have been on my schedule at all. Almost the last thing I wanted to do was visit a man on Death Row with whom I would have nothing in common. I foresaw an extra day in Houston and an embarrassing hour of trying vainly to find enough conversation.
But, looking across the table at Sheila's expectant face, I found I could not say no.
∗ This was before Dominique's removal to solitary confinement in Livingston in 1999.
4
The first meeting between Dominique and Sheila Murphy gave off no adumbrations of instant karma. Dominique, a prisoner now for nearly eight years, had learned to be distrustful of lawyers; and even this late-middle-aged one, a woman whose sympathy is so effortlessly engaged that it seems to spill from her like mother's milk, was going to have to work hard to earn the confidence of this young convict, who had come to be skeptical, even cynical, toward outsiders who came to visit him. Many, both lawyers and sometime supporters, ∗ had come and gone by this point; many more had shown themselvesto have their own self-serving agendas unconnected to Dominique's crying needs.
Dominique did exempt some repeat visitors from his silent scorn, especially occasional visitors from Rome, exotic to him at first, then gradually welcomed for their evident seriousness and solidarity with his suffering. And he had come to have positive feelings toward David Atwood, founder of the Texas Coalition to Abolish the Death Penalty, who turned up regularly, offering books and other simple services, and seemed unlikely to go away. Dave, a retired chemical engineer, has dedicated his retirement to the service of Death Row inmates, their families, and the families of their victims. He is an even-tempered, mild-mannered man but quietly unswerving, even relentless in his dedication. He would help bridge the gulf that yawned between Sheila's good heart and Dominique's distrust by insisting to Dominique on more than one occasion that this ebullient female judge with the Chicago accent was O.K.
Sheila first met Dominique in the summer of 2000 on her birthday, August 18. She was not his chief attorney, nor could she be; that role had been awarded to court-appointed lawyers Mike Charlton and Gary Taylor, who could not be removed from Dominique's case except by a judge's order. Sheila was initially surprised to find Dominique especially keen on retrieving the videotape that he assumed had been made automatically by the security camera of the store in front of which Andrew Lastrapes had been shot nearly eight years earlier.
Dominique understood that whatever had been videotaped that night had long since been taped over. But he had also readthat it was possible to restore by electronic manipulation some semblance of the taped-over images. He had not been able to get Charlton and Taylor's investigator, nor the investigator who had preceded him, to look into the matter. However hopeless such a quest might have proved, Dominique's urgency proved to Sheila that, although Dominique was unwilling to rat on the real murderer, he was eager to let the evidence speak for itself.
Sheila, however, could find nothing: the store manager looked at her blankly and shrugged. No one worked there who had worked there in 1992; no one knew what had become of the old tapes; no one knew anything that could give Sheila the least help. She returned to Dominique empty-handed.
But gradually, almost without realizing that it was happening, Sheila overcame Dominique's suspicion of her by leaving the subject of his case and talking about her family, especially about her husband and her children, a son, Patrick, and a daughter, Brigid, both a little older than Dominique. It was an intuitive strategy, one that any law school would advise its students against: under no circumstances do you open your personal life to your clients! But Sheila, a refreshingly open woman, impelled to candor by her own temperament as well as by her experience of fighting her addiction, can talk
But, looking across the table at Sheila's expectant face, I found I could not say no.
∗ This was before Dominique's removal to solitary confinement in Livingston in 1999.
4
The first meeting between Dominique and Sheila Murphy gave off no adumbrations of instant karma. Dominique, a prisoner now for nearly eight years, had learned to be distrustful of lawyers; and even this late-middle-aged one, a woman whose sympathy is so effortlessly engaged that it seems to spill from her like mother's milk, was going to have to work hard to earn the confidence of this young convict, who had come to be skeptical, even cynical, toward outsiders who came to visit him. Many, both lawyers and sometime supporters, ∗ had come and gone by this point; many more had shown themselvesto have their own self-serving agendas unconnected to Dominique's crying needs.
Dominique did exempt some repeat visitors from his silent scorn, especially occasional visitors from Rome, exotic to him at first, then gradually welcomed for their evident seriousness and solidarity with his suffering. And he had come to have positive feelings toward David Atwood, founder of the Texas Coalition to Abolish the Death Penalty, who turned up regularly, offering books and other simple services, and seemed unlikely to go away. Dave, a retired chemical engineer, has dedicated his retirement to the service of Death Row inmates, their families, and the families of their victims. He is an even-tempered, mild-mannered man but quietly unswerving, even relentless in his dedication. He would help bridge the gulf that yawned between Sheila's good heart and Dominique's distrust by insisting to Dominique on more than one occasion that this ebullient female judge with the Chicago accent was O.K.
Sheila first met Dominique in the summer of 2000 on her birthday, August 18. She was not his chief attorney, nor could she be; that role had been awarded to court-appointed lawyers Mike Charlton and Gary Taylor, who could not be removed from Dominique's case except by a judge's order. Sheila was initially surprised to find Dominique especially keen on retrieving the videotape that he assumed had been made automatically by the security camera of the store in front of which Andrew Lastrapes had been shot nearly eight years earlier.
Dominique understood that whatever had been videotaped that night had long since been taped over. But he had also readthat it was possible to restore by electronic manipulation some semblance of the taped-over images. He had not been able to get Charlton and Taylor's investigator, nor the investigator who had preceded him, to look into the matter. However hopeless such a quest might have proved, Dominique's urgency proved to Sheila that, although Dominique was unwilling to rat on the real murderer, he was eager to let the evidence speak for itself.
Sheila, however, could find nothing: the store manager looked at her blankly and shrugged. No one worked there who had worked there in 1992; no one knew what had become of the old tapes; no one knew anything that could give Sheila the least help. She returned to Dominique empty-handed.
But gradually, almost without realizing that it was happening, Sheila overcame Dominique's suspicion of her by leaving the subject of his case and talking about her family, especially about her husband and her children, a son, Patrick, and a daughter, Brigid, both a little older than Dominique. It was an intuitive strategy, one that any law school would advise its students against: under no circumstances do you open your personal life to your clients! But Sheila, a refreshingly open woman, impelled to candor by her own temperament as well as by her experience of fighting her addiction, can talk
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