Tuning in…
Tuning in…
Castaway
1 appearance
Lawyer and passionate opponent of capital punishment who has represented 300 Death Row inmates.
On the island
Eight records
Spem in aliumFavourite
Choir of King's College, Cambridge
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.
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.
A. R. Rahman, Alka Yagnik, Udit Narayan and Sukhwinder Singh
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.
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.
Well, this is very much about Edward. I drove back after watching him die in the gas chamber. 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. On the radio, and uh he was singing Biko, you can blow out a candle, but you can't blow out the fire.
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.
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.
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.
In conversation
Presenter asks
5:58When did that infatuation [with the death sentence] begin?
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. 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. 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. And I remember that as a beginning and then later on I was writing a paper at Radley... it came as a great shock to me as a sixteen year old that the Americans were still killing each other.
Presenter asks
9:31What was your family's reaction to your chosen career?
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... 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.
Presenter asks
18:15Why wasn't [Edward Earl Johnson] saying, stop, I'm innocent?
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.
The keepsakes
The book
I would actually take uh the Koran both in Arabic and English, so I could learn Arabic as well.
The luxury
I would probably like to take my Mac computer. ... 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.
Presenter asks
22:44Do you believe that anybody should take responsibility for the crimes that they commit?
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.
Presenter asks
23:13What should society do about its muggers and its murderers and its rapists?
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
Presenter asks
29:51Does [your work] haunt you?
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. 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... 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.
“I've never understood how some human being can have that sort of uh human control at that moment in life.”
“If we love people, we look for the explanation instead of just figuring out how to condemn 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.”
“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.”