The Case Against the Death Penalty in Virginia
By Colman McCarthy
In mid-February 1991, I traveled to Richmond, Va., to say goodbye to a friend and watch him die. Joseph Giarratano, then 34, was scheduled to be killed in Virginia’s electric chair, in the Spring Street prison built by Thomas Jefferson in 1800. Hours after what both Giarratano and I thought was our final conversation, Gov. L. Douglas Wilder, once an opponent of capital punishment but now an advocate, commuted the death sentence. The decision, he said, was “complex but not difficult.”
Wilder urged that a new trial take place. But his attorney general, Mary Sue Terry, believed Giarratano was guilty and, legislatively empowered, said no to a new trial.
Amnesty International, the European Parliament, the Vatican and more than a dozen members of Congress had examined the weak, disredited and conflicting evidence, plus coerced confessions, behind Giarratano’s 1979 murder conviction and argued persuasively that an innocent man would be executed.
Wilder’s commutation turned out to be semi-justice, a half measure that dodged the obvious question: if the claims of innocence were strong enough to stop an execution, why were they too weak to justify an exoneration? Instead, Wilder gave Giarratano a life sentence with a chance for parole in early 2004.
That’s now. The Virginia parole board will soon consider Giarratano’s case. In a handwritten 14 page letter to the board, in clear and forceful prose that reflects a self-educated man far different from the addicted 8th-grade dropout he once was, Giarratano writes: “Do I pose a threat to society? No. Can I lead a productive, non-destructive and law-abiding life outside of prison? Yes. That is not something I could always state. No one more than I knows how horribly messed up my life was before 1979. To this day, life for me is not simple, and it will never be so. If ever I step beyond prison walls—whether by exoneration, new trial, pardon, clemency or parole—life will be difficult. Yet I have the support and love of many good friends and supporters who have kindly offered to help me find my way. But more, I know myself and know that I can rise up to any challenge that may confront me.”
My friendship with Giarratano dates to 1988. Marie Deans, the director of a public interest organization that investigates wrongful convictions, asked me to interview Giarratano and possibly write about it. I did both. Shortly after, I began taking student groups—from high schools, colleges and a law school where I was teaching courses on nonviolence—to visit Giarratano on death row. A humane warden, recognizing Giarratano’s intellectual and spiritual gifts, allowed him to hold seminars for us. Among the high school students, I know of at least two who are now public interest lawyers because of those seminars. I know of hundreds who are ashamed that America, with four percent of the world’s population, cages 20 percent of the world’s prisoners.
When Giarratano was freed from death row and transferred to another prison, the seminars continued. With the warden’s backing, I worked with Giarratano to have him teach an academic course on nonviolent conflict resolution to fellow inmates. I gave $5,000 to get the program started, a sum that brought in more funds, including $3,000 from the U.S. Catholic Conference’s Campaign for Human Development. Giarratano applied for, and received, an IRS tax exempt status for the program. It’s success—a marked decrease in the prison’s violence, a waiting list of 300 inmates to take the course and which did not count for parole points—was widely reported, from a segment on NBC’s Nightly News to a long article in Corrections Magazine.
Despite the success, and the warden’s strong support, the program was ordered closed in 1995 by the state’s Department of Corrections. It was seen as coddling prisoners, men locked up to be punished not tutored in the nuances of Gandhian thought. This was a time when get-tough-on-crime politicians like Sen. Phil Gramm were calling prisons “Holiday Inns.”
I am only one of thousands of people who have benefited from knowing Joe Giarratano. Over the years, he has written hundreds of letters to my students, encouraging them to use their gifts to create a peaceable society. He has done that himself, having filed and won several law suits for prisoners’ rights. In July 1985, it was Giarratano’s last minute civil rights complaint that stopped the execution of fellow death row inmate Earl Washington Jr., an illiterate African-American who had no appeals lawyer. Washington was eventually exonerated and freed.
Virginia’s parole board is not empowered to act on the flaw’s behind Giarratano’s 1979 commutation. It’s function is to judge the 25 years since, years that have been marked by all the positives of classic rehabilitation: self-discipline, optimism, compassionate service to others, intellectual spiritual growth and nonviolence.
Whether Giarratano is paroled or not, all of that is likely to continue--as well as the grave doubts about his guilt in the first place.
Colman McCarthy, a former Washington Post columnist, directs the Center for Teaching Peace, Washington D.C.