogs from
coming to work. We bought 636 for a song before property values
in the neighborhood soared. It was renovated by a team of
former prisoners, all glad to be part of an effort to aid
those they had left behind. Harry Lucas was their leader.
Harry lived in the heart of the Ninth Ward, the poorest part
of New Orleans, built in the dangerous low lying areas heaviest
hit by the flooding. These were the folk with no means to
flee the city. I wonder where Harry is now. Maybe on a rooftop.
I know he has a ladder to get there: he borrowed mine some
time in 1999 and I never saw it again.
Yesterday, when I saw the pictures of the Orleans Parish prisoners
huddled on a ramp of the Interstate, turbid water at one end,
and torpid guards with shotguns at the other, it made me angry.
The government said everyone had to leave the city, yet the
prisoners, the one group who could have been moved without
the right to protest, were left behind.
They are likely to stay in prison much longer now, with ‘636’
most probably underwater. The building was an amazing place
to work, full of dogs, children and lawyers, and the potted
plants that always died exactly one week after the site visit
of the funder they had been purchased to impress. The halls
rang with the accents of English volunteers adrift in a city
of southern drawl. ‘636’ somehow ran itself, with
an eclectic staff of anti death penalty zealots with one or
two level heads to balance the others out.
There was a running battle over the washing up, as the dishes
accumulated Withnail-style in the sink. But if the state was
trying to kill someone, even these partisan lines dissolved,
and anyone in the building would stay photocopying until 4:00am
without having to be asked.
‘636’ was an incubator of dreams, acronyms of
civil rights offices that gave prisoners hope. We began with
the LCAC. Then the Capital Appeals Project (CAP) became the
first resort of those sentenced to death. A Fighting Chance
(AFC) was a team of young and intrepid investigators who give
capital lawyers the facts they need to defend their cases.
Finally, Innocence Project New Orleans (IPNO) became the closest
thing Louisiana and Mississippi had to a Criminal Cases Review
Commission, with its six staff seeking out the wrongful convictions
in a prison population the size of Britain’s. These
offices promised many of the South’s most vulnerable
prisoners the first light of dawn.
It makes me sad to use the past tense, but these brilliant
people with their huge hearts are now scattered all over the
United States, finding refuge with friends and family, clutching
what they could save. Some took pets, others case files, others
only had time to take a car and drive. All of the staff, I
am thankful to say, are safe, even though Kim evacuated to
Mobile, driving further into danger rather than away from
it. I heard that Richard managed to take the back-up tapes
for the server. David is in Los Angeles, but his beagle is
in Houston. Emily and Keely are in Jackson, Mississippi, looking
for a plug for their portable printer, so they can send letters
to their clients with assurances that their legal team is
still alive. But who will carry the letters?
Life as I knew it New Orleans has been smudged out by Katrina.
There are many needy causes in the city now, but ‘636’
will find it harder to rebuild than most. President Bush is
unlikely to put it at the top of his list for reconstruction.
It will be weeks before the true damage is known. We don’t
know what we will find when we are allowed back there. The
ground floor of ‘636’ was the storage area: boxes
and boxes of papers, some kept as memorials for the dead,
but most a potential life raft for the living. In 2003 it
took one single document identifying the true killer to rescue
Dan Bright after nine years of wrongful conviction. The DNA
test results that freed Ryan Matthews from death row are probably
disintegrating into mulch, along with his chances of receiving
compensation.
In the depths of ‘636’ there are probably a million
pages of ink that we gathered over twenty years, now swimming
off the page. Whose hopes are dissolving in these flood waters?
When will the tide recede? And where will the building’s
inhabitants find the strength to face the wreckage of so many
years of their work, the despoilment of their clients’
best hopes?
For now, all I can do is keep trawling those tragic photographs
for clues.
Reprieve is taking up a special collection to help the offices
of 636 Baronne Street get back on their feet. If you would
like to help, please call 0207 353 4640, or send your cheque
made out to Reprieve, marked “The 636 Fund” to
Reprieve, PO Box 52742, London, EC4P 4WS, or email: info@reprieve.org.uk
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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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Click here
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