Life or Death in Wisconsin
Life or Death in Wisconsin Wisconsin has had no death penalty for 142 years, longer than any other state in the Union—possibly longer than any nation in the world. That streak will end this year if...
...Among those defending Wisconsin's abolitionist tradition are a handful of lawyers who have volunteered to represent prisoners on death row in the South...
...Wiseman, I never looked at it that way.' He asked us to take care of his mother and sister...
...Gardner did not match the description of the man who killed a high-school cafeteria worker in Dallas during a robbery in 1983...
...Shortly after she volunteered to represent Gardner, Wiseman was notified that an execution date had been set for her client, and that it was only a month away...
...When we were in the antechamber, awaiting the execution, the chaplain told us that one Texas lawyer has seventeen clients on death row...
...Whether or not Gardner committed the murder of which he was convicted, his case is an example of the slipshod justice meted out to people on death row, who are overwhelmingly poor...
...The victim and several witnesses described the murderer as tall, with reddish-blond hair, and a goatee...
...The idea that a legal system imperfect as ours is going to have the pretense to use a perfect penalty is very troubling," says Strang...
...That's what it's about...
...A number of lawyers were making similar arguments at the time...
...His sister kept saying, 'Don't let them tell you this is a peaceful way to die.' Billy had emphysema, and when they gave him the injection he was gasping for air...
...In 1853, the citizens of Wisconsin were so appalled by a gruesome public hanging that the Senate voted to ban capital punishment outright...
...His latest effort, Senate Bill 1, comes on the heels of the murder of Cora Jones, a ten-year-old girl in northwest Wisconsin...
...At last count, the bill is just a few votes short of passage...
...The arguments haven't changed much in the last century and a half...
...Out of the dozen remaining states, Wisconsin is the most likely to go next...
...Whether you are charged depends on who you are and who represents you...
...She filed an emergency stay of execution...
...The state of Texas responded by objecting that Wiseman was practicing law without a license in Texas...
...In 1994 there were almost twice as many people executed in the United States as in other recent years...
...I suggested that there were many things they could do about that besides killing the client," she says...
...I think the Texas situation is a nightmare," says Wiseman...
...Lasee has been introducing death-penalty bills in the state legislature annually for the last eighteen years...
...But Gardner's first lawyer never contacted any of the witnesses...
...The bills, pegged to a series of grisly murder cases, always focus on particularly heinous acts...
...But in the end it's simply barbaric...
...Wiseman took Gardner's mother and sister back to their motel in Huntsville after the execution...
...Instead, Wiseman tried to demonstrate that he had received ineffective counsel, and that there were serious constitutional problems with the Texas death process...
...For Lasee and fellow sponsors of Senate Bill 1, who have been holding hearings around the state featuring emotional testimony by the families of murder victims, the issue is simply vengeance...
...There are no moneyed people on death row," Wiseman points out...
...Are we a civilized people or not...
...As the rationale behind criminal sentencing shifts from reform to retribution, the death penalty's popularity is on the rise...
...Christine Wiseman, an associate professor at Marquette University Law School in Milwaukee, spent seven years defending Billy Conn Gardner, before finally attending his execution in Texas in February...
...He's starting with people who murder kids—who could argue with that...
...For too long we've seen a criminal-justice system that treats criminals better than their own victims...
...He spent only a total of fifteen minutes talking with his client before jury selection, and he never sought a preliminary hearing to assess the strength of the state's case...
...And its record of ninety-two executions since the death penalty was reinstated there in 1976 far outpaces the rest of the nation...
...I'm just a farmer who got elected to the Senate and I represent 150,000 constituents," Lasee says...
...Then, sooner or later, somebody blows up a post office, so you tack that on...
...That streak will end this year if Republican State Senator Alan Lasee has his way...
...Wiseman managed to get an extension so she could read the 4,000-page court transcript, and so she could find a local lawyer to help with the case...
...When they came out they were human rags," she says...
...She has stayed in touch with them ever since...
...I'm not an expert on inmate behavior or a criminologist...
...It's a pretty canny strategy...
...Ultimately, all of Wiseman's appeals failed...
...Wiseman is convinced that Gardner was innocent...
...Even at that stage, everything was a mess," Wiseman recalls...
...We sent them flowers, and we've sent articles about Billy, and we've suggested to them that Billy didn't die for nothing, if his death helps keep the death penalty out of another state...
...Gardner was short, had black hair, and was clean-shaven...
...Texas has executed six people this year—more than any other state...
...One warden said we could wait outside the execution room for Billy's mother and sister, and another warden told us we would have to wait across the street...
...It was very painful to watch for his family...
...Wiseman traveled to Huntsville, Texas, on February 16 to be with her client at his execution...
...The death-penalty warden finally did honor Billy's request to meet us...
...The Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals at first issued an opinion supporting them, but it subsequently withdrew its opinion without explanation...
...Wiseman waited outside the execution room for Gardner's mother and sister, while Gardner was given a lethal injection...
...I think the public is fed up...
...Abolitionists argued that the death penalty was used disproportionately against the poor, that executions "harden" those who witness them, and that they are "a relic of a barbarous age...
...It was too late, by the time Wiseman got the case, to argue that there was a reasonable doubt about whether Gardner committed the murder...
...Ruth Conniff (Ruth Conniff is the Managing Editor of The Progressive...
...It applies only to defendants over the age of sixteen who willfully murder children...
...During the appeals process, Wiseman demonstrated that the district attorney who prosecuted the case at trial had perjured himself, claiming that Gardner confessed to the murder, after earlier telling the court that Gardner had made no statements about his guilt or innocence...
...So we were led through a series of winding corridors to the Walls Unit...
...There was a huge sheet of black mesh running fioor-to-ceiling— and we said our goodbyes...
...Are we progressing or regressing...
...I don't care how the process starts, it becomes politicized...
...I suggested that he'd taken me on some very interesting dates, but this was the most extraordinary, and he said, 'Well, Ms...
...It's a foot in the door," says Dean Strang, chair of the death-penalty project of the state bar's criminal-law section...
...After a twenty-year battle, New York recently became the thirty-eighth state to revive the death penalty...
...We spent most of our last few minutes joking together...
Vol. 59 • May 1995 • No. 5
