Remembering Ricardo Aldape Guerra: interviewer Gabriel Solis on interviewing Scott Atlas

Scott J. Atlas during his oral history interview with Gabriel Solis.

In 2011, former TAVP staff member Gabriel Solis was enrolled in a master's program in Mexican American studies at UT-Austin. It was during this time that he decided to pursue the capital case of Ricardo Aldape Guerra as the topic for his master's thesis. Aldape Guerra was a Mexican national living in Texas who was wrongfully convicted and given a death sentence for the murder of a white Houston police officer in 1982. He spent 15 years on death row in the 1980s and 90s before his release in 1997. The case garnered international attention and the intervention of the Mexican government. After his release, a telenovela was produced by Television Azteca in Mexico, and several books, articles, poems and other cultural products were produced. Aldape Guerra died shortly following his release in a car accident in Mexico. 

As part of his research, Gabriel Solis interviewed Scott J. Atlas who served as one of Aldape Guerra's appellate attorneys. The interview was done for Solis' master's thesis and simultaneously donated to the Texas After Violence Project. Solis' thesis, titled The trial of Ricardo Aldape Guerra, won the L. Tuffly Ellis Best Thesis Prize for Excellence in Texas History in 2011. A further outcome of Solis' research was Scott Atlas' donation of his personal collection of legal materials related to the Aldape Guerra case to the UT Libraries' Human Rights Documentation Initiative (HRDI). 

We recently had the chance to sit down with Gabriel to find out more about the story behind the interview. The conversation is part of our new "Interview Reflections" feature on the TAVP blog.

Atlas' oral history interview is TAVP's latest release: You can listen to the full interview now at the TAVP archive at HRDI.

Jim Willett, Former Warden of the Walls Unit

Jim Willett never expected to be the subject of countless interviews with foreign press, never expected to be asked by a publisher to release memoirs, and certainly never expected to be the public face of the death penalty in Texas. But upon retirement, the mild-mannered, grandfatherly warden found that his several years as warden of the “Walls” Unit, where he oversaw eighty-nine executions, were a constant source of interest to outsiders.

Willett, who graciously gave us a personal tour of the Texas Prison Museum and an interview, explained to us how he worked his way up slowly through the prison system, eventually promoted to the position of warden of the Walls, despite his misgivings about having to oversee executions.

The three years he held that position were unusually busy when it came to the death penalty, even for Texas. As we chatted with Willett in his small office at the back of the museum, I was curious to hear about the process through which the executions became a routine. Did he remember all of them individually? Did they blur together?

Here is a clip of Jim Willett discussing a time in the 1990s when executions became routine:

"You think it doesn't get you down like that, but it does if you do a bunch of them."

Douglas Becker and the responsibilities of leadership

Douglas Becker and the responsibilities of leadership 

by Maurice Chammah

I listened to Douglas Becker on a chilly December morning, seated behind both my camera and his massive, imposing wooden desk, originally designed for partnered lawyers--one on either side--but now comfortably placing Mr. Becker a good five to seven feet from me or, on a different day, a client. The desk was one of many features of this stately office that unpretentiously indulged many of the standard trappings of the legal profession. His wife’s darkly hued painting of the Alamo sat on one side of the room, while on the other, a stick figure version of Becker, drawn by his seven year old stepson, featured big triangular ears, a goofy little briefcase, and the words “Wolf Lawyer” scrawled across the length of the construction paper.