Insight

Already, the narrow hall to his office is overcrowding with brown boxes of books and civic awards. The walls inside his chambers are festooned with plaques from Yale, community groups and gag gifts from a career of public service.

There is a simple black bulletproof vest unzipped on a hanger dangling from the closet door. Signed posters from the stage plays of Les Miserables, Phantom of the Opera and Show Boat hang on the front wall. The vest, like the framed posters, are constant reminders of conflict, injustice and retribution.

Amid the packing, Judge Sam Monk sat down for a Q&A session about his 28-year career that ends in January.

Q: How do you cope with all the stress of having to hold the balance?

A: I don’t think any job is stress-free, or very few are. Most people think that judges probably set their own schedule — their own lives — and there’s nothing farther from the truth. We’re slaves to court calendars, we’re slaves to lawyers filing motions. I mean, unless I’m in the courtroom full-time, there’s not a day that goes by that I don’t have something walk in the door. I think it’s just learning the tools to deal with it.

Q: Going into this, or I should say earlier in your career, you pledged you would always be accessible for law enforcement officers. Has that changed over the years?

A: My phone number is in the book. I can’t tell you I don’t use caller I.D. to help screen — I do. There are nights that I’ve been up at two, three, four o’clock in the morning, sometimes more than once. But we all do that. It comes with the job.

Q: Do you know off-hand the approximate percentage of cases that you try that would lead to incarceration versus those that would lead to capital punishment?

A: Oh yeah, well, capital punishment is still a rare event around here.

Q: Right, are we talking like magnitudes of one percent or 10 percent?

A: Capital? No, no. Fewer than one percent, I would think. I mean we’ll run 1,500 cases through here a year and most years we don’t have any capital cases.

Q: What are your personal beliefs on capital punishment?

A: I’m not for it, I’m not a proponent of it, but at the same time I’m not an opponent of it. Personally, I think it does not fit my belief of Christian teachings.

Q: Really?

A: You know, I can say that in public and make 90 percent of the people angry at me probably. But I can tell somebody I’m personally against it. But you know, you can be personally against a lot of things and still do your job.

Q: Doesn’t that set up a conflict though?

A: I guess that’s an area of conflict. I’ve never walked out of a capital trial that I felt as human as I did when I walked in. I guess that’s the only way I can tell you. And I don’t know how many judges would tell you that. I don’t know anybody that likes doing it. Now there may be some; if there are, they need to get off of the bench.

Q: Fundamentally, is the death penalty a good fit for Alabama?

A: Is it a good fit? I mean, I hate to even approach it from that angle. The Legislature has decided that it is appropriate. The majority of the people in Alabama would think that it’s appropriate. Which to me there’s a misfit between being in the Bible Belt, where the majority of people who have religious beliefs believe themselves to be New Testament Christians. There is a misfit between being a New Testament Christian and believing in Old Testament punishment.

Q: What happens when the D.A., the jury, or the judge walks out of the courtroom after someone is sentenced to die?

A: I think you lose a piece of your humanity.

Q: How do you rectify that at the end of the day?

A: I don’t think you do. I think it’s gone. I don’t think you can recharge your batteries on it. The only thing you can do is walk out of there saying, “I did my job as best as I could.”

Q: When you see the horrors of one of those trials, does it make you reconsider your personal beliefs?

A: No. It doesn’t make me reconsider. I didn’t always hold these personal beliefs. I didn’t come to this conclusion purely because of religious consideration. Before I sentenced my first one to death, I went and I sat down to talk to my priest. I just said, “I want to talk to you about the death penalty.” And of course he was against it 100 percent. We agreed to disagree on the concept. I don’t know whether he planted seeds or if I changed just in having to deal with it. I came to the conclusion that the process probably dehumanizes everybody to some degree.

Q: Can you still remember those you’ve sentenced to death?

A: Every one.

Nick Cenegy is a Knight Fellow of Community Journalism at the University of Alabama’s master’s degree program at The Anniston Star. He can be reached at npcenegy@bama.ua.edu.