announces to me, i ve prayed, and i can offer you life without parole. and i m sorry. i think i probably did laugh, i was so taken aback by it. this is woman who i was totally convinced was innocent, and this guy is telling me she should go to prison for the rest of her life was a good deal. in my opinion, it was totally delusional, but he believed. while all gogood disputes th events, clive knew for sabrina s second trial, he would be up against more than just an aggressive d.a. i suppose of all the cases you deal with, the death of a child is the easiest one for the prosecutor to say this is a totally innocent victim, and, indeed, this parent is the one who had the duty to protect that child. so in terms of the narrative of the case that the prosecutor is spinning, it s incredibly easy, and it s very easy for the jurors to see that and get very,
just reading the prosecution case. you know, you look at it, and you think these people don t know what they re talking about. i mean, really, there s no way she should have ended up where she ended up. it s easy to make someone look like she might be guilty. but the real question is, is there any other possible explanation? within the transcripts, clive noticed that forrest allgood had told the jury that sabrina s failure to testify was a sign of her guilt. 2 1/2 years into sabrina s death sentence, the mississippi supreme court considered her appeal. on the appeal, i believe we raised about 17 different issues, and we would have won on a lot of them. in the end, the supreme court of mississippi reversed the conviction based on the fact that forrest allgood, the prosecutor, had made a comment on sabrina s failure to testify. forrest just couldn t stop himself. that s a no-no. you don t do that. and when you do, they re going to do something about it.
purple polka dots. he s going to try everybody. forrest never discriminated against anybody when he was trying to kill them. forrest allgood prosecuted a 16-year-old who had suffered a still birth one month after her 16th birthday for murder because there was a trace of the metabolite of cocaine. this is a 16-year-old. there s a still birth here. we don t know why, and so we re going to make somebody pay for it. one of the things i think that drove forrest was he was a very, very profoundly christian person in a fairly old testament sort of way. forrest has a very conservative approach to law and order. southerners are emotional people, and they re emotionally driven. they re going to fall on the side of the victim, and it s still an eye for an eye mentality here in a lot of respects. i found it pretty incredible
lot of folks just aren t up to it, to be honest with you. sabrina was my first one. i was dumb enough to think it didn t matter. so i crawled on in it. if a jury convicts her of her crime, this 19-year-old columbus woman faces a lifetime prison sentence or could get the death penalty. columbus resident sabrina butler was just 18 years old last may when a grand jury indicted her on capital murder charges in the death of her own son. the prosecution would be led by forrest allgood, a young d.a. building a reputation for aggressively seeking the death penalty. throughout the day, nurses and police officers have been asked to answer questions and identify pictures showing the condition of the baby s body at the time of his death. butler s defense offered no witnesses or expert testimony. we looked. we couldn t find anyone that
you think sabrina butler is guilty of capital murder? and they say, no, it s presumption of innocence, whatever. then you just show them the pictures of the baby, and you ask again. you know, 70% or 80% of people say she s guilty based just on looking at pictures. well, those pictures prove absolutely nothing about who did what, but we as human beings have this massive emotional response to them. i ve seen hundreds of autopsy photographs, and they all prejudice. that s why they put them on there. that probably had a lot to do with, you know, making it real for the jury. against the objections of forrest allgood, the judge agreed to keep the photos out. but clive still had to explain the bruising to walter s body, so he focused on the cpr that sabrina had administered to walter. i panicked. i just grabbed him and ran next