E-mail a friendThomas Cahill
airdate May 4, 2009
Thomas Cahill is the author of five volumes in the international best-selling "Hinges of History" series. He's a lifelong scholar, who's taught at Queens College, Fordham and Seton Hall Universities. He was previously The Times of London's North American education correspondent, a Los Angeles Times Book Review contributor and Doubleday's religious publishing director. In his most recent book, A Saint on Death Row, Cahill tells the story of Dominique Green, who was executed by lethal injection in Huntsville, TX.
Best-selling author describes how Dominique Green encouraged fellow death row inmates to seek forgiveness and forgive. (1:58)
Full interview. (11:13)
Thomas Cahill
Tavis: Thomas Cahill is a noted historian and bestselling author known to many of us for his series called "Hinges of History." His latest book takes a very personal look at the death penalty and is called "A Saint on Death Row: The Story of Dominique Green." Thomas Cahill, nice to have you on this program.
Thomas Cahill: Tavis, thank you for inviting me.
Tavis: Let me make the most of my time and go right at it. Tell me about Dominique Green.
Cahill: Well, I met him I would say almost by accident, but I suppose that's how you most people, you come right down to it. I knew slightly a woman who had agreed to represent him in his final appeals, Sheila Murphy, a retired judge from Chicago. And I was having lunch with her and I was on a tour for another book, and she asked me where I was going next and it turned out that it ended in Houston.
She said, "Well, then you can visit Dominique." That was about a week and a half before Christmas, and I have to say the last thing in the world that I wanted to do was to stay an extra day in Houston and go out to this prison, which was about an hour and a half outside the city, to meet somebody that I figured would be difficult to talk to and what did we have in common anyway? But I couldn't say no to Sheila, so I went out.
Dominique Green was a completely different person from anybody I could ever have expected to meet in such circumstances. He was not just extremely bright - he was extremely bright - he was extraordinarily well-read. He had educated himself while he was in prison, and he had done a very, very good job of it.
But more than that, he was somebody who - he was interested in me, he was interested - here's a guy who's in solitary confinement, has been there for years, who is a wonderful conversationalist, full of fun, great sense of humor, and extremely sincere and I would say even profound in his concerns, in his ability to articulate them. I was just blown away.
And we became much better friends as time went on, a lot of it through letters. He's not the easiest person in the world to visit - he was not - and after his execution, I decided I really had to tell people about him.
It is a book about the death penalty, but principally it's a book about Dominique Green. It's a book about this man. I know that there are plenty of other stories like this. Last night at a bookshop in Marin County, a woman who visits people in prison said, "You're talking as if Dominique Green is unique; he's not."
And I know that's the case, but rather than tell the story of thousands, which is very hard to do, I wanted to tell the story of this one person who, despite the fact that he never got a break either from Texas or from its judicial system or from the cops or from his own family or from anything that ever happened to him, turned into this sensational, wonderful person.
One of the things that we talked about the first time we met was Desmond Tutu. He had just finished Tutu's book, "No Future Without Forgiveness," about the Truth and Reconciliation Commission in South Africa, and he decided that that was the way he had to go and the way the other people on death row had to go, and he sent that book up and down death row.
They have ways of doing this, even though they are in solitary. And he got most of the guys then on death row to forgive everybody who had hurt them and ask for forgiveness, insofar as they could, from everyone they had hurt. And we talked intently about Tutu because Archbishop Tutu is a friend of mine, and he wanted to know everything he possibly could about him.
And then finally Archbishop Tutu actually visited Dominique, which I think was certainly one of the great days of Dominique's life.
Tavis: I can only imagine. He's sitting on death row why?
Cahill: He supposedly was responsible for murdering a truck driver early in the morning outside a convenience store. I'm virtually certain that he did not do it. It did happen. This man, Andrew Lastrapes, was knifed and died, bleeding, on the sidewalk. If the police had actually called an ambulance in a reasonable amount of time, he might still be alive. That's my own opinion, looking things over.
But it's not just my opinion. Andrew Lastrapes's widow and his sons both made pleas for Dominique's life. All of them believe that he was innocent. Dominique grew up in terrible circumstances, really - an absent father and an out-of-control mother who would do things like in order to discipline Dominique would hold his hand over a gas flame.
It was really only after he got into prison that Dominique was able to blossom into the person that he always was meant to be. But he was part of a gang of kids who were robbing people.
Tavis: I was about to ask, what was the case against him, specifically?
Cahill: And there were four kids that were supposedly involved in this hold-up. Three of them were Black and one of them was White. The White kid was never charged with anything, in a state where they have a law that you can be charged for a crime if you were in any way associated with it - if you were driving the car and didn't know it was going to happen, you can still end up on death row. And this kid, the White kid, was never charged.
Tavis: Charged with anything.
Cahill: No, but he testified at the trial. Dominique was the only one who had no protection. The others, one kid's mother got him a lawyer, they were all out of prison by the - they were not - Dominique had nothing. He was just stuck there. They went after him because he was the easiest to go after. Somebody wanted a conviction, settled the whole thing.
Tavis: So your argument is, your believe is, in the research you've done, that while something did happen, somebody was murdered, number one; number two, this gang that he was a part of was running around doing unsavory, illegal, unethical, immoral things. He was a part of it, but he had nothing to do with this actual murder.
Cahill: Yeah, I don't think so. But at the end of the book, I say - everyone asks me, "Did he do it?"
Tavis: Did he do it. And you say that's the wrong question.
Cahill: Yeah.
Tavis: And the right question is?
Cahill: Did he receive a fair trial? That's what I would want for my child. (Laughs) If my kid was in that kind of trouble - and I say this to everybody out in television land - wouldn't you, of course, go get yourself a good lawyer? That's what he didn't have. He didn't have the normal protection.
Yeah, he had a lawyer that was brought in by the court that was paid on an hourly basis who did nothing - nothing. The trial was over before it began. It was bizarre. And Bernatte Lastrapes, the widow of the murdered man, attended the trial and said to me, "It looked like some kind of bizarre ritual that was already decided in advance."
Tavis: I want to end our conversation where we began. This story is so common in America, where people don't - and I'm talking specifically now about the part of the story where people don't get a fair trial. I think you're right about the fact that oftentimes, we ask the wrong questions.
Did he do it? An important question, but perhaps a more important question is did he or she, whoever the accused is, did they get a fair trial? Because that's what we are told that we are entitled to as American citizens, to get a fair trial. I raise that only to ask this question.
Since this story is so common, and certainly inside of Black America we know all too well how common this story is, what's the point here, to educate White people? Because we know this story. What do you hope to accomplish by telling, very powerfully, the story of Dominique Green?
Cahill: My first goal is to give Dominique Green to as many people as possible. This is a death penalty book, but it's principally the story of Dominique Green, because he was a wonderful person and everybody - as many people as possible should know it. Very, very few people were able to get to know him during his life. If you're in solitary confinement, you don't get to see a lot of people.
And it's such an inspiring story, how this kid pulled himself up all by himself, without anybody else's help, to become really a kind of spiritual genius. Archbishop Tutu said after meeting him, "He is a good advertisement for God."
Tavis: Great place to leave our conversation. I might add to this very quickly, though, that Thomas has told me off camera, which I don't know if he meant to say on camera but I'm going to say it anyway because I know this to be the case, Thomas Cahill is a bestselling author and so you can walk into stores all over the country and find his stuff typically, usually, at the front of the store, very much on display, in the window. That's what happens when you are a perennial bestselling author.
This book, though, isn't easy to find all the time when you walk in a bookstore. They don't put these kinds of stories in the window.
Cahill: I haven't been in every bookstore, needless to say, but I have to say that I have been kind of shocked by the treatment given it in many places. I was even told by some of the wise old heads in publishing, better not to put a Black face on the front of the book.
Now, that was from one end. And then from the other end, in the chain bookstores it's sometimes found in true crime or general religion. I don't know why (laughs) it's in either of those categories.
Tavis: It is for all those reasons that he is on PBS tonight. That's why we chose this book. His name, Thomas Cahill - the author, that is. The book is "A Saint on Death Row: The Story of Dominique Green." Thomas, nice to have you on. I know Dominique appreciates you telling his story.
Cahill: Oh, thank you very much. Thank you.
Tavis: Thank you.
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