Dr. Stephen Bright speaks at Wofford College
On Tuesday, Oct. 9 Dr. Stephen Bright, a renowned attorney, gave a lecture in Leonard Auditorium at Wofford on “The Triumph of Law Over Fairness: How Race, Poverty and Procedural Rules Determine Outcomes in Death Penalty and Other Criminal Cases.”
Dr. Bright spent 35 years working as an attorney for the Southern Center for Human Rights, first as director and later president and senior counsel. Since 1993 he has taught at Yale Law School and he began teaching at Georgia State College in 2017. He has also taught courses at Georgetown School of Law.
Bright has tried capital cases primarily in Alabama, Georgia and Mississippi, but has also argued capital cases in South Carolina and Florida. He argued four capital cases before the Supreme Court, resulting in the original sentences being overturned and the cases being retried. In 1998, Dr. Bright received the American Bar Association’s Thurgood Marshall award.
In his lecture at Wofford, Bright recounted a letter he had received from an African American woman, Ms. Shackleford. She had lost everything she own in a fire at the apartment she was renting. At the time of the incident, she was working two jobs while also attending school at a community college. Shackleford had no prior criminal record. She was accused of starting the fire and was arrested for arson. Shackleford applied for a court appointed attorney, but the lawyer assigned to her case was unhelpful and Shackleford ended up conducting most of the investigation herself. She later was assigned another attorney, but this attorney advised her to plead guilty and take a 15-year recommended sentence, despite her innocence. Shackleford refused and decided to hire an attorney on her own instead, struggling to come up with $3,500 for the $5,000 fee. Once hired, her new attorney missed court and was hardly reachable. The case was continued many times, so many that she lost both of her jobs. At this point, it had been three years and she couldn’t afford to hire another attorney. Although she was out on bond, she asked to be put in jail, fearing she would take her own life since she was almost homeless. Her case had been continued 20 times in three years. She was only 23 years of age. She wrote a letter to Bright asking him to represent her. He agreed and ultimately, won her case.
Bright used this story to communicate the realities facing a poor person accused of a crime. In the majority of cases, court appointed lawyers aren’t properly trained to try certain cases, especially concerning difficult things like arson. These lawyers aren’t always vetted properly and therefore, might have issues of their own—Dr. Bright shared many stories about lawyers who slept during the case or were drunk while trying the case.
Dr. Bright recited the end of the Pledge of Allegiance, “liberty and justice for all”, and denounced its validity. He then quoted the United States Supreme Court Justice Hugo Black, “There can be no equal justice where the kind of a trial a man gets depends on the amount of money he has.”
“Sometimes the process is the punishment, like in Ms. Shackleford’s case,” said Dr. Bright.
The criminal courts are the parts of our society that have been least affected by the Civil Rights Movement. Even in the 21st century, the court houses appear to be stuck in a 1950s-style demographic: 96% of all elected prosecutors in the United States today are white—80% are white men, 16% of white women and 4% are men of color. 95% of all convictions in criminal court systems are the result of plea bargains which depend on the discretion of the prosecutor. The race of both the victim and the defendant can indirectly affect all of these discretionary decisions. Another decision affected by race is the selection of the jury in cases that do go forward to trial because the prosecutor can elicit bias against African American people. In order to prevent this, the court decided that the prosecutor has to give a valid reason for striking the juror that cannot be on the basis of race, however, some training programs for prosecutors give reasons other than race for the prosecutor to use as a cover-up.
Along with the many issues of our court system, there have been many improvements. Bright stated that we know so much more than we used to know because of DNA which helps us find how often we do make mistakes, however, only 10% of cases have biological evidence. Cell phones are also able to help us learn much more than we previously did.
Society is also continually turning against the death penalty, which Bright said is a good thing. In 1980, 300 people were sentenced to death, whereas last year only nine people were sentenced to death. Dr. Bright urged that although the death penalty is good in theory, it isn’t necessarily in outcome. Although the death penalty is hardly given anymore, when it is given race is a key factor. 80% of death row inmates are there for killing white people, but there are many more African Americans killed nationally (51% murder victims reported are black).
So, what can we do to change this corrupt system? Bright said that step one is recognizing that there is a problem—something cannot be addressed if it isn’t recognized as an issue in the first place. From there, making offices more diverse in order to learn how effective changes can be made. For college students, this might not necessarily be applicable for another year or two, but Bright encouraged conversations on the subject of race in a respectful manner in order to learn what the issues on campus are and what can be done to change them.
“Where you stand determines what you see. I urge you to stand with the marginalized, the outcasts, to stand in proximity of them in order to sympathize, understand and eventually make a change for their benefit,” said Dr. Bright.
