What holds sway?
They are doing more than watching. There was no evidence of complacency at last week’s conference. Seminars focused on winning new recruits in campuses, churches and legislatures, and discussions wrestled with nuances of strategy. What would be the best way to sway Americans? Convince them that capital punishment is immoral? Or focus their attention on the justice system’s bureaucratic flaws? Should activists abandon confrontational protests and the kind of inflammatory rhetoric such as the bumper sticker for sale that declared “The Death Penalty is a Hate Crime”? Whatever the solutions, activists didn’t need to look far for evidence of the challenges ahead. Indeed, one sat quietly in the back row of a seminar on death penalty appeals. There, flipping through a crisp new legal handbook, was Ori T. White, a former Pecos County district attorney who was instrumental in last year’s exoneration of Texas death row inmate Ernest Willis. Declaring Willis innocent, White paved the way for his
