Summary
Prejean pleads with Millard Farmer to take Patrick’s case.
He says he will. On December 14, 1983, just a month after the court
denies Patrick’s appeal, Robert Wayne Williams, another inmate at Angola,
is put to death. Robert Williams’s mother insisted on an open casket
at the funeral so people could see the burn scars on her son’s body.
Millard Farmer prepares petitions for the U.S. Court of
Appeals for the Fifth Circuit and the U.S. Supreme Court. On January
18, he and Prejean visit Patrick. During the drive to the prison,
Millard explains the flaws and inadequacies of Patrick’s initial
defense. It is now very difficult to correct the mistakes made during
the trial. He believes the Supreme Court’s decision to allow execution
is a byproduct of a political compromise made after the federal
government enforced Civil Rights Laws. The courts, he says, are
now so interested in speeding up executions that they are violating
people’s constitutional right to fair trials. Prejean offers two
examples of the courts doing so.
Millard says he will argue that Patrick had ineffective
counsel, although he doesn’t believe this will work. He says that
ninety-nine percent of death row inmates are poor. He points out
that Patrick’s lawyer failed to offer personal testimony on his
client’s behalf during the sentencing. During law school, Millard
witnessed case after case in which white juries sentenced black
men to death, proof that white lives are clearly valued more highly
than black ones. In 1987, the Supreme Court acknowledged a racial
discrepancy in capital sentencing, but nonetheless excused it as
“an inevitable part of our criminal justice system.” Millard offers
further evidence that poverty and a poor defense largely determine
sentencing in capital cases. In three different cases, the Supreme
Court upheld the right of the state to execute the mentally retarded,
sixteen-year-olds, and the formerly insane.
At the prison, Millard explains his defense strategy to
Patrick. Patrick tells Millard he met his defense counsel for the
first time the day before the trial. On the drive back, Millard
tells Prejean his plan to appeal to Governor Edwin Edwards, who
he believes is a reluctant supporter of the death penalty. Prejean
asks Bishop Ott, the Catholic Bishop of Baton Rouge, and Reverend
James Stovall, head of the Louisiana Interchurch Conference, to
talk to the governor on Patrick’s behalf. They both agree. The Supreme
Court denies Patrick’s petition. The execution is set for April
5, 1984.
On March 17, Archbishop Phillip Hanna, a man who in the
past advocated on behalf of the death penalty, agrees to intervene
on Patrick’s behalf. Brad Fisher, a clinical psychologist, evaluates Patrick
and concludes he is an extremely productive prisoner. Prejean grows
increasingly hopeful.
On March 27, Prejean and seven others—including Bishop
Ott, Reverend Stovall, Archbishop Hanna, and Brad Fisher—meet with Governor
Edwards, who is surrounded by cameras and reporters, and argue on
behalf of Patrick. The governor says it is his job to carry out
the laws of the state. His position gives him a moral loophole that
allows him to sleep peacefully at night, despite his reluctance
to enforce the death penalty. Prejean quotes a political writer who
refers to the governor’s power to pardon as the last “vestige of the
power of kings.”
