The Kind of Class Everyone Should Attend

by Laura Caldwell

Dick Devine, the former Cook County State's Attorney, is now a law professor at Loyola University Chicago School of Law. In particular, Dick is teaching a death penalty seminar, which I have been fortunate enough to audit. As the former prosecutor, some might assume Professor Devine is a dogged proponent of the death penalty and that he might push his views on the students. On the contrary, Devine understands the myriad issues surrounding the death penalty. He's taken great pains to probe the topic from every angle and has ensured that the speakers who attend class weekly are representative of the wide range of philosophical, emotional, legal, practical and intellectual views about capital punishment.

One of the classes pitted a current state's attorney who has frequently sought the death penalty with a staunch opponent, Rob Warden of Northwestern's Center on Wrongful Convictions. I don't know how else to describe the debate except to say that it was an intellectual cage match between two learned and passionate people. The class should have been held outside the Acropolis.

Professor Devine has also invited victims' families who have had loved-ones killed. Some strictly believed in the death penalty, others are working to oppose it. Also speaking to the class was Scott Turow, the writer, who as a former federal prosecutor felt the death penalty was "an ugly necessity," but is now an opponent of capital punishment. Numerous other attorneys spoke including those who had worked on the John Wayne Gacy and Richard Speck cases and many others where the death penalty was imposed or sought. Devine even invited jurors who decided a capital case and made the agonizing decision on whether or not someone should be put to death.

I continue to think of a couple of things as I attend this class. One, I'm learning so much more now that I don't have to memorize anything or write a paper. Two, this is the kind class I wish everyone could attend—one with honest, frank, emotional discussions about issues in our culture and our society with view points from every possible person, where concepts, ramifications, feelings and philosophies are widely discussed and where students are ultimately left to their own devices in terms of their thinking.

by Laura Caldwell

Last week I toured Stateville Correctional Center, a maximum security men's penitentiary in Joliet, Iillinois. I went with my law students so we could better understand our Life After Innocence clients who have been wrongfully convicted, many of whom were imprisoned at Stateville for decades before proving their innocence. As a writer, there was an added bonus for me because the background of a minor character in my new book includes imprisonment and execution at Stateville.

The long debated question, "Should you write what you know?" has been by batted around authors forever. I have always been firm in my answer: certainly, it helps to write what you know, but when you can't? Do the research. It's a close second. I've written books about Russia based on talking to locals and studying maps and guidebooks. I've written about a member of a covert op in Vietnam after reading books and interviewing men in the same position.

Now that I've spent five hours in Stateville, many of those hours in the general population of prisoners, I could write what I know, I suppose. I can tell you what it looked like to stand in a room painted powderish green with 4 floors of cages (or "cells" if you want a nicer, cleaner word). I could tell you what it would look like to watch one man in his cell urinate while we stood a foot outside and our guard/guide spoke about prison procedure. I can tell you what it looked like to watch another man do sit ups, to hear another prisoner hurl insults at my law students (surely those weren't meant for me). I can tell you what it looked like when one of my law students waved at someone on the fourth tier, and what it sounded like when a chorus of shouts, hoots and lewd screams erupted.

We can tell you what we saw when we walked in the "round house", the only round house prison left in the world. The room was cement and steel gray; 5 floors of cages, circling around a guard station in the middle, shotguns at the ready. Prisoners threw themselves against the bars of their cells or the plastic that had been put there to protect guards from urination or spitting. I can describe the madness in the eyes of some as they watched us, free, standing and observing them as if in a zoo.

I can tell you what it was like to walk into the death chamber - the kleig lights making it look like a tiny stage, the exhaust fan with mint green paint chips hanging from it, remnants of days when executions were done by electrocution. Silver brackets hung on the wall, ready to be adorned with IVs and used for lethal injections. Despite a moratorium on executions in Illinois, the red phone was still on the wall, awaiting a call from the governor to halt everything. And a few steps down and visible through a Plexiglas wall was the gallery. Where people could watch someone else be killed.

I can describe all these things in more detail. I will in my future book. But I don't know if I will ever be able to describe the energy of the place, the feeling of being in that round house, the vibrations that coursed through our bodies as we stood in the death chamber. How do you write those feelings? I suppose I "know" them now. But I can't find the words. "Jumping out of my skin" is way overused. So I need some suggestions. Got any? To use another cliche, I'm all ears.