We Who Know Killers, and the Way They’re Killed, Best

• In Event: Punishment and social context

Abstract

Our colleagues on the Law Faculty of the University of Bucharest have recently surveyed Romanian law students and learned that more than 30% favor re-introduction of death sentencing. These students, not just in Romania but throughout Europe—born a generation or more after capital punishment was abolished—may know little of its real-life application, of its deep flaws, or of the human experimentation it involves.
In the U.S., those with the most comprehensive knowledge of people who commit murder and the operation of the legal systems used for prosecuting them are their post-conviction lawyers—we who are assigned to represent clients after they have been sentenced to death. In hopes of changing this fatal outcome, it falls to us to learn everything about their life stories, which we accomplish by collecting every record that mentions them, by interviewing every person with whom they have interacted, by having them examined by mental health experts, and by spending countless hours talking with them, often over the course of a decade or more. We challenge the legality of their convictions and sentences at every level of court and, if we fail in our mission, we sit with them as their execution approaches.
We are a unique resource and it is our responsibility to share our knowledge both at home and abroad with those who wrongly imagine that murderers are the embodiment of evil, or that death sentencing deters crime, salves victims’ families, or maintains the social or moral order.

Author

• Amy Gershenfeld Donnella, Villanova University School of Law