Word: prejean
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Those and other legal arguments eventually failed as the Supreme Court steadily narrowed the grounds to block executions. But clemency is rooted in morality as well as the law, and these grounds prompted the Louisiana board of pardons to recommend commuting Prejean's sentence to life imprisonment without parole. And although there were two other executions last week, in Missouri and Texas, it was Prejean's case that inspired protests from Amnesty International and the European Parliament. As Prejean's attorney John Hall argued, "Dalton's lack of control over his behavior is so obvious that it is hardly ennobling...
...credit, Roemer never fled from the responsibility for his decision. The Governor conducted a deathwatch of his own in the hours before the execution, waiting for phone calls from Prejean's lawyers at his desk in the executive mansion. "I'll be here," he said in advance. "Not liking it. But ready to do my duty." Shortly before 10 p.m., attorney Andrea Robinson called Roemer to make her final appeal: "I told the Governor I wasn't there to make legalistic arguments, but that we were killing a child...
Robinson also relayed Prejean's request to speak to Roemer directly. The Governor resisted, saying it was useless, but he soon relented. There is no record of that conversation. Earlier in the week, though, Prejean had explained what he desperately wanted to tell Roemer. "I'd like to have a chance at life," he said in slow, simple sentences. "To live with my mistakes. We all make mistakes in life. Some bigger than others. I'd like to give something back to society. I've changed. There's a whole difference between being...
Hall also spoke with the Governor by phone just after Roemer said goodbye to Prejean. "Roemer did say that he would not be able to sleep at all tonight," the attorney recounted. "But before I could react to what he said, the Governor quickly added, 'Of course, the person having a terrible time tonight was Dalton...
...favorite passage from novelist John Fowles' book The Aristos: "In the whole, nothing is unjust. It may, to this or that individual, be unfortunate." So, in a sense, is capital punishment for both the condemned man and the Governor, who waited for word from Angola Prison that Dalton Prejean had died...