Ian Zelazny
Professor Jason Berry
Journalism and Place
4/16/12
Speaking for the Walking Dead
Mr. Shah (name changed for web posting) deals with death every day, with people who have killed. He defends them as an attorney. Specifically, he defends those who have been sentenced to the ultimate punishment for their crimes. Shah is a capital appeals lawyer in the state of Louisiana. His non-profit law office (office name deleted) represents clients in their appeals to the Louisiana Supreme Court and, when called upon, the United States Supreme Court.
Shah accepted, “There are victims in these crimes. That’s a reality.” What Shah often does in court, though, is to make these killers human, to share their story. And often, that story is truly rich.
One of his clients is Corey (last name deleted). The night of (date deleted), Corey robbed and killed Jarvis (last name deleted), 23, who was delivering pizzas in Shreveport. Following his indictment for first-degree murder a month later, Corey was convicted as charged on (date removed) in 2000, and sentenced to death the following day.
And that’s all a lot of people might see – a murderer deserving to die. As Shah described, “the deck is stacked against us legally and sort of culturally, especially in the deep south. In places like Louisiana, Georgia, Texas there’s a big commitment to the death penalty.”
But it’s Shah’s job to look closer. He said,
“I think generally our clients are mistreated, neglected, and sort of ignored their entire lives. And then something awful happens. And many of them – those of them who are guilty – commit these awful crimes and then have to pay this insane punishment, pay this price for it. And the first time anybody really like cares to intervene on their behalf is when their capital defense lawyers come to their side and say, ‘How did this happen? We need to understand everything about this person’s life.’”
“In Corey’s case? He’s a 16-year-old mentally retarded guy. Really. They put him on death row. What happened? One of his friends put the gun in Corey’s hand. These guys split all the money they got from the robbery. Corey had no money on him when they found him – he just ran away.”
Shah finds vital contexts. And in court he asks hard questions to represent his clients’ backgrounds.
“Why was this person left in the custody of their abusive parents? Why didn’t anyone intervene when they found out that his older cousin was raping him?”
“Those stories are so commonplace for all of our clients, like stories of total neglect and poverty and abuse and when you hear the stories I think you realize that our clients have dealt with things that nobody should have to deal with, but nobody cared and nobody did anything about it.”
While his passion means he finds the work enormously rewarding, Shah finds it challenging too.
He said, “Sometimes it feels futile because we’re coming in so late and we’re coming in after something terrible has happened.”
The real challenge, though, is the culture of the Louisiana court system, which is not saved from the blights found elsewhere in society. The only problem isn’t just that “The courts are hostile to us, hostile to what we do. They look at us like we’re crazy if we say something for the defendant.”
There’s also rampant discrimination. Dustin’s case (last name removed), which Shah works intimately with, involves precisely this symptom.
“The issue in the case has to do with the fact that the state basically excluded almost every single African American from the jury before they went to trial. It’s an issue I’ve become sort of consumed with because of that case and then getting into other cases – seeing the same issue pop up all across the state.”
“It’s happening, and there doesn’t seem to be like a widespread understanding that it’s happening or any sort of outrage that the state continually prevents African Americans from meaningfully participating in these juries.”
“It’s especially happening in our death penalty cases, but I think there’s pretty good evidence that it’s happening in all kinds of criminal jury trials across the state. And I think it’s very disturbing and upsetting and I do think it’s upsetting to individuals who are excluded and don’t know why, but I don’t think it’s seen as a big systemic problem because people don’t really think about it that way.
“I think people also don’t really get excited about jury service so when they get excluded they don’t go home complaining that they didn’t get to serve on the jury. So I think that’s why the issue hasn’t really got a lot of attention.”
“But in this case the state had to explain their reasons for excluding African-Americans from the jury and they were saying things that didn’t make any sense at all. They said that they were getting rid of these jurors because they were more likely to be harsh to the defendant. The thing is the state obviously wants harsh jurors in a death penalty trial.
And that’s the reason they’re giving for getting rid of these African Americans in this trial? They get away with this stuff all the time and I think it’s pretty shocking.”
“Something interesting that happened in that case and I’ve written about this – I don’t know if you came across it but when we went to go argue the case – it was the first time I’d ever argued at the Louisiana Supreme Court. We were sitting there outside the court getting ready to go in and I was there with a couple of my co-workers who had been helping me prepare and they had been doing a bunch of historical research about the Louisiana Constitutional Convention in 1898. And this is a Constitutional Convention where the white democrats got together and they basically tried to figure out how they could pass new laws that would circumvent the 13th, 14th, and 15th amendments, basically they wanted to figure out how they could disenfranchise again African-American voters. That was the purpose of the Constitutional Convention and the guy who presided over it – the president of that Constitutional Convention is this guy named Ernest Benjamin Kruttschnitt – so we’ve been researching and talking about him a bunch with respect to another case but we’re sitting outside the court getting ready for this argument and I look on the wall and the portrait that is hanging right outside the Louisiana Supreme Courtroom is a portrait of this guy. I kind of looked at my co-workers and I was kind of like – can you believe this guy’s picture is here? Nobody knows who he is or why he’s here, but we know that the whole purpose of that Constitutional Convention was to make sure black people didn’t have a voice in our society. And this guy, he’s revered right here.
And then I went in and argued the case and we lost. We lost unanimously. We didn’t pick up votes from any of the judges. Even though I think it’s really compelling and it’s not to say that we’re right about every issue in every one of our cases, but I feel like we had a strong one.
It’s disturbing, at least, that the state is able to get rid of so many African American jurors.
“Afterwards, in the tradition of our office, we went down to the Napoleon House and drank a Pimms Cup and talked about what happened.”
“I was mulling it over there and, seeing that portrait, to me, that was like the moment where I was like here we go, here I am arguing race issues at the Supreme Court 115 years after the Constitutional Convention and it feels like this: not as much has changed as we think.”
A Philosophy major when he was an undergraduate, Shah talked about his reasoning on the death penalty.
“It doesn’t get much farther than I don’t think the state should have the power to take someone’s life in our system of capital punishment, doesn’t have the right to kill. I think giving the state that authority is dangerous and problematic. I think we have better ways of dealing with dangerous folks – of keeping them in prison if that’s required or finding other ways to rehabilitate them.”
But, like I said, I think it’s a way that, to me, capital punishment is the ultimate expression of individual responsibility. Like when we talk like you are responsible for your actions.
When you execute someone for something they’ve done you’re extolling that virtue saying: you are responsible, fully responsible for the crime you’ve committed and you have to pay this price. And by putting it all on the individual it glosses over the societal problems that put that person in this situation where they were when that crime occurred. So I guess that’s what I mean when I say it gives us a chance to overlook the deeper societal problems that affect all of our clients.
But mostly, Shah is interested in the human factor behind it all.
“It’s less philosophical than it is emotional for me at the end.”
“Dustin’s case is also important to me because Dustin was 18 years old at the time of the crime and he’s the same age as me. When I go to visit him at death row I’m looking at someone who in so many ways, he’s my contemporary – we like sports, we like similar music. If he wasn’t on death row I could imagine spending time with him, you know, going out with him. He obviously ran in different circles when he was on the street, andd you know, was involved with people who were into criminal activity – into drugs, that sort of thing. So it’s not necessarily the case that I would have met him on the streets, but we have this relationship and I just..”
“It’s a stark reminder first that we put really young people on death row. Second, in some ways I feel he was born into a different situation and different circumstances than me.”
“And in my mind it’s a thin line between us.”
“Dustin is kind of a comedian. I find insights in my own life because of him. One of the big lessons I’ve got from him is to not waste time with people who aren’t going to matter in your life. Invest in the people who care about you and who you care about. Don’t spend your time chasing down networks or prestige – that might make you feel better superficially. But when it comes down to it, all Dustin has is his family now.”
Ian Zelazny Library Project 