By Bernard Thompson
Appeared in The Big
Issue in Scotland, Issue 361
In a recent poll, conducted for The Advocate newspaper in Louisiana, most respondents were said to believe that the state had a poor reputation amongst outsiders in the USA.
More importantly, the majority of Louisianans seemed to care that their homeland had a bad reputation. The reasons, those polled seemed to indicate, were the same as those given by three big businesses that had chosen not to locate there: "dirty politics, bad schools and widespread poverty."
It is no secret that life is "different" in America's deep south. In a region in which the South's role in the American Civil War is still often looked on as being about defending a preferred way of life, it may not be surprising that one of the state's newspapers has a section devoted to desegregation matters.
But to outsiders who happen to take an interest, the most important issue might relate to what is not covered in the press. Education features highly as do claims of great strides in working towards racial harmony and endless column inches are devoted to sports from high-school level upwards. However, a foreigner looking in might be deceived into believing that certain other things aren't happening - either that or they just aren't news.
The name, Joe Ward, for example doesn't seem to feature much on the news pages of his local papers. And why should it? Not, obviously, because he is one of numerous Americans facing trial for murder in a case that the local District Attorney hopes will end in a conviction and death sentence.
Nor does the fact that Ward, accused of murdering Christina Smith, a 25 year-old schoolteacher is, by any reasonable standards, mentally handicapped, having a mental age of eight. And the mere issue of Ward's age - he was 17 at the time of the crime he is accused of - is of no great concern to ordinary Louisianans.
Granted, international law expressly prohibits executing those convicted of crimes committed while under the age of 18 but this seems to be of little concern to the ordinary man or woman in the streets of Louisiana. After all, if you're old enough to do the crime, you're old enough to do the time. At least, that seems to be the prevailing opinion in the area.
That is an attitude that causes immense frustration to Clive Stafford Smith. The English-born son of a Cambridge University lecturer has spent 18 years representing poverty-stricken defendants in capital trials in Louisiana.
Asked what motivated him to take such an extreme career path, his answer is: "Ignorance. I didn't even know that countries still had the death penalty until I was 16. It came as a shock to me when I learned that it was going on in the United States. I wanted to put a stop to it."
In 1999, he founded the charity, Reprieve, to represent the mostly poor and black defendants capital cases and eventually help bring an end to the death penalty altogether.
That decision eventually brought him into contact with Joe Ward but not without the aid of some tragic circumstances. As an adolescent with no history of violence, Ward was convicted of stealing his mother's car.
His punishment was incarceration in the Tallulah Correctional Centre for Youth, a facility once described in the New York Times as "so rife with brutality, cronyism and neglect that many legal experts say it is the worst in the nation". There he also met Robert Smith, the victim's brother and Ward's co-accused in the crime.
Stafford Smith is in no doubt as to the effect that Ward's imprisonment had on him. He says of his client's treatment, "Joe was raped and beaten in Tallulah CCY. He had been sent there for a non-violent offence - stealing his mother's car.
"While he was there, he suffered horrendous abuse in one of the most notorious correctional facilities in the USA. If a parent was guilty of that type of abuse, they would be faced with criminal prosecution. But the State can subject a child to that kind of treatment and no-one takes responsibility for the consequences."
Released six months before Christina Smith's death, Ward was clearly scarred by his experiences. As Stafford Smith, who intends to enter a plea of not guilty, says, "I think we're going to prove that Joe was suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder at the time of the crime he is accused of."
Nonetheless, the practice of seeking the death penalty for child offenders prevails in the United States. In the past ten years only two other countries have executed child offenders. The USA shares that distinction with the Democratic Republic of the Congo, in which one juvenile convict has been put to death and Iran with three similar executions.
Eight such killings have taken place in the USA, where there are more than 80 prisoners on death row for crimes committed at the ages of 16 or 17. Two of these, Cedric Howard and Adam Comeaux, were prosecuted in Ward's home of Rapides Parish, which has a population of 130,000.
Ward's case has been highlighted by Amnesty International. One of the organisation's two State Death Penalty Abolition Coordinators for Louisiana, Rosanne Adderley, is charged with bringing the issues in the Ward case to public attention. She explains, "Amnesty International opposes the death penalty in all circumstances – no exceptions – referencing the Universal Declaration of Human Rights wherein, even people convicted of crimes have a right to life."
However, Amnesty does pay particular attention to cases with special circumstances. With regard to sentencing child offenders to death, Adderley puts Amnesty's case saying: "The organisation readily focuses on incremental steps towards our ultimate goal. The imposition of the death penalty on anyone is a gross human rights violation, one that is certainly compounded in the case of child offenders or offenders who suffered from mental disabilities.
"Psychologists and psychiatrists have mountains of evidence relating to the development of children and adolescents and their understanding of their actions. Many experts have demonstrated that young people's thought processes and the circumstances under which children commit even horrible acts are different from those of adults."
She goes on, "It is also true that the potential for rehabilitation of youthful offenders offers a strong argument against the over simplified slogan about 'adult punishment for adult crimes'. As a juvenile, Ward clearly had much stacked against him. Of course, this would not excuse his alleged crime but it certainly challenges the idea that he should be eligible for the death penalty even under the standards suggested by its advocates."
Amnesty often recommends that members and sympathisers write to key international figures, expressing concern over the issues, and the Joe Ward case is no exception.
If some might be sceptical about the effectiveness of such campaigns, Clive Stafford Smith is in no doubt about just how important a contribution they can make: "Letter writing campaigns such as Amnesty's are very helpful. People need to see that the outside world doesn't like what they're doing.
"In Joe's case, The District Attorney received a raft of letters and faxes and that had an effect on him - it showed that there was a level of concern about this case that he hadn't been aware of."
But Stafford Smith urges that people who share his concerns over the issue go one step further. "As well as taking part in the sort of letter-writing campaigns suggested by Amnesty International," he says, "we need people to write to the accused. It is immensely comforting for people on death row to know that people out there are concerned about them."
That is how Stafford Smith, who faces real dangers in the heartland of the Ku Klux Klan - "Most people are quite nice - I've only been shot at a couple of times." -believes that ordinary people can make a real difference.
Both Rosanne Adderley and Clive Stafford Smith remain consistent about a key point: in being opposed to the death penalty, especially for juveniles, they are not seeking to diminish the seriousness of the crimes of which Joe Ward and others stand accused.
Rather, they defend an issue that is at the heart of most people's understanding of morality as well as International Law - the Right to Life. In all conscience, that is difficult to argue against.
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