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Straight From The Gut: Reaction To Ex-Governor's Regrets About Executing Alabama Prisoners [1]

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Date: 2023-06-03

I hope you'll click the link and listen to this 5-minute interview with former Alabama Governor Don Siegleman. It's five minutes you won't soon forget. https://bit.ly/3N4uYFW

In this 5-minute audio clip, former Governor Don Siegleman talks to radio personality, Richard Banks about being "Haunted by memories of people he allowed to be put to death by the State!" Without a doubt, hindsight is 20/20. Citing the case of Freddie Lee Wright a Mobile black man executed by the State of Alabama on March 3, 2000, he shared: "... and the fact is, I know, from personal experience, from looking back on those people who came before me as Governor, when I had a chance to commute Freddie Lee Wright's sentence, I didn't have the information available to me because it was withheld by the prosecutors. He would not have been executed, had I known what I know today, 23 years later."

Well, Governor Siegleman, sadly for FREDDIE LEE WRIGHT, IT'S EVERLASTING TOO LATE! How does that make you FEEL?

I was once a great admirer and strong advocate of former Governor Don Siegleman dating back to my young adulthood — since shortly after he came on the scene as Secretary Of State, Attorney General, Lieutenant Governor, and later as the 51st governor of Alabama.

I believe former Governor Siegleman was probably one of the most popular Democratic politicians to grace our State Capital in my memory. Unlike most of his democratic predecessors — who came to be called "Dixiecrats", I believed in Siegleman and genuinely regarded him as a fair-minded white man with a conscience and a soul.

His political persona was in sharp contrast to most white political leaders in Alabama, all of whom seemed to have some kind of mental block when it came to acknowledging or even pretending to understand the structurally inherent flaws within Alabama's judicial system, which was inarguably slanted against blacks, and rigidly, inescapably — unapologetically ensnared and victimized many an innocent black man or woman — I dare say. For any black citizen being tried, OR already convicted and sentenced to Death Row, once caught in that convoluted labyrinth of Alabama's corrupt machine, there has just been NO escape. Moreover, despite how loud the pleas for Clemency are, they have fallen on deaf ears. In my simple way of thinking, it was just easier to take for granted that the system is always right, and conform without question, than to dare entertain the thought that there might be a modicum of validity in the cries for equal justice.

I was prompted to rethink at a much deeper level, my past impressions of Governor Siegleman, after this interview aired, given his "change of heart" recently shared in this interview and in a May 23, 2023, Op-Ed he co-wrote with former Governor Robert Bentley in the Washington Post. After listening repeatedly to his words, it became crystal clear, that he, too, on some innate level, was infected with that inherent attitude of superiority, held by most Alabamians that simply presumed — even in the absence of ANY evidence to the contrary — their self-righteous attitudes and dogged determination to pass judgment on others, even going so far as to commit murder against another human being regardless of the apparent failings of a deeply flawed system. It never mattered how many black lives were sacrificed in the name of "justice."

In preparing their article for the Washington Post, former Governors Siegleman and Bentley said they conducted six months of research before completing this Op-Ed!

I know everybody who reads this or listens to the interview will be captivated by some aspect of this narrative. And everybody won't be touched by the same piece of it as some other reader. But for me it was this:

Not until that brightly aimed light, was turned in his own direction was former Governor Siegleman prompted to question Alabama's long-thought-to-be impeccable justice system. "I — When I heard the word "Guilty", I realized that the system was FLAWED, at that moment, I thought about the people whose death sentences I set as Attorney General; and I thought about the people who came before me and asked for Clemency while I was Governor... and, if, in everything, there is a purpose, or if in every situation one should find a purpose, it was as if God was telling me, "Okay Governor, You've seen what's wrong, NOW GO FIX IT!"

Former Governor Siegleman charged some of this breakdown in criminal justice, to prosecutorial misconduct, stemming from a 1976 Supreme Court decision that allows prosecutors to encourage false witnesses and testimony, to withhold evidence legally, and still enjoy absolute immunity from Civil Liability. He also pointed to other factors such as divided juries, and judicial override; some of which have now been outlawed in Alabama.

The question begs to be answered, did you even stop to give consideration to the generational pleas of the hundreds of thousands of blacks incarcerated in Alabama's prisons, who were subjects of this Judicial malfeasance? Or was there a stereotypical presumption that everybody behind bars is guilty? I'm sure numerous pleas for Clemency crossed his desk, before his own 2006 Federal Indictment, trial, and incarceration.

On a visceral level, I just couldn't believe what I was hearing coming out of his mouth! — When for generations, black citizens have lived this incessant conflict with the criminal justice system; cried out against the hopelessly flawed arm of the law; and all Siegleman and Bentley had to do was open their ears, and listen to the cries of black citizens not only throughout ALABAMA, but the nation!! All they had to do was a head count of the State's prison population by race! Look at the disproportionate numbers of incarcerated men by race, to know that the system is hopelessly flawed. It ain't rocket science. It's called common sense!

AT THE END OF THE DAY, WHO ARE ANY OF US, REGARDLESS of our race; REGARDLESS of our station in life; our education; REGARDLESS of our political persuasion; REGARDLESS OF HOW PERFECT WE THINK WE ARE — to deem ourselves incapable of constructing any system or governmental constructs, that are infallible? JUST WHO IN THE HELL DO WE THINK WE ARE to exercise judgment at such a level that we would claim the power to determine who will live and who will DIE? Definitely NOT GOD! AMEN.

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[1] Url: https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2023/6/3/2173139/-Straight-From-The-Gut-Reaction-To-Ex-Governor-s-Regrets-About-Executing-Alabama-Prisoners

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