Surely everyone in the Scottish parliament thinks it?s bad to execute an innocent Scot?

CLIVE Stafford Smith lives in the belly of the very beast he wants to destroy. He wakes up every morning, hops in his car and goes to court to tell the US justice system that it is rotten to the core. Tomorrow, Stafford Smith, an English-born attorney who lives in Louisiana, is going to drop in on the Scottish parliament and tell them just how rotten the US justice system is ? and then he?s going to ask them to do something about it. He?s going to ask them to fight for a fellow Scot, Kenny Richey, who is on death row in Ohio for a crime that nobody now really believes he committed. Stafford Smith will detail the case for Richey?s innocence to MSPs and then ask each of them to sign a legal document to be lodged with the Ohio supreme court supporting Richey.

The legal document is known as an amicus curiae (friend of the court). It is lodged by someone who is not a party to a case, but believes that their opinion might influence the court. In other words, it?s highly likely that an Ohio judge would listen to the collective will of the Scottish parliament.

Richey, who was sentenced to death for killing a child while he was trying to murder her mother in a fire, is now at the very last stages of his fight against execution. If he fails, he will soon die. The Scottish parliament, says Stafford Smith, has a chance to save a man?s life or to turn its back and allow him to be killed.

?The prosecution has said that the fact that he?s innocent is not reason enough to set him free as they didn?t know he was innocent at the time of the trial,? Stafford Smith says, outlining the Orwellian world of US justice.

?In 1993, a federal judge ruled that, as the US constitution has no ruling against killing the innocent, then it doesn?t matter whether you are innocent or not when you are executed. It?s profoundly stupid ? the constitution doesn?t say the sun must set in the west but it does.

?Put in that context, the belief that the US has the finest legal system in the world is total bullshit.? Stafford Smith has represented some 300 death row cases ? of the eight that he is now preparing to take to trial, he believes five are truly innocent.

Stafford Smith is the antithesis of Bush?s America ? a man who makes most liberals I know look like ardent Nazis. He says he?d never send anyone to jail ? ever. It sounds ridiculous at first, but then you and I haven?t spent most of our working life on death row or in Kafkaesque courtrooms where the rich kill and walk free while the poor fry for crimes they didn?t commit.

Stafford Smith?s alternative to custody is medical and psychological treatment. He says he has never met someone who was born evil ? it?s society that made them what they became.

?I?ve been held up seven times and I?d no sooner put those people behind bars than I would my brother. Prison is a sick concept. Some people are dangerous but we have an alternative called secure mental hospitals.

?I just know I?d never send anyone to prison. I couldn?t be a judge. It?s disgusting. It?s like slavery. Define a crime. It?s defined by rich, white men. The people we define as anti-social don?t choose to be anti-social. I find that the worse the crime is, the easier it is to understand why it happened.?

He asks why Jeffrey Dahmer, the Milwaukee cannibal killer, was not sentenced to detention in a mental hospital. He thinks that the defence of insanity should find anyone mad if their refrigerator is filled with body parts. Ted Bundy, one of America?s most prolific serial killers, was ?so crazy he couldn?t put a sentence together?. These are men that should be given treatment, not killed, Stafford Smith believes. ?I don?t believe in those absurd tabloid myths about the notion of evil,? he goes on. ?It?s as stupid as calling someone a nigger.?

Despite his maverick status, Stafford Smith is held in high esteem by the establishment, so his task of winning around Scottish politicians may not be that hard. He was awarded the OBE in 2000 for his humanitarian services and during his trip to Scotland this weekend he will also pick up the prestigious Robert Burns Humanitarian Award.

He?s just come out of a Louisiana courtroom when we start talking. The case he was dealing with involved a man called Dan Bright, who was charged with a murder during Super Bowl Sunday in 1995. Bright?s co-defendant wrote to the district attorney to say Bright was innocent and she knew who the real killer was. She was never allowed to testify. As a result, Bright was sentenced to death. That?s when Stafford Smith got involved.

?We asked the Feds what they had, and we got a sheet of paper that showed they knew who the real killer was but wouldn?t tell. The federal judge was horrified. The foreman of the jury was incensed and she has now started a campaign called Jurors for Justice.? Just over a week ago, Bright?s death penalty was reversed and Stafford Smith is now pushing for a full exoneration for his client.

Stafford Smith equates the way the Americans treat criminals with the way British society reacts to paedophiles. ?We just love to hate,? he says. ?The KKK teaches poor whites to hate poor blacks so they will feel better. My relatives, when I was growing up in the 1970s, hated the Irish. We do the same with paedophiles. It?s the politics of hatred. Paedophiles suffer from a serious mental illness. Most hate themselves. Normal people don?t go around raping babies. We always condemn. We are always judgmental. We always wish to blame.?

Stafford Smith?s professional life and private views have triggered waves of hate mail from Americans. His role acting for detainees at the notorious Guantanamo prison camp for alleged al-Qaeda terrorists sent right-wing America into paroxysms of anger. ?A foreigner? Representing terrorists? The anger was amazing,? he says. ?It was treason, I was told. I should be taken out and shot.?

Stafford Smith says he sees similarities between himself and the alleged terrorists he represents. ?I?m a zealot,? he says. ?I?m a patronising foreign guy who came over here and wants to set the USA straight.?

The British government, in Stafford Smith?s opinion, has failed UK citizens who have fallen into the American penal system. Stafford Smith says he watched one Briton, Nicky Ingram, ?die on death row because John Major wouldn?t make a call. I struggle to forgive Major for refusing to use his own considerable power.

?All he needed to do was call the Parole Board. They told me they were waiting for him to call. If he had called, they told me, they would have commuted Nicky?s sentence.

?When it comes to Kenny?s case, the British government says there is no international issue for them to get involved in. The hell there is. The UK is opposed to the death penalty internationally, so, if it won?t intervene on behalf of a British citizen who is innocent, then what point is there in having a government?

?If the British government won?t do it, then the Scottish parliament should. The parliament has a last chance to speak up. Surely everyone in the Scottish parliament thinks it?s bad to execute an innocent Scot? But maybe some in Westminster think it?s a good idea.

?I can?t see why Westminster would slap down the Scottish parliament for doing the right thing. They don?t need to do anything anyway, they just need to sign the petition.?

If they don?t then Kenny Richey may well be left to die on death row. ?Death row is a lonely place to be ? but it might not be so lonely with six million Scots behind you,? says Stafford Smith.

?Going to death row for me is still an incredible experience. That is where the people I really care about are. I?d prefer to live in a society of people who?d been on death row than in America ? they are much nicer people. It?s terrible to leave death row ? to leave people you know locked in a cell the size of a toilet to be slowly tortured to death.

?US society just doesn?t care for others. It is selfish and money-driven. On death row, people are more thoughtful. They may have done one heinous act ? but then who isn?t better than their own worst moment? The people on death row are better than the people you meet on the street.?

06 June 2004