Allen Ault - Former Commissioner of Corrections, Georgia, USA HARDtalk


Allen Ault - Former Commissioner of Corrections, Georgia, USA

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Welcome to HARDtalk, I'm Stephen Sackur.

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A host of countries around the world still impose the ultimate punishment

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on the most serious criminals, death.

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What's it like to be in command of the machinery

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Today I'm going to get a rare insight from Allen Ault,

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who spent years running the correction facility

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He organised the killing of criminals until he could stand

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Now he's an opponent of the death penalty.

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Allen Ault, welcome to HARDtalk.

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It's back in the 1990s that you were the Commissioner

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of Corrections in the US state of Georgia,

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and you were responsible for running the machinery of capital punishment.

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Is that experience still with you today?

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I still have nightmares, not every night, but on occasion

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It's the most premeditated murder possible.

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The manual is about that thick, and the preparation you go

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I can tell from your words already that this is seared into your soul,

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Let's start with how you got involved in this element

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As I understand it, you were a trained psychologist

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and you entered the world of corrections, the present system,

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believing that you were there to help and to rehabilitate.

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How on earth did you end up running death row and execution chambers?

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In the '70s, I'd never been into prison or jail,

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in Georgia they had a brand-new maximum security prison,

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called the Georgia Diagnostic Classification Center.

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The only problem was they didn't have a programme.

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They hired me to develop a diagnostic classification system

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They made me superintendent and warden of the institution.

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That was ultimately the institution and the facility that became

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Yes. Many years later.

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Listen, how did you get sucked into a system to the point where,

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having been a psychologist, having entered the system

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as somebody committed to rehabilitation, you ended up

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as the chief who was signing off on and running a system of death?

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In the early '70s, when I started in corrections, the death penalty

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was unconstitutional and then it was later,

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in '74, that Georgia wrote a new law that was determined to be

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constitutional by the US Supreme Court.

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But the actual executions didn't take place until many years

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later because of appeals.

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The first two that I executed had been on death row for 17 years.

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In fact they were 17 when they came in and they were 34

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Actually they were different individuals.

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Let's talk about the case because I think it is important

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The 17-year-old that you mentioned, I believe he was called

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Christopher Burger, he was of limited IQ.

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I think he scored something like 80 or so on the test,

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suggesting he was close to being mentally impaired.

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He ended up being involved in the kidnap, rape and murder

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As you say, he was on death row for 17 years, you got to know him.

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I visited when I was Commissioner, I visited death row on several

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occasions, I got to know him.

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This was the first warrant I had to execute someone.

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I went down to Jackson, about 40 miles from Atlanta,

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where central headquarters are, so I talked to him and other people

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So it wasn't just a matter of executing somebody that was...

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You said I think that you saw the change in him,

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to a man who, by the time he was approaching his end,

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you describe as being thoughtful and actually contrite.

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You know, to put it in psychological terms, when he committed the act

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he didn't have a fully developed frontal lobes

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which allowed you to make full decisions.

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And the other criminal involved in the crime was also juvenile.

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They were now adults, they had been on death row

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They had educated themselves while on death row.

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They had received a lot of counselling and other services

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while they were on death row, so they were different human beings.

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Christopher Burger's last words to you just before you gave

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to be pressed, were, "Please forgive me."

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As I executed others, many of which I found out went

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His was very simple, please forgive me.

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It was your responsibility to give the order.

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I was standing behind in another room with a glass,

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looking at the back of the electric chair.

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I was there with the Attorney General for the state of Georgia

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and we had phones hooked up to the US Supreme Court,

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the Governor's office, the Georgia Pardons

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and Parole Office, and so then, when he checked with each of those

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entities which might grant a stay or parole or commute the sentence,

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but when he checked with each entity and there was no stay,

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There was an individual standing behind me who had

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been my electrician when I was a warden at this institution.

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When the Attorney General indicated that there was no stay,

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then I asked the individual if he'd like to give

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Then I turned to Brad and said, "Brad, it's now time."

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Brad flipped a switch and we could see that jolt

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of electricity running through this individual's body and it

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And I knew I had killed another human being.

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At the very beginning of this interview, you used the word murder.

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Do you believe in your heart that you murdered or were complicit

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Although it is state sanctioned, it is premeditated murder,

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In most states, executions in the coroner's report are listed

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Yes, I feel like I was very much involved in premeditated killing

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and giving the order for him to be murdered.

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How much damage has that done to you?

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We provided psychological help for everyone involved,

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but then I realised the Attorney General

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and I weren't receiving treatment and it got harder and harder for me.

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The Attorney General, he handled it by running

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for governor and talking about being tough on crime.

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But I don't think he handled it very well.

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I finally went and asked for treatment and received some

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At first I tried to rationalise this whole process that,

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"Well, if I could save one human being by this process,

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You mean the idea of the deterrent effect?

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But I already knew, I had already read the research on the deterrent

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effect and I had talked to so many inmates even before we had the death

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penalty, and rarely do any of the inmates ever think

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through to the consequences of their actions.

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You know, there have been some pieces of research that indicated

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But I don't think any reputable research would say that it has

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Even the family of the victim were in the institution.

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I didn't allow them to go into the room where the witnesses

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I know, I used to work in the United States,

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that in many states, in many situations, the family

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of the victims, those who were murdered, they are invited

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if they want to witness the death, the execution.

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We invited them to the execution but we didn't let them witness it.

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But there are families who want to be there.

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They say it adds to their sense of justice being done.

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This word that gets used so often, closure.

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They did not receive the closure that they thought they would.

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I didn't want an execution to be revenge.

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this is what I find most puzzling about this first execution. You say

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you didn't actually even then believe in the deterrent effect and

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you clearly had grave doubts about what you were doing. But you went on

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to supervise the killing of more prisoners. Four after that. How

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could he do that, how could you live with your conscience? I didn't do it

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well. It was a small part of that job.

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I have 15,000 employees, a $1 billion budget.

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You were a top official in the prison system

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in the United States, but with all due respect it was not

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a small part of your job, because it was the moment

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in which you, in a certain sense, were playing God.

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You were playing with people's lives, and that's no small matter.

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It certainly is not and I spent a lifetime since then regretting

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It is perhaps too easy for me to sit here with you and go through cases

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and ask you difficult questions, but there is one other case that

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That's the black man who was convicted of murdering three women.

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It became plain, in that period between conviction and death that

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first of all there had been a significant racial element

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One juror described an atmosphere of intimidation, where the N word

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was repeatedly used for that minority of jurors who were black,

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who were ultimately to decide his fate.

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There was also evidence that this man was mentally impaired,

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to the point where frankly many experts didn't believe

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You still, despite all of that, had him killed.

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I was, without trying to excuse myself at all,

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I was the vehicle for the execution and I have no defence for that.

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When you are doing the executions, you don't get all the history

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of what went on in the jury, looking back over all that

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information came out but you certainly didn't have that

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But when you look at the research, black people who kill whites

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are about three times more likely to receive the death penalty

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I found that in talking to many, many citizens, they usually

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have a stereotype in the back of their minds

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In the south, that might be a large black rapist,

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but there's always a racial stereotype involved.

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And so when you are talking about an execution they are killing

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that stereotype, not the human being that actually is there.

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And I have many compatriots who were directors who have gone

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I don't know any of them that haven't shed a lot of tears over it.

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Or have you taken from your experience a determination to do

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There's a group of five of us, three who were former directors,

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One of them was the director in California one a director

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in Ohio, and we have an organisation that we work, we're trying

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I appeared before several legislative groups, trying

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to abolish the death penalty in several states.

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So it's been an ongoing type of thing.

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Most of them not too successful, but I did have success last year

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with one case, of getting it stayed and then commuted the next day.

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And those are very personal experiences.

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This individual was a black man who was six foot nine.

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He had a good record until he was around 19 and somebody

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said, I wonder what Daniel would do if he took this blue pill?

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They gave him the blue pill and he just went absolutely berserk

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for about four hours, stabbed and killed his best friend

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and stabbed one other individual who survived.

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And then the prosecutor went all out to try him and he went to death row

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He, as big as he was, he could have been a bully of death

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row, but he spent the whole 19 years trying to help other people.

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So I was asked to try and intervene in this case and I did talk

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with the parole board and we gathered affidavits

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from many of the staff who told how good he was,

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At the very last moment, about two hours before he was to be

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In that sense, in that particular campaign,

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for that particular individual, did that seem like some sort of,

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I don't know, some sort of giving back, some sort of payback,

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for what you had done yourself in the past?

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I look at all the things I do now, I try to alleviate

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I've made two movies, one for Discovery Channel,

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which was produced and directed by a British firm,

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because they wanted to do a nonpolitical film.

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Well, I'm sorry, but the death penalty is totally political.

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I wanted to talk briefly about politics.

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You said this of politicians that you've had experience

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of as a director of corrections in the United States.

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In the field of corrections, you say, politicians played

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to the base instincts of the electorate.

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There's an awful lot of grandstanding.

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You sound very cynical about politicians on this issue.

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Yes, one North Georgia chicken farmer told me about politics.

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He said, Allen, I'll do whatever you want me to do.

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You want some more money in your budget or you want to change

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the law, unless it becomes between me and one of my

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constituents, and he said the name of the game is re-election.

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And certainly that's our US Congress and most legislature.

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So many of them will tell me, we've got to just be tough on crime

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In this extraordinary change of heart you've had,

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and the journey you've made, you're missing out one element,

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That is the United States is very proud of its democracy and every

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poll in the US to this day, even though the numbers have changed

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somewhat, shows that a majority, a clear majority of Americans,

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believe in the death penalty as the ultimate deterrent.

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And as long as that is true, don't politicians have a duty

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They also have a duty to inform their voters,

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Connecticut, they had a research that was done over four decades

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by Donohue, from Stanford University, a law professor.

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They had every little case judged by independent judges.

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Because people thought the most egregious cases were on death row.

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It turned out somewhere around 47 or 49 of the most egregious cases,

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where they'd cause pain or rape or whatever,

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only one of those cases was actually on death row.

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When that and some other things, the expense of it, is tremendous,

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the Connecticut legislature last year did away with

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You wrote not so long ago some very powerful words.

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You said, no one has the right to ask a public servant to take

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on a lifelong sentence of nagging doubt, shame and guilt.

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Is that what you have been sentenced to?

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Every time I think it's behind me, then something happens and it

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I was out at the Lexington airport, I had a 6:05am flight

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By all rights I'd always been on Delta airlines.

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This morning, I was going someplace else and was another another

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The plane crashed and killed everyone of them.

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I had to go again, all those feelings came back.

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Just had to keep re-dealing with it, re-dealing with it.

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Well, Allen Ault, I thank you for sharing your

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It is not often that we get the best of the weather over the weekend,

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but that seems to be the case this time round.

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On Sunday, we had a temperature of 20 degrees in Highland Scotland,

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But, for many of us on Sunday, the skies were not quite as blue.

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