One is enough.įor the third time today, I enter Alabama’s death row and stop at the metal detector blocking the front door where two frowning guards are protecting their turf. Currently I have five cases, all wrongful convictions, at least in my opinion. Four years ago, when I became convinced he was innocent, I signed on as the point man.
His team includes a mammoth firm in Chicago, which has committed thousands of pro bono hours, and an anti-death penalty group out of Birmingham that is spread pretty thin. He’s been my client for the past four years. Duke will return to the horrors of solitary confinement and live to die another day. There is an appeal bouncing around somewhere in the Eleventh Circuit in Atlanta, and when it lands on the desk of the right law clerk within the hour this execution will be stayed. He’s been on death row for only nine years. The folks who run Alabama may one day succeed in serving Duke his last meal before sticking a needle in his arm, but not tonight. Tick away-it’s not going to happen, not tonight anyway. The other was waved off in a miracle finish.
One went full cycle and my man uttered his final words. I’ve suffered through two of these countdowns in other states. As always during these dreadful nights, the clock seems to tick faster as the final hour approaches. They killed one lawyer twenty-two years ago, and they will kill another without a second thought.ĭuke Russell is not guilty of the unspeakable crimes for which he was convicted nonetheless, he is scheduled to be executed for them in one hour and forty‑four minutes. Powerful, ruthless people murdered Keith Russo, and they do not want Quincy Miller exonerated. With Quincy Miller, though, he gets far more than he bargained for. Cullen Post travels the country fighting wrongful convictions and taking on clients forgotten by the system. Guardian accepts only a few innocence cases at a time. In desperation, he writes a letter to Guardian Ministries, a small nonprofit run by Cullen Post, a lawyer who is also an Episcopal minister. He had no lawyer, no advocate on the outside. For twenty-two years he languished in prison, maintaining his innocence. Quincy was tried, convicted, and sent to prison for life. But the police soon came to suspect Quincy Miller, a young black man who was once a client of Russo’s.
There were no witnesses, no one with a motive.
In the small Florida town of Seabrook, a young lawyer named Keith Russo was shot dead at his desk as he worked late one night.