Inmate’s New Lawyer Wins Stay of Execution

The execution that Bill Bradford wanted and then feared was postponed indefinitely on Thursday, two hours after officials at San Quentin State Prison moved the condemned man to Cell No. 1--the cell closest to the death chamber.

U.S. District Judge Ronald S. W. Lew granted a stay of execution in response to court papers filed Wednesday in Los Angeles by Bradford’s new lawyer, Robert R. Bryan. The stay allows Bradford, 52, to pursue federal appeals of his conviction and death sentence based on constitutional issues.

Bradford volunteered in late June for execution, but last week changed his mind, and then changed lawyers, firing Jack Leavitt and retaining Bryan, a nationally recognized death penalty litigator who practices in San Francisco.

Bryan said he has been in touch with Bradford for the past decade. He added that he agreed to help obtain the stay after Bradford’s written requests for help were followed by a letter from other death row inmates that asked him to intervene. The inmates told Bryan they were worried about Bradford’s apparent death quest because they questioned whether he was getting good advice.

In a telephone interview, Bradford said he was relieved to receive the stay, although his original intention had been to die on Tuesday. He credited family visits and counseling by his spiritual advisor for the change of heart that “saved my life.”

“I’m back in my same old happy home. I was afraid I’d be swimming to Catalina,” he added, referring to plans to cremate his remains and scatter them at sea after his death by lethal injection shortly after midnight Tuesday.

“Needless to say, he has a right to pursue federal review of his conviction,” said Deputy Atty. Gen. David Glassman, who represents the prosecution on the appeals. “But it’s awkward to explain to people looking for closure that it may or may not happen.”

Bradford was convicted and sentenced to die for the July, 1984, strangulation murders of Shari Miller, 21, and Tracey Campbell--two Venice-area women he befriended. Prosecutors said he lured his victims to the desert near Lancaster after promising to photograph them for possible modeling portfolios.

Police suspect Bradford is a serial killer responsible for at least a half-dozen other murders.

“He’ll probably outlive me,” said Bradford’s previous lawyer, Leavitt, who is 67. Leavitt had represented Bradford without pay for the past 13 months, and is asking the court to appoint him as Bradford’s lawyer.

The attorneys’ backgrounds reflect their ideological differences.

Bryan, former chairman of the National Coalition to Abolish the Death Penalty, also is asking the court to appoint him as Bradford’s lawyer. He is considered an expert death penalty litigator and his clients have included Anna Hauptmann, widow of the man executed in 1936 for the so-called Crime of the Century, the kidnap-murder of the Lindbergh baby, and Larry Layton, the only man prosecuted for the deaths of Rep. Leo Ryan and 900 people at the Peoples Temple in Jonestown, Guyana.

In 1990, he talked Nevada inmate Jimmy Neuschafter into withdrawing his request to die, just hours before the prisoner was to be executed.

Leavitt, who described himself in court papers as “a lukewarm supporter of the death penalty,” is a controversial figure among capital defense lawyers, who view him as unqualified and hell-bent on execution.

“I don’t think he had any interest in seeing Bill vindicated on issues of guilt or innocence,” said Bradford’s court-appointed lawyer, David A. Nickerson. “I think he was only interested in getting Bill executed. I would hope someone, somewhere steps in and says Leavitt should not be representing death row people.”

Leavitt’s only previous representation of a death row volunteer ended in controversy with the client, Jeffrey Sheldon, ultimately deciding to fight execution after receiving a new lawyer, a television set and a pair of sneakers.

Leavitt said his only goal is to follow his clients’ wishes. “I do unto others as they want to do unto themselves,” he said.

Although Bradford has battled with and fired every lawyer appointed to him, he said he held no hard feelings toward Leavitt.

Even as Bradford was firing him, Leavitt said he’d received a letter from yet another death row inmate requesting that he pave the way for his execution.