‘Hit squad’ battles for defendants
By Mark C. Utgaard
The New Mexican Staff
Strictly speaking, Stephen Aarons’ job is to provide accused criminals with their constitutional right to an attorney. But it goes beyond that. He also tries to save them from the state’s death penalty, a lethal injection.
“A lot of time it’s clear he (the defendant) is guilty,” Aarons said. “But the question then is: Should he get the death penalty? Are there some redeeming values about this person?
“When you work with a client and get to know him as a human being, it’s hard to say that this person is so worthless that we need to get rid of him.”
“I’d rather think of ourselves as the life savers,” Aarons says.
Aarons is the lead attorney in the death penalty unit of the Santa Fe public defender’s office. He specializes in protecting people from the state’s death penalty, a lethal injection.
Consequently, one New Mexico district attorney has referred to Aarons and his co-workers as “the death penalty hit squad.”
Sitting amid boxes of legal briefs, evidence, charts and paper over-flowing off tables, the 33 year old Aarons laughed when told about the ‘hit squad’ nickname. It’s a laughter that comes from dealing with what he feels are misconceptions about his work; a laugh that perhaps indicates he is a bit troubled, nonetheless.
“We get a lot of hate mail,” Aarons said. “People write and ask why we’re wasting taxpayers’ money on murderers. The public doesn’t like what we do, they say we’re just trying to get these guys off.”
“We call them love letters and pin them up on the wall.” The letters are a grimly humorous reminder that they do a job many people loathe.
“Public support for the death penalty is a mile wide and an inch deep,” he says. But he’s quick to point out facts and figures about what he feels are the death penalty’s drawbacks.
“We know of 23 people who have been executed (in the United States) before their cases were rectified and someone else was discovered to be the true criminal,” he says.
These are documented cases of executions of the wrong person. Aarons is presently trying to document another wrongful execution: the case of a Santa Fe man executed for murder in 1947. Fifteen years late, on his deathbed, the true murderer confessed to the crime, Aarons claims.
“We’re not infallible,” he says referring to the judicial system. “A person may be found guilty beyond a reasonable doubt but not beyond total doubt.”
The success of his work is hard to define.
“We have to redefine the meaning of success each time,” he said. “Sometimes it’s saving a life when a person is clearly guilty. Sometimes it’s convincing the jury that he’s not guilty. I can’t think of too many cases like that.
“Sometimes the state will plea bargain for a life sentence. Sometimes it means finding a good appeal issue. Maybe not in this court or the next, but we try to create enough questions that someone along the line will take mercy.”
With the job comes tremendous stress.
During the recent murder trial of David Morton, the stress of the situation occasionally spilled into the courtroom.
Aarons, along with fellow public defenders Jesse Cosby and Jeffrey Jones, appeared calm during most of the trial. But at least twice tension broke the surface.
Once, Jones walked out in frustrated anger when they could not find a piece of evidence in their boxes. Even when he returned, Aarons and Jones hardly spoke for a half hour.
On another occasion Aarons was cross-examining a witness. The answer he got was not what he expected. He turned to Cosby, who had interviewed the witness before the trial, and scolded him under his breath.
“Sometimes the tension mounts and something causes it to shoot up,” he said a bit sheepishly. “If we’re working on the case in the office and we disagree and get angry, that’s all right. But we try to avoid that during a trial. Appearances can affect the jury and we really shouldn’t telegraph our tension to them.”
But there’s a good side to the tension and stress.
“There’s a certain bonding between us. We’ve all gone through a lot together. We’re blood brothers and sisters. Everything else pales by comparison.”
“It’s very stressful but I can’t think of doing anything else.”
The death penalty unit was started in 1985 to help eliminate some of that tension and to put the public defenders with the most experience on the most stressful cases.
“A lot of times there’s nothing else I can think about except the case,” he said. “A less experienced attorney would have a lot of sleepless nights. It’s not like defending someone for a residential burglary. If you goof that up it means a few years. But with the death penalty, it means someone’s life.”
Aarons began his work as an attorney in 1979, working for a year with the Black feet tribe in northern Montana. Then he went to Germany as a prosecutor with the United States Army.
“That’s where I found defense work,” he said. “I prosecuted about 50 cases. But in the Army, a defendant can ask for any attorney for defense and I ended up doing three or four heavy duty murder cases. I found that I was spending most of my time working on the defense cases.
“Prosecution doesn’t require much imagination,” he said. “The police provide much of the investigation, But on defense, the evidence is not there. You have to go out to find it. You have to look under every rock.”
Next week, Aarons, Cosby, and Jones will face another tough test. The sentencing phase of Samuel “Ed” Wilson’s trial will begin Wednesday in Judge Petra Maes’ courtroom at District Court.
Wilson was found guilty of murder in late September by the same jury that will have to sentence him. For Wilson, the result will be life in prison or death.
“I had a lot of sleepless nights after Ed’s verdict,” he said.
_______________________
Editor's note: The jury unanimously returned with a life sentence. Aarons handled the appeal the the New Mexico Supreme Court which overturned the conviction. See Blank. On remand, Wilson pled to second-degree murder and was sentenced to ten years in prison.
