But I am telling this story because it is a love story that has taken hold of me. A love story between Anna Lorance and her little boy. Her health was already failing and they were too poor to own a clothes dryer and each time she hung the laundry outside it took something out of her. When Clint was six years old, he said to her, "I want you to teach me how to hang up the wash for you, Mama." From then on, he hurried home from school on washing days. She would sit on the steps and watch with a kind of wonder: Where did this little person with his deep soul come from? What life has he lived before? And what have I done to deserve him? With those questions she always felt a certainty deep inside her that he was hers for only a little while.
He joined the army and left her for the first time when he turned eighteen. He had been gone just long enough to set aside his first army paychecks when a big truck pulled up to Anna's house on the dirt road in Texas to deliver her a proper clothes dryer.
JB: Lovely! I'm starting to tear up myself.
DS: In August of 2013, Anna sat in the courtroom trying to believe that her love for America, and her son's love would prevent the army from convicting such a fine young officer, someone so honorable and thoughtful and handsome in his uniform, and who possessed such a gentle spirit. The army would understand that he was only trying to protect his men in a war where it was impossible to tell the innocents from the enemy.
It was impossible for Anna to comprehend any of this. She was just trying to keep breathing.
She had no idea why the army prosecutor turned and gave her a cruel little laugh when the guilty verdict was announced. Why did he seem so pleased with himself?
All she wanted was to pull her son into her arms, and when he gestured for his younger brother to take her out of the courtroom after the sentence was read, she didn't understand that he was trying to protect her. He didn't want her to see him put in handcuffs and led away.
Of course her heart was broken that day, but it was nothing compared to the first time she left him after driving up from Texas to visit him in prison at Leavenworth, Kansas, walking outside into the fine summer light and realizing all the life that he was going to miss, knowing that it would be twenty years before she would hear him softly calling to her back home. With each mile on the drive back to Texas, her heart broke into smaller and smaller pieces.
And I am carrying this story as far as I can because I really didn't know such a heart as Anna's heart. I confess, that I never felt or understood the kind of love for one's country that she and her son shared. That deep, abiding and unconditional affection that my own father held all his life. Until I made my way from Maine to Leavenworth Prison I never understood.
And then, the moment I got out of my rental car in Anna Lorance's dirt driveway in the middle of Texas and looked into her eyes, I suddenly knew.
JB: What are the chances of turning this around? Clint is in prison. Are there any kind of encouraging developments at this point?
DS: Yes, Joan. Several years ago I was best man at a wedding for an army officer. And I remembered meeting there a young Army lawyer with a brilliant reputation. Col. John Maher. Soon after I met Clint in prison I asked Col. Maher to take on Clint's case. He agreed. He went out to Leavenworth and met him and Anna. And he has filed a petition for clemency that is right now on the desk of the general at Fort Bragg who can set Clint free. Col. Maher's clemency petition rests on three points:
1. Lt. Lorance was convicted of murdering two innocent civilians and attempting to murder a third but the Army never attempted to determine if these were in fact innocent civilians or if they were acting on behalf of the Taliban when they approached his platoon on their red motorcycle on the morning of August 2, 2013.
2. The government withheld key evidence from Lt. Lorance's defence counsel, failing to provide the defense emails it used to investigate Lt. Lorance's personal life, and derogatory information it uncovered about two of the chief witnesses who were granted immunity by the government to testify against Lt. Lorance.
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