Perhaps no person on death row attracted more attention than Gary Graham, who was convicted in a Houston murder and sentenced to death in 1981 at the age of 17. Rodney Reed waves to his family in court in Bastrop, Texas, in 2017. Afterward, the film’s star Susan Sarandon became an anti-death penalty activist herself most recently promoting the innocence claims of the Oklahoma prisoner Richard Glossip. Two decades later, Sister Helen Prejean’s book, detailing the final days of a condemned Louisiana prisoner, became the award-winning movie Dead Man Walking. In the 1960s and 1970s, authors Truman Capote and Norman Mailer published In Cold Blood and The Executioner’s Song, respectively, both crime narratives about then recent executions. “But the idea that whether you live or die may turn on whether or not you are lucky enough to have a lawyer that can get your case in front of someone with that kind of megaphone – that’s just an indication of the arbitrariness of our system.”įor decades, individual death penalty cases have grabbed the attention of famous writers, actors and musicians. “Celebrity involvement is useful for raising up some of the injustices of the criminal justice system that we would not otherwise know,” said Cassandra Stubbs, the director of the ACLU’s Capital Punishment Project. While more than 1,500 people have been executed in the US since 1977, only a small fraction have received such high-profile attention. Governors and presidents have no such restrictions as they consider clemency, and Kardashian West persuaded the then president, Donald Trump – whose own presidential campaign was built on the power of celebrity – to free several federal prisoners who were not on death row.Īdvocates against the death penalty say celebrities often bring welcome attention to individual cases, but that only proves how fickle the system can be. But many jurists, including those who will decide Reed’s fate, are elected and not immune to political pressures. Judges do not officially consider pleas from famous people. The visibility of superstar involvement has only seemed to grow in recent years, as social media gives celebrities an outsized voice and Americans’ support for the death penalty wanes. Whatever attention the hearing attracts, Reed’s case continues to be a touchstone in the debate over the role celebrities and publicity have come to play in the American justice system, especially in the death penalty. Two years later, Reed is finally getting a hearing next week, where his lawyers plan to present new evidence they say shows Reed played no part in the 1996 murder of 19-year-old Stacey Stites, and that he deserves a new trial.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |