Capital Defense Lawyer Kelley Henry on Death Penalty Litigation During a Pandemic

Robert Dunham 0:01

Hello, and welcome to Discussions with DPIC. I’m Robert Dunham, Executive Director of the Death Penalty Information Center. In this episode, we’ll be speaking with Kelley Henry, a Supervisory Assistant Federal Public Defender in Nashville, Tennessee, who has represented Tennessee’s death row prisoners for more than 20 years. Ms. Henry was last year’s recipient of the Justice John Paul Stevens Guiding Hand of Counsel Award, given by the American Bar Association’s Death Penalty Representation Project. It was Henry’s lead counsel on the defense team that obtained the stay of execution for Oscar Franklin Smith, who was scheduled to be executed June 4th in Tennessee. The stay was granted in this case on the grounds that crucial work could not be done during the coronavirus pandemic without endangering the health and lives of the defense team, witnesses, and court and prison personnel involved in the clemency and execution processes. Ms. Henry also filed a motion on April 29th, seeking to stay Byron Black’s October 8th, 2020 execution date, saying that the COVID-19 pandemic poses “unprecedented challenges to the legal community and the courts, as well as the public at large.” We’ll be discussing how the pandemic has affected the critical work that takes place in the months leading up to a scheduled execution, including final investigations and clemency efforts. Kelley Henry, thank you for joining me today.

Kelly Henry 1:21

Thank you, Rob, it’s good to be with you.

Robert Dunham 1:23

When most people think about what goes on in advance of an execution, they conjure up images of last-minute litigation. But while there is in fact substantial end-stage litigation in capital cases, the supposed last-minute nature of that litigation is highly sensationalized. And there’s much more to whether an execution should proceed in the pandemic than merely whether it’s safe to carry out the execution. Now, I know you can’t get into the specifics of what you and your colleagues are investigating in Mr. Smith’s case and Mr. Black’s case, but would you tell our listeners what the defense actually has to do with this stage of the case?

Kelly Henry 1:59

Certainly, and there’s so much that goes on behind the scenes that the courts and the public never really see because that work ends up being synthesized by our team and presented in our motions and pleadings to the court as well as our presentations to the governors. So a two-hour presentation to the governor in support of a clemency petition usually represents about, you know, 400 hours worth of field work on the part of the team. One of the things that happens when we begin to represent a client who is facing an actual execution date is that we begin a complete reinvestigation of the case. And the reason that we do this is because there were procedural technicalities that were barriers to the presentation of many of our clients’ factual claims in federal habeas and in state post-conviction. And so when we get to this stage of the litigation, when we are presenting our case to a governor for executive clemency, those procedural technicalities are now irrelevant. And so work that may have not occurred earlier, because it would have not borne fruit in a legal challenge, is suddenly very important. And the reality is that lawyers miss things. And so when we look at a case 20 years after we began representation, we’ve learned more, science has moved on. There are so many things that can be looked into and reinvestigated in a case. And that’s our obligation to do so. A perfect example of that, Rob, was the Sedley Alley case in 2006. Mr. Alley was convicted of a sensationalized, horrific murder and no lawyer had ever really investigated his innocence. They had just always said he was guilty but insane. Mr. Alley didn’t have a memory of the night in question, and so he couldn’t defend himself. And yet when the legal team began a complete reinvestigation of his case, after an execution date was sought, we discovered compelling evidence of innocence, which unfortunately, we were never able to see through in the court during his lifetime.

Robert Dunham 4:25

How often do death row prisoners have significant issues still pending in their cases at the time that they get the warrant?

Kelly Henry 4:33

You know, in my experience, and I’ve been doing this work for about 30 years, it is the rare client who doesn’t have serious litigation pending at the end. We are often challenging their condition, sentences, or the method of execution in collateral proceedings, and so when an execution date is set, and we have that collateral litigation that is ongoing, that speeds up markedly. Litigation that would take years suddenly has to be conducted in an extremely compressed period of time. You may recall in 2018, when the state of Tennessee requested execution dates for 10 men on Tennessee’s death row, there was a challenge made to the new lethal injection protocol, and we were placed on what Justice Sonia Sotomayor and Justice Sharon Lee both described as a rocket docket. And we’re forced to litigate that case in the course of eight months. We took countless depositions, traveled all over the country, presented a 10-day trial with multiple expert witnesses and had to conduct a full appellate process, including request writ of certiorari to the US Supreme Court and at a period of time that normally you would expect five years of litigation.

Robert Dunham 6:03

One of the things that I noticed in the 25 years when I was doing death penalty cases is that the public really doesn’t have an accurate perception of the kinds of things that are going on, especially around the time of a death warrant. And, you know, I mentioned earlier that there’s this misperception that there is this just last-minute activity. Now there is last-minute activity, but misperception is that defendants are waiting until the last minute to try to jam up the courts so there isn’t a fair opportunity to review the cases. And my sense, through the time in which I was doing cases, is that, in fact, there hasn’t been in most cases a fair opportunity to review the issues in the case, but that’s had nothing to do with defense strategy. So, there are key issues like ineffective representation or prosecutorial misconduct that courts have never looked at. Is that the same experience that you’ve had in Tennessee?

Kelly Henry 7:08

Oh, absolutely. I don’t know of any lawyer who intentionally holds on to legal issues until the last minute. That is just not the case. That is a complete misperception. And as you say, there are issues of ineffective assistance of counsel that often come up. Jury misconduct issues that are discovered at the last minute as jurors reveal for the first time their misconduct at the trial. Brady evidence is often found when we conduct these reinvestigations of cases. And that’s happened and you, face multiple times over the course of my career. And sometimes the law changes. So, you know, for years it was held to be constitutional to execute individuals with intellectual disability under Penry v. Lynaugh, and then in 2002, the law changed. Well, that law, in Atkins v. Virginia, was retroactive and applied to every person who was on death row with intellectual disability. That spawned, you know, a lot of litigation for many of our clients, certainly my clients, regarding their intellectual disability — that wasn’t a last minute strategy. That was just the change in the law. And we see that happen, oftentimes, in our cases.

Robert Dunham 8:23

Now, there are some issues that, because of the way the law is written, and the way the US Supreme Court has interpreted the law, do have to be litigated at the end stage. And I know Byron Black has issues in his case, and we don’t need to discuss the specifics of that, but they deal with his competency to be executed. And that’s an issue that you can’t litigate until there’s a death warrant. So, when you have that, what’s the defense required to do?

Kelly Henry 8:54

Well, you’re exactly right about that, Rob, and in Tennessee, we have a procedure which is extremely truncated. What we have to do is conduct an investigation of our client’s current mental functioning, but that also requires looking back as to what his mental functioning has been throughout life because we know that past mental illness is an indicator of current mental illness. And we want to see the course and progression of that mental illness through time. That requires us to review, synthesize, organize, mounds of mental health records, institutional records, we want to look at their medical records because oftentimes, a medical issue can result in incompetence to be executed as the Supreme Court recognized in Madison. And then we have to get extra witnesses, and those extra witnesses need to travel and see the client face to face. You can’t conduct a mental health evaluation through Zoom. It has to be face to face and the reason for that is the examiner has to be in the room to read facial cues, to see hesitation, we all know through our own Zoom experiences that we have problems using this technology even today. The internet is not perfect. And an examiner can’t look at the client and understand whether or not there was a delay in the video or there was a physical tic that he observed in our client. So those examinations have to take place at the prison and that’s something that takes an evaluation. In Mr. Black’s case, although I can’t go into a lot of the specifics, I did inform the court today that Byron is in need of neuroimaging studies. We know that he has organic brain damage, the state doesn’t even oppose it — doesn’t dispute brain damage. The question is whether or not that brain damage is indicative of his intellectual disability, and we’ve fought over that since 2002. But the question is, does he also have some sort of degenerative brain disease? Some cognitive decline? And we need neuroimaging studies to determine whether or not there there is this atrophy going on with Byron. To do that, he has to be transported from the prison to a facility that’s capable of doing these sorts of evaluations. And we do those a lot in our cases. And typically it’s routine, but in the era of the pandemic, nothing is routine.

Robert Dunham 11:29

That’s a routine thing for the defense to need and for the defense to request. And oftentimes, there are hurdles that make it hard to do in the best of social conditions. What’s an expert able to do, if anything, in order to prepare for a competency evaluation during a pandemic?

Kelly Henry 11:50

Really, they can’t. I mean, that’s just a simple answer because the court wants and needs an opinion about our client’s current mental functioning. And the expert can’t rely on what the lawyer tells them about her client’s mental functioning, even if the lawyer could visit her client, which right now, we can’t. He has to see the client in person. No expert is going to give an opinion without having done an in-person evaluation, and that can’t happen right now.

Robert Dunham 12:18

And that’s not the only thing that can’t happen right now. And I think it’s, you know, the Oscar Smith stay motion that you filed is the most thorough description of the effects of the COVID-19 pandemic on defense investigation, at least the most thorough of any of the motions that have been filed to date. I know it’s in it, you know, you talk about how Tennessee, like most states, is under a stay at home order, and because of that, you say, and I’m quoting here, that the order has resulted in a loss of critical time needed to represent in that case, Oscar Smith, but certainly the same thing with Byron Black and the other death row prisoner who’s facing a warrant. Here’s, what the public, what folks have been saying to me, and I know it’s the misconception that many folks have, and they don’t understand this. But why can’t investigative work just be done by phone?

Kelly Henry 13:15

Well, because we know from scientific studies and of human behavior, that you’re just not going to get the level of cooperation, the depth of information, and knowledge that you gain from an in-person interview. You know, there was actually an article circulated this morning about how even Zoom is ineffective in that way, because of our inability to observe verbal cues that you see when you’re in a room, the ability to have that nonverbal communication between two people that is so normal to us that we take it for granted, but really is the key to human communication and interaction. It’s so easy when you’re speaking to someone on the phone, particularly these days in a world where we have tablets and phones and computers, to have a conversation with someone on the phone while at the same time you’re checking your email or checking your text or you’re distracted by something else, and you just want to get off the phone versus a human being coming to the door, sitting down, having a cup of coffee over the kitchen table, and having a frank outright discussion. That’s just a completely different experience. And we know because we have seen what happens when defense teams that came before us in our cases did conduct investigation by telephone. When those investigators didn’t get up out of their office and go out into the field, they missed so many important stories. I had an example of that in a case recently where the trial team did not have an in-person interview with a witness who was the client’s cousin. They deemed this person to be not terribly important and when we went and sat down with this individual face to face, he told us that our client had confessed to him that her mother had sexually trafficked her, that she was a human trafficking victim and he went on to provide incredible detail. That conversation would not have happened over the telephone. That conversation happened by building trust and rapport between the defense team and the witness and we have to have that in every single case. There are no shortcuts. And when you start the conversation with somebody on the phone, you’ve already lost that witness. We have to meet them face to face.

Robert Dunham 15:50

I think one of the things folks really don’t understand — it happens all the time, it happened in a number of my cases — is how you have to build a rapport not just with the client, but with the family members and the witnesses. Because a lot of what we say, or what I used to say when I was doing cases, has to do with letting the public know, letting the courts know, letting the judge know, some of the worst things that ever happened in a person’s life. I hear these stories all the time from from lawyers who are doing the cases, and it happened to me when I was doing the cases, where you go into somebody’s house, and there’s reluctance to talk to you and you finally break down the barriers and you start talking to a person and you notice, you ask them a question. And they look to the side, and you’re like, well, what’s that about? They start to talk and then they stop and they look to the side again, and you realize that they’re about to tell you a story about the father, or a stepfather, or somebody doing a horrible act and that person is in the house. So those are the kinds of things that you just don’t know about and can’t know about if you’re doing the interview by phone.

Kelly Henry 17:11

Oh, that’s such an excellent example, Rob. Sometimes you get the verbal cue that the witness wants to tell you more, but they just can’t that day, and so you know to come back. If you talk to that witness over the phone, and you didn’t see that nonverbal cue, you might end the conversation too early and never return to that witness, not knowing the information that that witness holds that’s so important to your client. And, you know, a lot of people ask us, well, why didn’t your client tell you these things? Well, we know, one, that our clients feel shame for a lot of what’s happened in their life. And also, quite frankly, your trauma is a disease of memory. And our clients often cannot remember all of the horrible details of what they experienced growing up. But that information, what happened to them, is a part of who they are and contributed to how they got into the situation that they were in, my clients who, you know, don’t challenge their guilt or innocence. You know, how did they get here? What happened to them? That information is crucially important to the decisionmaker in an executive clemency proceeding. And as I was mentioning earlier, oftentimes that information is never thoroughly discussed in federal court because of procedural technicalities and the Anti-Terrorism Effective Death Penalty Act’s limitations on relief in federal court. But in executive clemency, you can bring those stories to light and you can make your client and his family come alive to the governor or whoever the decisionmaker is on clemency and have them see the whole person, and that’s an extraordinary opportunity. It’s really it’s a gift that our clients give to us when they allow us to tell these stories. But we can’t tell the stories if we don’t have the facts. And we can’t get the facts if we can’t do the investigation.

Robert Dunham 19:13

So here we are, we’re at a stage where access to critical information isn’t available because you can’t get to the people who might have that information. How are you able to communicate with clients right now?

Kelly Henry 19:27

Well, it’s extremely difficult. There is no real guarantee of attorney-client privilege through any telephone call that we have with our clients — those phone calls are brief. It’s difficult for the phone calls to even get through because we aren’t working in the office and our telephone system isn’t really set up to forward our calls very effectively. We’re in government and it’s an old phone system. You know, our clients can’t put our personal cell phone numbers on their list, so having our clients speak to us is extremely difficult. The prison now has eliminated all legal visits, and I don’t criticize the prison for that — it’s their right to end legal visits for now, because of this pandemic. You know, if it was another situation, I would be the first one at the courthouse steps complaining about being denied access to my clientm but my client’s safety has to come first, as does the safety of the community, and this just isn’t about just the client. It’s about, you know, the corrections officers. It’s about the people in my office. It’s about the family members of the corrections officers, the family members of people in my office, the people that they will come into contact with. This pandemic is like nothing any of us have ever experienced in our lifetimes and I pray to God that we never experience it again. And we’re learning a lot on the fly, but what every government official agrees is that we have to social distance, we have to minimize in-person contact, because that is what is needed to save lives. And so it’s not about our client being executed, it’s about saving lives. And my staff love their clients. And, you know, they will do anything for their clients, they will move heaven and earth, they will work 24 hours a day if they need to — none of us ever complains about that. But we can’t ask our workers, our investigators, our paralegals, our attorneys, to possibly submit themselves to a death sentence or death sentence to someone in their family because they caught this virus during this time when it’s avoidable, when they could stay home.

Robert Dunham 21:49

I’ve gotten a number of questions from reporters about, why isn’t this just another attempt to delay an execution? And, you know, you’ve now explained the significance of the clemency process and have been close to 300 grants of clemency in death penalty cases. But there are also a lot of very substantive issues, issues about whether someone should have been sentenced to death. You talked earlier about Sedley Alley. There’s really strong circumstantial evidence now that he’s innocent. And, in fact, it’s more than circumstantial evidence, there’s some forensic evidence as well. You guys went into court representing, and when I say “you guys” I mean the Federal Defenders Office and The Innocence Project and local counsel who were representing Sedley Alley’s daughter. You went into court asking for DNA testing. Can you tell us briefly what happened there?

Kelly Henry 23:00

Sure, and I’ve said this many times, and I believe it. I will go to my grave believing that Sedley is innocent unless DNA proves me wrong. Sedley was an incredibly mentally-ill man who also had a drug and alcohol problem. And we’ve seen it, and the Supreme Court has recognized in cases of mental retardation, that mental retardation puts people at special risk for wrongful execution. Well, so does mental illness. And that’s what happened in Sedley’s case because he had no memory of the events of the night of the murder, and so he couldn’t defend himself. And his lawyers just assumed he was guilty and never looked back. When we reinvestigated the case, in 2006, we realized that there was proof that had been withheld that would have established an alibi, a rock solid alibi, for Sedley at the time the homicide took place. And then we dug further, and we saw that Sedley in no way matched the description of the man who abducted Suzanne Collins. That man was about five foot nine; Sedley was over six feet tall. We discovered that the victim had two boyfriends, one that was secret to the other, and that she had just broken off with that boyfriend in Millington, Tennessee, and was set to return to California the next day to be with her fiance. The jilted boyfriend matches perfectly the description of the person who abducted Suzanne Collins and drove the same kind of car that was used in the abduction of Suzanne Collins. It’s evidence like that, that we were beginning to uncover. Tire tread tread evidence, foot print evidence, all sorts of things that a trained trial lawyer would have known to look for, but that no one had looked at before. We tried to get the DNA tested in the case. The Innocence Project, as you mentioned, came in. We conducted a clemency hearing before a board that was appointed by Republican governors, and that board recommended to the governor at the time a reprieve for Sedley. And the board actually recommended to the governor that he should order the DNA to be tested. The governor did half of that: he gave us a reprieve and told us to go back to court in Shelby County, in Memphis, Tennessee. And we were denied evidence under a legal theory which has now been overturned by our Tennessee Supreme Court. So the law that was used to inhibit Sedley from getting DNA at the time of his execution is no more. Given that change in the law and the discovery of a man who was arrested in St. Louis, Missouri, who is thought to possibly be a serial killer, who mentioned on his LinkedIn webpage his presence at the Millington Air Force Base during the timeframe that Suzanne Collins was a student there and during the timeframe that she was murdered, we went to April and told her we had this new evidence, and we went to court because she, standing in the place of her father and representing the estate, wants to know the truth. She has lived with this hanging over her head her entire life. It has destroyed her world and that of her brother’s, and the not knowing is worse than anything else, and they just want an answer. And so that case is proceeding through the courts right now, and we hope she gets the answer and the justice she deserves — and that Sedley deserves.

Robert Dunham 26:54

I think Sedley Alley’s case illustrates both the promise, and the sometimes ineffectiveness, of the clemency process. Because here you’ve got a case where, for a variety of reasons, the evidence was never developed in the courts. And after someone is convicted, the legal standard for getting off of death row is very different from the standard for getting onto death row. And so you almost have insurmountable burdens of proving that you are innocent. Whereas a trial, the burden is on the prosecution beyond a reasonable doubt to show that you’re guilty. So I think Sedley Alley’s case is a really strong example of how, through the clemency process, you can get additional review. But the downside of it was that all there was was additional review, and then the courts didn’t follow through.

Kelly Henry 27:55

Exactly and again, just because of procedural hurdles, and as you say, the insurmountable obstacles that are placed in our way. That’s why, frankly, it does take so much time because once you make these discoveries, then you have to dig deeper and deeper and deeper, and you have to do it very, very quickly. And then suddenly you realize, oh my God, look what got missed. Today, there was an article posted in The Appeal about my client, Pervis Payne, who also has an execution date in December of this year. And Pervis was arrested for a crime that occurred, interestingly enough, in Millington, Tennessee, and the crime occurred a year after the Suzanne Collins murder. He was convicted in Shelby County, even though he has always maintained his innocence. And he is a person with intellectual disability that the Tennessee courts have refused to give a hearing. And so here we have the intellectually disabled man wrongfully convicted. The new team on his case — who took over after his lawyers of 18 years left our office — we did a new investigation of the case, the new team, and we went down to Shelby County and asked them to produce the evidence in the case. And lo and behold, there’s forensic evidence that we never knew existed that’s inconsistent with the prosecution’s theory. DNA that could be tested and demonstrate Pervis’ innocence. So that’s the kind of thing that happens in these cases. And it’s not intentional, and it’s not because the lawyers who who came before were bad lawyers or because, you know, my team is so great. I’m certain that I’ve made plenty of mistakes along the way in my career. The point is, is that we’re all humans and we miss things, but we can’t allow our human errors to produce a wrongful execution. We have to do everything we can to right those wrongs as long as we can, and as long as our client draws breath. And in Sedley’s case, that was until the very end. We were still writing a cert petition when we got word that Sedley was executed at one in the morning.

Robert Dunham 30:19

I want to shift gears here for a second. I kind of think that the listeners might need a break from the really traumatic and emotional kinds of things that we come across in these cases. And so let’s shift a little bit to process and going forward: how courts have been effective or ineffective in responding to the pandemic. We’ve seen the courts canceling a lot of proceedings and moving others to phone or video. Do you think the courts have been sufficiently responsive with important issues like for example, your stay matters?

Kelly Henry 30:58

I think I’ll reframe your question just a little bit or respond in this way, which is, I think that the courts were and are as unprepared to deal with this pandemic as the rest of us. They were as blindsided as we were. And the pandemic has highlighted holes in our “coop plan,” as they call it, the continuing operations plan. Technology is great, but it’s still not where it needs to be for us to be able to practice virtually — it’s never going to be there. You’re never going to replace the human being, and I think that the courts are doing the best that they can, but I think it’s hard for them to have to deal with all the issues that are coming up. And to me, when you’re talking about dealing with essential matters, that involves people who are just arrested, who have a right to be arraigned within 24-48 hours, those sorts of things have to go on. You can’t stop those, but other matters can wait. And it’s not ideal. It’s not ideal for any of us to have to stay home, but it’s what we have because of the nature of this pandemic and this disease that we’re still learning more and more about. So I do feel for the judges having to find their way through. And I do think that they have other matters that are more urgent and more pressing, which is another reason why putting executions on hold just simply makes sense. Because these cases do divert the court’s attention from other matters, as they should, and our clients won’t be able to get the sort of consideration that these cases call for. The same is true for governors. I mean, how does the governor deal with a substantial case for executive clemency when he’s trying to figure out how to get hundreds of thousands of people in his state back to work, you know, he has some real nuts and bolts, things he needs to do. And he’s not gonna have time to look at a clemency application, as important as it is. There are only so many hours in a day.

Robert Dunham 33:18

I think this situation tells us a great deal about priorities. One of the things that we’ve heard with folks calling in from a variety of different states is: Why does the State even consider an execution at this point? A state like Georgia, which has the shortest death warrant period of any state in the country, they can sign a warrant and the execution can be carried out within two weeks. The Attorney General there, who is very strongly supportive of capital punishment, has said we’re not going to seek death warrants during this period. There are more important things for the state to be focusing on. When it comes to whether to carry out an execution now, I think one of the images that comes to mind for me is that this isn’t a question of, are you for or against the death penalty? It isn’t even a question of whether a particular prisoner whose execution date has been scheduled should or shouldn’t be executed. In many respects, it’s a question of, Is it more important for the state to attempt to kill that prisoner now, in circumstances that would place many other lives and the health of many other people at risk? Or is the state’s priority safety first? Health first? And then we can get back to whether or not we’re going to have a death penalty, whether or not we are to carry it out once the public is safe.

Kelly Henry 34:53

Oh, that’s absolutely correct. I mean, you know, prisons aren’t prepared for carrying out executions. So, again, if you get to just the mechanics and logistics of how to carry out an execution, how is that going to work? Does everyone have to wear masks and gloves? There’s no way to social distance in the witnessing room. I mean, I just think that it would be a debacle and a huge distraction. When somebody goes in Tennessee, I think it’s true in most cases, when an execution date is set a certain period of time before the execution the inmate is moved to death watch. And I think in Arizona, that’s 30 days in advance and in Tennessee, it’s three days in advance, and it takes an enormous amount of time and staffing to deal with those death warrants and death watch, not to mention what it will do to our clients’ families. Right now, they can’t visit their loved ones. Their visits have been cut off and we face the very real possibility of clients being executed without an opportunity to say goodbye to their mother, their father, their brother, their daughter, their son, and be deprived of their spiritual advisor. Because most clients have a spiritual advisor who is outside the prison. Very few clients actually use the prison chaplain as their spiritual advisor. And Tennessee is a heavily Christian state, very religious and I think that it would be offensive to most Tennesseans to know that men who are about ready to have their life taken at the hands of the state in their name would be deprived of that opportunity to take last communion with their priests, or to say a final prayer with their spiritual advisor or have their spiritual advisor prepare them for death and what that means to them in their particular faith practice.

Robert Dunham 36:54

And this is not an abstract matter. Earlier this week in the news, a spiritual advisor for the Texas prisons died from the coronavirus. And so it’s a matter of life and death. And it’s hard to imagine how a spiritual advisor would turn down a request to see someone whose life is about to be terminated by the state. And yet, you can’t put somebody in that position.

Kelly Henry 37:29

Exactly. I mean, like I said in the motion and have said many times during this conversation, this is something unprecedented and we hope it never happens again, and we’re all doing the best that we can, but this is one obstacle that can be removed. Nobody has to be executed right now. Nobody has to be executed this year. Let’s get through this pandemic. And and then if we want to fight about whether or not somebody deserves to be executed or not, we can do so then. But right now, to do so needlessly puts lives at risk.

Robert Dunham 38:12

Well, Kelly, this has been a fascinating discussion. Before I let you go, is there anything else that you would like our audience to know that we haven’t covered?

Kelly Henry 38:21

Oh, I’m sure I could go on and on all day. As you know, I never give a short answer, but I think we’ve covered it all today, Rob. Thank you.

Robert Dunham 38:30

Kelly Henry, it has been a pleasure to have you on Discussions with DPIC.

Kelly Henry 38:33

Take care.

Robert Dunham 38:33

To learn more about the death penalty, and the effects of the coronavirus on death penalty cases in Tennessee and elsewhere, visit the Death Penalty Information Center website at deathpenaltyinfo.org. And to make sure you never miss an episode of this podcast, subscribe to Discussions with DPIC on your podcast app of choice.