Future Forum: Guilt, Innocence, and the Death Penalty 
John O’Quinn Objects
He thinks the Houston Chronicle is out to get him, tort reform is a joke, and George W. Bush should be more compassionate toward the environment, but he isn’t anti-corporate—he swears! An exclusive interview.
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Be careful: I’m not anti-corporate. I’m just against corporations that do bad things, that somehow think they’re above the law. When a corporation does something that results in the death of people, what prison do you put them in? What prosecutor prosecutes that misconduct? It doesn't happen, does it? The law doesn't say that if a corporation commits murder, we can take all of its assets. Things have been arranged in such a way that there is no meaningful way for society's main judicial instrument against criminal misconduct to have any force against a corporation. It works great against people. If a person commits murder or steals or lies or cheats, he can spend a lot of time in prison. But when a corporation lies and cheats and steals? No consequences. Now, I think the vast majority of corporations are perfectly honorable and ethical and are doing a good job and should be left alone. I'm not against all corporations, just as I would not be against the whole human race if I were a prosecutor—only that part of the human race that violates the law.
So what consequences would you propose? Give me an alternative to the current system.
Punitive damages cannot exceed, say, 20 percent of a company’s net worth.
Would you be willing to look at a two-tiered deal in which one rule applies to big corporations and another applies to small businesses?
Yes. If a defendant’s wealth is less than $10 million—I’m just pulling this number out of the air—then it’s one set of rules. If it’s more than $10 million, it’s whatever a jury thinks is reasonable.
I wonder what the public would think of that. They don’t seem to care much about the subject, do they?
The same methods that sell Palmolive soap have been used to anesthetize the people into not caring about the erosion of their basic liberties. They say you can put a frog in a pan of water and if you turn the heat on, the frog won’t get out—he just stays in there until he dies. The technique has been to just put this whole thing—the right to trial by jury—in a nice pan of water and slowly heat it up. The ultimate goal is to take away that right from the people.
What’s good about the American people is that it may take a generation or two, but they wake up and say, “Uh-uh, we’re going to do what’s right, and we’ll elect the leaders who’ll see that it gets accomplished.” When are they going to wake up? I don’t know. What’s going to cause them to wake up? I don’t know. Do I hope they wake up? Yes.
Let’s talk about one of those potential leaders, George W. Bush. You’re a longtime Democrat, and you gave money this year to both Bill Bradley and Al Gore. It goes without saying that you’re not supporting the governor this fall, but what do you think of him?
He’s a nice guy. He’s got great parents, whom I frankly admire. Those are two big pluses for me. But I was extremely disappointed in his handling of environmental problems in the past legislative session. There was a considerable movement to do something about polluting chemical plants on the Gulf Coast. We had been promised that they were going to be put out of business. And some kind of law could have passed. But Governor Bush went on television and said, “Oh, don’t worry. I have a plan: the Bush Plan.” Well, the plan turned out to be the honor system. George said, “The executives from these companies came to my office and sat there and looked me in the eye and said, ‘Governor, we’ll fix it.’ And I trust them. We don’t need new laws.” And also part of the plan was that the same companies were going to give millions to his presidential campaign. I’ve got a problem m with that.
I know from my own work that this part of the world has many, many chemical plants that leak out highly toxic substances. Back when we passed our clean air and clean water laws, the chemical industry went forth with its lobbyists and said, “Just pass laws that will apply to the new plants, but don’t make the existing plants retool. We’re going to shut them down in a few years anyway. Don’t worry about it.” So the Legislature let them go. Now, what happened was that the chemical industry never closed those plants down. They’re too valuable. They have a competitive edge. They get to operate inefficiently. It’s cheaper for them to make the product than it is for the new plants, which have to have extra engineering to run clean. They get to run dirty. Because business is driven by one thing and one thing only—greed—those plants are still operating.
Sea turtles are important, and protecting them is important, so don’t misunderstand what I’m about to say: The endangered species that I’m concerned about is humankind. The cancer risk in the part of Harris County where all the chemical plants are located is four to six times the national average. Is that a coincidence? No, it is not. Those people breathe cancer every day. George W. Bush hasn’t done one thing to reduce the cancer rate along the Ship Channel. I don’t see that he has any environmental record that he should be bragging about.
You give money to other candidates too—not just on the presidential level. What do you think about the current system of campaign finance? Critics say that you and other trial lawyers give too much and are part of the problem.
Campaign finance is a problem, but not because of what I or other trial lawyers have given. There has to be some political money to back those who believe in government of the people, by the people, and for the people, because there is going to be lots of political money to back the people who believe in government of corporate power, by corporate power, and for corporate power. Trial lawyer money is the only money available to accomplish that. As we all know, money has too big a determinative effect on political races, so you’ve got to have some or you don’t have a chance to be competitive.
Free TV time for political candidates might fix the problem.
It’ll never happen, at least not in the near future. It’s in the financial interest of the networks to keep things the way they are. All this obscene money in politics is being used to enrich the media. The whole thing about the First Amendment, the power of the press, is that we want a watchdog who isn’t afraid to bark once in a while. Then we put it in the economic interest of our watchdog to be quiet. What kind of watchdog have we got?
One such watchdog, the Wall Street Journal, unleashed quite an amount of artillery at you in 1995 and 1996 and 1997. You’d think you were Bill Clinton. What did you make of it?
I thought it was a very unfair attack, not based in fact.
Did you say so to them?
Yes.
They made no effort to call you, to come to you and say, “Mr. O’Quinn, we’re preparing stories about you. We feel you’ll want an opportunity to respond”?
Correct. They made no effort to do a balanced story.
It wasn’t a case of your declining to comment.
True.
If it was all so unfair, you’d think you might be inclined to sue, having so much experience in the courtroom yourself.
Look, the law is one-sided on the issue of suing the news media. Besides, how do you sue somebody who has barrels of ink? You just have to learn to live with it. That’s about all you can do. They have the power to treat people unfairly, and they do it.
I want to press you on this point. You make a very passionate case for standing up for the little guy. You say you do it better than anyone. Yet when it comes to defending yourself, you don’t rise to the challenge?
I have two choices. I can spend my time and energy fighting for my clients, fighting on matters where I can make a difference, or I can spend my time on matters where I can’t make a difference. I choose to make a difference.
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