Can there be life after Death Row?
After watching her client die on Death Row, lawyer and journalist Joan Cheever set out to answer a question: what if, instead of being executed, he’d been given a second chance? She tells Women’s Editor Sarah Foster about her quest to find the ‘Class of ’72’ – a group of inmates to whom this happened. “WHEN I walked into the Death House, I was struck by the starkness of the room. There was the gurney and there was Walter, already lying on top of it, bound by those six thick white leather straps. His head immediately turned to the glass window. He seemed to have been waiting for me. It was time to say goodbye. “God bless and God speed, Walter. You’re almost home,” I said, choking back the tears. “Thank you Joan.” And then the warden asked if Walter had any last words. Walter looked up at the microphone and said he was grateful that he had converted to Islam. And then he asked the family of Daniel Liepold for forgiveness. He closed his eyes and a tear rolled down his right cheek. These w
