For Immediate Release: September 7, 2015
Press Contacts: Natalie Raabe, (212) 286-6591
Molly Erman, (212) 286-7936
Adrea Piazza, (212) 286-5996
Judy Clarke Excelled at Saving the Lives of Notorious Killers. Then She Took the Case of Dzhokhar Tsarnaev.
In the September 14, 2015, issue of The New Yorker, in “The Worst of the Worst” (p. 62), Patrick Radden Keefe, through extensive interviews with a dozen of Judy Clarke’s colleagues and friends, profiles the woman who is arguably the best death-penalty lawyer in America, and reports from the trial of the first client she lost to death row: Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, who has been sentenced to die for his part in the
Boston Marathon bombing. Clarke’s specialty “is what the Supreme Court has called ‘the worst of the worst’: child rapists, torturers, terrorists, mass murderers, and others who have committed crimes so appalling that even death-penalty opponents might be tempted to make an
exception,” Keefe writes. Her efforts helped spare the lives of Ted Kaczynski (the Una­bomber), Zacarias Moussaoui (the so-called “twentieth hijacker” in the 9/11 plot), and Jared Loughner (who killed six people and wounded thirteen others, including Representative Gabrielle
Giffords, at a Tucson mall). Among death-penalty lawyers, Clarke—who is driven by an intense philosophical opposition to the death penalty—“is known, without irony, as St. Judy, on the basis of her humility, her generosity, and her devotion to her clients,” Keefe writes, noting
that, in some ways, her public persona resembles that of Sister Helen Prejean, the Catholic nun from New Orleans who runs the Ministry
Against the Death Penalty. “But Clarke is no nun. Her convictions are rooted in constitutional law, not the Bible, and in the courtroom she
is unabashedly gladiatorial.” On the rare occasions that Clarke withdrew or was removed from the defense team, a defendant received the
death penalty, but in cases that she tried through the sentencing phase, she had never had a client receive the death penalty until Tsarnaev
did. Keefe notes that Clarke, despite her success, “isn’t a notably original legal theorist.” But Clarke goes to unusual lengths to establish bonds
with her clients. In the words of her colleague David Bruck, who worked with Clarke on Tsarnaev’s defense team, “The client becomes her
world.” But in Tsarnaev’s case, Clarke ultimately “failed to paint a picture of her young client that was moving enough to save him,” Keefe
writes, adding, “It may be that she never found the key.” Those close to Clarke say that the loss has been devastating to her. In death-penalty work, Clarke’s friend Elisabeth Semel tells Keefe, you talk not about losing a case but about losing a client. When it happens, she says,
“you suffer, and you have to figure out how to pick yourself up.” Clarke, she pointed out, “has never experienced this before.”
A Determined Pope Francis Moves to Reform a Recalcitrant Curia
Stille visits the newly created Secretariat for the Economy, headed by the Australian Cardinal
George Pell, who Francis brought in to clean up the Vatican’s finances. The Secretariat for the
Economy is the first department of the Vatican to be bilingual, in English and Italian; Danny
Casey, a financial manager whom Cardinal Pell chose to handle the day-to-day operations, tells
Stille, “English is the international language of business, so we can hire people from all over the
world.” Pell and Casey have collaborated with major international consultants to standardize
accounting practices, identify valuable assets, and bring a number of small Vatican properties
and institutions under direct management of the Holy See, the legal entity that controls the
Vatican and certain institutions in and around Rome. As Stille details, there is evidence that
Francis and his team have had some impact. But Pell has been criticized in the Italian press for
their spending, which, Stille notes, “would be would be normal in the business world but was
out of tune with the modesty and simplicity practiced by Francis.” Piero Schiavazzi, a journalist who has written extensively about the Vatican, tells Stille, “There is a struggle going on
within the Vatican, between the more capitalist-minded people, like Cardinal Pell, and those
who want something different. The first group is for working within the capitalist system and
BARRY BLITT
In “Holy Orders” (p. 50), Alexander Stille reports from Vatican City, and, through interviews with several high-ranking Catholic officials,
explores how Pope Francis is attempting to change the way the spiritual and administrative center of the Church does business. “If Francis seems to the general public like a kindly avuncular figure, within the walls of the Vatican he has a reputation for toughness,” Stille writes.
“While he has distinguished himself for public gestures that point to a life of humility and selfless charity . . . he has moved with equal assertiveness in his insistence on shaking up traditional forms of Vatican governance.” Francis has
introduced some new people into the Vatican government to carry out his vision for the Church,
though for the most part he must work with the singular community that he inherited. Stille
notes that this year he “got a glimpse of how difficult that might be.”
making as much money as possible in order to do good works. The other group, which Francis may favor, thinks the Vatican should use
its money to actually change the system, to invest in poor countries directly in order to change their structure.”
Cardinal Tarcisio Bertone, who was Secretary of State under Francis’s predecessor, Pope Benedict XVI, tells Stille that Benedict should be
seen as a transitional figure, who started many of the reforms that Francis is currently promoting: financial transparency, intolerance of priestly
sexual abuse, the diplomatic opening between Cuba and the United States, reform of the Curia. Francis visits the United States this month,
ending up in Philadelphia, for the World Meeting of Families, a precursor of the Synod on the Family, whose next session will take place in
October. “In his first two years, Francis, through the deployment of his modest personality and inclusive rhetoric, has skillfully created the
impression of a much more open and tolerant Church without actually changing Church doctrine,” Stille writes. But, as is evidenced in the
softening stance of Catholic cardinals on subjects such as homosexuality, Francis has succeeded in changing the internal mind-set of the
Church. “It is the particular genius of Catholicism that it continues to change while insisting that it has never changed,” Stille writes.
Plus: In Comment, Amy Davidson examines the career of the Republican Presidential candidate Ben Carson, a neurosurgeon whose
success in the polls—he is second to Donald Trump—“may be best understood as desperation on the part of voters who have rejected political
experience as an apt test of competence” (p. 33); in a poignant essay, the late Oliver Sacks, who passed away last week, writes about rediscovering the joys of a childhood favorite food—gefilte fish—at the end of his life. Sacks, who, like other Orthodox Jewish children was given gefilte-fish jelly as an infant, writes, “Gefilte fish will usher me out of this life, as it ushered me into it, eighty-two years ago.” (p. 40); Atul Gawande reflects on the life of his friend and mentor Oliver Sacks, whom he credits with teaching him how to be a doctor (p. 38); John McPhee
ruminates on the writing process, and the art of selecting exactly which details to omit (p. 42); in Shouts & Murmurs, Paul Simms presents
eight very short science-fiction stories (p. 50); in a Sketchbook, Paul Rogers pays homage to the spirit of the U.S. Open (p. 69); Kelefa Sanneh
reads three new books about the black experience in America, and considers the role of a black silent majority in the war on drugs (p. 78); Nathan Heller reads Jane McGonigal’s new self-improvement book, “SuperBetter,” which advocates for the “gamification” of everyday life (p. 86);
Carrie Battan listens to The Weeknd’s new album, “Beauty Behind the Madness,” which she notes is “filled with the sort of exhaustive—and
exhausting—nihilism that would make Bret Easton Ellis proud” (p. 92); and new fiction from Joy Williams (p. 76).
Online: On the Political Scene podcast, John Cassidy and James Surowiecki talk about the current and future state of the economy with
host Dorothy Wickenden; on the Out Loud podcast, Sarah Larson and Andrew Marantz talk about the relationship between self-help
and podcasts with hosts Amelia Lester and David Haglund.
Tablet and Phone Extras: Joy Williams reads her short story; Jacquelyn Pope reads her translation of Hester Knibbe’s poem “Destination”; a slide show compares the coifs of Presidential candidates to ancient Roman hair styles; and Richard Brody discusses his Movie of
the Week, Frank Borzage’s “Man’s Castle,” from 1933.
PAUL NOTH
The September 14, 2015, issue of The New Yorker goes on sale at newsstands beginning Monday, September 7.