In the first third of Tulsa attorney Greg Laird’s debut novel One Life for Another, the protagonist’s mentor says, “Don’t ever forget, if you don’t win this case, your client will be executed. … I assure you that it is a feeling to which you will never get accustomed, and despite handling cases with insurmountable odds, if your client dies, you will suffer guilt that will never leave you.”
It’s a perfect summary of Laird’s professional career vis-a-vis capital punishment. His childhood and teenage years were spent between Oklahoma City and Jenks. He graduated from Putnam City North High School, and after completing his undergraduate degree in history at Oklahoma City University, he attended Georgetown University for his law degree.
“I couldn’t pass up the opportunity to go to a top-fifteen law school and be in D.C.,” Laird said. “I played soccer at OCU, and while there wasn’t really an American pro option at the time, 19-year-old me was definitely thinking about professional soccer in a European league.”
Capital punishment
Steve Hanson, the protagonist of Laird’s novel, is clearly autobiographical to some extent; his career is a fictionalized version of Laird’s early career as a law clerk on capital cases for federal judges in Tulsa and Muskogee. The penultimate appeal for convicted murderers facing execution is a federal court review of state trial proceedings where the defense attorney tries to show that a client’s federal, constitutional rights were violated by the lower court, thus Laird’s work with Oklahoma’s Eastern and Northern federal court districts.
“My protagonist gets handed a death penalty case a couple years out of law school, much as I did,” Laird said. “One of the qualifications required of an attorney who is permitted to oversee a capital case is that the judges in the district agree that the attorney is qualified to take the case.”
Capital cases are lengthy, complex, emotionally driven processes that require patience, diligence, tenacity and a deep, broad understanding of relevant law. Clerking is an excellent and tedious way to dive into the details of capital punishment law, and Laird notes that as a clerk at that level, the attorney would spend every hour of the workweek delving into the law and proceedings at every stage of the appeal process, from the lower state court all the way to the final appeal before the Supreme Court.
“After two years of clerking, most attorneys make a decision to either stay in that lane or go do something else,” Laird said. “I wanted private practice, but I guess I never thought I’d have someone’s life in my hands, certainly not when I started law school.”
Laird has been involved in nearly 100 murder trials, including several capital murder cases, the first of which was Ernest Eugene Phillips, who was tried in Durant in 1997 for the stabbing death of Jason McFail. Laird was two years out of law school when he was given the case, and he argued successfully before the 10th Circuit Court of Appeals that the jury should have been allowed to consider a lesser charge in the sentencing phase.
Hanson’s story in this novel definitely tracks with much of Laird’s experience, and he draws on it without getting bogged down in legalese or insider baseball-style procedural information. Ultimately, this is a work of fiction, so the details are more crime novel than real life, but the weaving of the two into a coherent narrative works. Young Hanson is given what seems to be an open-and-shut capital murder appeal for a man, Scottie Pinkerton, who is incarcerated at McAlister penitentiary for the stabbing murder of his wife in Claremore. Unlike Laird’s story, this one involves familiar, enjoyable tropes like death threats and attempts to sabotage his investigation, but it’s clear, too, that some of the characters — like the mentor — are based on Laird’s lived experiences. We meet racist cops, a beautiful tech nerd, an overbearing assistant and a hard-boiled investigator, all characters that will be familiar to fans of the genre.
Persistent ideas
The novel has been a yearslong process. Laird took long breaks, like when he had his daughter, now 10, and when death penalty work was all-consuming.
“The book had been lurking there for a long time, a story in my head,” Laird said. “I like good stories, and I remember thinking I’d like to write a book someday. I tried to avoid too much soapbox time in the novel, but there are a few paragraphs for sure. But I think it’s a fun, enjoyable read, not a hammer over the head.”
To facilitate getting the word out, Laird hired a good friend’s sister as his publicist, a step that is crucial for success in self-publishing. Modern publishing requires new authors do much of the work that publishing companies would have handled internally until the rise of digital technology. Now, getting a book published is only the first piece of the work; there are readings, appearances, book signings, panel discussions, reviewing and responding to online reviews, etc., none of which are convenient for a full-time attorney and father.
After 23 years of death penalty work following his clerk role, Laird has strong feelings about capital punishment. They come through in the novel, but with more subtlety than Laird expresses in person.
“There is no justice in it,” Laird said. “Be honest about why you support it. It’s revenge. There isn’t a single argument that doesn’t come down to that. There is no deterrence in it. I’ve worked 97 murder trials. Not one of the guilty ones said they thought about the death penalty before they committed the crime. It costs three times as much to execute as it does to incarcerate. So-called fiscal conservatives should be opposed to it based on that, so everyone just be honest about why you support it.”
For Laird and Hanson, the message is pretty simple. The murder rate is higher in states with the death penalty.
“It’s almost like the government saying murder is wrong and then executing people makes the step from anger to murder shorter than saying killing people is wrong and then not executing people for revenge,” Laird said.
One Life for Another is available through major book retailers.
This article appears in New Year’s Eve Guide.