A few weeks ago, Steve mentioned that he was watching American Justice or some similar true-crime-story TV show. He said the show was on innocent people who were convicted of murder and sentenced to die, and told me about one of the cases that had particularly captured his interest and upset him. It is worth mentioning that one of the many things I love about Steve is that he totally gets why I do what I do for a living, and his brilliant engineer's brain is capable of understanding at a high level of detail and complexity the various injustices perpetrated in the name of law enforcement. And he was deeply disturbed at the thought that an innocent man could be convicted, condemned, and executed.
As soon as Steve started describing to me the case depicted on television, I recognized it as Roger Coleman's. Both because it led to an important (and awful) Supreme Court decision and because a few years after the events in question, when I was a summer associate, I had the privilege of working on a pro bono case with the lawyer who fought tirelessly to prove Coleman's innocence. But I did not realize that Coleman's story was still making news. After talking with Steve, I did a little googling and found May God Have Mercy, an amazing book chronicling Coleman's case, written by a journalist and former criminal defense attorney. I read it over the weekend, and I've spent the last couple of days trying to crystalize my thoughts and reactions here.
The book does a masterful job both of demonstrating just how easy it was for the State of Virginia to convict and condemn Coleman for his sister-in-law's murder. It also presents the substantial -- to my reading, almost unassailable -- evidence of Coleman's innocence. I found myself shaking, nearly sobbing, in anger as I read about the local authorities' manipulation of witnesses and evidence, about the trial lawyers' inexperience and ineptitude, and about the courts' adamant refusal, upon being presented years later with evidence of Coleman's innocence, even to allow a hearing for that evidence to be developed and evaluated.
From a habeas lawyer's standpoint, Coleman's case is important because the Supreme Court used it to clarify the extent to which serious constitutional claims are subordinate to the states' right to apply their own procedural rules. Justice O'Connor began her opinion by proclaiming, "This is a case about federalism. It concerns the respect that federal courts owe the States and the States' procedural rules when reviewing the claims of state prisoners in federal habeas corpus." Because Coleman's state habeas appeal was filed one day late, the Virginia Supreme Court refused to consider its merits, and the U.S. Supreme Court held that this state decision rendered Coleman's claims "procedurally barred" from consideration in federal court. This decision, and subsequent decisions building on the rule it announced, play a primary role in the enormous bumps on my head and the matching dents in the wall of my office.
But from a human standpoint, Coleman's case is important because it demonstrates the fallibility of the criminal justice system and the finality of the death penalty. Even moments before Coleman was electrocuted, Virginia's governor appeared to be waffling on whether to grant clemency, or at least to allow a delay during which to consider the evidence of Coleman's innocence -- evidence that was growing and becoming stronger on a daily basis as the execution date approached. Yet the governor, like the judges and prosecutors who preceded him in holding Coleman's life in their hands, preferred to allow a possibly (I would say, almost-certainly) innocent man to die than to reopen a jury's conviction or admit that mistakes of such magnitude could, indeed, be made.
And from a personal standpoint, Coleman's story touched me deeply. Roger Coleman was an enormously sympathetic character, a boy from the Appalachian coal-mining region of southwestern Virginia, a humble, religious, and exceedingly kind man who spent his time in prison educating himself, reading, writing, and developing highly successful programs to help young people stay out of trouble. The members of his eventual legal team, too, are compelling characters, particularly the young lawyer who nearly killed herself trying to save him (and with whom I worked, briefly, a few years later). Most of all, I found myself drawn into the story, making up my own arguments as I read and feeling myself struggling with the combination of serious, substantiated constitutional claims and enormous, seemingly insurmountable procedural barriers that Coleman's lawyers confronted. Because I confront the same terrible combination every day.
There are moments in the book in which Coleman expresses his gratitude for his lawyers' and investigators' efforts to save him. Certainly, he went to his death knowing that someone, at least, believed in his innocence and was fighting to prove it every step of the way. I like to think that my clients feel similarly, that even if I can't succeed in overturning their convictions and obtaining relief for the constitutional violations inflicted upon them, they draw some comfort or satisfaction from knowing that I'm on their side, that I believe in their cases, and that I'm doing what I can to defy an incredibly crappy set of odds.
Reading May God Have Mercy, I also realized that the past 14 months represent the longest stretch of time I've gone since leaving law school without working on a death penalty case. There's not much I can do to pick up a new one right now, but reading about Coleman's case stirred the outrage, passion, motivation, sense of honor, and savior complex that death cases always generate in me -- regardless of whether innocence itself is at issue. In any event, my caseload is demanding and time-consuming enough, so I'm trying to channel all of that energy and zeal into my existing cases. This week's brief, for example, involves an indisputable and grave constitutional violation and a teenager sentenced to life without parole. And ridiculous procedural barriers to relief. Perhaps it is about federalism, but surely it is also about the Constitution, about justice and fairness, and most important, about an individual, his rights, and his life.
