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Eva was fearless and smart, and she sorted everything out so that a few dollars could trickle
in. We hired a receptionist and tried to figure out how to survive. I had worked on fund-
raising for the Southern Prisoners Defense Committee almost as soon as I started there, so I
had some experience asking for money to support our work. I was sure there would be a way
to raise enough for the new Alabama office to meet the minimum federal matching
requirements. We just needed some time—something, as it turned out, we wouldn’t get at all.
A flood of execution dates awaited us. Between the passage of Alabama’s new death
penalty statute in 1975 and the end of 1988 , there had been only three executions in
Alabama. But in 1989 , driven by a change in the Supreme Court’s treatment of death penalty
appeals and shifts in the political winds, the attorney general’s office began vigorously
seeking executions of condemned prisoners. By the end of 1989 , the number of people
executed by the State of Alabama would double.
Months before our center opened, I started visiting Alabama’s death row every month,
traveling from Atlanta to see a handful of new clients, including Walter McMillian. They were
all grateful for the help, but as the spring of 1989 approached they all made the same request
at the end of our meetings: Help Michael Lindsey. Lindsey’s execution was scheduled for May
1989. Later, they would ask me to help Horace Dunkins, whose execution date was scheduled
for July 1989. I painfully explained the constraints on resources and time, telling them how
frantic we were just trying to get the new office up and running. Although they said they
understood, they were clearly anguished about getting legal assistance while other men faced
looming executions.
Both Lindsey and Dunkins had volunteer lawyers who had reached out to me for help
because they were overwhelmed. Lindsey’s lawyer, David Bagwell, was a respected civil
attorney from Mobile; he had worked on the case of Wayne Ritter, who’d been executed a
year earlier. That experience left Bagwell disillusioned and angry. He wrote a scathing letter
published in the state bar association’s journal in which he vowed “never to take another
death penalty case, even if they disbar me for my refusal” and urged other civil lawyers not to
take death penalty cases. Bagwell’s public complaints made it hard for courts to appoint other
civil lawyers for last-stage appeals in a death penalty case, not that they were particularly
inclined to do so. But it had another effect as well. Prisoners got word of the letter and talked
about it among themselves, especially about a chilling comment buried in Bagwell’s jeremiad:
“I generally favor the death penalty because mad dogs ought to die.” The prisoners became
even more distrustful of lawyers, even the ones who claimed they would help.
After further pleading by our other clients, we decided to do what we could for Michael
Lindsey, whose execution date was fast approaching. We tried to make arguments about an
interesting twist in that case: His jury had never decided that Michael Lindsey should be
executed at all.
Lindsey received a sentence of life imprisonment without parole from his jury, but the
judge had “overridden” it and imposed a death sentence on his own. Death sentences
resulting from “judge override” were an anomaly, even back in 1989. In almost every state,
juries made the decision to impose the death penalty or life in prison without parole. If the
jury imposed or rejected death, that was the final judgment. Only Florida and Alabama
allowed the jury’s decision to be overridden by a judge—and Florida later put restrictions on
the practice that severely curtailed it. It remains the law in Alabama, where judges almost