Eva Ansley and Bryan Stevenson formed their own non-profit law center in Tuscaloosa in February 1989 (pictured on right). No one sponsored or helped fund it and therefore their resources were limited. The Supreme courts changed attitude towards death penalty appeals and the political climate led to more prisoners wrongly ending up on death row for good. At the time, politicans were competing for votes based on who was “tougher on crime” and carrying out the death penalty was the best way to demonstrate this characteristic. Stevenson was presented with three different cases in the chapter, Michael Lindsey, Horace Dunkins, and Herbert Richardson. Throughout the chapter, Stevenson’s uphill battle against the government to get his clients justice and a stay of execution never reaps desired results.

S U M M A R Y

M I C H A E L L I N D S E Y

4

Introduction

Both Michael Lindsey and Horace Dunkins had volunteer lawyers that needed Bryan Stevenson’s help. Lindsey’s jury had ruled for life imprisonment over the death penalty and Stevenson made this clear in a letter to Governor Hunt, who later contradicted this evidence and maintained Lindsey’s execution date. When Lindsey was executed, Stevenson had no time to mourn before having to work on Horace Dunkins’s case. Although Dunkins was ruled “mentally retarded during his trial from school records, the Supreme Court had previously ruled it constitutional to put these intellectual disabled individuals on death row and therefore Dunkins was also unjusticely killed. Duncans had a botched execution where he was still alive in the electric chair for a significant amount of time when he should have been dead. The government preformed a autopsy against the family’s persistent wishes, and a lawsuit was born.

H O R A C E D U N K I N S