depositions but no judgment of relief. The civil suit failed to slow down the State of Alabama, which moved ahead aggressively with more execution dates.
We relocated to our new office in Montgomery in the shadow of these two executions. The men on death row were more agitated and unnerved than ever. When Herbert Richardson received word in July that his execution was scheduled for August 18, he called me collect from death row: “Mr. Stevenson, this is Herbert Richardson, and I’ve just received notice that the state plans to execute me on August 18. I need your help. You can’t say no. I know you’re helping some of the guys and y’all are opening an office, so please help me.”
I replied, “I’m really sorry to hear about your execution date. It’s been a very tough summer. What does your volunteer lawyer say?” I was still working on the best way to talk to condemned people about how to respond to news of an execution date. I wanted to say something reassuring like, “Don’t worry,” but of course that would be a remarkable request to make of anyone—news of a scheduled execution was nothing if not unimaginably worrisome. “Sorry” didn’t seem quite right either, but it tended to be the best I could think of.
“I don’t have a volunteer lawyer, Mr. Stevenson. I don’t have anyone. My volunteer lawyer said he couldn’t do any more to help me over a year ago. I need your help.”
We still didn’t have computers or law books, and I didn’t have other lawyers on staff. I had hired a classmate of mine from Harvard Law School who agreed to join our staff and moved to Alabama from his home in Boston. I was thrilled to finally have some help. He had been in Montgomery for a few days when I had to leave town for a fund-raising trip. When I returned, he was gone. He left a note explaining that he didn’t realize how challenging it would be for him to live in Alabama. He hadn’t been there a week.
Trying to stop an execution would mean nonstop work eighteen hours a day for a month, desperately trying to get a stay order from a court. Only an all-out effort would get it done, and it was still wildly improbable that we’d succeed in blocking the execution. When I could think of nothing to fill the silence, Richardson continued: “Mr. Stevenson, I have thirty days. Please say you’ll help me.”
I didn’t know what else to do but be truthful. “Mr. Richardson, I’m so sorry, but I don’t have books, staff, computers, or anything we need to take on new cases yet. I haven’t even hired lawyers. I’m trying to get things set up—”
“But I have an execution date. You have to represent me. What’s the point of all that other stuff if you’re not going to help people like me?” I could hear his breath growing ragged.
“They’re going to kill me,” he said.
“I know what you’re saying, and I’m trying to figure out how to help. We’re just so overextended—” I didn’t know what to say, and a long silence fell between us. I could hear him breathing heavily on the phone, and I could imagine how frustrated he must be. I was bracing myself for him to say something angry or bitter, steeling myself to absorb his understandable rage. But then the phone suddenly went silent. He’d hung up.
I was unnerved by the call for the rest of the day and couldn’t find sleep that night. I was haunted by my helpless bureaucratic demurrals in the face of his desperation and the silence of his response.
The next day he called again, to my relief.
“Mr. Stevenson, I’m sorry, but you have to represent me. I don’t need you to tell me that you can stop this execution; I don’t need you to say you can get a stay. But I have twenty-nine days left, and I don’t think I can make it if there is no hope at all. Just say you’ll do something and let me have some hope.”
It was impossible for me to say no, so I said yes.
“I’m not sure there is anything that we can do to block this, given where things are,” I told him somberly. “But we’ll try.”
“If you could do something, anything … well, I’d be very grateful.”
Herbert Richardson was a Vietnam War veteran whose nightmarish experiences in brutal conditions left him traumatized and scarred. He enlisted in the