That's the title of a profile of Harris County defense attorney Jerry Guerinot in Sunday's Observer magazine by David Rose. LINK
Here's the sub-head:
Texas sentences more people to death than any other state in America, and the emotional toll on its defence lawyers is so great that many only ever work on a handful of cases. Not so Jerry Guerinot. He's defended 39 men and women. The bad news: 20 have been sentenced to death. Is he incompetent, or does he just get the 'hardest cases'?
And a brief excerpt from near the beginning:
In Texas, it is the jury, rather than the judge, which decides when to confer the ultimate penalty. Guerinot has acted for 39 capital murder defendants, of whom three had their charges dropped by the prosecution and six pleaded guilty in return for life imprisonment. In a further five trials, the prosecution did not ask for the death penalty when it came to sentencing. Guerinot has managed to persuade a jury to give his client life instead of death just five times since 1983. Not one of his capital clients has been found not guilty. Thirty-eight states in the US have the death penalty: former Guerinot clients have either been executed or are on death row in 15 states besides Texas.
Guerinot says the reason for this is that Houston's judges deliberately assigned him the toughest propositions - in Texas, publicly-funded defence lawyers are appointed by the courts. 'Most of the cases I've tried where the state was seeking the death penalty were horrific. Multiple killings: I mean seven, eight, nine people dead. Cold, calculated killings. Little girls, seven years old, raped and strangled and murdered, you know. I came to the conclusion that unless the case was horrific enough, I never got it. The easy ones, somehow, never came to me, only the ones where there were lots of bodies around. I think it's a recognition, that if I represent them the state is in for one hell of a fight. Nothing goes down easy.
'People need to be represented by aggressive lawyers who will not just sit in their chair and let the state run over them. I am an extremely aggressive lawyer. There's a lawyer that does appeals here named McLean. He called me a pit-bull one time. I would say that's accurate.'
Others disagree. They include attorneys from Baker Botts, the 'white shoe' international law firm led by James A Baker III, George Bush senior's Secretary of State, which now represents pro bono one of the 10 women on death row in Texas. Linda Carty, a British citizen, was convicted of ordering the bizarre 2001 murder of her neighbour Joana Rodriguez, allegedly in order to steal her baby. In their appeal claim to the federal courts, which is likely to be decided early next year, Carty's lawyers Michael Goldberg and Maryanne Lyons say she did not get a fair trial, that the prosecution was allowed to call evidence that should never have been admissible, and that crucial testimony that might have persuaded the jury that she did not deserve execution was never called.
Their appeal puts most of the blame on one man: Carty's trial attorney, Jerry Guerinot.
'Guerinot's a waste. A waste for society, a waste to the legal system,' says Linda Carty with a shudder. A handsome woman who looks younger than her 49 years, her broad smile and twinkling eyes belie her surroundings - the death-row visitation centre at the Mountain View unit in Gatesville, four hours northwest of Houston on the edge of the Texas hill country. 'Basically he's an undertaker for the State of Texas.'
A hat tip to Hilary Sheard for sending this in.
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