This is one in a series of profiles marking the 60th anniversary of the ACLU of Kentucky’s founding. Each week through December 2015 we will highlight the story of one member, client, case, board or staff member that has been an integral part of our organization’s rich history.
Carl Wedekind
“I continue to be amazed at the workings of this world, but I decided it is simply better to believe that if you keep after it, good things will eventually happen. I believe this, and off we go again.” -Carl Wedekind in Politics, Religion and Death: Memoir of a Lobbyist
“The man whose life we were trying to save was Harold McQueen, and if ever there was a loser, it was Harold McQueen.” So begins Carl Wedekind’s account of his pro bono efforts with the ACLU of Kentucky to save a convict from the death penalty. Wedekind and his legal partner on the case, David Friedman, worked in a frenzied race against time: McQueen was scheduled for an execution less than a month away.
The lawyers and their assistants worked night and day to make their argument to any and every court with authority on the case. But in the end their efforts were unsuccessful: McQueen was executed in the electric chair on July 1, 1997. As Wedekind wrote in his book Politics, Religion and Death: Memoir of a Lobbyist, that night “Harold McQueen’s journey ended, and my journey as an abolitionist began.”
After the McQueen case, Carl Wedekind’s influence grew as an advocate for the abolition of the death penalty in Kentucky. He served as director for the Campaign to Abolish the Death Penalty, on the ACLU National Board of Directors, and on the Board of Directors for the ACLU-KY for many years, often focusing on the abolition cause. His memoir of his experiences as a lobbyist in Frankfort against the death penalty reflects on his many hours and years of effort that are seen in Kentuckians’ slowly changing views on the death penalty.
Wedekind passed away in 2011, but his legacy has been immortalized through the posthumous Carl L. Wedekind Fellowship, which provides for a local high school senior to work part-time for the ACLU-KY and continue the organization’s work while honoring the lobbyist-activist’s memory.