4our

I read this article yesterday and I can’t get it out of my mind. Alton Logan has spent the last 26 years of his life in prison for a crime he didn’t commit. Attorneys Dale Coventry and W. Jamie Kunz have known he was innocent the whole time. Their client, Andrew Wilson, admitted to the murder Alton had been convicted for.

 

“…it wasn't just Wilson's word. Firearms tests, according to court records, linked a shotgun shell found at McDonald's with a weapon that police found at the beauty parlor where Andrew Wilson lived...”

 

“Now the lawyers had two big worries: Another killing might be tied to their client, and "an innocent man had been charged with his murder and was very likely ... to get the death penalty," Kunz says.”

 

It seem obvious to me which of the two worries is more pressing, an innocent man getting the death penalty or a sadistic repeat offender being charged with another killing. Andrew Wilson’s attorneys were representing him in a separate case. Bound by legal ethics, they say they were unable to prove to anyone that Alton Logan was in fact innocent.  

 

The attorneys then signed an affidavit stating what they had learned and sealed it away in the event they would be presented with an opportunity to make it public. They asked Andrew Wilson if they could do so in the event of his death, as everyone was expecting Andrew to get the death penalty in his separate case. He agreed. However he was sentenced to life instead.

 

Kunz offered this explanation to anyone thinking that keeping this secret for 26 years is outrageous, saying his duty was to his client, Andrew Wilson.

 

“If I had ratted him out (Wilson)…then I could feel guilty, then I could not live with myself,” he says. “I’m anguished and always have been over the sad injustice of Alton Logan’s conviction. Should I do the right thing by Alton Logan and put my client’s neck in the noose or not? It’s clear where my responsibility lies and my responsibility lies with my client.”

 

He could not live with himself for telling on a murderer but he could live with letting an innocent man face a possible death penalty and eventually a life sentence? It makes me sick.

 

Recently Andrew Wilson died in prison. At this point both attorneys brought this affidavit to light. In the article Dale Coventry poses in a picture with a smug smile next to the locked box he has stored the affidavit in for decades. He strikes a hero pose, as if he is doing a great deed. He was obligated 26 years ago to his fellow man to keep him from spending half of his life in prison.

 

At some point common sense and righteousness should override legal code. How can these men say their jobs are more important than another man’s life? A job is a job. It’s just one of the things that make up our lives. A life is the be all and end all of our existence. No matter the amount of time spent in school or the amount of time spent at work means your job is more important than a soul. While a part of me realizes that if every lawyer disregarded lawyer-client privilege it could be disastrous, the better part of me answers that justice is supposed to be blind. Justice is more important than technicalities.