I, of course, had no money to hire an attorney and my family certainly couldn’t afford the $ 25,000 to $ 50,000 that the attorneys they had talked to wanted to take my case so I ended up with three court appointed “public defender” attorneys.
The first one, James, was a middle aged White man who had only sat in on one death penalty case in his entire career. The second one, Harrison, was a middle aged Black man who was, basically, a “political appointee”, as he had helped the judge that presided over my case, Thomas Routt – an older Black man –, campaign for his judgeship so he wasn´t there to “do” anything – he was simply there to collect a cheque from the court. The third one, Carol, was a middle aged Black woman who ended up being the only one of the three I had any regard, respect and trust for although she was the most “junior” member of the “team”. It was James – the white attorney – who ended up being the “lead” attorney because he had some death penalty experience compared to the others who had none. I believe this was the only instance in which “race” wasn´t an issue in my case; from this point on it was a complete “white wash”!
When it came time to pick a jury the state attorneys – a middle aged White man and an older White man – systematically excluded all non-whites from being on it so I ended up with an all-White jury in a city that had over 45% of a minority population. My jury even included a woman who went to the same church as did the family of Daryl Wayne Shirley – the police detective I was on trial for killing! There´s a false perception about how people come to be a jury for a “capital” case – this is not a “jury of your peers” as is supposed to be guaranteed under the U.S. constitution because your “peers” are most likely to have a wide variety beliefs and opinions – especially on a subject such as the death penalty! However, anyone who does not believe in the death penalty and/or is willing to sentence someone to death cannot be a member of the jury so, essentially, you don´t have a jury of your peers but a bunch of people ready, willing and predisposed to sentencing someone to death. I was a black man on trial for killing a white man – I was doomed from the start!
According to the law; I could only face the death penalty if I knew before I shot him that Daryl Wayne Shirley was a policeman and there was absolutely no kind of “evidence” for this being known by me.
Claudette, who had given a statement to the police within hours of the incident and who had no reason to lie one way or another(her oldest sister was engaged to a police detective!), testified that at no time had this “cowboy” identified himself as a policeman and for all she knew at the time he was trying to rob me/us. The voice who had called out, “What’s going on down there?” turned out to be a young White man named David, who lived in the same complex but who I had never met. He testified that the guy who I was fighting with didn’t give him any indication he was a policeman or he would have come down to help him directly because he believed that people should always help a policeman. Besides me these were the only two direct witnesses to any part of the confrontation and I testified myself, for all the good it did me that at no time did this man, Daryl Wayne Shirley, identify himself as a policeman and that if he had done so then I wouldn´t have fought and/or shot him.
