“His face has the dignity of a Benin bronze.... His countenance is suffused with an aura... [of] goodness.” This is Cahill’s opening description of Dominique Green, whose life and death the bestselling author (How the Irish Saved Civilization
) recounts in a distinctly hagiographic tone. Green was a young African-American executed for murder in Texas in 2004, who Cahill and many others believe was innocent and convicted in a sham trial. Cahill’s “saint” Dominique suffered (among other travails, he was abused by a schizophrenic mother), sinned (he turned to drug dealing, but only, he said, to support his younger brothers) and redeemed himself in prison by educating himself and aiding his Death Row comrades, whose quoted testimony to Dominique’s qualities is more convincing than Cahill’s own praises. But Cahill makes Green more than saintly, a Christ-like figure (“like the peaceful Jesus of the gospels, Dominique was on the verge of... transfiguration”). Given the spiritual and literary license Cahill takes, one must read this less as a reasoned argument than an impassioned, very personal plea against racism, poverty and the death penalty. (Mar. 10)
