>> glor: good evening. i'm jeff glor filling in for charlie rose. we begin tonight with the announcement from british p.m. threesa may about a forthcoming snap election in june. we talk to ed luce of the "newg york times." if. >> if it had been david cameron or tony blair calling for a snap election, it would have been leaked out and they have so many friends that it would have been hard to keep a secret. threesa may is a very different kind of character sz. >> glor: we conclude with a discussion about the arkansas death penalty with david boies, lorri davis and damien echols. >> i went from solitaire confinement to the streets of

manhattan literally overnight. i walked into a world where everyone uses computers, debit card readers and machines that i had no idea how to use. so it was like me being an alien dropped off in a new world without any help or anything. i needed someone with me 24 hours a day, seven days a week almost as if i were an invalid. >> brexit and the death penalty in arkansas when we continue. >> rose: funding for "charlie rose" has been provided by the following: >> and by bloomberg, a provider of multimedia news and information services worldwide. captioning sponsored by rose communications

from our studios in new york city, this is charlie rose. >> glor: good evening. i'm jeff glor filling in for charlie rose who is away today. we begin with news out to have the united kingdom. u.k. prime minister theresa may said she would call an early election on june 8th to give the prime minister more flexibility in pending negotiations to exit the european union or brexit. alsthe house of commons will voe on wednesday whether to approve the election. john mikheil twhait joins me and ed luce. welcome to both of you. to the latest chapter in the soap opera that is brexit.

ed, how surprising is this? >> it is quite surprising. this is the best kept secret in british politics. if it had been david cameron or tony blair planning to call a snap election, it would have been leaked out. they had so many friends, david cameron had a chumocracy. it would have been hard to keep a secret. theresa may is different character. doesn't reveal her hand and has executed a complete surprise to almost everybody except a very small cotree around her. it's not surprising in another sense that she doesn't have her own mandate. she became prime minister becoming reluctant romainer but did campaign for romaine. she was in the e.u. with her

head but out of it with her heart so she was not seen as one of the true brexit-eers, out of the e.u. with their head and heart, and if she gets the majority, she can claim her own authority to pursue brexit negotiations her own way and gives her i want standing. so in that sense, it's not a surprise, but it was a brilliantly kept secret. >> glor: fundamentally is why she's doing this. >> she will characteristically say this is on behalf of the country and the country needs to back some version of brexit but she's doing that in mind. her starting point, she has a slim majority, she may end up with a bigger tory majority.

we could be wrong but, assuming that happens, that should give her more stability, give her the ability to get things through parliament easier if she wants, but sometimes having large groups of people means your chances of keeping them all in order are much smaller because you can't appeal to the tribal loyalty. and the underlying problem with this is the tories and europe, where the tories have the same sort of approach to europe as the republican party to abortionists. it's all about internal politics, the tory party, and many m.p.s, you think their main danger is being deselected by their local party rather than beaten by the labor party. >> glor: but as you say, what we expected might happen has not always happened. >> even people as clever as ed and me have got this completely wrong repeatedly. >> glor: so if we talk about june and the opposite of what you mentioned might happen does happen, what position does that put -- does theresa may put

herself in? >> i think theresa may is basically in a position where she doesn't have much -- she has a tiny majority, and if she keeps on with a tiny majority, that would not look good. the other thing is she's trying to play with time a bit. in continental europe, the other side of the big negotiation with the brexit, you have the french election, then the parliament bit after that, merkel's election, you have august, which is not much work done. so she has a period where she declared brexit or started the process but in the next few months nothing's been happening and she's going to replenish her political supplies. >> glor: the conservatives have a significant amount of support, as you know, in the polls today. is there a sense that has continued to surge? >> that's not clear. i mean, there is one party in print, the liberal democrats and

only one that unambiguously wants a second referendum to reverse brexit and that the what they will campaign on. tony blair, former labor prime minister, indicated today he'll probably campaign with the liberal democratic party. as john mentioned, polls in brain, though they show a 20 point conservative lead which is prohibitive and overwhelming, polls have got british elections wrong quite a lot recently, not just brexit where are narrow romaine victory was indicated by is polls but much more egregiously the last general election in print two years ago who which labor was shown as being neck and neck with the conservatives, and labor was absolutely obliterated on the day. so it's a very volatile picture. john mentioned france. the far left french leader who

could be compared possibly to germy corbin, the labor party leader, was nowhere three or four weeks ago. he was pulling single digits. now he surged up to strong double digits out of the blue and that's in the space of three or four weeks. we've got six weeks between now and the british general election, and lots can happen if this kind of volatile environment, so i wouldn't bank on the theresa may massively increases her majority scenario. >> what she wants is she wants flexibility, she wants people to say, trust me, i'm the person who is going to oversee the brexit thing. but at this precise moment, she wants like any other candidate to say as little as possible other than trust me, because if she makes pledges, saying things like brexit will absolutely guarantee the following things and they don't appear, then she's setting up a massive

headache for herself later. she's taken the calculator risk, the opposition is so useless she can get that mandate through now. but if she gets pushed gradually into revealing more and she's going to have this very hard core pro brexit group within her party saying we shouldn't allow x, we shouldn't pay money to the european union and do these things, that gives her very little wiggle room, because at some point she's going to come back from brussels with what is not a bad deal but probably not a particularly brilliant one and say this is as good as i can get and that will be a hard sell. >> this is the hard exist. as we stand two months away or less from the snap election, we're now ten months removed from brexit? >> yes. the vote? and the ramifications are still going on. only a few -- back in the days,

looks like the tories were looking secure, the referendum was likely to push forward. british politics is incredibly volatile. >> one word for it and the polls are volatile as well. if you're forecasting time-wise here, again, you're now ten months removed, if there is an expectation whether it's going to be hard or a soft exit here, how long is britain looking at? >> well, i think it's got to be two years to negotiate the actual divorce agreement. that's an e.u. law, the article 50 she triggered in march. but in terms of negotiate ago substantial trade deal with europe that includes all the thorny questions about freedom of movement of people's, whether the european court of justice has a role, that could take many, many years, beyond even the next election. i mean, it's worth, you know, in terms of john's point that she wants to give away as little as

possible in this campaign, she's refusing to debate germy corbin. the -- jeremy corbin. there won't be any tv debates. she may be forced to change that position. she doesn't want to open her mouth. corbin is held in low regard, she's held in high regard, best thing is to avoid him. >> glor: do you think that can happen? >> she might well get away with no debates but imagine she gets dragged into a debate, imagine she narrowly increases the majority and she has to guarantee what she wouldn't say. there's a narrative building up in british politics particularly among the right-wing press and members of the conservative party that says basically no deal on brexit is better than a bad deal, and that sounds very convincing, but when you pick at that, that means britain would have to immediately jump back to

operating with world trade organization rules. you look at places, you have the irish politicians here today, they're making the point the island of ireland is divided in two, if we end up with a barrier one against the other, that will be very difficult if there is no free trade deal to cover how people go backwards and forward with that. there are complications and she's gambling she can come back in a stronger, better position to be able to do these things, but everything else is aeriesing. >> glor: appreciate both of your time. >> thank you. pleasure. >> rose: we turn now to a battle waged in arkansas over the death penalty. the u.s. supreme court rejected a request by the arkansas attorney general to carry out the first of the eight planned eexecution bys the end of the month, the decision after a week of last-minute appeals, state and federal debates over lethal injection drugs and continued

questions about the ethics of capital punishment. hundreds of anti-death penalty advocates launched on little rock friday to have the governor halts the executions. the governor scheduled the lethal injections before the drugs expire. damien echols is with us, a member to have the west memphis three, spent eight years in prison on death row after wrongly convicted of murder, released in 2011. lorri davis began correspondents with damien echols while he was in prison and is an advocate. and david boies, a lawyer and anti-death penalty advocate. you mentioned 18 years on death row. you know all the men currently

scheduled for execution now. >> yes. >> glor: you went to little rock last week. >> yes. >> glor: when this cropped up, did you have any thoughts? >> i was fide. we got a call from the woman who runs the coalition to abolish the death penalty. they were having a gathering to protest the executions and asked me to come. my first thought was no, it was a nightmare for me. i think it would probably be the second most traumatic thing to ever happen to me in my life to return back to where people tried to kill me the second after actually being sent to death row. but the more i thought about it, i couldn't sleep at night because i was thinking i can't just sit here and not raise a hand, not try to do anything while they're killing these guys. but even after i made that decision, i would go back and forth. i would say, i've got to do this. there's no way -- i'll regret it

for the rest of my life if i don't do this. but when i got ready to go to bed that night, i would wake up having panic attacks, feeling like i was having a heart attack and couldn't breathe and tell lorri i can't do it. i would go back and forth till the last minute and i knew this was something i had to do but it was still trying and horrific. >> because this was the first real substantial visit back to you where you had to talk to folks and maybe see some of the folks who you hadn't seen in so long. >> absolutely. and, you know, this was one of those things where the thing that kept going through my mind is these people tried to murder me for something i didn't do. these people knew i didn't do this. after dna testing came out in my case, i still sat on death row for two more years before the state could figure out how to kill me and sweep this under the rug and not admit their mistake. so i thought, i'm going back into a place where these people were more than willing to murder

me and not lose a night's sleep and i kept thinking, what if they try send me back again. that's what i was wrestling with in an attempt to return to the state. >> glor: i want the to talk about your back story and what happened to you starting in the early '90s in a moment, but first i want to talk about what's happening right now and what you were there to talk about on friday. don davis, in particular. he's the one scheduled right now, the subject of discussion right now. you knew don davis very well. tell me about him. >> i knew don for the entire time i was in prison. he got there before i did, so i knew him for about 18 years. in prison, you don't really develop friendships the way you do in the outside world. the best thing you can hope for is you establish an understanding with someone that, no matter what happens, i'll watch your back and you watch my back, we're going to look out king place and for me donwhat's

davis was that person. there were times in there where i honestly do not think i would have survived in prison, i would not be sitting here now if not for him looking out for me. so, you know, for other people, for people who are pro death penalty, these guys are stories they read in the newspaper, things they saw on television. for me, these are flesh and blood people i lived with almost 20 years. >> glor: don davis freely admits his guilt. >> absolutely. >> glor: says it was a terrible thing he did. i think he said even if they would have executed him the day after, he would have felt like it was a just execution. he killed a woman in the process of a home invasion. the family of the victim is upset right now. they want this to happen. they are frustrated by further delays. what do you say to them? >> well, i would say i understand your pain, first and foremost. i don't want to downplay any sort of trauma or anything else you're going through. i understand it completely and i

understand that desire for vengeance. keep in mind, i had people trying to murder me. i would like to see them be held responsible for what they did to me, but, at the same time, i don't believe death is ever the answer to anything, and i think you also have to keep in mind this system is run by human beings and they make mistakes. when you cast a net this wide and start executing this many people, a conveyor belt of death, you will catch innocent people in that net and innocent people will die along with the guilty ones and i don't think executing the innocent will ease anyone's pain. >> glor: david, i want to talk about the death penalty. the number of executions has been down. asa hutchinson says he wants to do this now because the stock of the drug they use is going to run out.

first of all, why is that running out? why is the governor doing it at this time? >> i think one of the reasons the drug is running out is that fewer and fewer companies want to be participating in the death process. there are obviously two important problems with the death penalty. one is whether the state, whether the people, whether society ought to be putting anybody to death. the second is that, as this clearly illustrates, the death penalty is applied to a lot of innocent people, and there is nothing that you can think of that society can do that is more troubling than consciously putting to death somebody and then having that person be innocent, and i think that the fallibility of our criminal

justice system and the discrimination that poor people, people of color, disadvantaged people face in our criminal justice system is something that ought to give everybody pause about the death penalty. >> glor: lorri, can i ask you about midazolam a little bit, the drug in question we're talking about the governor says they're going to run out of. david mentions the drug companies don't want to be in this business. what is it intended for? >> the drug is an analgesic. the reason it exists is to calm people down so that they are in a erelaxed state. so it doesn't prohibit an extremely painful situation when someone has the needle put into their arm and, in many cases, it's caused a great deal of pain on these botched executions when men are lying on the table, gasping for breath.

it is said that this death is one of the most painful deaths because they feel as if they're burning up from the inside, literally burning, and this drug doesn't prohibit that pain. and it's a big problem, also, because, in arkansas' case, they've cloaked their procedure, so you can't f.o.i. you know, the general public has no knowledge of how this drug is being administered. it can be just a department of correction employee who's doing it and, in many cases, it's not even a medical doctor because medical doctors, same as the drug companies, aren't interested in killing people. so it's a big problem because people don't know how to administer it. it's not doing what people think it's supposed to do, prohibiting the pain. it's a problem. >> if i could add something. >> glor: yes. keep in mind, these drugs were not designed to kill

people. these were designed by companies to help people, people with ailments, sicknesses, people who need surgery, that's what they were designed for. so the state tries to convey this image to the general public that it's sort of like putting an animal to sleep, that the person goes to sleep and they feel no pain and it's over. there are cases they had to give men they were executing up to 15 doses of this medicine to knock them out and they still laid over two hours to die, lay on the table gasping and coughing over two hours after the medication was administered. >> glor: you became accordance with damien echols while he was in prison. >> i did. >> glor: the correspondence picked up and you eventually married. we talked about going back to arkansas and how it was not easy. why do you think that was so important and what impact do you think this had? >> i think it was important --

well, speaking of for damien, i think it's important just because he knew all of these men and like his story about don davis, it's hard for him to just turn his back and not do something. i think it was important for everyone to appear at this rally because it's the only thing that the state of arkansas reacts to is pressure, being seen. they have been able to do executions. they have been able to convict innocent men for years. it's a very insular place. i lived there for 16 years, i saw the way they conducted their business. the only thing they react to is pressure from the outside, media intervention. so getting the word out to as many people as possible about what they're doing is the only thing that makes a difference. >> glor: and legal intervention.

so, david, talk a little bit pore about where this case -- a little bit more about where this case stands and where other germane death penalty cases may stand around the country now. >> well, each case is a little bit different and, indeed, some of the cases in arkansas right now are different. some people are claiming innocence. some p people are claiming mental -- a level of mental awareness that makes it inappropriate to put them to death. some of them are simply opposed to the death penalty under any circumstances. so each case is different, but what you see is a series of legal issues with the death penalty. some of them proceed on the argument that any imposition of the death penalty is a cruel and unusual punishment, violative of the constitution. some of them proceed on the

basis from a legislative standpoint, legislators should not make the decision to put people to death. on the other hand, there are a number of people who can oppose the death penalty right now who believe that, if you had a perfect system, there are crimes that deserve the death penalty. the problem is that we don't have a perfect system, and what we do is we convict innocent people. we don't have an all-eseeing judge -- all-seeing judge that can understand what the truth is. we have imperfect judges and imperfect juries and we have imperfect lawyers, and what happens is the vulnerable, the disadvantaged, the poor, the discriminated against, they get the worst lawyers, they have the greatest suspicion. the statistics show they are the most likely people to get put to

death, and that is a problem independent of what your views are about capital punishment in theory. >> glor: right, so if the drug companies and the medical professionals don't want to be involved in this irregardless of the moral debate here, if the drug companies and the medical professionals don't want to be involved in this, it makes the state's job increasingly more difficult, which leads you to wonder why they are continuing to pursue it and how often it's being pursued right now. >> well,eth not being pursued nearly as much now as it has been in the past. in part for those reasons and in part for the reasons i was saying before about doubts, about both the efficacy, the morality and the fairness of the death penalty. but there are a number of people on death row right now, and as a

society, keeping them there in this kind of limbo is not the right thing to do either. we have to make decisions as a society, as to what kind of society we're going to be, and part of that is, i think, facing up to the reality that whatever the theoretical desirability a death penalty might be p if we had a perfect system, we don't, we won't have, we probably can't have and, under those circumstances, i think people would have to reexamine how many innocent people are we prepared to put to death in order to get vengeance on certain guilty ones. >> glor: damien, if you could, take me back to west memphis, arkansas, in 1993. there was a grizzly murder of three young boys, eight years old. best of friends. what happened, how did the authorities come to turn their attention to you and what

happened next? >> in 1993, which is the year that i was arrested, you know, i lived in this very small down called west memphis, arkansas. it was an extremely conservative, fundamentalist, hard-core christian. so i really did not fit in, in this neighborhood. you know, they considered me suspicious just because to have the way i looked in the first place, and that is a lot of what they used as evidence against me at the time of trial. they said, i listened to heavy metal music, had books by stephen king, i dressed in black, so, therefore, these things, in their minds, proved i was a satanist and, in their minds, it would have taken a satanist to commit these crimes. i went to death row for years. in 1993, they couldn't do the same sort of dna testing they do now. so when they could finally do the dna testing, they found not only did the dna at the crime scene not match me or the other two men they convicted overit,

instead it matched a family member of one of the victims. three eyewitnesses said they saw the same person with the same dna match with the victims within an hour of the time they were murdered. these people were not even talked to by the police. no one questioned them and asked them if they saw anything. so, in essence, what happened was the police picked up a mentally handicapped child, a mentally handicapped kid in my neighborhood, he was 17 years old, but operated on the intellectual level of an eight-to-ten year old and over 14 hours they tortured and battered a confession out of him. they couldn't get the details of the crime scene out of him but they didn't care. all they cared about is getting him to say yes he did it and implicated me and two other men.

even after the eyewitnesses came forth, people have this idea that, oh, you have dna so it's over, the person is going home. that's not necessarily true. that's only 50% of the battle. you can have all the evidence in the world pointing toward your innocence and they will still kill you and sweep it under the rug unless the outside world -- outside world is paying attention. the other 50% of the battle is getting people to care and notice what's going on. >> glor: you believe they basically thought of you as the odd kid in school. >> the freak, yeah. >> glor: and said, listen, we're looking for something, for a reason to do something like this to you? >> one of the police, as soon as they found the bodies, even as the bodies -- the bodies were found in a wooded area, submerged in water. as they were taking the bodies out of the water, one of the police later said he said when they were taking out the bodies, looks like damien echols finally did it. >> glor: this is because you

listened to metallica and didn't act like everyone else? >> exactly, read stephen king novels. i always, ever since i was young, loved western ease esotericism. anything that's not christian is automatically satanic. it put a bullseye on my back in this small community. >> glor: because of these killings. >> yes. in the eight '80s and '90s they had this thing called satanic panic. it wasn't just me. you had people all over the country sent to prison because they were saying, at one time -- you had huge shows like her railedo rivera and oprah winfrey doing show on these things. they were saying hundreds of thousands of human sacrifices were going on around the

country. no bodies were ever found and no evidence of this, but it was accepted as gospel throughout the time, throughout the country. >> glor: i know prison damaged your eyesight badly which is why you're wearing the shades. >> yes. >> glor: where did you spend your time? you began writing a book at some point. >> mm-hmm. >> glor: this affected you in different ways as you spent more time in prison. talk about that a little bit. >> well, it affects you physically on a bunch of levels, a bunch of different levels. keep in mind i was in prison for almost 20 years and the last eight years of that i was in solitaire confinement, 24 hours a day. i didn't see sunlight for almost a decade which is part of what started destroying my vision. i had just a list of health problems whenever i got out because there is almost no medical care, no dental care, things like that. they're not going to spend a lot of time, money and injure taking care of someone they plan on kill. so, whenever i got out, i had a long road just trying to get my

health back up to normal. the thing i think that helped me survive in there, that kept me from losing my sanity, was you have to build a life for yourself. as hard as that is inside those walls, you have to find something to focus on other than the prison or you're going to go insane, and for me those things were meditation, energy work and lorri. i don't know, over the years, i had a zen master that would come back and forth from japan to the prison and, before i got out, i even received ordination in the tradition of japanese buddhism which is the same thing that trained the samurai in japan. before i got outer, i was meditating eight hours a day. a lot of time i wouldn't think about the walls around me. i would think about the books lorri and i were reading together or the conversations we had when we saw each other once a week or the 15 minute phone call we had that morning. so for me it created a world i

was able to live in that gave me enough buffer zone from the prison that it didn't completely and absolutely break me inside the way it would have other wise. >> glor: though it did it's best. >> yes, and it came close to absolutely destroying me. even when i got out, you -- people through you will just be happy to get out of prison and you are, but you're completely crippled. the last time i had seen a computer was 1986 and it was basically a glorified type writer for rich people, wasn't connected to the internet, none of that sort of thing. i went from almost a decade of solitaire confinement to the streets of manhattan literally overnight. so i walk out into a world where everyone uses computers, everyone uses a.t.m. machines and debit card readers and i

didn't know how the to use them. it was like i was an alien dropped off in a world i didn't know how to do anything. i needed someone with me 24 hours a day almost as if i were an invalid. i can barely remember my first year out of prison because i was so psychologically devastated that it destroyed something in me. when i was in prison i was a voracious reared. i would read up to five books a week. when i got out of prison, i would try to read the same page over and over and over and could not retain what i was reading when i got to the bottom of the page. i couldn't watch movies or television. i would introduce myself to the same person two or three times because i couldn't remember having met them before even if i had dinner with them the night previously. it destroyed me in ways that took me years to start recovering from. i would say i've only started to become even remotely norm, remotely feeling like myself again probably in the past year. >> glor: that can't be easy

for you to hear him say things like that. >> no, it's not, and as -- i mean, it was devastating, and when he got out, i didn't know what i was doing. i mean, there's no handbook on how to help someone who has severe p.t.s.d., and i didn't really know what it was doing, and i felt like i failed him so many times just because we were traveling for the first two years constantly because he had a book, we had a documentary, we felt compelled to get the story out, an that's one of the things that i've come to realize is there are so many people in this world who are dealing with extreme trauma, and those of us who don't know how to deal with it, it's extraordinarily difficult, and it's so sad to see someone suffering, you know, someone you love and you can't reach them.

we just recently started tterapy to help us with this. it took us this long to get to that point but it has helped immensely and i have seen a big change in him. he would never have been able to go to arkansas any sooner than this. the timing of the situation actually -- you know, if you can call it good timing, but for damien, he finally got to the point where he had the strength that he could do it. >> david, i wonder, it's one thing talking about this issue on a macro level and dealing with some of the bigger stories, but there's also the personal part of this. >> exactly, and the issue is that every single person on death row is an individual. every single person on death row has a story, a human story. some of them we know are innocent. we don't know which ones. we can't prove usually which ones. dna's helping, and when it works it's great, but all dna really

does is show us how many mistakes we've made in the past. everybody there has some story to tell, and one of the problems is that we too often look at the death penalty in an abstract way. we don't look at it as something that applies to an individual. we think about vengeance, we think about justice, we think about a life for a life, but what we don't understand is -- what we don't think about and sometimes we make ourselves not think about it is we're doing it to an individual. we're doing it to a person with parents, often with children, with a spouse, with a life, with hopes and dreams, just like us, and some of them are just like us because they are innocent just like us. >> glor: the state's argument and governor hutchinson's argument right now is we have an obligation to the family. don davis, in particular, let's

talk about, that's the most immediate case, he acknowledged his guilt, he was convicted. the family wants their vengeance, and, so, we have to do it for them. >> and i think governor hutchinson is in a very difficult place, he is the governor. he has the laws of arkansas to enforce. he has somebody who is an admitted murderer who, under the law, been sentenced to death. i think the problem is not what governor hutchinson is doing, i think the problem is the law. i think the problem is the choices that we're making, and those choices are particularly complicated when you're dealing with somebody who you know is guilty. on the other hand, there are a lot of extenuate withing circumstances -- extenuating circumstances for individuals like mr. davis in terms of their mental capacity, in terms of the

difference between the person that committed the crime and the person that exists right now. but there's no doubt that governor hutchinson and anybody in that position is in a very complicated and difficult position. i don't criticize him. i sympathize with what he's going through. >> glor: damien, you said the state of arkansas is salivating, if your words, to carry out these executions. did you get the sense when you went back there that they were -- that the government was surprised at the reaction that this got, not just around the country but around the world? >> i think they're mildly surprised, but i also think it made them even more determined, it seems like, because, you know, i barely got any sleep last night because i was up until midnight watching the back and forth battle of whether they were going to execute don davis or not. so they may be surprised, and

they may be a little uncomfortable with the scrutiny they're getting, but it hasn't lessened their blood lust. they're still pushing to see people killed. keep in mind, we're talking about this is a story that has a lot of nuance to it. when you're focusing on, as we were saying, the individual as opposed to the abstract concept. you know, don davis is a man who's been in prison 25 years now. this is not the same man who was sentenced for these crimes. he wrote a let where are he said the state can't kill the person who committed those crimes because i executed the person who committed those crimes myself. when we were sitting talking together one day, this man breaks down crying. it was like watching somebody's soul crack open and he was telling me every single day since he had done this, it had tortured him. when he goes to his cell at night, it's all he could think about. this is a man who knew remorse

to his soul, not remorse because he felt bad about what was happening to him, but he felt sincere soul-eating remorse for what he had done and he could never take back. so, you know, it's not -- once again, it's not just an abstract concept, these are real people that they are putting to death. >> you came to know a number of big-name -- you came to know a number of celebrities through the course of your case who were instrumentl in keeping your case in the spotlight. johnny depp, eddy vetter, a lot of people might be familiar with a lot of this. i wonder, as you try to keep this now in the spotlight with what's happening now, i wonder what you've learned as you spent time with them, peter jackson, as well he made the movie with,

the filmmaker, what you've learned from them and what lessons you've learned trying to navigate, keeping the case in the public eye? >> i guess what i've learned from them is, honestly as abstract as this sounds, maybe how to be a better person, because you're talking about people who had nothing to gain by supporting me, nothing to gain by helping me. you're talking about people who are already, by most to have the world's standards wealthy, famous, people who were stretching their neck out for me with nothing to gain, and it made me see the value in doing that for other people. if it wasn't for johnny depp, i honestly do not think i would have been able to go back to arkansas. it was one of those things i was just too terrified of, too horrified of, and i texted johnny and i said, they're getting ready to kill these guys in arkansas, these are guys i knew for almost 20 years, some of them are most likely innocent, others are mentally

ill. would you please go down there with me? and he wrote back immediately and said absolutely. you throw the ball and i'll catch it. i said, you don't have to talk, you don't have to do anything. this is a guy who has nothing to gain by this. he went out there and he spoke. he asked the government of arkansas, please don't kill these people. you know, that was kind of my stance, too. what i went down there to say to the government is we've sort of completely and absolutely lost faith in you for everything. we don't even expect that and i don't think i could have done it otherwise. also, keep in mind a lot of people go to television shows and movie, due to them, they think dna is gaven that it will be used in court.

that's not true. in my case, we had to pay every single penny to get this dna testing done. we had to pay over $200,000 because the state would cover none of it. they were going to kill me and never even test this dna. we didn't have that kind of money. i was poor white trash from a trailer park. if it wasn't for people like johnny andout. >> , ewe would have never had the money to get this dna testing done. most people on death row don't have that kind of money, they don't have family or friends with that kind of money, so they may very well die even though there is dna at the the crime scene that could be tested that would common rate them. >> and they also likely don't understand the law. was there a moment when you were going to be executed because your lawyers didn't even realize they had to file a stay? >> absolutely mix original execution date was may 5, 19 19, and i got close to that because i had ineffective public defenders who didn't realize they had to file a stay with the

court and ask for a stay for my execution. so i got close because i had ineffective attorneys. >> david boies is walking all over the place. >> you don't feed a david boies. what you need is any one of 50,000 lawyers that somebody with money would be able to hire. it's not just the lawyers. damien says it is having the money to do the testing, the investigation, find the witnesses. if somebody of means is in that position, they have the money to get the dna tested, they have the money to find the other witnesses, they have the money to do investigations, and they have the money to hire a good lawyer, but somebody who's poor, somebody who has disadvantaged,

in a group that's discriminated against, not only are they tucial suspects, but they don't have often the resources to defend themselves, and that's one of the fundamental problems with capital punishment. it is applied in such a discriminatory way. if you're poor, if you're african-american, you are much more likely to be put to death than if you were a rich white person, even if you do exactly the same thing. and that is something that ought to trouble even people who theoretically favor the death penalty because it means that what we're doing is we're putting innocent people to death, and even among the guilty, we're discriminating based on wealth and status and race as to who actually gets the death penalty. >> glor: damien, you took something called the alford

plea. to the layman, it would seem confusing. >> it was confusing to me, i had never even heard of it. i still haven't been common rated. according to the state of arkansas, no one on death row have been common -- exonerated. they still say they have not executed an innocent person. an alford plea means i am able to maintain my innocence while at the same time accept a guilty plea. it exists so the state can't be held accountable for what they've done. i had never heard of this before my case, but now it got a lot of air play, a lot of recognition in our case, so now we've heard more and more stories across the country where more and more states are using this to keep from having to pay out huge sums of money. in our documentary, they exer

viewed the prosecuted and he said his main concern was the fact he had three guys who spent almost 20 years in prison each, if you calculated how much financial restitution that would be, it would be somewhere in the area of $20 million each, off$0 million he would have to pay out, this was his way out of not having to pay that. so i can't sue arkansas. they still get to maintain they have never put an innocent person on death row and life goes on. nute they arrested me, this? case was closed. they told us, whenever we took this plea, the prosecutor swore to us that whatever evidence we brought to him after this, he would be willing to look at. he would be willing to have an open mind, reopen the case. so far that has proved absolutely false. everything we've brought to him and given to him he he has refused to look at, says he has no time and as far as he's

concerned the case is closed. >> glor: to the initial investigation and the arrest itself and how that was all handled, how different are cases handled today? >> unfortunately, there are still people like damien who are suspected for reasons that are independent of what they've actually done who don't have the resources to hire a good attorney, who don't have the resources to find witnesses, to get dna testing. there are still people who are going through today what damien went through two decades ago, and that will continue to be the case as long as we have a justice system that depends as much as it does on the adversarial system where you've got to have a good lawyer, and that lawyer has to have the resources to do an investigation. these are factual-intensive cases, and public defenders, dedicated though they are, many

very good lawyers, but they don't have the resources to give the kind of defense people are entitled to. >> glor: lory, until you got more resources, you exhausted bank accounts, you took out personal loans. >> it was a nightmare. once again, i found myself in a position i didn't know what i was doing. i go down to arkansas, i'm a landscape architect by training, not a lawyer, but i ended up with the help of the people we have been talking about, johnny -- actually, i have to say fran walsh, peter jackson's partner, came on board in 2005, and that woman, she'd make a great defense attorney. she'd make a great investigator. but she -- i can't even believe that she was in the middle of making king kong film, and eshe's researching forensic scientists and lawyers and investigators, and the two of us, she sent me to go through

trash. i was going through trash to find hair, picking up trash in memphis and driving to courthouses all over that region just to track down possible suspects. but, yeah, i mean, i had no idea how much. i mean, we probably ended up raising 6 million to 7 million to get damien, jason bald within and jason kelly out of prison. but i had to really depend on people around me to give me information i needed to hire the lawyers and we went through probably ten lawyers on this case. >> glor: david, immediately and legally right now in arkansas, the spotlight is obviously on what happens next. >> yes, and several things are happening. for example, the arkansas supreme court gave a stay of

execution to one case and there will be scrutiny to additional cases. you have the overall issue of does arkansas have a way of actually putting people to death, actually killing people that is constitutionally acceptable. what is the consequence of using these particular dougs? are there going to be other drugs available? those kinds of questions will have to be decided both at the legislative level and at the judicial level. >> glor: we talked about how difficult it is for you to go back. if it comes to tat, would you go back again? >> i don't feel like i have a choice. i feel like i have to. this is one of those things i think if i didn't go back, if i sat ideally by and did nothing while the state of arkansas put these people to death, i would regret it the rest of my life, it would be something i would never forget. not only because these are people i knew. i know these are intellectually challenged and mentally handicapped peernlings i know some are probably innocent, but it's also just the fact that i'm

not -- after what was done to me, i am not comfortable being governorred by a government that as awarded itself the right to kill its own citizens. something about that is just wrong. trying to kill people to show killing is wrong means as much sense tha as raping someone to w raping is wrong. it's illogical. we know a lot of reasons the people put in support of the death penalty are erroneous. there is no truth to it, like it costs more to keep someone in prison for life or it's a deterrent. there are no statistics that show the death penalty is a deterrent. as a matter of fact, you actually sometimes have crime spikes after an execution occurs. so there is no reason to carry out the death penalty whatsoever other than pure vengeance. >> glor: damien echols, lorri davis, david boies, thank you all for being here. >> thank you for having us.

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