Vicki Werneke is a fed­er­al pub­lic defend­er who rep­re­sent­ed Billy Slagle on Ohio​’s death row. She recent­ly wrote about her fren­zied work dur­ing the last week­end before Slagle’s death on August 4. She not­ed that he was only 18 and high­ly intox­i­cat­ed at the time of his crime. He had been remorse­ful ever since, try­ing to do some good with his life while on death row. Even the District Attorney of the coun­ty that pros­e­cut­ed him sup­port­ed a reprieve, mak­ing this a strong case for clemen­cy. On the final week­end before his exe­cu­tion, new evi­dence emerged that Slagle had not been informed about an oppor­tu­ni­ty to plead guilty at his tri­al and avoid the death penal­ty. The cur­rent pros­e­cu­tors agreed not to oppose a motion for a stay, but, as Werneke wrote, a tragedy occurred: ​“But then Sunday morn­ing, the world shat­tered. I was in church with my dad and my phone kept vibrat­ing in the mid­dle of the ser­mon. I could tell I was get­ting phone calls, but didn’t look at my phone. As soon as I could find a dis­creet time to take a glance at my phone, I saw a text mes­sage from [our inves­ti­ga­tor] telling me that Billy’s sis­ter called to tell us that he had hanged him­self. He was gone.” He did­n’t know of the new legal devel­op­ment. Werneke con­clud­ed, ​“Even in a case where there is no ques­tion of guilt, there remain seri­ous ques­tions about whether the death sen­tence was the appro­pri­ate pun­ish­ment and the cat and mouse games played by those in pow­er. Hope is a pow­er­ful thing and loss of hope can be deadly.”

(V. Werneke, ​“Loss of Hope,” National Coalition to Abolish the Death Penalty Blog, August 6, 2013). See Arbitrariness and Life Without Parole.

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