I’ve saved killers from death row & met monsters who butcher victims in woodchippers…even most evil don’t deserve to die
CLIVE Stafford-Smith has walked his clients into the execution chamber and watched as a mask is slipped over their heads and 2,400 volts of electricity pumped through their bodies.
But Britain’s top death row lawyer has also prevented hundreds of dangerous criminals from dying.
Clive, 64, even got one client, triple murderer Larry Lonchar, off the hook within 58 seconds of being executed.
And out of the 400 people he has defended, only six have ever been lost to the death penalty.
“It’s six too many, but it is inevitable,” Clive, who now lives near Dorset, exclusively tells The Sun.
“I never struggled with the deaths until they killed Nicky Ingram.
“We were born in the same hospital in Cambridge and had become very close over the 12 years that I represented him.
“To watch him die from electrocution was just unspeakable and when I close my eyes I can still see his shaved head in a stark black and white contrast.”
In 1995, Ingram became the first Brit to be executed in the US after he was convicted of murdering military veteran JC Sawyer, 12 years earlier, in a botched robbery.
The Cambridge-born man was 19 when he shot JC and in the back of the head with .38 calibre long-barrelled revolver before shooting his wife, Mary Eunice, who survived.
Ingram spent 4,380 days on death row and in his final moments declined a last meal and spat on the warden.
However, in an open letter to the public – Ingram wrote: “If I die, I hope it is not for nothing. I hope people will see that a ritualistic killing in the electric chair solves nothing.”
Befriending psychopaths
In a career spanning roughly 40 years, Clive has met many psychopaths, including child molesters and murderers – and even read the gaze of Ted Bundy after meeting him through fellow lawyers.
Clive said: “In the media he is portrayed as a suave guy who went to law school… but that is just total nonsense.
“He was a blubbering insane person, who had no idea that he was facing execution when it came to the time.”
‘Barbaric’ deaths
Clive – who acknowledges he’s represented “some of the most hated people in the world”, including alleged rapists, triple-murderers and terrorists – still believes the death penalty should never be used against them.
Capital punishment – by firing squad, lethal injection, electrocution, lethal gas or hanging – is still legal in the US and 54 other countries, but Clive believes the practice is “utterly barbaric.”
He added: “To begin with I had a theoretical opposition to the death penalty but then I watched six people die.
“One of whom was Edward Earl Johnson – the first person I lost – I was young and stupid back then and I managed to get an innocent man executed and that is something I have to live with.”
At just 18 years old, Johnson was executed in racially-charged Mississippi after he was convicted for the murder of a policeman and sexually assaulting a 69-year-old woman.
His death sentence gained international attention because it was widely believed he was framed by local cops and forced into a confession.
Ted Bundy was a blubbering insane person, who had no idea that he was facing execution
Clive Stafford-Smith
A woman who claimed she was with Johnson at the time of the crime was reportedly told by cops to “go home and mind her own business”.
Clive said: “Each time it happened, you are walking out of the execution chamber in the middle of the night and you’re looking up at the stars and thinking this is just unspeakable.
“You ask yourself ‘did that make the world a better place?’ – the answer is no.”
Butchering victims in wood chippers
The most chilling moment of Clive’s career came when he had to find one of Pablo Escobar‘s hitmen, known as Cuchilla, who had framed Kris Maharaj for the double murder of Derrick and Duane Moo Young.
Clive said: “Thankfully, I had represented a number of Colombian cartel people over the years and they got people to tell the truth.
“I went to Medellin to talk to a man called Cuchilla, which means ‘the blade’ in Spanish, who was guilty of the murders.
“But I ended up sitting down with a different man who murdered Cuchilla in 1993.
“He recalled the interrogation saying ‘now Cuchilla, how would you like to die?’ and Cuchilla, who killed 300 people himself, replied ‘that’s not how we used to do it, we didn’t give people a choice.’
“The man replied ‘Ah Cuchilla that was just my little joke’ and then fed him through a wood chipper, feet first… that is the kind of people I have dealt with.”
Clive – who was awarded an OBE in 2002 for his humanitarian services – was working in journalism in the US and covering death row workers when discovered inmates no right to a lawyer after their first appeal, meaning an innocent person sentenced to death was helpless.
He ended up defending inmates on death row for the next 26 years – putting in hours of pro-bono work mostly funded by charities.
Opposing the penalty
Clive has been the victim of attempted murder SEVEN times, being held at gun point several times and hospitalised in incidents unrelated to his job.
Clive recalled: “In the end I would say to them ‘look it is obvious to me that you are going to need a defence lawyer one day… and that’s me… so why don’t you go and get a f****** prosecutor and leave me alone.'”
Aside from the fact there is the potential to kill the innocent, the main reason Clive opposes the death penalty is because “revenge is not a cure”.
He recalls the mercy shown by Lorelei Guillory, whose son was murdered by his client, paedophile Ricky Langley.
Clive arranged for Lorelei to meet her boy’s killer ahead of the trial so she could understand what happened.
He recalled: “She turned to the jury and said ‘I think Ricky Langley has been crying out for help since the day he was born. For whatever reason his family, society and the legal system has never listened to him. As I sit on this witness chair I can hear the death cries of my son Jeremy but I can still hear that man crying out for help. I think he was mentally ill when he did it.’”
Langley’s second-degree murder conviction was subsequently reversed and he was taken off death row.
Clive continued: “Society has an absolute right to protect themselves against incurable people like Ricky, and under those circumstances we have a right to sequester people away somewhere.
“And critics will say ‘what about the victims’ – and that is a great case for my client Leslie Martin who was executed by lethal injection.
“The poor victims’ families had been told that by killing him it was going to bring their daughter back and make them happier and it just didn’t.”
Guantanamo Bay
In 2022, Clive secured the release of his attention to Guantanamo Bay‘s older prisoner – Saifullah Paracha.
Paracha, 76, reportedly sang the Hotel California lyrics ‘you can checkout but you can never leave’ as he was freed.
Clive said: “It was quite fitting for a man that spent almost two decades of his life locked up with no charge.”
The dogged lawyer has also secured the release of 81 other detainees amid hopes to close down the infamous detention centre off Cuba.
Clive continued: “It is exactly the same stuff but instead of being told you have the right to a free lawyer, you are told you can’t have a lawyer at all.
“You aren’t told any charges but you’re told you could be there forever and will face the death penalty.
“The catch is I can sue the President and the person who is facing all of this is not exposed to any costs – to date, I have sued 88 times and lost once.”
Because the US government controls Guantanamo Bay prison, lawsuits can be brought against the incumbent president.
In cases that Clive has won, charges against his clients were dropped and the US government was ordered pay compensation to former detainees.
America's most notorious executions
The isssue of the death penalty in the US has been cast back into the spotlight following the execution of Kenneth Eugene Smith
The U.S. Sun has a rundown of some of the most notorious executions, including ones that did not go to plan.
Jesse Tafero
Tafero was sentenced to the death penalty after he was wrongly accused of shooting two police officers in 1976.
His death was anything but ordinary as the electric chair he was strapped to malfunctioned three times and his head burst into six-inch flames.
“It takes seven minutes before the prison doctor pronounced him dead, seven minutes of heaving, nodding, flame, and smoke,” one eye witness later said.
Clayton Lockett
Lockett was sentenced to death for murder and rape in 2000 but his 2014 execution was called off after it was botched.
Nine failed attempts were made to inject potassium chloride into his veins until officials put the needle into his groin.
The injection slowed his heart instead of fully stopping it before a doctor placed the needle into an artery, which caused blood to squirt over him.
The execution was called off but Lockett died of a heart attack on his way to the hospital.
George Stinney
The 14-year-old was sentenced to death in 1944 for the murder of two girls, despite a lack of evidence.
Stinney was too small to fit into the electric chair so he had to sit on books but he survived the first round of 2,400 volts.
Prison guards had to use two more electric shots to kill the teen.
Stinney’s conviction was overturned by a South Carolina court in 2014, 70 years after he was executed.
John Evans
Evans had shot and killed an Alabama pawnshop owner in 1977 during a fumbled raid of the store.
He initially survived the first shocks of 1,900 volts but an electrode came loose resulting in a gruesome scene.
“A large puff of greyish smoke and sparks poured out from under the hood that covered Mr. Evans’s face,” his lawyer said.
“An overpowering stench of burnt flesh and clothing began pervading the witness room.”
Evan’s heart was still beating after the second electrocution and he finally died following the third shock, in a 14-minute ordeal.
Pedro Medina
Medina, a Cuban refugee, was convicted of murdering his neighbor Dorothy James in 1982.
He died in an electric chair 15 years later but a journalist reported his gruesome ordeal.
“Blue and orange flames up to a foot long shot from the right side” of his head,” the reporter said.
“They’re burning him alive,” witness Michael Minerva also said.
‘We are winning the battle’
While death sentences are still being pursued in the US, their frequency has diminished since peaking in the 90’s.
Last year there were just 24 executions for more than 40,000 homicides across the country.
Clive said: “We are clearly winning the battle – those numbers are almost comparable to getting struck by lightning.
“There will come a time when the death penalty is abolished.
“I have often had debates as to whether it would be in my lifetime, I don’t think it will be but it won’t be much longer.”