Mind Matters: Steel Magnolia?

Posted by Dr. Kayta Gajdos on April 15, 2015

My ears perked up the other day when I heard Mark Bowden being interviewed on NPR relating to his recent article in Vanity Fair about Judy Clarke, the attorney who is defending Dzhokhar Tsarnaev.

Because Southern born and bred Judy Clarke eschews publicity and notoriety, she may not have “celebrity status.” However, Bowden considers, “Among those who want capital punishment abolished in this country, Judy Clarke is the most effective champion in history.”

Before being Dzhokhar Tsarnaev’s defense attorney, she has defended numerous others whom the media and the public have already condemned.

She was the defense for Ted Kaczynski, the Unabomber; for Susan Smith, who drowned her children; for Eric Rudolph, the racist terrorist and Christian extremist who detonated a bomb at the summer Olympics in Atlanta in 1996. Rudolph, we should remember, killed two people and injured 150. Also Clarke defended Zacarias Moussoui, who was accused of being a part of the Sept. 11 attacks; and she defended Jared Lee Loughner, who in 2001, opened fire at an outdoor event in Arizona where he severely wounded U.S. Rep. Gabrielle Giffords and murdered six others. While Attorney Clarke may shun the limelight, her clients achieve the fame of infamy through their heinous crimes.

Clarke’s defenses rest not on proving the innocence of her clients as much as it is to wrest them from the death penalty, which she considers “legalized homicide.” She has told her students that the attorney stands between the power of the state and the individual. She has also commented that “no one should be defined ‘by the worst moment, or worst day’ of his life.” (Bowden) Her goal at trial is to reframe the narrative about the accused, showing what factors and circumstances may have been foundational to the crime. According to Bowden, “She seeks not forgiveness but understanding.”

Perhaps it is her compassion in seeing the broken humanity of the individual that allows her to be so persuasive in court. Bowden remarks that Clarke has a steeliness that doesn’t usually get associated with kindness, and that it is her steeliness that makes her defiant and committed. However, compassion and steely tenaciousness are not antithetical to each other. In fact, for authentic action, they work hand in hand. That old cliché, “don’t mistake kindness for weakness,” comes to mind.

While reading about Judy Clarke’s relentless work against the death penalty, I remembered a horrific story of a man and woman falsely convicted of murder. Sunny Jacobs and her husband Jesse Tafero were both given the death sentences. Tafero burned to death in a botched execution. Jacobs was released after almost 20 years in prison. There are other shocking stories told in the movie, The Exonerated. Or, consider the Innocence Project, “a national litigation and public policy organization dedicated to exonerating individuals through DNA testing and reforming the criminal justice system to prevent future injustice.”

Judy Clarke’s defense of the guilty may one day bring light to the other dark side of the death penalty: the wrongful execution of the innocent.

*Kayta Curzie Gajdos holds a doctorate in counseling psychology and is in private practice in Chadds Ford, Pennsylvania. She welcomes comments at MindMatters@DrGajdos.com or 610-388-2888. Past columns are posted to www.drgajdos.com.

About Kayta Gajdos

Dr. Kathleen Curzie Gajdos ("Kayta") is a licensed psychologist (Pennsylvania and Delaware) who has worked with individuals, couples, and families with a spectrum of problems. She has experience and training in the fields of alcohol and drug addictions, hypnosis, family therapy, Jungian theory, Gestalt therapy, EMDR, and bereavement. Dr. Gajdos developed a private practice in the Pittsburgh area, and was affiliated with the Family Therapy Institute of Western Psychiatric Institute and Clinic, having written numerous articles for the Family Therapy Newsletter there. She has published in the American Psychological Association Bulletin, the Family Psychologist, and in the Swedenborgian publications, Chrysalis and The Messenger. Dr. Gajdos has taught at the college level, most recently for West Chester University and Wilmington College, and has served as field faculty for Vermont College of Norwich University the Union Institute's Center for Distance Learning, Cincinnati, Ohio. She has also served as consulting psychologist to the Irene Stacy Community MH/MR Center in Western Pennsylvania where she supervised psychologists in training. Currently active in disaster relief, Dr. Gajdos serves with the American Red Cross and participated in Hurricane Katrina relief efforts as a member of teams from the Department of Health and Human Services' Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration.Now living in Chadds Ford, in the Brandywine Valley of eastern Pennsylvania, Dr. Gajdos combines her private practice working with individuals, couples and families, with leading workshops on such topics as grief and healing, the impact of multigenerational grief and trauma shame, the shadow and self, Women Who Run with the Wolves, motherless daughters, and mediation and relaxation. Each year at Temenos Retreat Center in West Chester, PA she leads a griefs of birthing ritual for those who have suffered losses of procreation (abortions, miscarriages, infertility, etc.); she also holds yearly A Day of Re-Collection at Temenos.Dr. Gajdos holds Master's degrees in both philosophy and clinical psychology and received her Ph.D. in counseling at the University of Pittsburgh. Among her professional affiliations, she includes having been a founding member and board member of the C.G. Jung Educational Center of Pittsburgh, as well as being listed in Who's Who of American Women. Currently, she is a member of the American Psychological Association, The Pennsylvania Psychological Association, the Delaware Psychological Association, the American Family Therapy Academy, The Association for Death Education and Counseling, and the Delaware County Mental Health and Mental Retardation Board. Woven into her professional career are Dr. Gajdos' pursuits of dancing, singing, and writing poetry.