Andrea D. Lyon

Ms. Lyon was a public defender, is a defense attorney, a thankless job representing the people we love to hate. Her specialty -- getting people off death row.

In theory, I have been against the death penalty. It seems barbaric to kill someone in response to killing someone. I'm just not that eye-for-an-eye. But my theory is often tested when I hear of some truly heinous crime, something that makes someone seem so cruel that they do not seem human. Someone who should never walk the streets again. Ms. Lyon believes everyone capable of redemption. I am not sure I believe that.

But, and this is a big "but," I always had faith that our legal system was fair, with the occasional mistake as the exception. I know of the unreliability of eye witness testimonies and of coerced false confessions. What I didn't know is how much politics enters into judgments. How racist, misogynist, corrupt judges are allowed to rule and preside in cases they should never touch. How appeals can be denied even when important new evidence is discovered and presented. In short, I never knew how flawed our legal system is.

The cases in this book all show these people sentenced to death row as people, often disenfranchised, often with violent backgrounds, often desperately poor, but people. The statistics of who is sent to death row are astounding. If you are African-American and poor, don't expect the justice system to work for you. Some of these stories are truly heartbreaking. Imagine spending years of your life in 23-hour a day lockup, waiting for someone to legally kill you, for something you didn't do.

I still have faith that most judges are honest and fair. Whether that is true, I don't know. But there has to be a better way to get the dishonest ones, the racists and corrupt ones, off the bench. There has to be a way to make representation fair and not about politics, not just about "the kill" of winning.

Ms. Lyon was part of the defense team for Casey Anthony. That one is hard for me. She left the team.

Why do I think this book deserves five stars? Ms. Lyon has a job I would absolutely hate, yet she has done it for years, never giving up on justice, in the right to a fair trial. In her personal life, she has made some of the same bad decisions her clients have made but to a much lesser degree. She is real, she is believable. The most important part of this book is that it will cause discussion, it will cause open-minded people who believe in the death penalty to see the other side of the coin. Perhaps it will lead to some reform of the legal system. It will help us know that there is another side to the coin, what we hear isn't always the truth, isn't always the whole story. As Ms. Lyon says at the end of her book:

"It takes enormous effort to drag the courts, sometimes against staggering opposition, toward what is fair and humane. And to me, fair and humane is the definition of justice. We may never arrive at a state that perfectly balances these two concepts, but we affirm our own humanity in the attempt."

The quote may have changed in the published edition. I read an Advanced Readers Edition given to me by a friend. Thank you, Tara, both for the recommendation and for your copy of the book. I highly recommend reading this one.… (mehr)

Andrea Lyon is one of the most fascinating and honest women I know. When I say "know," it is with great honor that I get to be her facebook friend. Some authors really strike a resonating cord and I seek them out to actively stalk them. This is one of them.

The book contains 12 chapters and an epilogue. Each chapter reads like a very well written essay that can stand alone but, as is Andrea's way, when taken as a whole with the other stories, the journey is much more satisfying.

The author begins her career as an attorney in the late '70's as a public defender. She is presented with cases that are horrifying, engaging, and often mishandled. Woven within the pages is Andrea Lyon, an articulate, intelligent, fallible human being who cries when she meets a downtrodden client and brings home (to her own home), a client she has successfully proved not guilty of the crime convicted of. Competent in her chosen career, the author suffers from poor decision making in her personal life. Through her experiences, she recognizes it and rectifies it.

I could not put the book down. Andrea introduces the reader to some of her clients that have been instrumental in solidifying her own choices. Most are residents of death row. This means they have been arrested, charged with murder, a jury trial held, and found guilty. Some are guilty. Some are not. Her job is to provide the best possible outcome for these people. She strongly believes that every life is precious and redemption is always possible.

The pious majority believe that if a person is arrested and charged with a crime, they are probably guilty. This flies in the face of the concept, "Innocent until proven guilty." The burden of proof to make an arrest by law enforcement is not monitored. One woman was charged with the murder of her boyfriend based on one eyewitness who "thought" she saw the woman's car leave the area at a certain hour. The other evidence was a broken fingernail found in her own garbage can. Her own. The detective surmised it broke while she killed her boyfriend. That's it.

Except that isn't really it. The detective did not present all of the evidence found for discovery. For instance, there were a number of other people who possessed the boyfriend's house key. There was a man dressed in a uniform wandering around the streets at the time of the murder and mentioned something about the crime before it was discovered later that morning. He was later polygraphed and failed.

It was such a flimsy case, the defense attorney didn't even try to prove her client was not guilty. Arrogance in an attorney can have disastrous results. She was convicted.

Key points I found fascinating:

* Arrests can be made with insufficient evidence. Oft times the evidence is simply that the accused survived a horrible tragedy (a case of an apartment fire where 7 people died, including a man's wife and child. He was arrested without any evidence).
* Once under arrest, the most unlikely to leave are the truly indigent, particularly African American. If bail is set, they are too poor to make bail.
* Even if innocent, they will stay in jail thus losing their means of support and income.
* There are detectives who do and will use torture to force a confession. One man spent three hours with a typewriter cover tied over his head while being intimidated and tortured for a confession. He never gave it. The detectives claimed he signed a confession but coffee was spilled on it so it was thrown away. Their word was accepted as evidence.
* The client is nearly always over charged. This means the defense attorney has to file motions to get each charge addressed in court with the judge or accept a plea deal, guilty or not.
* Without income or savings, the accused is forced to accept counsel from a public defender who carries far too many cases to effectively defend the client.
* Judges make a huge difference in the way the case will be handled. They are not necessarily represented in the image of Lady Justice, holding a scale with a blindfold. The author has heard her share of bigotry, misogyny, and other prejudices in open court. Judges can choose whether or not to allow exhibits that would exonerate the accused without basis of law.
* It is terrifyingly easy to be accused of a crime and have all of the above conditions for any person in this country.

The Illinois governor, George Ryan, made this statement:

"Three years ago, I was faced with startling information. We had exonerated not one, not two, but thirteen men from death row... The state nearly killed innocent people, nearly injected them with a cocktail of deadly poisons so that they could die in front of witnesses on a gurney in the state's death chamber."

"Thirty-three death row inmates were represented at trial by attorneys who had later been disbarred or at some point suspended from practicing law. Of the more than 160 death row inmates, 35 are African-American defendants who were convicted or condemned to die by all all-white juries. More than two thirds of the inmates on death row are African-American. Forty-six inmates were convicted on the basis of testimony from jailhouse informants."

That, right there, frightens me silly.… (mehr)

Full disclosure: I know Andrea, I've worked with Andrea, I've represented some of the same people, I know and have worked with people she writes about in this book. But I'm going to review this book all the same.

Andrea joined the Cook County (IL) Public Defender's Office at a time when there were very few women trial lawyers, much less criminal defense lawyers. She took a lot of guff from prosecutors, judges and colleagues, but she never let it stop her. By the time she left that office, she was the head of the Homicide Task Force, than which there are, in no small part thanks to Andrea, no better lawyers. She went on to found the Capital Resource Center, representing Illinois' death row inmates in post-conviction proceedings (the Center is now the Post-Conviction Unit of the Office of the State Appellate Defender), and then moved on to clinical work at the University of Michigan and the DePaul University School of Law, where she heads the Center for Justice in Capital Cases.

This is the story of how she came to be "The Angel of Death Row", as she was dubbed by the Chicago Tribune. She talks of her life, her family, and her clients in an easy, conversational style. It's not a book that's heavy on the law; that's not what it's about. It's about people. The people she works with, the people she lives with, the people she represents. The last are the most important. It's so easy to see criminal defendants as "the other"; Andrea helps us (as she has helped juries) see the man or woman, and how they got to be sitting in the defendant's seat. Some of the stories are horrific, some are sad, some are incomprehensible. But they are all stories of human beings whose lives went terribly wrong. Andrea knows that the "why" is as important as the "what" in these stories, and she is indefatigable in conveying that to judges and juries.

Andrea's passion for justice and her anger at injustice and the system that tolerates it are obvious on every page of this book.… (mehr)