TEXAS: Nobel winner, inmate forge death row bond----Tutu to visit convicted killer next week

 After months of correspondence sparked by their shared views on forgiveness, a Nobel Peace Prize laureate and a Texas death row inmate are set to meet next week.

Archbishop Desmond Tutu, an international symbol for human rights and peace, and Dominique Green, condemned for the killing of a Houston man during a 1992 robbery, began their connection more than a year ago when Green read one of Tutu's books about reconciliation after the end of apartheid in South Africa.

"Something about that book spoke to Dominique, and he decided to contact Tutu," said Richard Drubel, a New Hampshire lawyer, formerly of Houston, who represents Green and sends him books for Christmas every year. "Here is this international figure, who must get hundreds and hundreds of letters, who saw something in Dominique and decided to write back."

Sheila Murphy, a former Chicago judge and friend of Green's, noticed the impact the book, and contact with Tutu, had on Green and began working to arrange a meeting.

"I go to see him as often as I can and on one visit, he started talking to me about the book," she said. "I saw a spiritual change in him that was very extraordinary."

The meeting is scheduled for Wednesday when Tutu will be in the area on a book tour. Tutu will accompany Murphy as an attorney's representative and can visit Green for about 2 hours, according to the Texas Department of Criminal Justice.

While the United States' use of capital punishment and the volume of death penalty cases in Texas have drawn international attention, few figures like Tutu have visited inmates on death row in Livingston, particularly not little-known inmates such as the 29-year-old Green.

People such as the Rev. Jesse Jackson, the Rev. Al Sharpton and Amnesty International representative Bianca Jagger, who have met with Texas death row inmates, often visit notable inmates such as the controversial Gary Graham or Karla Faye Tucker.

Tutu has been active in the U.S. death penalty debate, advocating for Napoleon Beasley, who was executed in Texas amid indignation over the fact that he was 17 when he committed capital murder, and influencing former Illinois Gov. George Ryan's January 2003 decision to clear his state's death row.

Ryan quoted Tutu, saying "to take a life when a life has been lost is revenge, not justice," as he commuted the sentences of 167 condemned inmates.

Drubel said he believes Tutu developed a relationship with and decided to visit Green because of Green's engaging personality and some of the issues in his case.

"Dominique's case may not have been the most publicized, but there are troubling issues such as his lawyer's failure to cross-examine a key prosecution witness," Drubel said. "The witness testified inconsistently at trial and the lawyer simply failed to confront him with that."

Further, Green's trial lawyers failed to raise issues, such as his troubled childhood, that might have persuaded a jury to spare his life, said John Blume, another lawyer representing Green.

Green has a request for a hearing pending with the U.S. Supreme Court. No date has been set for his execution.

"There was a failure to present mitigating evidence such as the abuse he endured as a result of his mother's mental illness that never got to the jury," Blume said. "They got a very distorted view of what his home life was like, and depriving a jury of such information can always skew the punishment they decide on."