Christine Wiseman is the former President of Saint Xavier University in Chicago, and the immediate past Provost of Loyola University Chicago, where she also held a tenured position as Professor of Law. Before joining Loyola in 2007, she served as Vice President for Academic Affairs at Creighton University, and Associate Vice President for Academic Affairs at Marquette University, where she was a member of its tenured law faculty for 22 years. Earlier in her career, President Wiseman served as an Assistant Wisconsin Attorney General with the Criminal Appeals Division. In 1989, she received the Wisconsin Civil Liberties Union Volunteer Attorney of the Year Award, for her seven-year pro bono representation of Texas death row inmate, Billy Conn Gardner, who was executed in 1995.
Some thoughts about my interview with Chris Wiseman, JD by Cindy Kamp:
“It’s one grain of sand. You make a difference one incident at a time, one student at a time, one client at a time, one case at a time.” – Chris Wiseman
A large part of my interview with Chris Wiseman concerns work she did on behalf of a Texas man, Billy Conn Gardner, who was on death row in Texas. She represented him for 7 years before he was executed. Her time was pro bono, or voluntary, and included many trips from her home in Wisconsin to the Texas prison where he was being held.
Her decision to represent him had a great deal to do with her commitment to treating everyone with dignity, even a man whom a local sheriff described to her as ‘scum.’ As she became familiar with the details of his case, she discovered that Gardner had suffered organic brain damage as a child, and had been injected with heroin to make him a compliant drug runner. From her viewpoint, these issues impeded his ability to develop a strong moral core, and should have prevented his execution. Nevertheless, after seven years representing him on death row, she was unable to have his death sentence overturned and Gardener was executed.
Chris has kept two binders full of Gardner’s letters, and notes that they are a record of how the death penalty works in Texas. She also explains that in her experience, there was no one on death row who came from the kind of home that she did, with two loving, devoted parents, financial stability, and educational resources.
Still, Chris finds some solace in the fact that today there has been an evolution in the application of the law. DNA testing has become more routine, there is an awareness of the issues of cross-racial identification, and a greater consciousness of the inaccuracy of eyewitness identification.
As Chris explains toward the end of our conversation, Gardener gave her a gift of grace before he died, holding up his hand to her hand through the prison glass, and telling her not to blame herself for what happened to him. Her work in his defense was clearly rooted in her commitment to the law and to its equal application for all citizens. It also strengthened her understanding of what it means to treat everyone with dignity, including those on death row.
DATE RECORDED: 12/11/14
MUSIC: Thingamajig by Audionautix is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution license (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/…)
Artist: http://audionautix.com/
Cindy Kamp is the host and creator of Your True North radio show and podcast.
Sean O’Melia is currently the producer of Your True North.
Wow! What an interesting woman. I appreciated her reflections on her father’s traditional values as they posed a challenge for her because she was ambitious and career minded. Also, interesting to note that sometimes what we consider a professional failure may not have been a failure at all. Her values and morals clearly have guided her throughout her life.
I enjoyed listening to this interview. It’s interesting to hear her perspective and her insight about every person being worthy of some measure of dignity. We all need to respect each other even if we disagree with each other. These podcasts are a great resource!
Interesting how her grandmother’s experience of losing her 2 spouses made her mother want to raise self sufficient children. Contrast that with some of Billy Conn Gardner’s formative experiences.