What's that like?

Well, I mean, actually, you don't know that.

Um, one of the shocking things to me, uh, is how bad the system is, and I've been doing a study right now with people who have been executed since 1977, which is what we call the modern era of the death penalty.

And we're, uh, it's looking at the people who may well have been innocent, and we're doing a thorough investigation, and we're batting about a 13% error rate according to what I'm finding.

So, so often you don't know, and indeed- It's much worse when, when you're at the beginning of the system.

I was always doing trials, so you meet someone for the first time before they're on death row, and you try to prevent that.

And at that point, the number of people who they've arrested who are just the wrong person is, is much higher.

Do you think about those six people often? I, uh, it strikes me as a job that is difficult to get away with, given that the stakes are, get away from, given that the stakes are so high.

Are there any legal grounds for lawyers in the US to, to challenge this?

this?Well, we haven't had public executions since the 1930s, and so there's not a lot of stuff that we've litigated [laughs] in my lifetime at least.

But I think there's gonna be grounds very quickly on several levels.

The first thing is gonna be that I would predict that either by late today or Monday, the Democrats will introduce a bill in Congress to try to put a stop to this because there are so many reasons it's a very, very bad idea, including children watching it.

Um, but failing that, there are all sorts of other grounds.

There's gonna be issues of, of exposing children and other people to this kind of thing, and then there'll be many, many other issues in terms of how they go about it, the protocol, the bullets they use, who fires them, how much they fire.

It'll just go on and on.

What, what do you make of that?

Yeah, we better be careful, sport.

I mean, look, it's hard to say that there's a case from 1946 where This young African-American kid was electrocuted by Louisiana.

They didn't put enough electricity through it.

He starts crying out then, I'm not dying.

And it got stopped.

And then his lawyers took the case to the Supreme Court.

And the Supreme Court said, have another go at it.

What impact has the Krista Pike case had on American view towards the death penalty in the number of states? I think is it still about half the states that have the death penalty, broadly speaking? Has the view changed at all?

And how is the legislation in the United States? Uh, how, how does it govern this? Is it, is it individual states that decide whether they have the death penalty or not?

Well, it is.

There are thirty-two states with the death penalty, but most of those don't actually use it.

It's really about five states that take it seriously.

And it is those states who, um, who choose how to do it.

Ultimately, you'll be surprised to hear, guided by Michael Portillo, um, because when we showed just how awful lethal injection was, and some of the states started not being able to do that anymore, um, [chuckles] Mr. Portillo, who, uh, you know, had a similar, um, Damascene conversion.

He was in favor of the death penalty and voted for it in parliament a few times, and then he came against it.

What, what do you put it down to that, that really we, we don't talk about it very much anymore? I mean, there are people, I think Dominic Lawson, um, and Lord Glasman have both written articles in r-recent memory, uh, advocating that it should be brought back, but it's a very fringe issue now.

Right.

We once did an experiment in the science museum about whether we could get veins, um, by trying ourselves, and I would make a terrible executioner.

And the problem for Christa is she had very small veins, as they were all born.

Uh, that's often true of people who have had, uh, the tragedy of too much drugs and drug abuse in their childhood.

So that was the first.

The second is that, um, they don't have very good drugs because the drug companies really don't want their materials used to kill people.

It's not good PR.

Right

It's business.

Well, and, and we're not making that up because General Musharraf wrote a book called In the Line of Fire, and if you look at page 234 of his rather terrible book, uh, it boasts right there that, you know, more than half of the prisoners in Guantanamo Bay- Were sold for bounties to, to the CIA.

Now, I've been to Guantanamo Bay 42 times.

I like to say it is my Caribbean resort of choice.

I've represented 87 prisoners there.

Every single one so far we've proven innocent.

Not to my satisfaction.

What, what, what, uh, what could the average person do to, to help you, to help this, uh, this case?

Now,

I've been to Guantanamo Bay 42 times.

I like to say it is my Caribbean resort of choice.

I've represented 87 prisoners there.

Every single one so far, we've proven innocent.

Not to my satisfaction, but in order to get someone out of there, you have to get all six of the top U.S. intelligence agencies to say, this guy's no threat to anyone.

And in every case, that's been the case.

What could the average person do to help you, to help this case?

What was it that you could have known?

Well, I was young.

This was when I was 26.

And I was young and arrogant and thought I knew everything and I'd never lost a case and all that nonsense.

And back then, we thought legal technicalities was what would save someone's life.

And we only had three weeks.

I only had three weeks.

You, I think, got into this something to do with Joan of

No,

no, no, I think it's sweet.

They really honestly believe I'm not going to go to heaven if I don't do it.

And so I think they're trying to be nice.

And my favorite, this is lovely, Shakarama in Guantanamo Bay.

Every time I saw him, he insisted that we have a little time set aside for him to tell me about becoming Muslim.

And we went through this for six years.

You said yourself you're not sure about the burqas and things like that.

Thank you on behalf of our community for all that you've done.

Well, my goodness, wow, this is loud.

I know that you didn't come to listen to me.

You came to listen to Sheikh Omar.

And I just want to do some affirmation.

This guy I met in Texas when I'd gone all the way to see Yafia.

And I found a person who I have to look up to, both physically and metaphorically.

On behalf of our community, thank you for fighting for our sister.

powerless? Two billion strong colonizing across Africa and

Europe.

I'm able to do things right.

I, I'm going to do something the day after tomorrow on Palestine action because I feel fundamentally that, uh, I don't agree with everything Palestine Action says and does, but I think they have a right to protest.

And what Kirsten is doing is just fundamentally hypocritical and stupid.

And so I want to go as close to the line of getting arrested as I possibly can, because I can do that.

And nothing would give me more pleasure than to have these poor cops come and waste their time arresting me so I can make a point.

of people stopped trusting some of the human rights issues, particularly due to the trans issue and some of the immigration

That's fascinating.

It is fascinating.

And then when they recognized five months in she was pregnant, the doctors said, you've got to have an abortion.

Her husband said, we're Catholic, we're not having an abortion.

So Ricky's born.

He sexually abused himself.

He starts sleeping on gravestones.

This is

But it's not the same as mutilating a child.

Well, no. It's probably more in some ways, and it depends what you're dealing with.

I've dealt with this obviously many times.

In some ways, what some people do in their antisocial way when they're trying to get rich and rich and richer is far more premeditated.

So, you know, I'm not interested in that argument back and forth.

I'm not going to send the rich people to prison.

I just think we need to have a system where we're trying to teach people to be decent to each other.

inspiring anyone, right?

No, no, no, nothing can

work perfectly, but it can work better.

And, you know, Britain, the Americans come here and they say, we are a communist socialist society.

They say all sorts of other things about whether our cities, whether we can walk out of the door at night.

all of which are nonsense.

Britain's not a socialist society, but it's a much more socialist than America.

And there are other countries that are more socialist than Britain, and I think it's great.

I took the hair

And where are we going to go in another 20 years? You

know, it's not actually.

If you look historically, I think it's interesting that you say that.

It's not that different than things that have happened in Britain forever.

And we did it on very strange basis before.

I mean, first, obviously, we didn't really have elections.

But when we were going around the world doing our imperialist thing, we very much had elections or what passed for elections based on people saying, I'm going to go and invade this country over there.

when I'm dealing with cases in America, you know,

What I love

about picking an American jury is it is my little utopia in a microcosm.

That you've got 12 people, all of whom have to say something that I fundamentally disagree with.

They have to say that they would consider the death penalty.

They don't have to say they'd do it.

And so I'm talking to 12 people who I am just not on the same planet as really.

But what's lovely about it is finding the decency in them.

that's

Is there anything that movies can't convey to us that you saw in that room? Oh, yeah, of course.

Because the biggest part of it, you see this short time period.

But of course, the biggest part of it is, as you say, that very often people have been waiting for it for 20.

In fact, there's one guy waiting for it.

He's got a very strong innocence case in Florida right now who's been on death row for 49 years.

And, you know, Chris Maharaj told me about Jesse Taffaro, who was close to him on death row in Florida.

And, you know, people become friends, and then their friends are taken away.

People try to get their own loved ones off, don't

People try to get their own loved ones off, don't they?

No, but of course you do.

But what you've got to think about is everyone I've ever represented has loved ones.

And the question is why we do what we do.

And if I were to ask you about the most despicable thing you've ever done in your entire life that you're most ashamed of...

My legal advice would be don't say it out loud on your podcast.

But we've all done terrible things.

Yeah,

(laughs)

I'm way out there on the spectrum of believing things that most people don't believe, and I believe them passionately, and I will argue to the death on them.

I was eight years old when I was sent away to boarding school, a place called Old Buckingham Hall School.

It was a miserable experience that I think only the British would do to each other's children.

Anyone you ever meet who says, "Oh, I loved my school.

It was all great," is lying.

We all blubbed our eyes out in these cold beds at night.

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