Political acts

Theatre has a tiny audience compared with the media. But, says human rights lawyer Clive Stafford Sm

By Clive Stafford Smith Published 14 February 2005

The United States may be the richest nation on earth, but if you are on death row, ploughing your way through appeals, you have no constitutional right to a lawyer. In many states, you must either represent yourself or find someone who'll do it for free. America's condemned certainly need lawyers on their side. They also need theatre. This could not be emphasised more plainly than in Lorilei, a production that the human rights charity Reprieve is bringing to the Old Red Lion Theatre in London.

A central figure in the play is my client Ricky Langley, a deeply unpopular man in Louisiana. He is a paedophile. He was accused of molesting several children and, in February 1992, of murdering Jeremy, the six-year-old son of Lorilei Guillory. In 1994, Langley was sentenced to death. Nine years later, the courts ordered a new trial. By this time, Lorilei had lived with the horror of her son's murder for more than a decade. The prosecutor's promise that a death sentence would give her "closure" had proven hollow, so she did an extraordinary thing: she asked to meet Langley to help her to understand her loss. They spent three hours alone in a cell. By the end, Lorilei was convinced that the defence lawyers had been telling the truth: Langley was insane when he murdered Jeremy.

"Ricky," she said, "I'm going to fight for you." And fight she did. She insisted on testifying for the defence at trial, and instructed me on the only question she wanted to answer in court.

"Ms Guillory," I asked, "do you have an opinion as to whether Ricky Langley was mentally ill at the time he killed your child Jeremy?" "Yes, as a matter of fact, I do," she replied. "I feel like Ricky Langley has cried out for help many, many, many times. And for whatever reasons, his family, society and the system have failed him. I feel like he is sick. And even though, as I sit on this witness stand, I can hear my child's death cry, I, too, can hear Ricky Langley cry for help."

The death penalty exists because the world remains ignorant of the true story, or the real people, behind each case. Politicians and prospective jurors alike expound on the need for the noose, but when faced with all the facts, and the human reality, few are willing to dish out death. This proved true in Langley's case. However, the problem with Lorilei's extraordinary story, when first told in Courtroom H in Calcasieu Parish, Louisiana, was that the audience was limited to 12 jurors. These jurors did not take long to acquit Langley of capital murder and to find him guilty of a lesser charge. But it was not a lawyer who saved Langley; it was Lorilei. More people should hear her words, and theatregoers are about to get that opportunity.

In recent years, political theatre has veered towards verbatim pieces such as Guantanamo and The Exonerated, productions that put transcripts of human experience on the record. In an age dominated by the mass media, it is one of the best alternative forums in which to discuss important ideas. Political theatre, if it's good enough, is able to escape its ghetto and become simply "theatre". But theatre should still be a place where society's big issues are discussed.

The director Nicolas Kent and the Tricycle Theatre have been particularly active lately with plays about Stephen Lawrence and Bloody Sunday, as well as the internment of terror suspects in Guantanamo Bay. In this last production, I was mildly embarrassed to find David Annen playing me as an ill-dressed lawyer. Yet, rather more importantly, Guantanamo emphasised how political theatre can effectively re-humanise the dehumanised. At the time it was staged, no law court had recognised the rights of the prisoners, and advocacy for them was confined to the court of public opinion. Particularly when Archbishop Desmond Tutu volunteered to play a role for a week in New York, the important messages of the piece reached hundreds of people in the theatre and many more who read the reviews.

It could be argued that such productions only preach to the converted, as few apologists for Guantanamo are likely to go to a play by that name by mistake. But I think of Moazzam Begg - who was released at the end of January - one day walking down a street in London and seeing a fading Guantanamo poster on a wall. How strange it would be for him to realise that the jumpsuited actor on the poster was playing him, and at a time when he was on the other side of the world, unaware that anyone cared about his fate.

Political theatre has its faults, not least didacticism. Yet the alternative is apathy, and I know which I prefer. Political theatre is hopelessly partisan, yet why is it a crime to hold honest opinions with passion? Theatre audiences are tiny compared with the numbers who consume the modern mass media, but when Lorilei first told her story, it was to an audience of 12 who were changed for ever: after Langley's trial, the jurors jointly signed an open letter condemning the retributive spirit of the prosecution.

Reprieve is dedicated to providing front-line assistance to people facing the death penalty. So why would such an organisation bother with a spot of theatre? Because it works, connecting with people on a deeper level than if they were simply to read about a case in the headlines, or to plough through some rant I may have written for the opinion pages.

The first production that Reprieve brought to London was This Is a True Story, about Howard Neal, a Mississippi death-row prisoner with an IQ of 54. In part because of the attention Neal received in the wake of the play, he remains alive today, reconnected to a world he thought had thrown him away. His lawyers were reinspired. Volunteers travelled to the US to help him. Audience members still write him letters. Neal's hope still falters, but at least now he knows that he is not alone.

If all theatre were wildly political, the West End would be a dull place. Yet the current burden of proof is clearly misplaced. The artist is asked to justify a political production: can it, or should it, meaningfully influence the political debate? Lorilei is a production that shifts the question, asking apolitical theatre to justify its polite demurral on issues of such significance.

I doubt, however, that audiences will talk about politics as they leave the theatre after hearing Lorilei's story. This is human theatre, not just a piece about the death penalty. Bertolt Brecht once said: "Art is not a mirror to reflect society; it is a hammer to shape it." Sometimes the hammer and the mirror can effectively coexist.

Clive Stafford Smith is a founder of Reprieve (www.reprieve.org.uk). Lorilei: a meditation on loss is at the Old Red Lion Theatre, London EC1 (020 7837 7816) from 15 February to 5 March, Tuesday to Sunday, 8pm. Stafford Smith and others will lead a discussion each evening

2 comments

Fri, 2007-11-23 16:56 — dudleysharp

"The Exonerated" - anti truth, anti victim - are any actually innocent?
Dudley Sharp, Justice Matters

This play is presented as a true story of six innocents sent to death row because of corruption within the system.

The Exonerated is a true story just as CATS and The Lion King are.

Reviews of each case, with links and contacts for your own review.

1) Robert Earl Hayes Nothing about Hayes’ retrial changes the appeals court’s original observation that evidence existed to establish Hayes’ guilt. Hayes has now been convicted of a nearly identical murder in New York, which was committed prior to the murder in Florida. Go to

no. 74 at http://www.prodeathpenalty.com/DPIC.htm
and pages 36-39 at http://www.floridacapitalcases.state.fl.us/Publications/innocentsproject...

2) Sunny Jacobs -- After the shooting, still at the scene of the murders, a trooper asked Jacobs: "Do you like shooting troopers?" Jacobs response: "We had to."

The best review of the blatant dishonesty of this "Exonerated" case is "The Myth of Innocence", Josh Marquis, The Journal of Criminal Law and Criminology, v 95, No 2, Winter, 2005, Northwestern University School of Law.

Mr. Marquis can be reached at CoastDA@aol.com, or 503-791-0012.

There is no evidence to support a claim of innocence for Jacobs in the murder of two police officers in Florida. She eventually pled guilty to two counts of second degree murder and was released for time served, after 16 years. Hardly a finding of innocence.
go to pages 40-46 at www (dot) floridacapitalcases.state.fl.us/Publications/innocentsproject.pdf

3) David Keaton -- Keaton's defense attorney stated that even without Keaton's numerous confessions, that the eyewitness testimony was likely sufficient to convict Keaton for the capital murder.

Through the testimony of numerous eyewitnesses, Keaton's numerous confessions, as well as those of co-defendants, Keaton was sentenced to death. There is no credible claim for innocence in this case of robbery/murder. The case was overturned on appeal. The prosecution chose not to re prosecute for a number of good reasons -- 1. he was no longer subject to the death penalty, because of changes in the law 2. Keaton was sentenced to 20 years in prison for a robbery that he committed ten days prior to the robbery/murder for which he was sentenced to death and 3. illness of witnesses.

Keaton was sentenced to death in 1971, under the old death penalty law. He was on death row for 13 months when the US Supreme Court overturned all death penalty cases in Furman v Georgia.

Read pages 60-68 at www (dot) floridacapitalcases.state.fl.us/Publications/innocentsproject.pdf

4) Delbert Tibbs -- The Florida Supreme Court candidly conceded that it should not have reversed Tibbs' conviction since the evidence was legally sufficient.

The state prosecutor who chose not to retry Tibbs recently explained to the Florida Commission on Capital Crimes that Tibbs “was never an innocent man wrongfully accused. He was a lucky human being. He was guilty, he was lucky and now he is free."
See no.10 at http://www.prodeathpenalty.com/DPIC.htm
and pages 134-138 at www(dot)floridacapitalcases.state.fl.us/Publications/innocentsproject.pdf

5) Kerry Max Cook -- The judge, in accepting Cook's no contest plea, said that Cook was guilty of the crime and that the state was capable of proving its case.

This is not a DNA exoneration case.

Mr. Cook was convicted of the murder of Linda Jo Edwards, who was found in her apartment on June 10, 1977, beaten on the head with a plaster statue, stabbed in the throat, chest and back and sexually mutilated. Mr. Cook was arrested 2 months later where he worked as a bartender in Port Arthur. Officers said they found Mr. Cook's fingerprint on Ms. Edwards' apartment door. At first he denied knowing Ms. Edwards. Cook lied. He later said they met at the apartment complex's swimming pool and he went to her apartment. His original conviction resulting in a death sentence was overturned because of prosecutorial misconduct. A 1992 retrial ended in a hung jury. He was again convicted and sentenced to death in 1994. That verdict was overturned in 1996. Before a 4th trial, Mr. Cook pleaded no contest to a reduced charge of murder. He was sentenced to 20 years time served. Mr. Cook took the deal so he could avoid a possible return to death row. By taking the plea, both Cook and his attorneys conceded that this is hardly a case where there is no evidence for guilt and certainly not a case with confirmable actual innocence.

for more on this case, contact David Dobbs at david (at) davidedobbs.com

6) Gary Gauger -- Gauger confessed to the murder of his parents. That confession was thrown out based upon the lack of probable cause to arrest him. Gauger's ex-wife and children filed a wrongful death suit against Gauger in the murder of his parents. Gary's brother remains so convinced of Gary's guilt in the murders of their parents, that he has prepared a review of the case which claims to support Gary's guilt, even though there are now two other people jailed for the murders.

Furthermore, the trial court erroneously imposed a death sentence. The court granted a motion for reconsideration and vacated the sentence less than ten months later in September 1994. The trial court found that it had not considered all the mitigating evidence and concluded that Gauger should not be sentenced to death. People v. Bull, 705 N.E.2d 824, 843 (Ill. 1999); Chicago Tribune (9/23/94). Gauger served a brief time on death row. He was not properly sentenced to death by the trial court. He should never have been sent to death row because the trial court did not finally sentence him to be executed. Gauger’s case is an example of how consideration of mitigating evidence under current law results in a sentence less than death.
see no. 69 at www(dot)prodeathpenalty.com/DPIC.htm

Some additional articles:

"Cross-Examination for a Drama That Puts the Death Penalty on Trial", Adam Liptak, New York Times, January 27, 2005
www(dot)nytimes.com/2005/01/27/theater/newsandfeatures/27pros.htm

"Prosecutors take exception to Court TV film", Richard Willing, USA TODAY, 1/24/05http://www.usatoday.com/news/nation/2005-01-24-exonerated_x.htm

"The Myth of Innocenceon’t believe everything you see on CourtTV", Joshua Marquis, National Review, 1/27/05 www(dot)nationalreview.com/comment/marquis200501270742.as
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Are audiences being duped to further a political/social agenda? Of course. And theater critivcs? They simply don't bother to fact check and blindly accept and repeat whatever the producers tell them.

Only one theater critic, Tom Sime of the Dallas Morning News, bothered to see if the claims were true. His brief review resulted in this published comment: "Maybe three are actually innocent and three actually aren't. In any case, blind faith - in the criminal justice process or in the truth of crusading art- is best left at home."

"The Exonerated" is strictly a bit of anti-death penalty deception, which is not at all surprising. It appears that the Soros Foundation, through their Open Society Institute (OSI) is the primary benefactor of "The Exonerated" . The Soros Foundation finances anti death penalty efforts, worldwide.

Dudley Sharp, Justice Matters
e-mail sharpjfa@aol.com, 713-622-5491,
Houston, Texas

Mr. Sharp has appeared on ABC, CBS, CNN, C-SPAN, FOX, NBC, NPR, PBS, BBC and many other TV and radio networks, on such programs as Nightline, The News Hour with Jim Lehrer, The O'Reilly Factor, etc., has been quoted in newspapers throughout the world and is a published author.

A former opponent of capital punishment, he has written and granted interviews about, testified on and debated the subject of the death penalty, extensively and internationally.

Mon, 2010-11-29 03:51 — Just me (not verified)

I don't know anything about the other cases but "dudleysharp's" take on Kerry Cook's case is wrong. It is definitely a DNA exoneration case. Yes, Cook took a no contest plea to get off of death row. But, at the time the prosecutor, David Dobbs offered the deal he knew the DNA that was recently found didn't match Cook. It was later determined that it matched the married man the victim had an affair with. David Dobbs is a scumbag (former prosecutor now ambulance chaser) who continues to spread lies about the case and denies his own egregious misconduct in the case. Dobbs should have lost his license for his conduct in this case. Dudley gives Dobss email address. Contact Dobbs if you want to hear a bunch of lies.