We met at a gay wedding. I’ll call him David. His wife was the matron of honor for one bride, my wife the matron of honor for the other. We were at the rehearsal dinner ordering margaritas at the bar when we were introduced:


“Andy meet David. Andy represents people on death row. David is a cop.” 


David seemed like a good guy. I don’t think I had ever made small talk with a police officer, but I enjoyed talking with him. He was funny and had a warm smile. And it turned out we had a few things in common. It was readily apparent that we were the only two Jews present, both happily married to non-Jews. We each had two kids about the same ages. 


We were seated next to each other at the wedding. As the evening wore on, the kids went off to play, our wives got up to dance, and we approached the topic of our jobs. He wondered if it was hard to represent clients who had committed such despicable acts. I explained that with some rare exceptions I had built strong relationships with the men and women I represented. I told him that one of the most compelling aspects of my work was delving into their life histories to understand how they ended up on death row. I found humanity in all.


EACH OF US WAS AT SAN QUENTIN 12 YEARS EARLIER AND HERE WE WERE DRINKING CHAMPAGNE TOGETHER.

He wanted to know if I had “gotten any of them off.” I said I just argued an appeal I expected to win. In that case, a juror leaning toward a not guilty verdict had been improperly removed during deliberations. “So, your client would get off on a technicality,” David retorted. “It isn’t a technicality,” I replied, “when, if the juror hadn’t been kicked off, the defendant could have been found not guilty.” He shrugged, seeming to concede the point.David asked if I ever been to an execution. I told him that about a 12 years ago I witnessed the execution of a colleague’s client. I was there as a representative of the defense team in case something went awry. Nothing did, but there I was, watching a man being put to death, a disturbing and surreal experience under any circumstance. Coming as it did only six months after a client of mine was executed, it was devastating.He told me he had been at both executions – as a sheriff’s deputy assigned to security detail. I was stunned. Each of us was at San Quentin 12 years earlier – he as law enforcement and I, the condemned man’s witness – and here we were drinking champagne together.I asked him if being at these executions had an impact on him. Maybe I just wanted to see if we could find some measure of common ground in our shared experiences. He broke into his warm smile, put his hand on my shoulder and said, “I hate to tell you this, Andy, but it was the best.” The deputies working executions are served good barbecue, hang out for hours watching the invariably peaceful crowd of protesters, and then “a bad guy gets killed.”I wasn’t sure what to say. After a few awkward moments, I told him about my client whose execution he had worked – a man with no history of violence and no prior criminal record who was convicted primarily based on the testimony of jailhouse informants. The courts prevented us from presenting new evidence that could have proved his innocence because, though reliable, it had been discovered too late. “My client,” I pointed out, “was executed on a technicality.” David muttered he didn’t know the facts. I went off to find my wife.We didn’t talk again until it came time to say goodbye. I put out my hand to shake his; instead of taking it, David gave me a big hug and said with a little laugh, “My opposite.” I hugged him back.

ANDREW LOVE is an attorney who has represented prisoners on California’s death row for 22 years. He writes the blog Fair and Unbalanced and co-chairs the planning committee for the Capital Case Defense Seminar, taking place next February in Monterey.