Word: victims
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...dread it," says Stanley Levco, who has been the prosecuting attorney in Vanderburgh County, Ind., since 1991. Levco strongly backs capital punishment, but he says capital cases take so long and cost so much that he wonders which ones are really worth it. "I tell this to the victim's family: there is an excellent chance this person will...
Earle's capital locale has extended his visibility beyond the county. He was one of the first prosecutors in Texas to create a victim-assistance program, in 1979; later he helped write a state law requiring every D.A. to open an office to connect crime victims with social services. He helped start Austin's Children's Advocacy Center, which works with abused kids, and a family-justice division of the D.A.'s office, which prosecutes those accused of domestic violence and helps their families get back to normal. A lot of prosecutors view such do-gooderism as a waste...
...defendant was George Clark, who had abducted a young woman from Sears, raped her and stabbed her 38 times. Earle won a death sentence, but instead of trumpeting his victory, he gave a morose press conference calling it "a sad day for everybody." When a friend of the victim's brought him a congratulatory bottle of whiskey, Earle was aghast. "This is not a celebratory event," he scolded. Citing the administrative demands of running a large D.A.'s office and the talent of his staff prosecutors, Earle never again personally prosecuted a death case...
Earle was devastated. He felt awful for the victim's family, for Danziger and Ochoa, and, frankly, for himself. He told Bryan Case Jr., one of his most trusted assistant D.A.s, he was sure the Danziger-Ochoa debacle would mean the end of his political career. But instead of hunkering down, Earle admitted the system had screwed up. He asked Case to lead a task force to review hundreds of the office's old cases for any other errors. If an inmate still claimed innocence and if biological material from the crime still existed, prosecutors investigated further. Eventually they whittled...
Characteristically, Earle picked an interesting mix for the committee. One member is Ellen Halbert, a nationally known victims' advocate who in 1986 was raped, stabbed, beaten in the head with a hammer and left for dead. The only nonlawyer on the committee, she is director of Earle's victim-witness division. Other members include Patricia Barrera, a devoutly Roman Catholic Latina who has a stained-glass cross affixed to her window and tries to reconcile her church's opposition to the death penalty with her duties as a prosecutor; Buddy Meyer, the gruff head of the trial division...