Angel of Death Row: My Life as a Death Penalty Defense Lawyer by Lyon Andrea D

Author:Lyon, Andrea D [Lyon, Andrea D]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Kaplan Trade
Published: 2010-03-08T07:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER 7

A Mother Accused

ONE DAY AFTER a trial, I returned to find a file on my desk that had been assigned to me from the preliminary hearing court. I flipped through it. Damn. A dead-baby case. I had been dreading the inevitable day when one of these would land in my lap. I am a committed defender of accused killers. But sometimes even I have to struggle to overcome my revulsion in the face of certain crimes.

During law school, I spent a clinical rotation in child advocacy. We represented children who were the subject of neglect or abuse petitions. The work was important and compelling, and I hated it. Satisfying resolutions were rare. Children who were abused, neglected, dirty, and hungry—even these children loved their moms and dads. They didn’t want to leave their homes, no matter how miserable those homes were. So, when should the State step in? What, ultimately, is in the best interest of children? The ambiguity of the job was too painful. I intended to stay far away from work involving abused children. Now, a decade later, I had to defend a woman who had killed her child. Annette Gaines was charged with murdering her twenty-two-month-old daughter Shania. She had admitted to hitting the little girl in the stomach. The blow had been so hard that the duodenum that separates the stomach from the intestines had burst. The toddler’s own body had fatally poisoned her. The file told me little else.

On the evening before my visit to the jail to meet Ms. Gaines, I was going to have dinner with my friend Melody. While I drove to Peter Lo’s Chinese restaurant on Howard Street, just over the Chicago line, in Evanston, I could think only of the next day’s appointment. I wasn’t sure I could handle it. Instead of running through potential legal strategies, I obsessed over my own negative reaction. I might not be planning on having any children myself, but I knew what a good parent was, and I had a pretty good idea how parents felt about their children, how deeply they loved and tried to protect them. What kind of a mother would hit her baby hard enough to break the wall of her stomach? The image wouldn’t leave my mind.

“Hey, Melody,” I said to my old friend as I walked into the restaurant. She smiled and hugged me. We chatted and ordered the dishes on the menu that are so spicy they make you sweat. Melody and I had been friends since I was sixteen. She and her sister, who was my classmate, had come to Chicago from Jamaica. Even though Melody was older and prettier than me, we quickly bonded. It was likely a case of simple empathy: at six foot one, Melody was even taller than me. She was also whip-smart. She had worked her way up from receptionist to vice-president at a black-owned Chicago advertising agency.

After sharing stories about our families, she asked me about work. When I answered vaguely, she shook her head.

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