By THIRSTY
Thomas Lowenstein’s new book, The Trials of Walter Ogrod, reveals explosive new evidence in a Death Row case from 1988. Founder of the New Orleans Journalism Project and former policy director and investigator of the Innocence Project New Orleans, Lowenstein is also the son of the late U.S. Representative Allard Lowenstein who was murdered in his Manhattan office.
Stay
Thirsty Magazine visited with Tom Lowenstein at his office to talk
about his new book and about his views on the criminal justice system.
STAY THIRSTY: In your new book, The
Trials of Walter Ogrod, you investigate the 1998 murder of four-year-old
Barbara Jean Horn and the man convicted of the crime. After going through an
exhaustive exploration of that case, how do you feel about the American
criminal justice system today?
THOMAS LOWENSTEIN: When I started working on the book I was aware of the
significant problems in our criminal justice system, and aware of the lengths
district attorneys and police would go to in order to win cases (as opposed to
simply seeking justice, which is supposed to be their job). Nevertheless, in
working on this book. I uncovered behaviors that were shocking to
me—particularly the use of jailhouse snitches. The snitch in my book, John
Hall, was used repeatedly by the DA’s office in Philadelphia (and surrounding
counties) to get convictions in cases without any other evidence—and this isn’t
me saying this, I have letters of support for him from several DAs in the area
stating that without him they had no case or that he took a sure loser case and
made it into a winner. Later, when I got John Hall’s own papers, proving he
lied in the Ogrod case, and asked the Philadelphia ADA who’d prosecuted Ogrod
about them, she said John Hall was a liar and she’d never used him. Hall was a
liar, that part is true, but the fact is she and others in her office had used
him many times. The ADA wouldn’t answer the question of why, if she knew he was
a liar, she used him and stood by the convictions he’d earned for her office.
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| Thomas Lowenstein |
So while I can’t say I was shocked
that innocent people end up on death row, there is something shocking about
sitting in a room with someone who put an innocent man on death row, admits
that the snitch she used to do it was a pathological liar, and yet refuses to
even consider the possibility that she convicted the wrong man. To me, this was
as pure a case of “win at all costs” as could be imagined. And once you see
that kind of callous indifference in person, it changes your view. I still
understand that the vast majority of people in the criminal justice system do
their jobs honestly and to the best of their abilities. But it seems the ones
who make it to the top of the law enforcement ladder—the top ADA’s, DA’s, and
judges—are usually the ones who win at all costs. This appears to be changing
slowly, some DA’s and DA candidates, like Larry Krasner, who is running for DA
in Philadelphia right now, seem to take innocence cases seriously. But
convincing DAs that their job is to seek justice, not victory, is, sadly, a
long, slow process.
STAY THIRSTY: You recount the murder of your father, Congressman
Allard Lowenstein, and its effect on you and your family. As someone who has
experienced such a grievous loss at the hands of another, how do you personally
feel about the death penalty?
THOMAS LOWENSTEIN: I have always opposed the death penalty, and it has
nothing to do with sympathy for murderers. They deserve whatever we want to do to them, but we deserve better for
ourselves. I learned this the hard way, wrestling for years with a desire to
kill the man who killed my father. But all I was doing was ruining my own life,
and killing him wasn’t going to make that any better. The death penalty is the
same on a societal level—we waste millions of dollars and (cumulatively)
hundreds of years fighting these cases in court so that we can, a few times a
year, give a murderer what we think he deserves. This makes us all worse off.
We should spend that time and money, instead, on things that actually help
reduce the number of murders and help victims heal.
It’s one thing the prosecutor in
the Ogrod case and I agree on—she told the jury that if ever a crime deserved
the death penalty, the crime of killing a child, as Ogrod was charged with,
deserved it. I agree. Ironically, she made this claim while sending an innocent
man to death row based on the word of a snitch she herself said was a liar. So
the true costs of the death penalty go on one side of the scale, and killing
innocent people is one of them. Would I shoot the man who killed my father if
it meant the innocent person next to him got killed, too? Would you?
One more point: it’s not clear at
all that the death penalty actually helps victims feel better. I’m not
pretending to speak for all family members who’ve been through this, but I know
many who feel the same way I do, even some who have had the murderer of their
family member executed only to realize that after the initial feeling of
satisfaction it didn’t help them feel better at all. Killing the man who killed
my father might’ve made me feel satisfied for a few minutes, like an execution
probably does for some people, but the cost is way too high.
STAY THIRSTY: Does the truth ever come out at trial?
THOMAS LOWENSTEIN: Yes, I believe it can and even does in many cases.
Trials are made up of the stories told by the two sides, and true stories can
come from either side if the lawyers involved are ethical and play by the
rules. But while it is the defense’s job to throw up any defense they can and
thereby force the state to prove its case before putting someone in jail or
even killing them, the prosecutors are supposed to seek justice—in other words,
the truth. So when prosecutors lie or hide evidence or ignore evidence, they
subvert our process in the most fundamental way imaginable. This is the biggest
threat to the truth coming out at trial, and it happens far too often, without
any real chance of consequences for the DAs who do lie.
STAY THIRSTY: In our headline news society, is justice fairly
administered or does public pressure and public opinion often sway the outcome?
THOMAS LOWENSTEIN: It’s an interesting mix. Justice can be fairly
administered and sometimes is, but in cases where it has not been public
opinion can sway the outcome. Judges and lawyers like to tell you public
opinion it doesn’t matter, but I’ll give you a small example of how it can: The
judge who is currently deciding whether Walter Ogrod will get a new trial or
not, Shelley Robins-New, worked in the DA’s Homicide office at the time of his
first trial and was possibly even in the courtroom rooting for his conviction
when the mistrial happened. At the same time, her office was using the snitch
John Hall in multiple cases. She never mentioned this conflict of interest
until, just this year, she was contacted by a TV reporter about it and my book
came out. Then, at a hearing earlier this year, she explained on the record
that she’d worked in that office but hadn’t worked on the Ogrod case so it
didn’t matter. (She pointedly did NOT say whether she’d worked on other cases
with the snitch, which was the more important question.) Also at that hearing,
the DA’s office finally admitted that there were issues with the Ogrod case
that deserved an evidentiary hearing. I believe that knowing that publicity was
coming was at least part of why this judge and the DA’s office changed their
tune on these issues. Judge Robins-New is up for re-election, by the way, and I
hope people in Philadelphia who are considering their vote will look at her
record on this case, which demonstrates a profound lack of concern about a
shocking wrongful conviction and her willingness to support her old boss, Lynne
Abraham, and her old colleagues at the DA’s office over any sense of actual
justice, and vote against her. But I know elections usually work the other
way—the “tougher” a judge is, the more likely they are to win, even if being
“tough” means innocent people stay in prison.
STAY THIRSTY: If you were on death row, how would you go about
proving your innocence?
THOMAS LOWENSTEIN: This highlights one of the great ironies of our
justice system right now, and one that I was not aware of when I started this
project: while death row inmates are given lawyers for their appeals, those
sentenced to Life Without Parole (LWOP) do not. So if you’re going to be
convicted of murder, you’re better off going to death row because at least that
way you’ll have lawyers. I remember the first time I talked to Walter Ogrod
about the possibility that he could have the death sentence lifted and be put
back in general population and he was adamant that he didn’t want that to
happen. I was surprised at first, because it’s generally viewed as a “win” for
lawyers to get a death sentence overturned and changed to LWOP. And it may be
for guilty killers who’d rather live in prison than die. But for innocent folks
this can just mean they sit in prison without lawyers for the rest of their
days. I even interviewed a Philadelphia lawyer who told me he’s had clients
tell him they’d rather “lose” the sentencing hearing and end up on death row
than “win” it and get life, for this very reason.
How innocent people in prison
survive the 10, 20, 30 years it takes to overturn even the worst convictions is
amazing to me. You have to have enough anger and emotion about your situation
to fight every day for years and years and years without letting that anger and
emotion destroy you. So many innocent people can’t do it, and just give up. So
many more are just eaten up by the anger. The survivors I’ve met have somehow
mastered the art of fighting passionately while figuring out inner peace. As
someone who spent many years consumed by anger about my father’s murder, unable
to come to any kind of peace with myself, I find these men and women to be some of the strongest people I’ve ever met, and the most
inspiring.
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