Nobel Peace Prize laureate Bishop Desmond Tutu spent...

Nobel Peace Prize laureate Bishop Desmond Tutu spent about 45 minutes with inmate Dominique Green on Texas death row in Livingston's Polunsky Prison Unit. "I have met quite a few people in my time, but I have not been as impressed by someone I met very briefly through a glass partition," Tutu said later at a news conference. "He is a remarkable young man. It would be one of the greatest tragedies if someone like Dominique were to be executed." Thomas Cahill, a historian and best-selling author, earlier had visited Green at the suggestion of a friend, who happened to be one of Green's appeals lawyers. During the encounter, Cahill said, Green was inspired by Episcopal Bishop Tutu's book about his experiences as president of South Africa's Truth and Reconciliation Commission, in which Tutu said that people should "ask forgiveness from everyone we've hurt and to forgive everyone who has hurt us." Tutu took a detour from his U.S. book tour for "God Has a Dream: A Vision of Hope for Our Time" to visit with Green at the urging of Thomas Cahill and of former state Judge Sheila Murphy of Illinois, one of the condemned man's lawyers. Green was 19 in 1993 when a jury decided he should receive lethal injection for the Oct. 14, 1992 robbery and shooting death of Andrew Lastrapes Jr., 41. Green's case is before the U.S. Supreme Court. His supporters believe Green's trial was marked by racism, that his court-appointed trial lawyer was incompetent and that he was the product of a dysfunctional family, which jurors did not consider. An all-white jury decided the fate of Green, who is black.