When I’m feeling cynical about well-publicized criminal trials, I sometimes use the timeworn phrase “they’ve never hung a millionaire in the U.S.” Certainly I can’t think of one. But is it true? –Timothy G. Merker, Chicago
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Labor racketeer Louis “Lepke” Buchalter made millions in the 1920s and ’30s. Under investigation for extortion and murder, Lepke–head of the notorious organized-crime hit squad nicknamed Murder, Inc.–waged a “war of extermination” against potential informants. Dozens died, but the scorched-earth policy backfired, encouraging targets to take their chances with the law; one witness at Buchalter’s eventual murder trial in 1941 agreed to testify only after being shot in the head on Buchalter’s instructions. Buchalter was convicted despite spending an estimated quarter million on his defense. He appealed as far as the U.S. Supreme Court but was finally electrocuted in 1944. That’s one.
After that pickings are slim. Dr. John Webster was a professor at the Massachusetts Medical College. Not a millionaire strictly speaking, Webster inherited $50,000 (today worth about a million) but had squandered it by 1849, when a creditor came to collect a debt and the strapped Webster killed, dismembered, and partially cremated him. Still, he had rich friends who pledged $2,000 for his defense. Disclaiming all knowledge of the body parts found in his laboratory, however, Webster could convince no lawyer to defend him, and his appointed attorneys couldn’t save him. He confessed before he was hanged.
Harry K. Thaw, son of a railroad baron, found insane in the 1906 slaying of architect Stanford White.
And many more. Prosecutors often don’t even pursue the death penalty against the rich–think O.J. Simpson, Robert Blake, Phil Spector, and John du Pont (of the chemical du Ponts). You needn’t hire a Johnnie Cochran or a Clarence Darrow to get the treatment. An analysis of Georgia cases showed that prosecutors were almost twice as likely to ask for the death penalty when the defendant couldn’t afford a lawyer. Nationwide an estimated 90-plus percent of those arrested for capital crimes are too poor to retain experienced private counsel. In Kentucky, a quarter of death row inmates were defended by lawyers who were later disbarred (or resigned to avoid disbarment); other states are similar. A few states have offices dedicated to providing a proper defense for capital defendants, but a Texas jurist summed up the attitude elsewhere: “The Constitution does not say that the lawyer has to be awake.” So is it cynical to oppose the death penalty on such grounds? Nah. Just realistic.
