Attorney Christopher Gunter on Mental Health and the Death Penalty (warning: graphic material)
Attorney Christopher Gunter has worked both as a prosecutor and defense counsel in Travis County (Austin), Texas since 1980. As an Assistant District Attorney, he prosecuted Leroy Barrow and obtained a death sentence for the capital murder of Lynn Sternberg. Mr. Barrow’s case was reversed and retried by different prosecutors who obtained a conviction and life sentence. As a defense attorney, Gunter represented two defendants in capital murder trials: James Carl Lee Davis, who was seriously mentally ill, and the notorious Kenneth McDuff. Both defendants were convicted of capital murder and executed. In this brief clip from a longer interview ( rmedia.lib.utexas.edu ), Gunter discusses the tensions in the case of James Carl Lee Davis. Davis committed a brutal crime, fatally beating Evet Johnson, 15, Tyron Johnson, 6, and Tom Johnson, 4. Davis was also seriously mentally ill. Gunter explains how he tried to use Davis’ mental illness as a factor that would dissuade the jury from giving him the death penalty. This strategy was double-edged, however, as it painted two pictures of Davis, one a sympathetic character who needs to be institutionalized and the other a psychotic killer who needs to be executed.
