Clive Stafford Smith

Speaker 20:00

Hello, I'm Kirsty Young, and this is a podcast from the Desert Island Discs archive. For rights reasons we've had to shorten the music. The programme was originally broadcast in two thousand and four, and the presenter was Sue Lawley.

Presenter0:30

My castaway this week is a lawyer. The head boy of an English public school, he rejected the opportunity of a university education at home and took himself off to America. He might have been a journalist, but an early encounter with prisoners on death row changed the course of his life. He decided to work in their defence, and having graduated from Columbia Law School, he spent the last 26 years doing just that. He's represented 300 inmates of Death Row, many of whom have become his friends. Always emotionally involved with their plight and a passionate opponent of capital punishment, he's been awarded the OBE and the Lawyer's Lifetime Achievement Award for his work.

Presenter1:09

No one, he believes, should be judged by their worst actions alone. I can see no higher calling, he says. I just like to do this work with these people. He is Clive Stafford Smith. So it's more than a job for you then, Clive, is it? It's a calling, and hence you're not loyally in that you're dispassionate, you are emotionally engaged always with them.

Clive Stafford Smith1:30

Oh, I I always feel bad for people who have Thank God it's Friday on their desks. I'm afraid I have Thank God it's Monday on my desk. Not that that really makes a difference because the weekends merge, but um but it's such a privilege, so much fun in a bizarre way to to represent people for their lives.

Presenter1:46

So you live through the whole experience with them and with their families.

Presenter1:50

Yeah.

Clive Stafford Smith1:51

Well that's true, although I do think sometimes we overrate our own experience. I mean certainly as you're sitting there and someone's getting executed, the lawyer's suffering is not on the same scale as the poor person who's being executed. So it's not quite the same, but but I guess that's the same thing.

Presenter2:04

I'm sure it's not indeed. But nevertheless, y you are with I mean, you actually walk with them to the death chamber, whether it's gas or the electric chair or whatever.

Clive Stafford Smith2:13

Yes, and and that's a very im important part of it. I certainly have walked into the chambers with the people who are about to die. And they actually don't want to be promised they're going to heaven or anything. They want hope, normally. They want to know that perhaps it's not all over yet.

Presenter2:28

But they've they've lost that hope. That's the moment when you haven't won for them this day of execution, isn't it? And you're you've walked towards the

Clive Stafford Smith2:33

Yeah.

Clive Stafford Smith2:34

Not really, not really, because for example, in Larry Lanchard's case we gotta stay for him with fifty eight seconds left before he was going to die, and it was from the US Supreme Court. So even at that last moment, one of the reasons you have to be there is because it might stop.

Presenter2:49

How many times have you done this?

Clive Stafford Smith2:51

I've had six people die.

Presenter2:54

So what happens at that point? You've sometimes, as you say, walked into the chamber with them, you've got eye contact with them, you touch them for the last time, you say goodbye and you back out.

Clive Stafford Smith3:07

Uh I'm not sure I've ever said goodbye to anyone. Actually the the last of my guys who got killed was amazing. He had always had this running joke that if I didn't stay his case, you know, I was no good as a lawyer and so his last words to me were, You're fired and he smiled. And, you know, it was a joke. I've never understood how some human being can have that sort of uh human control at that moment in life.

Presenter3:29

Human

Presenter3:32

Harrowing experience though. And and as I've said, they've become your best friends often, these people, haven't they?

Presenter3:39

You sit and watch.

Presenter3:41

The last.

Clive Stafford Smith3:42

Uh

Presenter3:42

Uh

Clive Stafford Smith3:42

I sit and I'm there until they put the face mask on people. Now, I'm there for my client, I'm there to for them to see me and know that I'm there. I'm not there to watch the ghoulish, nasty stuff they go through afterwards, so I I don't watch after that. I I'm not interested in it.

Presenter3:57

Don't think you should out of cutie.

Clive Stafford Smith3:59

To one no, I don't think so. I mean of course there have been occasions when something's gone horribly wrong and you know you're there so at least you can then try and stop it.

Clive Stafford Smith4:08

Cheerful start to any conversation and that.

Presenter4:09

Any comments?

Presenter4:12

I suppose Death Row, if you like, is a certain kind of desert island anyway. We're sending you to one, but uh not quite as literally dreadful.

Clive Stafford Smith4:19

Well I'm glad you're not going to torture me to death.

Presenter4:20

Glad to be able to do that.

Presenter4:22

Okay. First record you're going to play there. What is it?

Clive Stafford Smith4:25

Well, it's actually ultimately the the the music that tugs at my heartstrings the most. It's Sperminalium by Thomas Talis. Um my wife Emily noted that all the bits of music I chose somehow have something to do with hope. I think that's something deeply psychological in me. And and certainly this is that.

Speaker 44:53

God's words are

Presenter5:41

The opening of Thomas Tallis' Spem in Allium, sung by the choir of King's College, Cambridge, led by Stephen Cleabury. The fascination of your story, Clive Stafford Smith, is why and how you would come to do this work. Why, you know, a public school boy, well heeled boy from Newmarket ends up.

Presenter5:58

uh ministering to the inmates of death row. You say that you've always been, and they're your words, totally infatuated with the death sentence as an issue. When did that infatuation begin?

Clive Stafford Smith6:10

Well, I suppose we all have our bigotries about one thing or the other, and I was very young when it first struck me and, you know, a bit of it's apocryphal, isn't it? I mean, when one tries to reconstruct life, but I do remember seeing a picture of uh Joan of Arc being burnt at the stake.

Clive Stafford Smith6:25

And, you know, up till that point I was a good British schoolboy and I thought, you know, torturing French people was a good idea.

Clive Stafford Smith6:31

But then you see this young Frenchwoman who looks like my sister Mary being burned up and you think this is really not a nice thing to do.

Clive Stafford Smith6:39

And I remember that as a beginning and then later on I was writing a paper at Radley. Your public school. Radley College, yes. I was writing what I thought was a history paper about the death penalty and it came as a great shock to me as a sixteen year old that the Americans were still killing each other.

Clive Stafford Smith6:55

And, you know, I thought I'd go straighten up the Americans and that was it.

Presenter6:59

You did you resolve to do exactly that then, did you?

Clive Stafford Smith7:01

Oh yes. And of course so many things in life are coincidence. I then got offered some

Clive Stafford Smith7:06

Place to go study in America.

Presenter7:07

But when you got there and you were nineteen years old where are we now, we're in the late seventies you you engineered yourself on to death row.

Clive Stafford Smith7:17

Yeah, I uh I was in college there and I wanted to be a journalist and so I went to work with some folk about the death penalty and and I was useless for anything. I was just nineteen so they sent me to visit the people on death row which I did for six months. And it it came as another huge shock to me that this was not theoretical anymore, this death penalty thing. And it was also astounding to me that in the richest country in the world if you were on death row you had no right to a lawyer.

Clive Stafford Smith7:43

And so you were meant to represent yourself and there were all these people on death row who were not well educated, couldn't possibly do that.

Presenter7:51

Couldn't have a lawyer because they're deemed to have exhausted the system and, you know, you can't just perpetuate.

Clive Stafford Smith7:55

And so at that point I thought I should uh sink even lower in the public estimation than being a journalist and become a lawyer and help them out.

Presenter8:14

So y I mean I quoted you in the introduction as saying it was a calling. Would you say it was?

Clive Stafford Smith8:19

Oh yes, absolutely. I I don't know who was calling but that I I was absolutely committed to doing that and I'm so grateful it's been wonderful.

Presenter8:29

Record number two.

Clive Stafford Smith8:31

The second one is a song by Sophie B. Hawkins. Every death penalty trial I've ever done, I've had a song for the trial that late at night I listen to over and over again, try to calm down, distill my thoughts, and try to go to sleep. And actually this one's called As I Lay Me Down. I was listening to this in Sabrina Butler's case. Sabrina was a young woman who was on death row for six years for allegedly killing her child. We got her a new trial and thankfully it had a happy ending and she was acquitted and went to marry her jailer and she's now happily out.

Speaker 49:03

I lay me down to sleep.

Speaker 49:07

Sideway.

Speaker 49:09

You are home me, dear.

Speaker 49:13

No one far away I'll whisper your name

Speaker 49:18

Into the sky

Speaker 49:21

I'll wake up happy.

Speaker 49:24

More dust in that side

Presenter9:31

Sophie B. Hawkins and As I Lay Me Down. Um what was your family's reaction to your chosen career, Clive? I can't think that they would condone it. There must have been short.

Clive Stafford Smith9:40

I think they were utterly non-plussed. I mean, the the concept of going off to America in the first place and then all this death penalty stuff. And not been a big political issue in Fordham in Cambridgeshire for a long time, I think the death penalty. But over the years, you know, I I love my parents dearly and both of them have become very vociferous anti-death penalty campaigners in Cambridgeshire. It may not be terribly necessary, but I'm proud of'em.

Presenter10:03

May not be taken.

Presenter10:05

But Cambridgeshire being where you were brought up, on a stud farm, I understand. Give me a sort of picture of it.

Clive Stafford Smith10:09

Give me

Clive Stafford Smith10:11

Oh, well, a fantastic place, chiefly park studd, uh outside Newmarket and, you know, incredibly unfair on one level that someone can be brought up in a place that's that beautiful and have three hundred acres to roam around wreaking havoc among the wildlife.

Presenter10:17

You know.

Speaker 210:17

Yeah.

Presenter10:17

Hmm.

Speaker 210:18

Encryption.

Speaker 210:19

Burn

Clive Stafford Smith10:26

as a child, but my goodness, and it it was wonderful. And it was actually incredibly important to me that ultimately we lost the stud, because I can't imagine living in that sort of privilege all your life. I think it would be it would destroy it. You lost it. The family lost it in the in the seventies, you know, when when it was very difficult to keep studs going, horse racing, it's a rich person's business, isn't it?

Presenter10:43

In the seventies, you know.

Speaker 210:44

Uh

Presenter10:49

So the business went wrong.

Clive Stafford Smith10:50

Yeah, it went the business went south and I think it's the best thing that happened to any of us kids.

Presenter10:56

You wanted to be rid of this privilege, is what you seem to be saying.

Clive Stafford Smith10:59

I mean, can you imagine? Oh, you're being stuck running a stud or or something like that for your life.

Clive Stafford Smith11:05

It would be nothing like the life I've been lucky enough to have, and so I'm so grateful it happened.

Presenter11:10

But it was an idyllic childhood. It was a happy childhood. You were one of three. You were the youngest of three. Were you spoiled, much loved, all those things?

Clive Stafford Smith11:18

Of course I was spoiled. Being the youngest is very important. I've always thought that in our family it was the perfect structure. My brother Mark is the oldest, so he gets spoiled. Mary's the middle one, so she's the only girl she gets spoiled. I'm the youngest, I get horribly spoiled.

Presenter11:23

Yeah.

Presenter11:30

But there seem to have been some shadows in in in this childhood, because y at some point you you arrive at again the the view that I quoted in my introduction to you is that that people should not be judged by their worst acts alone. Somehow something in your childhood informed how you should judge other people.

Clive Stafford Smith11:49

Well, I think that um you know, for example, when I was quite young my parents divorced and we lost the stud, and many people look at that as, you know, a family tragedy or whatever. Over the years I've come to look at that very differently. I think um those things sometimes are are absolutely for the best.

Presenter12:05

Yes, except that losing a business or getting a divorce is not a criminal act. I mean, uh the analogy falls down, doesn't it? If you're gonna compare those kinds of things that go wrong in life with committing a murder or a rape.

Clive Stafford Smith12:12

No.

Clive Stafford Smith12:19

Well, so it doesn't actually, because in a sense, you know, if you think about the thing you're most ashamed of in life, it's actually not a criminal offence. We don't criminalise the really nasty things we do to our brothers and sisters. And so I think there is a parallel. And if we love people, we look for the explanation instead of just figuring out how to condemn them. Pickle number three.

Clive Stafford Smith12:40

Number three, I'm afraid, probably reflects my public school days. It's from a film called Lagan, which is about the perfidious English taxing the Indians. And the great thing about this film is it goes on for four hours, and it's a cricket match. And when I was at school, I've spent a large amount of my dissolute youth playing cricket. And this is a track from a film about the English losing a cricket match against the Indians who therefore didn't have to pay taxes for three years.

Speaker 413:12

Hari Santika Hey.

Speaker 413:16

Sadhu Kahe

Speaker 413:22

I'm not sure if I can do it.

Speaker 413:31

Anthume tit usi kirai.

Presenter13:39

So, as we say, very establishment background, middle-class cricket, public school, decent parents, all the rest of it. But then you follow your star to America and you decide to become a lawyer, not a journalist, and you end up aged 24 working for a practice called the Southern Prisoners' Defence Committee with people who inhabit Death Row. I'm sure you must remember your first case.

Clive Stafford Smith14:05

My first trial, I remember, it was pretty horrifying. I barely knew my way to the court house, and uh someone let me try a death penalty case. It was pretty shocking.

Presenter14:15

Did you win?

Clive Stafford Smith14:15

Ah, no poor old John Pope got sentenced to death. I'm glad we got it reversed in the long run and got him off. But at the time oh my goodness I look back in total horror at the things I did in that trial.

Presenter14:26

What did you do?

Clive Stafford Smith14:28

Well, several things. I mean, for example, I was doing the closing argument at the penalty phase about why they shouldn't kill him to this bunch of jurors who were looking very uninterested, and I was quoting Shakespeare at them because, of course, you know, that's where I came from. The quality of mercy is not strained, it droppeth as the gentle rain from heaven. And a local lawyer, this guy called Bobby Lee Cook, told me later, Man, you can't ever attribute anything to an Englishman. There's a bunch of Scottish people up here, you can't do that. He said, I used that quote one time myself in a death penalty case, and I said, I think it was in the book of Job I read, and then launched into the same quote.

Presenter15:03

So it's the Bible, it's okay.

Clive Stafford Smith15:04

Definitely the rival.

Presenter15:06

But how were you treated? I mean, again, you would have cut a rather strange figure in this southern court, wouldn't you?

Clive Stafford Smith15:12

Totally. I cut a strange figure in many ways in that case because the prosecutor told me later that the big issue from their perspective in the trial was whether my trousers were going to split. But at the time it did split, during closing argument, in fact, and I had to back away from the podium so no one could see. Another of my many, many disasters in John's case.

Presenter15:28

And how the

Presenter15:30

But what you're saying without any qualifications at all is that racism is rife and at work. This was then back in the early 80s. What about now?

Clive Stafford Smith15:40

Well, racism and incompetence. I was incompetent then. But racism, of course, hugely an issue, and of course it is today. And and I was just doing a case in Louisiana where I'm representing a young sixteen year old kid and the prosecutor comes up to my client, um Lawrence Jacobs and says,

Presenter15:59

It's a black kid?

Clive Stafford Smith15:59

The black kid, uh and the prosecutor, a white guy in a very racist parish. And the guy comes up to Lawrence and says, Boy, we're gonna hang you But at the same time the prosecutors also wore lynch mob ties, ties with lynch nooses on'em. And it it's amazing how overt things are even in the twenty first century.

Presenter16:20

And nobody says a word.

Clive Stafford Smith16:21

Oh, they do. We said a word. We got'em in the New York Times for it. But the people in the local community tend not to say a word.

Presenter16:29

Record number four.

Clive Stafford Smith16:30

Number four would be Still by Macy Gray. And again, this is a song that very much relates for me to a client. It was about the the woman who stays with her abusive husband and I represented a guy called Scotty Lloyd whose mum is lovely, but his mum has a terrible complex that she stayed with her abusive husband. Dad used to play Russian roulette with him, put a gun to their head and pull the trigger just for fun. And this song reminds me a bit of that and the strength of Scotty's mum, but also the catastrophe of her staying with the dad.

Speaker 417:05

Somehow get me back, why?

Speaker 417:11

Say bye-bye.

Speaker 417:15

And all that makes me cry.

Speaker 417:22

I still let up like a caliber when it calls me alive.

Speaker 417:28

A steel down like a can have a handle every time we charge

Presenter17:35

Macy Gray and Still. The BBC made a compelling documentary back in the late 80s about you and your then client on death row, Edward Earl Johnson. It was called Fourteen Days in May and it followed exactly that, the 14 Days that led eventually to his death. You in the gas chamber, you didn't get him a stay of execution. We saw the rise and fall of the hope. Well, it rarely rose, really, the hope, did it?

Clive Stafford Smith17:58

Well, it it actually it did for me. It was the first case I lost, the first client I lost. And, you know, arrogant youth that I was, I thought we didn't have a prayer of losing. This was going to be easy. I mean, the case was such a scandal. Uh and I've got to say I didn't believe they were going to go through with it any more than Edward did at the time.

Presenter18:15

But the thing one felt watching it was, you know, if this guy was innocent and in the end it would seem that he it is now accepted by legal observers that he was innocent, why was he not protesting his innocence more loudly? I mean d do these people just get cowed by the system, get institutionalised? Why wasn't he saying, stop, I'm innocent? He never said that once in that program.

Clive Stafford Smith18:37

You know, so so much of this. I learnt so much from that. And, you know, one of the tragedies is Edward died because I knew so little. And, you know, I talked to a woman who was with him at the time of the crime. And I said, why didn't you go and tell someone? And she said, I did. I told the police and they told me to mind my own business. And the problem for a young African American in deepest Mississippi is who you're going to call. So there is a hopelessness, which is why it's so important that we go help.

Presenter19:06

So he was accused of of killing a white man, and not just a white man, he was a deputy marshal, wasn't he? So are you saying that that in in such a state with the capital S there is no hope for you if you're a black guy who s stands accused of such a crime?

Clive Stafford Smith19:20

Oh, there's every hope for you if you get power on your side and if you get and that's what lawyers are about. Unfortunately for Edward, at the time of his trial, his lawyer never went to the county where the crime took place and didn't do any investigation.

Presenter19:31

So you were just dealing with his appeal, were you?

Clive Stafford Smith19:33

I was dealing with the last three weeks of his appeal and you know I was twenty-seven, knew nothing and you know I look back today in total horror at what I didn't do for Edward.

Presenter19:43

Guilt?

Clive Stafford Smith19:44

For me, oh yes, of course, absolutely, very good motivator.

Presenter19:47

But you went back and you discovered that he was innocent. And I want to talk to you about that in a moment. But let's just pause for your next piece of music, which is number five.

Clive Stafford Smith19:56

Well, this is very much about Edward. I drove back after watching him die in the gas chamber.

Clive Stafford Smith20:03

I almost killed myself that night because I was very, very upset. And uh and I remember hearing it gets me emotional even today um listening to Peter Gabriel.

Clive Stafford Smith20:13

On the radio, and uh he was singing Biko, you can blow out a candle, but you can't blow out the fire.

Clive Stafford Smith20:21

And yeah, I didn't know then, but actually just in out of the depths of that tragedy came many, many good things. I mean, Lifelines, where hundreds and hundreds of British people began writing to folk on death row, giving them some dignity. Reprieve, the uh charity that we have fighting the death penalty, came out of that.

Clive Stafford Smith20:40

So and you know Fourteen Days in May the the the film that was made so there were many positive things but by God at the time there was nothing positive.

Speaker 420:50

I be cold.

Speaker 420:52

Because the man is dead.

Speaker 421:10

Oh

Speaker 421:11

Watching now

Presenter21:16

Uh Uh

Presenter21:18

Peter Gabriel and Biko, the music you played going home from that execution, um, just after midnight. Why do they always execute people at midnight?

Clive Stafford Smith21:27

It's strange, isn't it? I mean, I think it's ultimately because we are deeply and profoundly troubled by what we're doing, so we don't want to do it in the light of day. The only times that hasn't been true is when they want to save overtime money by doing it earlier so they don't have to pay the guards so much, which amuses me too.

Presenter21:44

Yeah.

Presenter21:45

The uh the BBC uh came back to Mississippi a year later, um, after a year after Edward Earl was gassed, and you and the film crew set out to find the man whom everyone was saying really had done it, and you found him, didn't you?

Clive Stafford Smith21:57

Yes, it was a strange experience. I think the point of that film was was more to exonerate Edward than to put someone else in prison. I mean, we always say we fight uh for the living and pray for the dead, but it's actually very important sometimes to go back and represent the dead.

Presenter22:14

Sure. But it was an unusual situation for you, wasn't it? Because you hadn't been on the investigative trail after the event, as it were.

Presenter22:21

Here you were with a guy who might have done it, but you did you do anything about reporting him to the police? Did you?

Clive Stafford Smith22:26

No, certainly not. No, certainly not. And you know, it j we'd be total hypocrites, wouldn't we, if we said of folk, we're all better than the worst thing we ever did, and then we turn around to the guy who we don't like because my Edward got killed on his back and say, Well, I'm gonna hate you because of the worst thing that you did.

Presenter22:44

But Clive, do you believe that anybody should take responsibility for the crimes that they commit?

Clive Stafford Smith22:51

It's one thing to say that you should recognize what you've done and you shouldn't do it in the future and you should apologize for it and this, that and the other. It's another thing to say that responsibility entails being, you know, put in prison, being executed or whatever. I don't believe in that.

Presenter23:06

So with the death penalty apart, do you think that people should be made to pay for their crimes?

Clive Stafford Smith23:11

It's certainly not. No, and I'm not sure.

Presenter23:13

So what well I mean, what what's the answer? What should society do about its muggers and its murderers and its rapists?

Clive Stafford Smith23:20

I think the first thing we should do is that we should say, if that was my brother or sister, what would I do there? And certainly if it was my brother or sister who did something like that, I my response would be to immediately be asking why it happened and how to make sure it doesn't happen in the future, instead of creating this system

Presenter23:37

But how do you do that?

Clive Stafford Smith23:39

It's it's

Presenter23:39

You've got to confine them in some way, haven't you? You've got to...

Clive Stafford Smith23:43

Actually you don't. No, you don't. In many there are only a few people we do have to confine. The people we have to confine are those who are genuinely dangerous to themselves or others. And that that's a very small group of the people we currently confine.

Presenter23:54

So if you don't put people in prison, what do you do with them?

Clive Stafford Smith23:57

Take burglars, for example. I am in favour of what the New Zealanders do, for example, restorative justice, where those folk are forced to go through a programme to learn what they did to the victims, and the victims have a chance to meet the people who victimized them. I think we abuse the prison system in a ghastly way that one day will come back and be written in the history books as as the nightmare of the twentieth and twenty-first century.

Presenter24:26

Next piece of music.

Clive Stafford Smith24:28

The next piece of music is considerably less serious than that. It's the Proclaimers Sunshine on Leith. Emily and I have this little predilection for following the Proclaimers around. This is not perhaps the most profound music in the world, but I love it, so let's play.

Speaker 424:48

While the chief

Speaker 424:51

Sunshine on me

Speaker 424:56

Off that candy.

Speaker 424:58

For this one

Speaker 425:01

You buy the

Speaker 425:03

Foundation

Speaker 425:07

Yeah.

Presenter25:12

Proclaimers and sunshine on Leith. You've obviously driven yourself hard, Clive, over the years, over the past quarter of a century, living, breathing and eating.

Clive Stafford Smith25:20

A quarter of a century sounds horrific. Can we say twenty-five years? It doesn't sound like a certain amount of time.

Presenter25:22

Terrific. Can't we say twenty-five years? Twenty-six years, I think it is. But you know, with these people on death row.

Presenter25:29

It sounds to me because you're so emotionally engaged with them, you you I mean, do you feel guilty when you relax and put your feet up, go to the cinema? I mean, it must infect your whole life.

Clive Stafford Smith25:38

Well, it certainly infects your whole life. I'm not sure if I feel guilty going to the cinema. It it's a bit the converse, that I really do love doing the work. Um

Presenter25:47

And you know, it's not.

Clive Stafford Smith25:48

That's it.

Clive Stafford Smith25:50

If it is the last four days. I mean, there's no two ways about it. That's if there's only fourteen days left, you you don't do that. But you know, the other side of it is and I'm a little terrified about not having the experience where you have clients who you're very close to emotionally, because that's what's so important about it. These are not legal theories, these aren't issues of objectivity, they're issues of human beings, and I couldn't imagine having a job where you don't have that sort of relationship.

Speaker 425:57

Hmm.

Presenter26:19

But I mean it is a very particular kind of job and I I wonder whether some people listening might

Presenter26:26

find it a little bit suspicious that there's an element of, oh, I don't know, wanting to be close to such people, wanting always to work with them, having it infect your life in that way, whether there isn't something

Presenter26:39

Is the word unhealthy? I mean, is it voyeuristic? What is it?

Clive Stafford Smith26:41

Floyd.

Clive Stafford Smith26:42

Certainly not voyeuristic. And one thing that one has to always remember is this. You know, we have these prejudices about the people we call criminals. If you would presuppose for one second that there are all these innocent people, then I think that tends to dissolve a bit of this voyeuristic thing. It's about.

Speaker 226:50

If

Clive Stafford Smith26:58

preventing the hatred of society from um traumatizing the individual.

Presenter27:04

Record number seven.

Clive Stafford Smith27:05

It's You Sexy Thing by Hot Chocolate. And there's a story behind it and Emily has done such wonderful work for innocent people who are facing life in prison, life without the possibility of parole rather than the death penalty. And after 27 and a half years, she got a guy called Greg Bright out. And so Emily was able to prove he was innocent. And every year I have a birthday party, a vastly self-congratulatory thing where I make people come and dance to bad music.

Clive Stafford Smith27:35

And so Greg had just got out of prison after twenty-seven and a half years. And he hadn't got up, but when we got to this old music that he remembered from before they locked him up, Greg, six foot nine, African American guy, gets up and starts doing the electric slide. And it's that sort of memory I would want to have on Desert Island if you lock me up there.

Speaker 427:54

I believe in Marco

Speaker 428:06

Said you came along

Speaker 428:09

You sex a thing

Presenter28:24

Chocolate and you sexy thing. So now you're back working in Britain, Clive, and um taking up the cases of prisoners held in Guantanamo Bay. Can you do that for me?

Clive Stafford Smith28:34

Oh, yes. Um, of course the US won't let you go to Cuba anyhow to visit the clients, so you can do it from London or Dorset as easily as you can from Louisiana.

Presenter28:37

Yeah.

Presenter28:43

You said it it's a logical extension of your your

Presenter28:47

Death row work that Guantanamo Bay is death penalty to the power of ten. How's that?

Clive Stafford Smith28:52

Well, of course, they they want to impose the death penalty in Guantanamo Bay. But what it's really all about I mean you know when you're in the execution chamber and they're killing somebody, it's all about uh the society looking at someone and wanting to hate them so much um and to avoid the rest of their problems in life. And sadly Guantanamo Bay is that. I mean the myth that locking people up in Cuba uh is going to somehow solve the problem of world terrorism is just ridiculous. So and it seems to me whenever the world hates a group of people passionately, they're almost certainly wrong and that we need to intervene and stop it.

Presenter29:28

Your infatuation, and that was your word, with the death penalty issue, has obviously um

Presenter29:34

infected everything that you have done. Has it exhausted you? I mean, this emotional engagement we've been talking about, has it drained you?

Clive Stafford Smith29:41

Oh, I I I don't doubt that. I think that's very true. It's it's very tiring and um certainly my fast bowling at cricket is not going to be what it used to be.

Presenter29:51

And does it haunt you?

Presenter29:53

Mm-hmm.

Clive Stafford Smith29:53

You know, I always used to think that one could try and put that aside and uh focus on the suffering of others rather than yourself until they killed Nicky Ingram. And Nicky and I were born in the same hospital in Cambridge and I represented him for twelve years.

Clive Stafford Smith30:08

And when they killed Nikki it had such an impact on me, I got on the next plane home and sat in a pub for a couple of weeks trying to get over it.

Presenter30:16

Hold you still?

Clive Stafford Smith30:17

Oh, certainly. Close your eyes. I can see his shaved head in stark black and white contrast in front of me every time I close my eyes. Yeah.

Clive Stafford Smith30:28

Last record.

Clive Stafford Smith30:29

Well thank goodness we can get away from that stuff and get on to some truly tasteless music. Most of my friends and people who like me and are trying to avoid me ruining my reputation forever tried to talk me out of having ABBA on this, although I would be totally dishonest to myself. And every party I have begins and ends with Dancing Queen. I don't like to refer to myself that way. But Dancing Queen is one of my favourites and we'll close out with that.

Presenter31:22

Abba and Dancing Queen. So if you could only take one of those eight records, Clive, which one would you take?

Clive Stafford Smith31:28

Oh, that's sort of hard. I b because you'd ha be tugged between memories and music. I think I would still take Sperminalium, Hope in Everything by Talis, because it's very long and uh and so it just pulls all my heart strings.

Presenter31:42

And your book as well as the Bible and Shakespeare.

Clive Stafford Smith31:45

Well, I I I think that would reflect my sort of pathetic optimism, because I'd expect to get off your blasted island um and I'd want to come off it having learned some things. So I would actually take uh the Koran both in Arabic and English, so I could learn Arabic as well. So I'd expect to get off the desert island and be fluent as well as having benefited from reading the book.

Presenter32:07

Yeah.

Clive Stafford Smith32:07

And your luxury.

Clive Stafford Smith32:09

Well, with my luxury, I'm told that I can't uh classify Emily, my wife, as a luxury, or even my dog Melpamine, the golden retriever. So, ultimately, I suppose I would probably like to take my Mac computer. I don't mean to cheat and have lots of music on it, but uh but I would at least be able to use it to write endless books that I could inflict on the world when I get off the island.

Presenter32:31

About guess what?

Clive Stafford Smith32:32

Oh, I imagine a few would be about the death penalty, and a little bit about Guantanamo.

Presenter32:38

Clive Stafford-Smith, thank you very much indeed for letting us hear your Desert Island discs.

Clive Stafford Smith32:41

Thank you very much.

Speaker 232:49

You've been listening to a podcast from the Desert Islandists archive. For more podcasts, please visit bbc.co.uk/slash radio four.