James William Potts

In July 1982, Mattson was on San Quentin’s Death Row, convicted of the kidnapping, rape, and murder of several young California girls. As with every Death Row inmate, he had been granted an automatic appeal to the California Supreme Court. A cold, calculating sexual predator who showed no signs of having been rehabilitated in prison, he had recourse to an adolescence of sexual ambiguity to bolster his appeal—Mattson’s mother would say that as a child, he stole womens’ clothing and underwear. He claimed that he had been diagnosed as suffering from schizophrenia, attributed to major traumatic childhood experiences. Expert testimony felt the deprivation and abuse he had undergone as a child, as well as a history of sexual identity problems—a vacillation between male and female orientation—had led him to cross-dressing and drug abuse, contributing to his depravity.

As a law clerk, I became personally involved with Mattson. My law professor asked me to assist him in representing his death row client. Knowing nothing of the case, I could not anticipate the tug-of-war that would take place between my personal and professional principles once I learned what crimes Mattson had been accused of committing. And so, I eagerly accepted the assignment only to quickly find out that our new client had been convicted of the kidnapping, rape, and murder of several young girls, some mere children!

The subject matter touched me particularly deeply because my only sister had been victimized three years before by a sexual predator. Could I go through with this assignment? I decided I had to. But then, adding to Fate’s cruel sense of humor, it was I who ultimately found the issue resulting in the reversal of Mattson’s conviction, a fact that caused a tremendous amount of stress between my wife and me. Throughout the appeal process, she remained vehemently opposed to my helping Mattson in any manner. The strength of our marital bonds was tested on more than one occasion.

As the years have passed, sexual predators like Mattson continue to stalk, kidnap, rape, and murder our children. Families of victims and the community have had to deal with the murders of young girls like Samantha Runion, Jessica Lunsford, Sarah M. Lunsford, Amanda Brown, JonBenet Ramsey, and Cherise Iverson. All of them were young girls who were brutally assaulted and subsequently murdered by individuals fitting a similar profile as Michael Dee Mattson. Society wants this type of predator held accountable on a national and international front.

Yet, as citizens, we have to remember—we can never forget— that in our search for vindication, justice must be served in a manner consistent with state and federal laws so as not to diminish the rights of the every citizen of the United States. For if we extinguish those rights, the rights of the victims to have their killers answer for their crimes will be lost as well. Vigilante justice has no place in American society. I am just as adamant that the legal system we have in place not be daunted by sloppy police work or emotional, knee-jerk reactions that ultimately destroy the basic foundations of the Constitution.