May 21, 2018
The injustice of the death penalty is something to which Clive Stafford Smith, one of Britain and America’s most powerful lawyers, has dedicated his whole working life. Clive describes Guantanamo Bay (staff have a McDonald’s!), death rows across America, his travels to the families of prisoners across the Middle East and his campaigning against drone strikes in Pakistan with cricketer turned politician Imran Khan. This fascinating insight into a world not often seen is also surprisingly up-beat, with the wit and warmth of a man who loves to ‘work hard and play hard’ never far from the surface.
On this episode we cover:
How Wikipedia describes him
One of Britain’s most powerful lawyers
How his mum inspired him to help people who are less fortunate
Representing people who are hated
Krishna Maharaj, the British Trinidadian businessman imprisoned in Florida Death row
The Columbian drug cartels
Exonerating innocent people in capital cases
How some US police feel frame crime suspects
‘The worse the crime the more obvious explanation’
Representing serial killer and paedophile Ricky Langley
Lorelei Guillory – mother of murdered boy Jeremy Guillory
What motivates him to represent death row inmates
His fantastic job
His 36 trips to Guantanamo
Representing about 88 of prisoners in Guantanamo
Guantanamo’s
McDonald’s and golf courses
Offending the US Army
The decent people in Guantanamo
How Trump is deranged
The 23 people languishing in Guantanamo
Last Resort by the Two Magpies Theatre in Bridport
A future vision of Guantanamo as a visitor centre
Concentration camps near Berlin
The books that are banned in Guantanamo (including Jack and the Beanstalk!)
The second largest landmine field
The future of Cuba
Cuba’s new president Miguel Diaz Canel
The ‘madman in the White House’
Growing up in Cambridge
His mother’s work at King’s College Cambridge
Moving to the US age 19
Finding out people on death row have no right to lawyers
Loving his life in New Orleans
Mardi Gras
New Orleans Jazz Festival
Setting up a death penalty trial office
The prisons he has visited across America
Angola Prison in Louisiana
Mississippi blues players
Describing death row
Don Cabana – the decent warden in Mississippi
The BBC documentary about death-row inmate Edward Johnson, who he was representing, Fourteen Days in May by Paul Hamann
‘managing to get an innocent person executed at a young age’
Diagnostic and Classification Centre in Georgia
The electric chair
Obama’s mistakes
Attending a Ku Klux Klan
The Assassination Programme of the White House
‘Terror Tuesday’
The CIA
Concerns about the Trump administration
‘We are all better than the worst 15 minutes of our lives’
Preferring not to represent innocent people
How we all do despicable things
His new book about his father being bi-polar
Mental health disorders
Alain de Botton
How we will all ask each other ‘how are you mad’?
Travelling around the Middle East to find prisoner’s families
Bahrain, Yemen, Jordan
His terrifying detainment by the Jordanian Secret Service
Being interrogated by the head of Secret Service
Being in Pakistan with Imran Khan
How Imran wont play for Clive’s local cricket team in Dorset (Mapperton Marauders!)
Travelling to Waziristan to protest against drone strikes
US drone strikes hitting schools and funerals
The 16 year old who was killed after their meeting
Asking the White House not to kill them
The terrible driving skills in Pakistan
Why the chaos was caused by the West
Tony Blair
‘You can bomb the world to pieces but you can’t bomb it into peace’
The conflict in Syria
What politicians really should be doing about conflict in the Middle East
Reasons to be cheerful
How the charity is funded
Running a charity with strong principles
Three months in Corsica – aka the ‘happy’ story at the end
Writing his new book
Learning the drums through his son
John Bonham and Led Zeppelin
Corsican goat-herders with guns
The unfortunate story about the family dog
Having a theme tune for each capital case he takes on
His appearance on BBC Radio 4’s Desert Island Discs
His wild nights of partying in New Orleans
His awful dancing