hey, how do you know how i smell?!?

i'm just going to go with that title for this post, despite the fact that i don;t recall having ever typed in that combination of words before (it autocompleted that in for me). i've had a few cocktails which should make this an interesting post indeedie. i want to mark for posterity the weird dream i had last night, in which keira knightly and beyonce were students at my law school. beyonce was in my study group, and we were all talking about whether or not keira would come back to school in the fall. we began smoking weed, and beyonce turned up her nose. i told her that her boyfriend was hot. then i woke up. the dog and cat are fighting like cats and dogs. bella (dogina, the monarch of hadogidda) has lost all her puppy teeth and is a whiny bitch as her big teeth come in. it's kinda funny, though, cause she lost her puppy teeth way before the adult ones came in to replace--so she looks gummy like w's grandpa. the cat is currently chasing the dog around the house, and w just informed me that he may kill one of the animals if they don't fuking stop. so they did. poor w. he has had some really frustrating poker finishes in the last few days--including a tenth place (one spot from the final table). tonight he was going strong until he flopped a set of jacks and went all in and someone called him--w had a queen kicker and the other dude had a king kicker. so fucking good and then out in 18th place. this week is the virginia prison tour as we visit the large number of people in my client's family who are incarcerated in various places around the state. then friday i am blowing off work to pick up my best biz-natch, alfina the muthafuckin vague. she likes it when i curse in front of the internets. incidentally, they have the internets on computer now. momar out.

where to begin...

so i am working on this fairly heartbreaking case right now. i obviously can't get into details. but last week another intern and i went on an investigative trip. part of what we do for post-con is review the trial record and look for big gaps in what trial counsel has done which, if closed, might have resulted in something less than a death sentence. intern and i were looking at the sentencing phase of the trial. the client had a really fucked up childhood and it seems that very little of that was actually brought out at sentencing. so we went to where he grew up and spoke to some of his teachers and school psychologists, as well as his family. i feel like i have a really good picture of what it was like for him growing up, but that it was not adequately covered during sentencing. basically, this kid never had a chance. his teachers and psychs, while heartbroken, were not particularly surprised.

dammit. see i'm kinda in the same position as vague, where this is the place where i often work stuff out, and i can't really elaborate too much for confidentiality reasons. i met his kids. they wanted to know how i knew their daddy and when he was coming home. my heart stopped right there and i thought i was going to lose it. they are pretty young and can't really know what is going on, though apparently some evil bitch told the older child (6, i think) "they are going to fry your daddy." the child has since had nightmares and has begun acting out in school. so the pattern begins all over again.

this is the main point of my post. killing this man will not bring back the victims. it will not ease the pain of their children. it will not fix the underlying problems, it will only create new ones. it will only break another family irreparably, destroy another child's family, and basically fuck their lives up forever. how will these people ever trust their government, as it murders their son/father/cousin/uncle? what does this teach them about how to react when someone hurts you or wrongs you? these are the arguments i have always made against the death penalty, but i have never really felt them so acutely before. my heart has smashed into a million pieces. i want to take his kids out of the situation they are in, adopt them and bring them out to the suburbs and get them the psychological care they need but can't afford, make sure they finish school and go to college, send them birthday presents...i'm just so frustrated! i feel so powerless.

there is an execution scheduled for this week. not in this case, but in another with less than perfect evidence, in the wake of some big issues with dna testing by the state lab. the governor will probably not grant clemency, even though they are in teh midst of an audit to ensure that the dna stuff was done properly which could take months. there is also eyewitness testimony, which is notoriously unreliable, especially in cross-race identifications. and the witness said he was only 80% sure it was him anyway. with less than certain eyewitnesses and questionable dna, how can they kill this man? this is what is so infuriating to me about my dad's views on capital punishment. he thinks that if there is "good dna evidence and eyewitness testimony" that capital punishment is okay. the porblem is that there is often no way to know until later whether the dna testing was done propely and there is really no such thing as reliable eyesitness testimony. don't believe me? ask larry youngblood. he spent 17 years in jail, believed to be the man who kidnapped and sexually assualted a small boy. the evidence was destryoed (but supposedly not in bad faith) by the police and he was convicted based on the eyewitness testimony of the little boy. it was a horrifying crime and who doesn't wnat to believe a child who has been hurt? but it really highlights the way these things can happen.

i don't really know where i am going with this post. i have been thinking about this for a while now. i wish people knew how thin some of the cases are against many of these death penalty inmates. or how fragile and human they really are facing down their own impending deaths.