- 10/02/01

A Proud and Unwavering Believer in the Death Penalty

By SARA RIMERKLAHOMA CITY -- At a time when even some prominent supporters of the death penalty are raising concerns about the system's fairness and the risk of executing an innocent person, Robert H. Macy remains a true believer. As the Oklahoma County district attorney since 1980, Mr. Macy has sent 54 people to death row - all of them, in his view, "remorseless killers who would kill again if given the opportunity." Re-elected five times, always by large margins, he has crusaded and campaigned on the necessity of the death penalty. "I feel like it makes my city, county and state a safer place for innocent people to live," he said in a recent interview. "And that's why I embrace it, not because I get any enjoyment out of it." Oklahoma executed six men and one woman last month; the woman and five of the men were prosecuted by Mr. Macy or his assistants. The district attorney was in his office on the morning after one of those executions - of Mark Fowler, who had been sentenced to death, along with a co-defendant, for killing three convenience-store workers. Tall and broad-shouldered, Mr. Macy was wearing his customary white shirt and black string tie. At 70, Cowboy Bob, as he is known, appears to have lost some of his trademark macho vigor. But he still ropes bulls, and his office is decorated with pictures of him and other men on horseback. He grew up in Indianapolis, one of five children of a truck driver and his wife. Hanging on the wall are his handcuffs from the days when he worked as a police officer to put himself through law school at the University of Oklahoma. He was courtly and low-key, inquiring about a visitor's hometown and sitting back as one of his top assistants, Richard M. Wintory, took the lead in answering some questions about the district attorney's record.If Mr. Macy was affected by the execution, if he had even spent much time thinking about it, he did not give any sign. "I don't go to the executions," he said. He decided years ago not to attend them, acting on the advice of his son Brett, an Oklahoma City police officer. "Brett said, `Dad, that's not your job. That's someone else's job. Let them do it.' " Mr. Macy said: "The first person I put on death row to die was Sean Sellers. He was a young man, 16, who murdered a convenience- store clerk to find out how it felt. Then he killed his parents."Mr. Sellers was sent to death row in 1986 and executed in 1999. Many prosecutors consider anyone who was under 18 at the time of his crime too young to be sentenced to death. A federal appellate court found that Sean Sellers suffered from multiple-personality disorder.Mr. Macy said he did not then, and does not now, agonize over Mr. Sellers's youth, nor did he think Mr. Sellers had multiple-personality disorder. "He may very well have been the brightest person I sent to death row," he said.As the person responsible for deciding when to seek the death penalty, Mr. Macy, a Democrat, is one of the most popular, and powerful, elected officials in the state. He says he does not keep track of which cases his office has won or lost, that justice is what matters most. On his desk was a stack of baseball cards with a picture of him riding a horse on the front. The back listed some of his statistics: "Nation's leading death penalty prosecutor." "Sent 42 murderers to death row." Asked about the card, which was outdated but seemed to indicate a sort of scorekeeping, Mr. Macy dismissed it: "That was from a campaign." Nothing seems to shake his faith in the death penalty. He dismisses the recent flurry of academic and government reports documenting flaws in the system as wrong, or as not applying to Oklahoma County. He sees public questioning as a sign that "people opposed to the death penalty have gotten a little better organized." He views the exonerations of death row inmates as proof the system works. He himself sent one man to death row for rape and murder who was released after 10 years when DNA exonerated him and Mr. Macy's office dismissed the charges for lack of evidence. Mr. Macy said he still believed the man was an accomplice.A past president of the National District Attorneys Association, Mr. Macy was recently named, along with several dozen other top law enforcement officials, to President Bush's Department of Justice transition advisory team. His legions of admirers in this staunchly pro- death-penalty state view him as a passionate crime fighter. But his critics say that in his zeal, Mr. Macy has violated the rules dictating that justice comes before winning convictions. Federal and state appellate courts have reprimanded him several times for misconduct in capital cases; in 1999, one federal court found that Mr. Macy had deceived the jury, made "mendacious closing arguments" and "crossed the line between a hard blow and a foul one" in a case. The court ordered a new sentencing hearing for the defendant, Kenneth Paxton, who subsequently received a life sentence."I may not be the smartest man, but I'm honest," Mr. Macy said in response to his critics. "I've always tried to play by the rules."HE had hoped to win the death penalty for Terry Nichols for his role in the 1995 Oklahoma City bombing, which killed 168 people. A federal judge sentenced Mr. Nichols to life in prison. A state district judge threw Mr. Macy off the case in October, ruling that he was too personally involved and that he had blatantly violated the rules of conduct by publicly promising to avenge the victims by sending Mr. Nichols to death row. "I promised all those people I would see to it that Terry Nichols was going to see trial," Mr. Macy said in a telephone interview after the visit in his office. "I just think a man ought to keep his word. Maybe if I'd been smarter or handled it more carefully, we wouldn't have had the problems we're having." His removal plunged him into a depression for a while, he said, adding that his overall health was fine. "I went to a doctor a while back. He said, `You're worn out, you're tired.' "With two years left in his term, Mr. Macy, who is twice divorced, says he is thinking of retiring early, but has some trepidation. "Right now, after 20 years it'd be awfully hard to separate Bob Macy from the D.A., and vice versa," he said. "It's been my life for so long."