A Saint on Death Row by Thomas Cahill
A saint on death row is a story that was written by an Irish-American author Thomas Cahill. In this tragic and heart wrenching story of a death row inmate known as Dominique Green, Thomas brings out the injustices and flaws that surround the American legal system. The issue of racism also comes up because the death row inmate (Dominique Green) was African American.
About the Author
Thomas Cahill is an American scholar born in New York in 1940 to Irish- American parents. Cahill grew up in Queens and the Bronx. He studied at Greek and Latin Literature, scripture and theology as well as medieval philosophy. He attained a Bachelor of Arts Degree in classical literature from Fordham University in 1964. In 1968, he went to Columbia University to complete an M.F.A in film and dramatic literature. Throughout his life, he studied many cultures including the Jew and the Irish culture which formed the basis of many of his books. One of his great works is a series of five books like “How the Irish saved civilization”. This is the untold story of how the Ireland played a heroic role in saving the world when Rome rose and fell. The other book is “The gifts of the Jews”, a story about how a nomadic community changed their lives and those of others in a major way .
Cahill also taught in different colleges and Universities like Queens College, Seton Hall University and Fordham University. He was also a correspondent for the Irish- American magazine, a contributor to the Times London and frequently contributed to the Los Angeles Times Book Review. Thomas Cahill is married to Susan Cahill. He also speaks French and Italian.
Early Life of Dominique Green
The book A saint on death row, tells the tragic story of one of many unlucky people who ever went to jail- Dominique Green. Dominique was born in Houston Texas and grew up knowing a life of crime and injustice, as most people would like to put it, this kid was damaged. This was as a result of a series of an unimaginable tragedies and horrors that he encountered during his life. From the time he was born, Dominique’s mother was an alcoholic and a regular sex worker and most of the times she practiced her business in front of her children (Dominique and his two younger brothers). His father was a drug addict and the family was extremely poor. This life of poverty pushed him to seek guidance from the church at an early age, but alas the church did not provide much sanctuary! At the age of seven, Dominique was sodomized by a local catholic priest. He left the church to seek refuge in the streets where at the age of eight, he started peddling drugs .
When Dominique was nine years old, his drug addicted father gave him a gun and told him that it was for his own protection. His father’s action shows proof of how broken the family was and we can only imagine the extent of damage that was inflicted on Dominique. As a means of punishment, Dominique’s mother used to burn their hands on gas fire from the cooker. By the time he was in his early teens, about the age of fifteen, he had been arrested four times already and raped repeatedly in juvenile detention facilities. Dominique changed his name from Dominique with the hope that he would change his life and shape his future like any other youth, but this did not help in any way to make his life better.
I did not pull the trigger!
During a robbery in Houston in 1992, person was shot repeatedly and died instantly. Four suspects were arrested for the crime. Among the suspects apprehended was 18 year old Dominique and three of his buddies, one of whom was white. All fingers pointed to Dominique as the shooter and he was, therefore, declared the murderer of Mr. Andrew Lestrapes who had tried to pull a knife in self defense just before he was shot. Dominique was, therefore, left alone to face a first degree murder case where the jury decided he was guilty and sentenced him to death. Throughout the court proceedings, a series of flaws occurred during his trial and this led to his sentencing.
Thomas Cahill visited Dominique Green in 2003 when he was an inmate living alone in a confinement in Huntsville, Texas. Cahill had learnt about Dominique from a retired presiding judge Sheila Murphy (Chicago, Illinois) when he was on a book tour. The judge convinced Cahill to meet with Dominique and he agreed. Thomas believed that some people deserved punishment by death. However, his opinion changed when he met Dominique. He also realized how unfair trials can be and that no one should permitted to hold the life of another in their hands .
Thomas learnt that Dominique was a very kind person who had gone through so much in his life and all that was happening was that someone was taking a fall for a crime he did not commit. A series of serious mistakes had happened during his case hearings and this coupled with bad luck, the wrath of the law fell on Dominique. To start with, his attorney was inexperienced and had only served one other murder case. He tried so hard but failed to convince the judges of the fact that he did not pull the trigger. The attorney further hired a psychologist who is publicly known to be racist. Inside the court she kept her prejudices to herself but she believed that all blacks and Latinos were very violent people. She, therefore, reassured the jury that if allowed to live, Dominique was a danger to the society.
The jury was comprised of only white people, and this made it even more difficult for Dominique to plead his case. Besides the jury, all his friends pointed accusing fingers at him but Dominique did not dare mention or implicate another accomplice in the robbery. The white boy who was in Dominique’s gang was called by the District Attorney after which they made a deal for that would benefit the white boy. Thereafter, the white boy gave a statement implicating Dominique and he walked. The other two blacks only faced armed robbery charges.
Throughout the twelve years that he was in jail awaiting his execution, Dominique kept insisting that he did no pull the trigger and that he was not guilty. He asked the court to look at the tape from security cameras on the day of the shooting but no member of the jury did that, throughout the twelve years! On one occasion he wrote a letter to a friend saying that he was a “trigger happy nigger”! This further implicated him because the authorities translated that as a way of celebrating his achievement of killing a person. His attorney argued that it was only a rhyming line from one of the African-American Music groups .
All this shows how Dominique had no chance of survival amidst all the injustice. He, therefore, turned to reading a lot of books and praying. He asked God for forgiveness for all mistakes in his past and forgave all people who had wronged him. He helped other inmates seek forgiveness too. However, he continued to insist that he was innocent throughout the 12 years he was in jail.
A ray of hope
When Thomas Cahill visited the inmate in 2003, he was convinced that Dominique was innocent and even though he had made mistakes in the past, he was a changed man. Cahill joined the fight to prove that he was innocent or at least lift the death penalty. Cahill began to publicly protest Dominique’s unfair trial which led to the existence of some media attention. To add to this, Cahill sold articles and stories told by Dominique and gave the money to his younger brothers. Perhaps the most noticeable act was when Thomas convinced Archbishop Desmond Tutu from South Africa to help protest Green’s mistrial. Desmond Tutu was Green’s role model and hero. Cahill did this for him in a hope that people will listen. Desmond went to Texas and pleaded publicly with the jury and the authorities from Texas to consider their judgment. This gave hope to many people including Dominique himself even though he knew he dint have much of it. He had already made peace with himself and God.
Injustice or bad luck?
Who is to blame for Green’s situation? Cahill’s book, paints Dominique as a saint and says that it is the corrupt legal system that caused his misery, yet from the book we can see that throughout his life Dominique was not so lucky. The state of Texas leads in the number of prisoner executions compared to any other state in America. The state executes four times the number of people more than any other state does. This started when the former president George W. Bush became governor. An execution would, therefore, not surprise many people, but was it fair? On the other hand, Dominique had been arrested four times already for different crimes so this did not help his case either, but then again was it fair to judge a person for his/her past mistakes? There are three thousand inmates on death row all over America; it was, , no surprise to many people when Dominique became just another one of them .
The Saint
Sadly but true, Dominique was executed in 2004 despite all the efforts to save him. He was executed on 26th October 204 by a lethal injection. Thomas Cahill was changed forever and perhaps many people who read his book will never be the same again.
References
Jonas, A. (2013, June 6). Saint On Death Row Book Review. Retrieved from College of Saint Benedict and Saint John's University Bookstore (CSB/SJU): http://www.csbsju.edu/bookstore/book-reviews/saint-on-death-row.htm
