Westley Allan Dodd Asks to Be Executed, 1991

Name: Westley Allan Dodd Asks to Be Executed, 1991
Uploaded: 2016-01-05
Duration: 4 min 49 s
Description: A year after his death sentence, Westley Allan Dodd told a television interviewer he would kill again and wanted to be executed.

A year after his death sentence, Westley Allan Dodd told a television interviewer he would kill again and wanted to be executed.

Subject: Westley Allan Dodd
Broadcaster: A Pacific Northwest television station (not identified)
Runtime: 4:49

Content warning: in this recording the speaker talks about his own violent crimes.

The Interview

This short television report, probably made in early June 1991, centers on an interview with Westley Allan Dodd, who had been sentenced to death the previous summer for murdering three boys in Washington. Dodd is seen in an orange jumpsuit, answering questions from an interviewer who stays off camera. The report also includes clips of lawyers in the case: Dodd's attorney, Darrell Lee, and former attorneys who opposed his request to be executed. The reporter names two of them, Judith Mandel and Gilbert Levy.

The report survives online through an upload by Seattle journalist Enrique Cerna, posted in 2016 under the title "00001 00001". The station that aired it and the reporter who conducted the interview have not been identified.

Historical Context

In September 1989 Dodd murdered two brothers, Cole Neer, 11, and William Neer, 10, in a park in Vancouver, Washington. In October 1989 he abducted Lee Iseli, 4, from a Portland playground and killed him the next day. He was arrested in November 1989 after a failed attempt to abduct a boy from a theater in Camas, Washington. He pleaded guilty and was sentenced to death in 1990.

Dodd then told the courts he wanted no appeals and asked to be hanged, one of the two methods Washington allowed at the time. His request raised a question the Washington Supreme Court had not faced before: whether a condemned prisoner could give up all review of his case and be executed.

Circumstances of the Interview

The report was made as that question went back to the trial court. The Washington Supreme Court had ordered a hearing in Clark County Superior Court to decide whether Dodd's choice was knowing, intelligent and voluntary, and whether he was competent to make it. The report says the hearing was to begin the next day. Dodd's own lawyer supported his wish. His former lawyers, who opposed the death penalty, were fighting it.

What the Interview Covers

Dodd tells the interviewer he has to be executed because he will kill again. He says he has been molesting children since he was 13 and that, given the chance, he would kill another child. He says there is a man he would set out to kill if he ever escaped, but refuses to say who. Asked whether his execution would do any good, he says it might make others like him think twice. Asked how he lives with himself, he says he sometimes thinks about what the boys said before they died and at other times tries to put everything out of his mind. He says dying would be a relief.

Between Dodd's answers, Darrell Lee argues that his client is intelligent and competent and that his decision is logical. A former attorney, apparently Judith Mandel, argues that society should not simply kill him because he did it. The reporter says Mandel and Levy regard carrying out his wish as state-sponsored suicide.

What Makes the Recording Significant

The report captures Dodd at the turning point of his case, after the death sentence and before the courts decided whether he could waive his appeals. In January 1993 he became the first person legally hanged in the United States since 1965. Much of what is remembered about him comes from the coverage around that execution. This recording is earlier, and it shows how Dodd framed his request while the courts were still deciding it: not as remorse, but as a statement that he could not be trusted to live.

It also preserves both sides of the legal argument in the voices of the lawyers involved.

Archival Importance

The footage is nearly impossible to find by searching. Its title is just "00001 00001", its description gives no station or date, and it has no captions. It is a surviving piece of early 1990s Northwest television coverage of a case that later shaped national debate over volunteer executions and over hanging as a method.

Important Caveats

The station, program, reporter and exact recording date are not known. The approximate broadcast date rests on the report's reference to a hearing the next day. The uploader, Enrique Cerna, worked for Seattle commercial stations before joining public station KCTS in 1995, after Dodd's death. This is therefore not KCTS footage from his time there, and whether he conducted the interview has not been confirmed. Dodd spoke to other outlets, including PBS's Frontline, and this footage should not be confused with those interviews.

Dodd's statements about what he would do if released, and about the man he wanted to kill, are his own claims. The transcript was produced by machine from the audio and has not been checked by a human listener.

Interviewer: Why do you want to be executed?

Westley Allan Dodd: Uh, I have to be. Uh, because I will kill again.

Reporter: Last July, Westley Allan Dodd was sentenced to death for raping and killing three boys in the Portland-Vancouver area: 11-year-old Cole Neer, his 10-year-old brother Bill, and 4-year-old Lee Iseli. Now Westley Allan Dodd says it's time he pay for the gruesome crimes he committed, and that he be put to death.

Westley Allan Dodd: I know I would do it again. I've been molesting kids nonstop since I was 13 years old, over half my life. Uh, anything happened, I can guarantee I'd do it again, and sooner or later I would kill another child. I've done it before, and at the time I liked it.

Reporter: Dodd also says that if he ever escapes from prison, there is someone in particular that he will be out to kill.

Westley Allan Dodd: I'm not going to say who, but there is somebody out there. There's a man out there. There's a man. Yeah.

Interviewer: Someone related to the case that got you in prison in the first place?

Westley Allan Dodd: Mmm, not directly, no.

Interviewer: But it's something that you know that you're going to do, or you plan to do, you want to do.

Westley Allan Dodd: Yeah.

Reporter: Dodd's death wish is the first time the Washington State Supreme Court has been asked to consider whether a death row inmate can waive all appeals and be executed. So the state high court ordered a hearing beginning tomorrow at Clark County Superior Court, where Dodd was tried and convicted, to determine whether Dodd is making a knowing, intelligent, and voluntary decision to waive his appeals, and is competent to do so. His attorney, Darrell Lee, believes he is.

Darrell Lee (Dodd's attorney): Well, it's a free country. He's a big boy. He's intelligent. He's well-educated. He's completely competent, and everything about his decision is logical.

Darrell Lee (attribution inferred): If you did this type of thing, killed three small boys, raped three small boys, one after death, hung one of them, if you did those things, would you want to wake up in the morning and think about it, or would you want to say, Lord, take me now?

Reporter: Dodd's desire to die is not without opposition.

Judith Mandel (attribution inferred): What looms most in the minds of people who just look at the surface of this thing with Mr. Dodd is that the just-deserts model, you know, he did it, that's just, let's kill him. Some people would say, let's kill him painfully. That's not what we're about as a society.

Reporter: Judith Mandel says the Dodd case is not as black and white as it appears. She says public concerns about the death penalty must also be considered. Mandel and Gilbert Levy, Dodd's former attorneys, oppose his wish to be executed. They're also opposed to the death penalty, and don't believe Washington should be involved in carrying out what they describe as state-sponsored suicide.

Former Attorney: We are not in the business, as people of the state of Washington, of doing the bidding of persons who want to choose whether we should execute them or incarcerate them for their lifetime.

Reporter: But for Westley Allan Dodd, his particular case is, in his mind, a cut-and-dried matter. He believes he received a fair trial and got the sentence he deserved. But he says he has no intention of spending the rest of his life behind prison bars. Westley Allan Dodd says it's time for him to die.

Interviewer: Would your execution do any good?

Westley Allan Dodd: I think it would. I think a few child [unclear: "masters" / "monsters"], anyway, are going to think twice before they do anything again.

Interviewer: How do you live with yourself daily?

Westley Allan Dodd: At times it's not easy. I said there's times I think about what I've done, I think about some of the things the boys said before they died, and that's real hard to think about. At other times I just try to put everything out of my mind.

Interviewer: Do you look forward to dying?

Westley Allan Dodd: In a way, yeah, I think it'd be a relief. I don't have to think about all these things anymore. And I know that's the only way I can guarantee I'm not going to hurt anybody else. Right now I sit here and say I don't want to, but I know it'll happen.