“Accidentally On Purpose” & “Memoirs and regrets of a death-qualified juror”

Written by Michael Flinner Wednesday, 02 December 2009

“Accidentally On Purpose”
“Memoirs and regrets of a death-qualified juror”

So, I’m sitting here pondering the chemical makeup of these miraculous teeth-whitening formulas, trying to decide which one could possibly remove the years of filth plastered upon virtually absent enamel that should shine in this hideous mouth of mine. It then occurs to me that my credit union has a fairly attractive interest rate for used car loans through the end of the month; how John Elway seems way more unstoppable in his retirement than he ever was on the football field, even in 1999 with his MVP and turn-of-the-century superbowl ring.

I can’t begin to imagine the uncertainty in the minds of the hijackers on United flight 175. Did they even know which tower was which? Hey, doesn’t John Elway actually own a Ford dealership? Now there’s a novel concept. For an hour and eighteen minutes (give or take), I’ve had an insatiable hankering for a colossal mountain of chili cheese fries.
Yes, you may’ve guessed it —– I’m stuck on jury duty. Seated next to me is a woman. She has more hair on her chin than I do and clearly, she’s an old as Copernicus. Dust literally escapes her lungs each and every time she exhales. With nine spiral-bound note pads full of remarks on the very same trial I’m pretending to watch, she must be angling for the foreperson’s job, perhaps she’s interested in serving her civic duties —– me, I’m bored stiff.

The remainder of the clowns in the jury box are seemingly as lost as I am. When is this God-damned thing over? Oh, I see juror number four’s nails are finally finished. She’s been working on ‘em all day. At least one of us got something accomplished.
These feuding lawyers argue like an unhappy married couple. “Objection!” “Foundation!” Isn’t that the powdery crap the wife wastes my money on at the cosmetic counter? I wish she’d get a job for Christ’s sakes. That reminds me, I need to grab a six pack of brewski and some avocados when I blow out of here later.

Someone said something about a chiropractor in the lobby who was going to testify shortly. I wonder if I can line up a quick rotator-brake, my back is killing me. I need a new wallet, one without all of these picture sleeves. Who uses these things?
This is a capital murder trial that spans well-over four years in the making, with an equal amount of transcripts (if that’s even possible). I’ve honestly never seen so much paperwork in my life. They actually kill trees for that stuff and then pay someone to babysit it all? I pay taxes too, y’know.

Well…I’ve been sworn to a semblance of secrecy despite the constant media frenzy each day here in the courthouse. Look at these losers. They’re like a pack of wild blood-thirsty carnivores, sniffing their way through the stench of rumors and gossip.
Juror number eleven cautiously accepted a business card from one of them with a very subtle wink and nod. I’m pretty sure (but don’t quote me) that the judge clearly admonished us against similar behavior. Oh well, I’m not the one on trial here.
Even if I were handsomely compensated and could sign a waiver granting me absolute liberty to discuss intimate details, I’d never do so. I won’t lie though, it crossed my mind last Friday when the accused appeared in court with that tasteless tie and such a gorgeous blazer. Had to be Armani. There should be laws against that, no? Who would I contact to enact such legislation? “Fashion Felonies”. Hmm….

Not only that, but the facts (what I vaguely recall) are so insanely mundane that you’d eagerly rip this very page from wherever you’re reading it and attempt to cram it quite decisively into your eye socket.

Whew, holy mackerel…someone stepped in dog shit! It smells like a wild buffalo’s ass just landed in the jury box.

Don’t you dare judge me or misinterpret my social sentiments and responsibilities. I’m not whining about being in this terribly uncomfortable duct-taped chair, lost in what appears to be a pensive thought. Clearly, the previous occupant sat on an equally lengthy criminal matter but instead of spearing his or her eye out, decided to do the next best thing and take it out on the county budget by literally shredding the stuffing from beneath the fake leather seat cover. “Kudos to you good sir!”

Son of a bitch! I just kicked over my 32 ounce Dr. Pepper. It’s all over everything as I pretend not to notice. Guess I shouldn’t have worn flip-flops today. One can only hope that the sweet scent of carbonated prunes will somehow mask the putrid stench of crap eagerly wafting through the air.

What did he just say? Did I miss closing argument? Excuse me, would you please repeat that?

Down in the courthouse cafeteria (where they don’t sell chili cheese fries), I came across some colorfully-insightful complimentary literature. There’s a statement in this pamphlet which says and I quote, “the majority of those who sit of juries exit the overall experience with positive views of the justice system.” What a load of crap! That’s almost as bad as a slogan I read on one of the homicide detective’s binder covers that said something like, “when your day ends, our begins”. How terribly insensitive…funny, but insensitive.

I’m quite certain I could’ve easily lied my way out of this arbitrary waste of time but I’m an avid fan of CSI and when I saw the initial news coverage of the case, I have to admit, it was a great way to get some much-needed time off from work.
Truth be told, I actually fought to get on this jury and in doing so, it helped me realize something very powerful, something difficult to reconcile.

This country doesn’t have too many attorneys, we just don’t know how to select juries. Trials essentially ask random people to award damages or vote to convict, in volumes of generally unfathomable turd-slinging disputes.

I must’ve read the wrong brochure or perhaps I just missed the fine print somewhere, so would someone please explain to me why the court requires that I must be pro-death penalty to sit on a capital murder trial jury? What part of the program is that? Doesn’t the 6th Amendment guarantee an impartial jury of your peers? It almost seems that such an emphasis given to my personal beliefs automatically creates an atmosphere wherein amongst other potential jurors, guilt can only be presumed.

It is said that constitutionally, any juror whom has a doubt about his or her potential ability to impose a sentence of death, faces certain elimination from the respective jury pool.

Clearly irrelevant, the actual guilt phase of these death penalty trials should not hinge upon our independent views as jurors as it relates to capital punishment. Cases differ.

We’re told in today’s political climate, the growing global disdain for sentences of death slowly creeps upon nearly half of the entire world’s population. Rather than presenting a consistent and reliably cross-section of society (a righteous peer group), jurors are selected because of their inherent willingness to impose a death sentence. Statistically, juries of this breed will contain far-fewer representatives of certain religious beliefs, fewer women, and a majority of those whom will trust in the evidence put forth by the state, blind to the frequent errors, high stakes, blatant inequities, and the nearly incomprehensible complexities associated with the application of death as a modern-day punishment.

In many respects herein, even long after I’ve illuminated this posture, in my eyes… the verdict generally (not always) ends up being determined by the following issues, none of which has a damn thing to do with the facts of the case or what even happened in ‘reality’.

There will forever be those who vote solely on the confidence of their respective co-jurors. The disturbing net effect however of all of this, stems primarily on the ‘followers’.

In earnest, I believe that the most critical component in any trial, even more important than the actual merits of the case, remains the likeability of the attorneys. Neither side ever presents any information that couldn’t be deemed “open for total interpretation”, completely and consciously biased in every stretch of the imagination. The only thing in my trial experience that weighs heavily in veracity or influence is how affably the questionably-slanted data is delivered and by whom. Who can sell me the bill of goods. That’s it — that’s all!

Every folly has its kernel of truth, every crime a virtuous objective at its heart. For the essence of man is unadulterated in the process from motive to deed, so that a lofty ideal is corrupted to a lowly end.

In the upper courts of late, numerous cases abound which question pharmaceutical giants’ ethics behind deliberately leaving various drugs on shelves despite proven claims of damages done to patients whom are administered said by physicians. Many claims against these drug and product manufacturers may indeed be legitimate but undeniably, an equal amount (perhaps more), are not. They will probably all win or lose at a fairly consistent rate in the courts, primarily because for example, they all share one tremendous factor in common.

These suits will invariable and ultimately be decided upon by groups of similarly uptight, lazy, anal-retentive, unmotivated Dr. Pepper spilling idiots whom don’t know a God damned thing about pharmaceutical, their doses, or potential side effects.
Jurors from a local courthouse’ jury pool aren’t remotely qualified to sit on those kinds of juries, much like I’m totally ill-equipped to have sat on this one.

What’s even more ridiculous is the fact that being a totally unqualified person is what makes me abundantly qualified in the eyes of the trier-of-fact. By being 110% ignorant about the subject or the laws in place which purportedly govern them, I’m seemingly he right guy for the job; the one deemed eligible to decide legal ramifications. I can’t even remember where I parked my truck or what I had for breakfast. Oddly enough, yet abundantly clear, remains the fact that had I possessed any pragmatic or practical knowledge about the subject matter I would’ve been immediately eliminated from service.

Commonly assumed is that an objective individual has no opinion about anything. Let me define “objective”. Objective means that you comprehend one’s own personal biases and barriers, capable of compensating through intellectually separating one’s self from a pre-existing notion, belief, or feeling. It isn’t something you are —– it’s something you do.
Our jury system has a selection process in this country which needs a serious “twice-over”. The courts assume that the best people available to decide modern criminal and civil problems are ill-informed folks whom an educated pair of over-informed lawyers is diligently and openly trying to confuse. Is this justice?

That’s a huge slap in the face to those whom are ultimately executed and later found to be innocent. Let me tell you something here and now —– the numbers are quite confounding.

Here’s a rather novel concept…why not employ the efforts of professional juries in this country? An otherwise complicated system to enact but imagine the abundance of clarity and effectiveness! And according to the proverbial laws of the land, it would fall comfortably within the realm of constitutional. Y’see, Article III section 2 of our nifty constitution states that all criminal trials must be heard by a jury and, the 6th Amendment requires said jury to be IMPARTIAL, not all willing to impose death.

There is however no particular language in either doctrine, which demands that we select citizens at “random” and have them decide complicated criminal matters they can barely understand, especially when virtually every step of the arduous process is designed by the very fabric of attorney lingo and legal jargon, to make the case factors terribly unclear to the average juror.
My potential for doubt as it relates to the imposition of a death sentence, a posture which would currently eliminate me from a jury pool, is far from “impartial”. Doesn’t the 6th Amendment apply here? How can the voir dire examinations in which the prosecutors and defense attorneys engage prolonged questioning upon potential jurors, comfortably and legally fall beneath the equal protection of the 6th Amendment, if those whose morals or religious scruples prohibit an imposition of death, keep them from serving on an “impartial” jury? Seemingly incomprehensible, huh?

Truth be told, I’m not remotely expecting the legal system as a whole (or even in part), to reinvent itself or make similar concessions but, I do continue to see myself as a genuine advocate for meaningful resolve. Enough is enough!
Yes I may be lost in translation, wondering about teeth-whitening, interest rates, terrorist hijackers and even chili cheese fries but I cannot imagine being the person who has come upon this very revelation on my own —– surely, there must be others. Is that possible?

Wouldn’t we be better served as a community by specific classes of “professional juries”, whose sole job is to objectively weight and consider court cases that they themselves are formally educated about? How is that not obvious to the masses?
It would seem to be a fascinating and ideal training ground for those who aspire to challenge their lives in careers like those found in courtrooms everywhere. Wouldn’t prosecutors be far-less willing to pursue suits and criminal cases (wasting billions of tax dollars annually), if they know inherently that their case factors (or lack of them) would be less-likely swayed by misdirection or emotion? Shouldn’t our most critical components of the nation’s trial courts not be subject to random selection?

With every moral fiber of my being, one thing remains abundantly clear today, how it is, ain’t quite the way it really seems. Trust and believe that.

Michael Flinner, a middle-aged Caucasian father of one and former general contractor from San Diego, California, resides on Death Row at San Quentin State Prison, for a crime many know he did not commit. He is a perfect example of how the 6th Amendment continues to fail good people in so many ways.

This very same Amendment provides a guaranteed right to confront and cross-examine one’s accuser. Mr. Flinner’s accuser (the lone gunman) sat silent in a joint trial with two separate juries, ours on one side and his on the other. The law provides the protection of confrontation so that one can flush out the truth in any number of allegations. See the 6th Amendment.
The trial judge in this case however, permitted the homicide detectives to testify on behalf of Mr. Flinner’s accuser. This is a direct violation of due process and a monumental statutory case handed down by the United States Supreme Court in March of 2004, cited as Crawford V. Washington, only days before Flinner was sentence to death.

San Diego County Sheriff’s Homicide detective Rick Scully, was awarded a national commendation of “Homicide Detective of the Year” for his involvement in the investigation and sending Mr. Flinner to California’s death row, even after the prosecutor himself proved to both juries that Mr. Flinner and his son were some twenty miles away from the scene of the crime at and during the commission of said, and that in no way were responsible for the shooting when it occurred. Professional jury? I know not.

It was later discovered that the prosecution obstructed justice by committing a barrage of felonies which fall beneath Title 18 in a variety of subsections, the least of which provides for actual felony prosecution of their acts. See Title 18: 1503-1512.
Only God and Mr. Flinner’s alleged co-conspirator themselves know what happened on the fateful summer afternoon in 2000 when Tamra Keck, Michael’s love interest and bride-to-be, surrendered her last living breath in vain to a single cowardly gunshot.
Ironically, the same prosecutors would deliberately fail to inform both juries that the now-convicted gunman had actually solicited his then county jail cellmate, to go to Mexico and retrieve the murder weapon from his mother’s care. That’s not even the half of it, people. While soliciting the jail cellmate, Tamra’s killer took the time to draw a map which led to Flinner’s property. Both the map and the cellmate’s testimony was admitted before Flinner’s accuser’s jury, but not ours. Ask yourself the obvious question; Why wouldn’t the prosecutors want to put forth evidence that would vindicate Flinner? If Flinner was remotely culpable for hiring this accuser to kill Tamra Keck, why would he want to plant the murder weapon on Flinner? This very evidence was left out because earlier on in the trial it was discovered that Flinner’s father had in fact found an eyeglass case on his property which contained bullets, bullets with names inscribed upon them. One fired casing had Tamra’s name on it, while another unfired round with Michael’s was also enclosed. It should come as no surprise that the map in question led to the same exact place where the bullets were found.

If we as a civilized society however, should continue to permit our justice system such unabated leverage and ability to “chisel away” at the very laws which govern this great nation with no checks and balances, there will undeniably be men and women of every nationality, creed, race and religion, robbed of their rights and sent off to concrete ghost-towns, condemned to die, much like Michael Flinner —– a kind, generous soul, whose compassion remains a weakness his captors will not soon embrace.

Mr. Flinner’s jury managed to struggle but find him culpable for a crime he would never have been charged with much less tried for but for the trial judges’ callous deliberate errors in allowing hearsay testimony to convict, knowing clearly that it violated statutory law and the United States Supreme Court’s ruling less than three weeks earlier on this very subject matter. This is no doubt reminiscent of judicial misconduct and a flagrant abuse of power.
On his way into retirement (or so it was said), the trial judge sought to get some mileage out of Mr. Flinner in lieu of doing the right thing and retrying the case and putting on all of the evidence.

Most notable and far-difficult to comprehend is how the shooter ended up with a life sentence and as previously mentioned, Mr. Flinner whom was nowhere near the crime scene, received a sentence of death.

Seriously people, what’s wrong with this picture? Only years after sending Mr. Flinner to this death, do some of us realized just how wrong we were and further, how the court failed each of us as jurors.

In an odd yet compelling way, I urge you to help Michael however your heart should lead. He truly deserves a new trial with an impartial jury. Moreover, one by constitutional standards.

Take a moment to visit his online venue where he’s eliciting support to aide in his survival, subsistence, and struggle associated with being entirely out of his element, defeated, spiritually blind, and emotionally numb.
“Conscience-Stricken”
El Cajon, Ca.

You can locate and correspond with Michael at the following:
Michael Flinner
SQSP #V-30064
San Quentin, California
94964-0001 U.S.A.

www.deathrowinmate.org

http://www.michaelflinner.org/about.htm

One Big Self: Prisoners of Louisiana

Photographer Deborah Luster doesn’t try to connect the dots. In conversation, she lays out the autobiographical steppingstones that led to the creation of “One Big Self: Prisoners of Louisiana,” her 2002 masterpiece now on display at the Newcomb Art Gallery. But she leaves us to fill in the psychological blanks.

“One Big Self” is a collection of more than 1,000 photographs of inmates in Louisiana prisons, including the Louisiana State Penitentiary at Angola. Luster visited the prisons between 1998 and 2002, seeking inmate volunteers who allowed her to take their portraits.

She used a black backdrop to remove any modern prison features from the background. To further remove her photos from the contemporary world, she printed them in black and white on small sheets of metal with an amber colored glaze, reproducing the look of the tintype photos popular during the Civil War. She gave each inmate paper copies of his or her portraits — they were not allowed to have sharp metal objects.

Gallery visitors are welcome to sort through the photos in the glare of a bureaucratic gooseneck lamp atop a sinister steel cabinet that clanks like a prison cell door when the drawers are shut.

The photos are sometimes forbidding, but more often they are strange and sad. Bulging prison-yard muscles and macho tattoos can’t disguise a sense of defeat. Unsmiling faces radiate regret. Occasional smiles radiate it even more. Luster said the prisoners cherished their portraits. One said he was shocked to discover he had grown so old. Some chose to be photographed holding a picture of a family member, bonding with their loved ones in Luster’s camera.

The strangest photos capture prisoners in Halloween and Mardi Gras costumes, or the cowboy gear worn during the annual Angola prison rodeo. One photo shows an inmate costumed as Christ for a prison Easter pageant. Modern details, such as an electric guitar, do nothing to disturb the impression that these pictures could have been taken in the horse and buggy era.

There’s a political component to “One Big Self,” of course. By creating present-day inmate portraits that appear to be antiques, Luster slyly suggests that while the rest of the world has undergone social and technological sea changes, incarceration is essentially the same as it has been for more than a century.

To visually emphasize the scope of incarceration, she has included a small book filled with the seemingly endless serial numbers of those jailed in Louisiana as of the first day of the 21st century. She’s forgotten the exact count.

But beyond artistic activism, there is an unseen personal motivation at work.

Luster, 56, was born in Oregon and raised in Arkansas. In an interview last week, she said her mother was murdered in 1988 by a hired killer, who was later convicted of the crime. She declines to elaborate on the details, but she said the incident so frightened her that she became terribly withdrawn and isolated. She feels photography helped her “get out in the world.”

In 1998, she was one of several photographers hired by the Louisiana Endowment for the Humanities to document life in northern Louisiana. She found that prisons were one of the major industries in the poor parishes. She was allowed to enter the East Carroll Parish Prison Farm, where she first photographed inmates. The results so compelling that she dedicated the next four years to laboriously creating “One Big Self.”

Luster spent only a short time with each inmate and she doesn’t claim to have gained any deep psychological insights. “I don’t want to presume to know who they are,” she said. “I’m simply showing you them.”

She said she was not frightened and had a “great time” taking the portraits. “If someone lets me photograph them, lays themselves bare, I love that,” she said. “I’m grateful.”

To have overcome her mother’s murder with the help of photography, which then led to her sympathetic documentation of prison inmates, would have been a strange enough turn of events. But in conversation, Luster revealed another odd detail of her background.

Her stepfather was an American prisoner of war in Poland during World War II, and helped dig tunnels that led to the mass prison breakout known as the “Great Escape,” she said. The concept of incarceration had always been part of his identity — and to an extent, Luster’s.

Luster doesn’t draw the threads of her life together to create a nice tight bow. She says that all these years later she’s not certain why she was so compelled to fill her lens with prisoners. And she allows that she’s not sure how crime victims will view her photos of “people who may have killed their loved ones.” All she’s sure of is that, in the end, “One Big Self” was personally cathartic.

“It’s very mysterious,” she said. “I had a very heavy heart for a very long time, but when I started photographing (prisoners) and handing photos back to them, I found it quite transformative. All that lifted. I don’t understand it.”

In 2002, I chose the debut of “One Big Self” as the No. 1 art exhibit of the year, but never felt it got the exposure it deserved. Thanks to the Newcomb Art Gallery, Luster’s postmodern tour de force can be seen through Feb. 24.

If “One Big Self” weren’t enough reason to visit the out-of-the-way exhibit space, the gallery is also showing a large suite of works by Diane Arbus and an exhibit of antique photo techniques.

Social Worker: California Needs To Spend More to Rehabilitate Inmates

Social worker and writer Rachel Meyer made some good points in this Women’s International Perspective, Inc. column on California’s prison system.

California’s prisons are overcrowded. Photo courtesy of California state government.

California’s incarceration rate is rising but the state has not increased spending on substance abuse treatment, education, job training and other rehabilitation programs, making it more likely ex-inmates will commit more crime and get locked up again, she said.

But check out what Meyer had to say about the disparity between the pay for prison guards and social workers:

“As a Social Worker I am required to complete six years of higher education, maintain licensing requirements through the Board of Behavioral Sciences, and meet continued education obligations. Juvenile Institution Officers are only required to have a High School Diploma or GED. After two years of employment my annual salary is approximately $55,000 per year. Comparatively, with overtime, a Juvenile Institution Officer makes $70,000.”

Q: Can social workers do anything in these hard economic times to get states to spend more on rehabilitating inmates?

Source: Social Workers Speak

California to bar undocumented inmates from vocational training

By Torey Van Oot
tvanoot@sacbee.com

The Sacramento Bee

Published: Saturday, Jan. 30, 2010

A board that oversees vocational training and work programs in California prisons has voted to stop allowing undocumented immigrant inmates set for deportation to participate.

California Prisons Industry Authority spokesman Tom Collins said the aim of the Prison Industry Board action Thursday is to “ensure that the effective vocational training that CalPIA provides is first applied to inmates who will return to California’s communities following their parole, rather than training individuals who will not.”

The certification program, established in its current form in 1982, provides training and jobs in the manufacturing and agricultural industries for inmates in 22 prisons across the state.

Approximately 427 of the 5,700 inmates now participating are under an Immigration and Customs Enforcement hold and will be deported once their sentence is completed. Fifty-two of the 727 inmate workers enrolled in certification programs are also under an ICE hold, according to a staff report recommending the change.

Collins said he did not know why inmates with ICE holds were not previously deemed ineligible for the program but that the recommendation for the change came up as the board was exploring options for lowering costs and improving the effectiveness of the program.

Recidivism rates for inmates who participated in the program are significantly lower than inmates who do not – 12 percent of certification program participants paroled in fiscal 2007-2008 reoffend, compared with 42 percent of the general prison population paroled during that time, according to the report.

The report also estimated that limiting the program to inmates eligible for parole in California could translate to fewer inmates reoffending and a savings of $784,000 a year in corrections costs.

“The Board’s action allows CalPIA to focus on what is best for the taxpayers of California,” Collins wrote in an e-mail.

“CalPIA would welcome funds from any government, foreign or otherwise as allowed by law to pay for vocational training of inmates who will subsequently be deported.”

The change takes effect March 1, though undocumented inmate workers now enrolled will be allowed to complete the program.

Source: SacBee

http://www.blogsurfer.us/index.aspx

PT: 2 Hank Skinner, Hell Hole News: Case Open- The Investigation

[Editor's note: Hank Skinner is set to be executed for a 1993 murder he's always maintained he didn't commit. He wants the state to test whether his DNA matches evidence found at the crime scene, but prosecutors say the time to contest his conviction has come and gone. Now he has less than a month to change their minds. We told the story of the murders and his conviction and sentencing in the first part of this story.]

It makes sense to Greg Jonsson that police in Pampa set their sights on Hank Skinner when they found Skinner’s girlfriend and her two sons violently murdered on New Year’s Eve in 1993. Skinner was a hard-drinking, hard-partying guy who had seen the inside of a jail cell more than a few times. He was in the house at the time of the killings, he had blood all over his clothes, and police found him hiding out in an ex-girlfriend’s house. “If I was a police officer, I would have looked at Hank Skinner, too,” says Jonsson, one of eight Northwestern University students who traveled from Illinois to Texas to investigate the case in 2000.

A decade later, Jonsson worries the authorities decided too quickly that Skinner was their man. “I didn’t come away knowing he’s innocent, but I didn’t come away knowing he’s guilty,” Jonsson says. “You’d hope that was the case with someone about to be put to death.”

Skinner is scheduled to be executed on February 24 for the murders of Twila Busby and her two mentally disabled adult sons. Skinner and his lawyers insist he was too intoxicated from liquor and pills that New Year’s Eve to have killed three people, and they contend his defense lawyer — a former district attorney who had previously prosecuted Skinner for theft and assault — did a shoddy job representing him at trial. They’ve been pleading with the state for 15 years to release DNA evidence they believe could exonerate Skinner and keep Texas from killing an innocent man.

Prosecutors in Gray County and lawyers for the Texas Attorney General’s Office argue that Skinner had his chance in 1995 to have the DNA tested at his original trial. “There were 12 people that sat in the jury and they listened to the evidence and they found him guilty beyond a reasonable doubt,” said Gray County District Attorney Lynn Switzer, the third Pampa DA to deal with the case.

Protess’s Probe

Northwestern University professor David Protess got acquainted with Hank Skinner in 2000 as then-Texas Gov. George W. Bush was running for president. Protess teaches a journalism class in which students investigate inmates’ innocence claims. The work of his students led to the exoneration of 11 Illinois inmates, including five who were on death row, between 1996 and 2000. The Republian governor of Illinois during that period, George Ryan, cited their work when, in January 2000, he declared a moratorium on the death penalty in Illinois.

Amid rising national questions about the death penalty that were largely raised by the students’ investigations, Bush was defending Texas’ death chamber, the busiest in the nation. He insisted that Texas had not and would not kill an innocent person under his watch.

To test that proposition, Protess sent a crew of eight journalism students to Texas to investigate Skinner’s case. They spent time in Pampa, interviewed residents about the heinous murders and visited Skinner on death row. Today, they say they came away with more questions than answers about what happened to Busby and her sons. And they have grave lingering concerns about the state’s plans to execute Skinner.

Jonsson, now a reporter for the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, was a senior at Northwestern’s Medill School of Journalism when he visited Pampa. “It’s just small, like a rough-around-the-edges town,” Jonsson says, nursing a cup of coffee at a St. Louis coffee house and recalling his first and only time in Texas. He and his classmates interviewed Andrea Reed, the state’s star witness, who at trial testified that Skinner admitted to killing Busby. They talked to the widow of Robert Donnell, Busby’s uncle, who had an incestuous relationship with her and stalked her at a party the night of the murders. They visited friends and neighbors of Skinner and the victims. They dug through case files, reviewed evidence and tried to reconstruct the case to see whether their investigation led to the same conclusion as the jury. “We didn’t come in thinking he’s innocent,” Jonsson says. “We did come in thinking it’s possible mistakes were made.”

The students came away with three big questions. First, why didn’t law enforcement more fully investigate Donnell as a suspect? Second, why didn’t Skinner’s lawyers test what they saw as crucial DNA evidence from the crime scene: Busby’s fingernail clippings, a rape kit, two knives, a bloodstained dish towel and a man’s windbreaker with hair and sweat on it. “There was a pile of it here that hadn’t been tested,” Jonsson says. “That was sort of disconcerting.” Third, what about the potential conflict of interest with the lawyer appointed to represent Skinner at trial? Harold Comer was a former Gray County District Attorney who had previously prosecuted Skinner for car theft and assault.

Donnell was already dead by the time the Northwestern students got to Pampa: He died of massive head injuries in a wreck on Interstate 40 in Oklahoma in January 1997. But they interviewed his widow, who said he became violent when he drank. Others in the community claimed Donnell had raped Busby. They said he often wore a windbreaker similar to the one found at the crime scene. Neighbors also reported seeing Donnell cleaning his truck with a hose and stripping the carpet from it within a week of the murders.

During the trial, though, jurors heard little about Donnell’s violent past. They heard nothing about his sudden desire to have a tidy vehicle. And neither prosecutors nor Skinner’s attorney tested DNA on the fingernail clippings or the windbreaker or the rape kit or the knives found at the scene, which could have revealed whether Donnell, or another person, could be implicated in the crime.

The students also interviewed Reed, Skinner’s ex-girlfriend. Skinner spent about three hours at her house before police arrested him the night of the murders. When they interviewed her, Jonsson says, she explained that she felt intimidated by police and worried that she could somehow be implicated in the crime if she didn’t testify against Skinner. In 1997, she recanted her incriminating testimony, writing in an affidavit that she had lied at trial, and that Skinner’s admission that he kicked Busby to death was one of several fantastic stories he made up in his drunken stupor the night of the murders. “She’d basically been given guidelines for what she was going to say” at trial, Jonsson says. “To us, she seemed sincere.”

Comer, Skinner’s court-appointed attorney, failed to find and fight for evidence that could have vindicated Skinner at the trial, says professor Protess. “My students found on one trip to Pampa … more information than the former prosecutor did,” he says. And no wonder, he says, when the very lawyer who had worked to convict Skinner twice before was now expected to defend his innocence. Comer was the DA in Pampa from 1988 until 1992, when he resigned. That same year, the State Bar of Texas suspended Comer for mishandling public money from a seized drug fund. “He basically didn’t put up a defense,” Protess says.

Emily Probst, another of Protess’s students, interviewed Skinner on death row and spent time investigating the case in Pampa. She came away not convinced that Skinner was innocent but persuaded that too many questions remained unanswered to condemn the man to death. “I still feel like the full truth in this story is untold,” says Probst, who is now a producer for CNN’s investigative and documentary unit.

The students’ investigation and Associated Press reporting on the case drew national attention in 2000 to Pampa and Gray County District Attorney John Mann, who succeeded Comer and prosecuted Skinner. Facing national scrutiny, Mann agreed to test more of the DNA collected from the crime scene.

Mann, who has since died, sent blood from a notebook at the crime scene, hair from Busby’s hands, bloodstained gauze and other items to private testing company Gene Screen Inc., in Dallas. The knives, Busby’s fingernail clippings and rape kit, the windbreaker and bloody dishtowel were not tested. When Skinner’s appellate lawyers requested additional testing, according to a 2000 Associated Press story, Mann said, “Be careful what you ask for, because you might get it.” But they never did get it, and the report from Gene Screen’s tests provided little new information about Skinner or any other potential suspects.

Court fight

Since 1998, Skinner has filed appeal after appeal seeking to prove that his defense was inadequate and begging the courts to force testing of the additional DNA. Each time, the courts have ruled against him.

In a July 2009 opinion, justices on the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in New Orleans said that Comer provided constitutionally adequate representation for Skinner. The court said Comer did present Donnell as a potential suspect to jurors, and although he did not dig up all the evidence Protess’s students found, the attorney performed within legal standards. Skinner has appealed that decision to the U.S. Supreme Court.

Contacted at his home recently, Comer, who is still a practicing lawyer in Pampa, says he was proud of the case he built for Skinner and disappointed that jurors sentenced him to death. “My opinion as a lawyer was the evidence was insufficient to convict him. I still feel that way,” Comer says. His defense of Skinner in 1995 was based on convincing jurors that the state did not have enough evidence to prove he was the killer. What little DNA testing the prosecutor had done was incriminating, showing that Skinner was at the scene the night of the murders. Comer didn’t want to take the risk of poking holes in his own case by testing more evidence that might come back with Skinner’s DNA. “I’m not new at this. I’ve tried four or five capital cases. I’ve been at it 50 years, so I have an instinct, or a feeling, for what’s good for my client,” Comer says. “I don’t second-guess that decision at all.”  He says he respects the decision of Skinner’s new attorneys, Rob Owen co-director of the University of Texas at Austin’s Capital Punishment Clinic and Doug Robinson of Washington, D.C., to go after the DNA. But he doesn’t agree with it. “I guess the proof’s in the pudding. If the courts allow the testing, and it does come out exculpatory, we got egg on our face,” Comer says, “but I still would have made the same decision.

So far, though, the courts have not allowed additional DNA testing. When legislators in 2001 passed a law allowing for post-conviction DNA testing in cases where such evidence existed but had never been examined, Skinner hoped the measure would finally force the state to turn everything over. The law allows for testing in cases where technology wasn’t available at the time of the trial or where untested evidence has the potential to exonerate. State and federal courts so far have ruled that Skinner’s case doesn’t meet those guidelines.

Skinner’s first motion for post-conviction DNA testing was denied, and on appeal the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals ruled that new testing was unlikely to show anything different from previous DNA tests that put Skinner at the scene of the crime. Skinner filed a second request for DNA testing in 2007, citing new legal developments and evidence that Gene Screen’s DNA tests in 2000 were flawed. Again, the Court of Criminal Appeals denied the motion. The court said Skinner was at fault for not having requested testing of the DNA at his original trial in 1995. Skinner then sued current Gray County D.A. Switzer, hoping a federal court would force her to turn over the DNA. “The fact of the matter is he had very good trial attorneys, and they made decisions and strategies at the time that the courts have upheld and said, ‘Yes, that is good trial strategy,’” Switzer says. “There are steps in place that he could have employed and some of which he did employ, and they’ve been handled.” A federal judge dismissed the case against Switzer this month, and Skinner attorney Rob Owen says he plans to appeal.

When legislators adopted the 2001 post-conviction DNA law, they worried the measure would start a flood of requests for testing. State Sen. Robert Duncan, R-Lubbock, who wrote the bill, says guidelines were implemented to ensure fairness and prevent abuse in the system. John Bradley, chairman of the Texas Forensic Science Commission and the Williamson County District Attorney, says Skinner’s case is a perfect example of why those criteria are necessary. “There’s 155,000 people in prison,” he says. “If you change the rules so you can having testing any time, you’re going to get 155,000 applications tomorrow, because what have they got to lose?”

Owen says he is hopeful the U.S. Supreme Court will intervene in Skinner’s case. “It’s about a one-in-100 shot,” he says. The decision not to test the DNA back in 1995 was one ex-prosecutor Comer made, Owen says, and Skinner shouldn’t be executed for a wrong that could be righted now. “There was good reason to doubt Hank’s guilt even then, and the concerns have only grown,” he says. Besides, he wonders, what has Texas got to lose? If the DNA tests don’t exonerate Skinner, the execution can go forward as planned. If the evidence proves he didn’t do it, then Texas avoids killing an innocent man. “The idea that we’re going to not find out, that’s … irresponsible,” he says.

As the February 24 execution date draws near, Skinner says he’s beginning to tire of this 15-year fight to prove his innocence. He’s tried to accept the possibility that needles filled with a lethal chemical concoction will take him to his end. But, he says he can’t. “Every time I try to think about them trying to kill me, I just think next, well, I didn’t do it.”

Source: Texas Tribune

KPBS Special: Life In Prison: The Cost Of Punishment

This 30-minute documentary explores the cost of California’s “tough on crime” legislation. It gives you an inside look into three state prisons, including the California Medical Facility. CMF houses the oldest and sickest inmates in the state.

Click here for video

Hank Skinner, Hell Hole News: Case Open

by Brandi Grissom
January 28, 2010

Twila Busby was Hank Skinner’s soul mate. “We just fell together. We just clicked, man,” he says. The two were hardly apart after they met at an Alcoholics Anonymous meeting. They would kiss in public and cuddled up on the couch to watch thrillers. They were “sick in love,” Skinner says through a telephone receiver behind a Plexiglas window on Texas’ death row unit in Livingston.

A jury found that Skinner was so sick in love that, in a jealous rage, he strangled Busby, bashed in her head and face with an axe handle and then stabbed to death her two mentally disabled adult sons on New Years Eve 1993. He was sentenced to death for the three murders. His execution is scheduled for February 24.

The 47-year-old doesn’t deny he was in the small house in the tiny West Texas town of Pampa on the night of the murders or that the blood on his clothes that night belonged to 41-year-old Busby and her sons. But Skinner and his lawyers say there’s no way he could have killed anyone; he was so loaded on vodka and pills that he was nearly comatose. They argue that his appointed trial attorney, a former district attorney who had previously prosecuted him for theft and assault, failed to adequately investigate other potential suspects. They insist Texas is about to execute an innocent man — and the state has evidence that could prove it.

The night of the murders, police collected, among other items, clippings from Busby’s broken fingernails, a rape kit, two knives from the crime scene, a bloodstained dishtowel and a man’s windbreaker with sweat and hair on it, but most of it has never been DNA-tested. During Skinner’s trial, prosecutors tested some blood and hair from the scene, but not the fingernails, rape kit, knives, towel or windbreaker. Over the last decade, the state has fought Skinner in court to keep it that way. Prosecutors in Gray County and lawyers for the Texas Attorney General’s Office say Skinner had his chance at trial to test the evidence, but he declined, and the jury spoke; now it’s time for him to face the consequences. “It’s already been handled,” Gray County District Attorney Lynn Switzer says. She’s the third DA in Pampa to deal with Skinner, who has sued her in federal court seeking to force release of the DNA. “He doesn’t need to keep trying it over and over and over again. It’s already been handled.”

Skinner’s execution date approaches as Texas faces renewed scrutiny of its famously busy death row and the science used to convict the accused. Since 1973, just 11 death row inmates have been exonerated, according to the Death Penalty Information Center, while more than 440 have been put to death. The New Yorker last year touched off a national debate about how many of those killed might have been innocent by posthumously profiling Cameron Todd Willingham, who was executed in 2004 after a jury convicted him of killing his three young children by arson in 1991. Before Willingham was executed, according to the story, the state ignored expert reports contending that the fire may have been accidental and calling the method used to prove that it was arson “junk science.” A Texas Observer story earlier this month revealed that a psychologist the state has relied on to test the mental capacity of more than a dozen death row inmates used faulty methods to boost IQ scores so the men could meet the legal standard for the death penalty. And in Dallas County, maverick District Attorney Craig Watkins has launched a Conviction Integrity Unit that has reviewed more than 400 cases in which DNA from the crime scene was still available to be tested and has discovered at least 15 wrongful convictions.

In Skinner’s case, attorneys argue that prosecutors selectively used DNA testing to put a potentially innocent man on death row, and that the state is manipulating a 2001 law that allows post-conviction DNA testing to keep him on the path to the death chamber. “The case against him is not open and shut, it’s not ironclad,” says attorney Rob Owen, co-director of the University of Texas at Austin’s Capital Punishment Clinic. “And in a reasonable system, we ought to go the extra mile to rule out the possibility that he is an innocent man before going forward with the execution.”

New Year’s Nightmare

Skinner and Busby had plans that New Year’s Eve. They were supposed to go to a friend’s house together, but Skinner got his celebration started early. By the time the friend stopped by the house to get them, Skinner was already passed out on the couch. He was so intoxicated from a codeine and vodka cocktail that even when the friend yanked repeatedly on his arm and hollered at him, Skinner didn’t budge.

So Busby went without him. Friends at the party said Busby’s intoxicated uncle, Robert Donnell, began stalking her there. The two had a predatory incestuous relationship, according to several people who have testified in Skinner’s case. A private investigator who looked into Donnell’s past found a long criminal history, including convictions for vehicle theft, embezzlement and burglary. He had served prison time, usually carried a large knife and told stories about having killed a man in a pool hall fight in Oklahoma. Busby’s friends described him as “scary” and said she had called them several times over the years to protect her from his frightening advances.

Agitated by Donnell’s come-ons at the party, Busby left for home — the last time anyone admits to having seen Busby alive. Donnell left the party shortly after, witnesses said, and there has never been a full accounting of his whereabouts that night.

Neighbors called police just before midnight when Busby’s 22-year-old son, Elwin “Scooter” Caler, showed up on their porch in his underwear, bleeding from multiple stab wounds. Police followed a trail of blood back to Busby’s house and walked in on a grisly scene. She was sprawled on the living room floor, her face and head beaten to a pulp; blood was splattered across the room. Her other son, 20-year-old Randy Busby, lay dead in his bunk bed, stabbed three times in the back.

Immediately, Gray County Sheriff Randy Stubblefield identified Skinner as the primary suspect. He sent deputies to look for him in the attic and called in a dog to sniff out a crawl space below the house. They arrested him blocks away hiding at a frightened former girlfriend’s house, blood on his clothes, a deep gash in his hand.

The State’s Case

Andrea Reed, the ex-girlfriend, was the state’s star witness during the 1995 murder trial in Fort Worth (it was moved because of the presumably prejudicial attention the crime received in Pampa). Reed said Skinner was an alcoholic and a drug user. A recovering addict herself, she had sponsored him and Busby in AA but tried to stay away from Skinner, she said, because he had fallen off the wagon.

The night of the murders, she told jurors, Skinner showed up at her trailer house banging on the front door, intoxicated and disoriented, with blood on his clothes and his hand cut. He told her he had been shot in the gut and stabbed in the shoulder, chest and arm. He ordered her to stitch up his hand, she said, and threatened to kill her if she called the police. “I told him the only thing I had was fishing line. And he had to get the fishing line, and I brought the Ambesol to deaden it,” Reed testified. “And he kept heating and bending needles.”

As Reed attempted to stitch his wound, Skinner told her wild stories about how he’d gotten injured. First he said he had been drinking vodka and smoking crack with Busby when “some Mexicans” came to the front door brandishing knives. At another point in the more than three hours he spent at her house, Skinner told Reed that he had caught Busby in bed with her ex-husband. He started to tell yet another story about a man breaking into the house, Reed said, but he didn’t finish that one. Then, after swearing her to secrecy, Skinner told Reed he thought he had killed Busby. “He said he thought he had kicked her to death,” she told the jury.

John Mann, then the Gray County District Attorney, showed jurors DNA testing on blood that covered swaths of Skinner’s clothes, and on blood and hair from Randy Busby’s bedding and body. The DNA put Skinner in the house at the time of the murders. His bloody palm prints were also found at the scene.

Though toxicology tests indicated Skinner had nearly lethal levels of drugs and alcohol in his system, the prosecution argued the habitual user had enough tolerance that he would have been capable of killing Busby and the boys. After all, he had the physical strength to walk several blocks to hide out at Reed’s house and the mental clarity to keep her from calling the police.

The jury condemned Skinner to death in less than two hours.

“Hellfighters”

Skinner grew up in Virginia and moved to Pampa in 1981 after divorcing his first wife. He wanted a clean start and had heard good things about the oil business. “I’d seen [“Hellfighters”] with John Wayne, Boots and Coots, Red Adair and all that, you know. And so, man, I wanted to come out here to Texas,” he says. A jack-of-all-trades, Skinner says he made good money doing everything from welding to drywall and working on cars. He also did paralegal work for a local criminal attorney, helping out friends who’d gotten tossed in the clink. That, he says, is how he made enemies in the Pampa law enforcement community.

Of course, his hard drinking and partying ways also caught the attention of local officials. He had a history of committing petty crimes and had been prosecuted for car theft and assault. “I look at everything as an opportunity, and I live life like an adventure,” Skinner says. “Somehow or another, man, I irritate people with my lifestyle,” Police turned to him as a suspect in the murders because it was convenient, Skinner says, and “because I was a pain in their ass.”

Skinner contends he was unconscious on the couch, still reeling from the effects of the liquor and the pills, when the murderer attacked his girlfriend and her sons. His blood alcohol content was .24 — three times the legal level of intoxication, .08. Toxicology tests showed Busby was also drunk at the time of the murder and that she struggled mightily, breaking her fingernails as she tried to fend of her attacker. And her boys, though mentally challenged, were physically huge. Caler was more than six-feet tall and weighed more than 220 pounds; Skinner is only five-eight. “This whole case is nothing but a pack of lies from the beginning to the end,” Skinner says.

The way he tells it now, a bleeding and dying Caler managed to rouse him from his chemical-induced lethargy, probably by splashing water in his face. Startled, Skinner says he fell off the couch onto shards of glass from a light fixture the killer broke while wielding the axe handle against Busby. That’s how he got the cut. “It hurt me so bad I jerked my hand back, and when I did I fell the rest of the way,” he says, displaying the scar on the palm of his hand. “And when I was laying flat on the floor, that’s when I saw my girlfriend and what was done to her.”

With the ailing Caler propping him up, Skinner says, he left the house to look for help. Caler went to a nearby neighbor’s house, while Skinner headed for the party to get help from the men there. In his stupor, Skinner says he could only walk a few steps before he would fall to the ground. Then he would crawl and try to walk again, only to fall back down and crawl a little farther. He only made it as far as Reed’s house, he says.

Skinner says Reed helped him willingly that night and that he never threatened her. And in a 1997 affidavit, Reed recanted her incriminating trial testimony. She claimed she was intimidated into testifying against Skinner by the police, who told her, she said, that she could face charges if she had helped him. She said Skinner didn’t threaten to kill her and was too intoxicated to carry out such a threat or to have murdered three people. “I believe that his statement about kicking Twila to death was just a drunken fantasy, like the other violent stories that he told me to explain how he was injured,” Reed wrote.

Skinner has always proclaimed his innocence, but state and federal courts have rejected 15 years of his pleadings. Still, as his execution date draws near, Skinner and his advocates continue to wage a legal fight for additional DNA testing. Only then, they say, will Texas know whether Skinner or a third person was the real killer. “They have no right to kill me,” Skinner says, “because I’m innocent, innocent, innocent.”

Source: Texas Tribune

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No Way Out

Inmate Lonnie Morris is a role model, antiviolence program leader, and darling of the media. But will the parole board see past his crime?

By Ashley Harrell

Ashley Harrell on San Quentin inmate Lonnie Morris

His walker screeched across the floor as Lonnie Morris entered the San Quentin conference room, where his 15th parole hearing was supposed to have started hours ago. The hearings of two other men — both much younger than Morris — had gone long, as parole proceedings tend to do. In the end, the board found neither man suitable for release.

But Morris, it seemed, might finally have his chance. At 59, having spent more than three decades in prison, he could be the model of a rehabilitated inmate. Bespectacled, freckle-faced, and gap-toothed, he looked about as dangerous as a retired history professor.

Morris is one of a handful of San Quentin inmates to have earned a college degree, and in his time at the prison he has also developed himself as a musician, a filmmaker, and a founder of antiviolence programs. He speaks passionately and often about the problems facing urban youth, and has thereby developed an iconic reputation with the media. He even appeared on Larry King Live as an inmate spokesman.

“I can see him as a motivational speaker for those headed in the wrong direction,” one correctional lieutenant said of Morris. Former warden Jeanne Woodford, who has known Morris for more than 20 years, describes him as a “gentle, caring spirit … often called upon to share his wisdom and life philosophy with other inmates and the public.”

After meeting Morris for the first time, a medical student called a friend to say she had encountered the real-life version of Red, the long-rehabilitated and sympathetic inmate played by Morgan Freeman in The Shawshank Redemption.

Like Red, Morris entered prison as a violent criminal who had taken the life of another person for no good reason. Morris’ case, however, was more egregious in the eyes of the law: While robbing a jewelry store, he shot and killed a police officer.

After several years in prison, Morris’ outlook and values began to shift, and he became a reformer who bore little resemblance to his younger self. He demonstrates that prison is not merely a storage facility for the dangerous and the deranged, but a place where resolute people can change their thinking and behavior. When a person serving a sentence with the possibility of parole has been incarcerated long enough and is no longer considered an unreasonable risk to the public, the parole board is supposed to grant the prisoner another chance on the outside.

But that isn’t always the case in California, where getting out on parole is a complex and sometimes arbitrary process that often keeps seemingly harmless prisoners locked up while simultaneously shoving problematic ones out the door. Mired in fiscal difficulties exacerbated by its enormous prison population, the state is scheduled to release about 40,000 nonviolent offenders over the next two years. In all likelihood, a majority of those will wind up back in prison.

Meanwhile, rehabilitated lifers like Morris remain at the mercy of skeptical parole commissioners appointed by tough-on-crime governors. In many cases, it’s easy to find a reason to deny parole. It could be a decades-old psychological diagnosis, or a purported “lack of insight” on the prisoner’s part into the reasoning behind the crime.

Morris faces both of those obstacles, but that isn’t all. He also has a secret he has kept for more than three decades. To law enforcement and the family of the cop he shot, that secret makes him a threat to society. To Morris, it’s part of a personal code of ethics.

At the end of the hearing, it would be up to the parole commissioners to decide just how much Morris’ secret mattered, and whether he had earned his freedom.

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It was a Thursday morning in August 1977 in San Pablo — a tiny city in the East Bay known mostly for its status as a UPS hub — and Officer Robert Wheeler had dropped into R.L. Customs Body Shop to see about some police car parts.

Wheeler had spent most of his life in San Pablo; he had grown up a Boy Scout, and later became a Scout leader and then a cop. A husband and father of two, he was much loved by the tight-knit, God-fearing community, and was sometimes mistaken for his twin, Alan, who worked as a reserve in the police department.

In his 18 years of service in the police department, Wheeler performed his job impressively. Just the week before, he had helped resuscitate a seven-day-old infant during a “code blue.” An emergency room doctor had written a letter thanking him for his help in saving the baby’s life.

That day in the auto parts shop, Wheeler’s radio crackled to life to inform him of a robbery taking place seven blocks away. He wasn’t the only cop to respond to the call, but he was the first to arrive, and decided to walk in alone. Fellow officers believe he may have been under the impression that it was a false alarm — common in San Pablo back then. What wasn’t common in San Pablo was a criminal with a gun.

Back then, Lonnie Morris was pretty much the opposite of a Boy Scout. He had moved around a lot in his youth, from Louisiana to San Bernardino to Oakland, with five brothers, two sisters, and his parents, who were migrant workers and alcoholics.

When Morris was 12, his mother died of cirrhosis, and his father fell into a depression. The male siblings began stealing to support the family, and eventually became engaged in violent lifestyles.

“Most of the people that died in our family was killed,” said Morris’ sister, Gloria Burnside, the oldest of the eight siblings. She estimated that about 20 extended family members have been murdered. “My husband was killed. His brother was killed. My brother was killed. My nephew was killed. My other nephew was killed,” and the list went on.

Immersed in a culture of violence, Morris oscillated from the streets to jail to prison and back. By age 26, he had accumulated a considerable rap sheet. He had three juvenile offenses, including a pot bust and a burglary charge. In 1972, he was convicted of armed robbery and received a five-to-life sentence. Paroled in 1975, he committed another burglary, served more time, and was released again in April 1977.

Out on parole and probation, in the broad daylight of Aug. 4, 1977, Morris and his crime partner (whom we’ll say more about later) burst into Robert Mussleman’s jewelry store in San Pablo. They ordered him to the floor at gunpoint. “We’ve killed before and we’ll kill again,” they told him.

Mussleman did as he was instructed, and was bound with telephone wire. The commotion set off a burglar alarm connected to the San Pablo police station, which relayed the call to Wheeler’s radio.

As Wheeler entered the store, and before he could even draw his gun, Morris stood up from behind the counter. Though Morris says he yelled “Freeze,” Mussleman has no memory of that. Morris also says he didn’t mean to shoot, but his gun went off anyway. A bullet struck Wheeler in the face, instantly sending him to the floor.

Uncertain of whether the cop was alive or dead, the two men fled the store, dashed across a parking lot, and disappeared into a nearby residential complex.

Close on Wheeler’s heels, several police officers discovered him lying on the floor of the jewelry store and summoned an ambulance. He died at Richmond Hospital shortly after arrival, becoming the first and only member of the San Pablo Police Department to lose his life in the line of duty.

At that point, every police officer from the department (and several neighboring departments) was called to the scene. They cordoned off the block and received instructions to knock at every door and request permission to search. If the answer was yes, they were to conduct the search. If the answer was no, they were to conduct the search. Every building was turned upside down; three unoccupied houses were also checked.

After several hours, a police dog caught a scent from underneath a home, and Morris was flushed out from its crawl space. Police also found a .38-caliber revolver wrapped in a glove; Morris had the other glove in his pocket. The second man had escaped, and police still do not know his identity. That is Lonnie Morris’ secret, one he has managed to keep for 32 years.

Although revealing the man’s name could be an important bargaining tool with the parole board, Morris says he will never give in. If he did, the man would likely face a murder charge and spend the rest of his life in prison.

Morris can’t live with that. “That man had no idea what was going to happen,” he said. “I take full responsibility for what I did.”

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In the San Quentin conference room, Morris removed his hat and jacket and lowered himself onto a torn seat cushion before Hollis Gillingham. She’s a parole board commissioner known for her smoker’s rasp and tough-love sensibility who used to work as a background investigator and probation officer.

“Okay. Hi there,” she said brusquely.

If that was a cool reception, it was nothing compared to that from Wheeler’s family members. Seated at the back of the room, his son Randall wore a scowl raw with hate, while the stony expression of his widow, June, betrayed no hint of compassion for the prisoner. That was nothing new.

The Wheelers have shown up to every parole hearing of Morris’ over the past two decades to ask that he remain imprisoned. They did not agree to be interviewed, citing concern that a story about Morris might champion his cause, but they have suffered immeasurably, said San Pablo Police Chief Joseph Aita. The death was particularly hard on Wheeler’s twin brother, who had continued working in the department. “I’m telling you, every time we saw Alan, it killed us,” Aita said. “It was like we were looking at Bob.”

As Gillingham reviewed the events of Aug. 4, 1977, and Morris’ criminal history, the prisoner sank a little in his chair. Finally, she asked him the inevitable, loaded question. “So what made you so violent and antisocial?”

Morris knew that his reasoning would be picked apart for lack of insight, but what could he do? He began to talk about the death of his mother and the division of his family. “The real core of my violent behavior was based on anger and pain,” he said. “No one had given me any understanding of why she died.”

Gillingham probed Morris’ relationship with his alcoholic father and learned that the boy had been beaten with switches and irons, but she seemed unimpressed. “Lots of kids lose their parents,” she said. “Lots of kids get whupped. They don’t end up violent with this total disregard for anybody else.” Then she brought up the secret. “Was one of those brothers the one you perpetrated this robbery with?”

“No,” Morris said.

“You’ve never given that person up, have you?”

“No.”

“You’ve said you disavow the criminal code. Is that true?”

“Yes.”

“How come I can’t believe that?”

Morris wasn’t expecting this kind of confrontation. “I don’t know why you can’t believe it,” he said weakly. “If you look at my record in prison, I haven’t been disciplined in over 22 years.”

Morris’ record is, in fact, nothing short of extraordinary.

When he entered San Quentin, he wasn’t somebody who stood out much. He didn’t often get into it with other prisoners. He didn’t cause too much trouble. And, like almost everybody else, he claimed he was innocent. “I’m here for another man’s beef that I didn’t do,” he’d say.

Then one day in 1981, Morris made a $10 bet with another prisoner that the Raiders would defeat the Eagles in the Super Bowl. The Raiders won, but the guy didn’t want to pay, so instead he stabbed Morris in the chest.

“Two inches to the left, and that would have been it for me,” Morris said.

In the infirmary, he got to thinking about his life. He hadn’t really accomplished anything, he realized. Hadn’t done anything of value. He had never gotten to know his son, Jamal, who was born a month after he shot Wheeler. He had brothers and sisters who admired him and visited him, but most people who knew his name knew him only as a cop killer. He didn’t like that.

Morris began applying for classes and activities within the prison walls. In the late ’80s, he was selected from a large applicant pool to work for SQTV, the prison’s television network. Soon after, he was accepted into an Antioch University bachelor of arts program within the prison. According to guards who knew Morris back then, he began developing good relationships with his teachers, and his attitude began to shift.

J.T. Evans, a corrections officer who has worked at the prison for 29 years, noticed a “profound change” in Morris. Evans delegated responsibilities to him, such as the organization of several yard concerts. In 1992, Morris became a peer health educator. In 1994, he became the cofacilitator of a substance abuse program. Morris then enrolled in San Quentin Film School, where guards say he displayed leadership and set a good example for the younger participants.

Morris eventually earned his degree in communication from Antioch, becoming one of the last inmates in California to do so. Armed with his education and newfound sense of self-worth, Morris decided he wanted to do more.

He began having conversations with a guard named Vernell Crittendon about issues facing the black community. They talked about how those issues can be dealt with on a policy level, and Crittendon — who went on to become a widely respected lieutenant and press spokesman — was impressed with Morris’ grasp of the problems facing urban youth. The two decided to work on reducing violence and recidivism from the inside out.

Morris knew that simply returning criminals into the community en masse — as the state will soon be doing — was bad news. He had gone through it himself, and was well aware of a certain criminal code many people continue to live by.

Before you can change people’s behavior, Morris recognized, you have to change the way they think. To start that process, in 2002 he cofounded No More Tears, an antiviolence program providing a supportive group environment for inmates to discuss their feelings and receive wisdom in hopes of interrupting the cycle of recidivism and violence. Morris facilitates weekly workshops, which are packed with volunteers and prominent visitors.

Morris didn’t stop there. In 2003, he, another inmate, and Crittendon started REAL Choices, another antiviolence program targeting urban youth, for whom they provided prison mentors. REAL stands for Reaching and Expanding Adolescent Lives.

Morris was already a spiritual and emotional adviser to other prisoners. But after he cofounded the inmate programs, word of his charisma and good works spread outside San Quentin. He became friends with writers, doctors, religious leaders, activists, and politicians, including Oakland City Councilwoman Desley Brooks and Alameda County Supervisor Keith Carson.

Those who gravitate to Morris tend to have a few things in common: They believe prison should be about reform, not punishment. And they believe he should be given the chance to take his programs outside the prison walls.

Woodford, the former warden, is one of those. “I know Mr. Morris’s crime is violent,” she wrote in a recommendation that he be granted parole. “I also know he has caused unbelievable pain to the families and friends of his victim. This he can never change. The only issue within his power to change is himself, and I believe he has done that.”

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Ask defense attorneys, victims’-rights advocates, lawmakers, prisoners, and anyone else who has to deal with California’s parole system, and they’ll all tell you the same thing: It’s godawful. A 2008 editorial in The New York Times even described it as “perhaps the most counterproductive and ill-conceived parole system in the United States.”

The main problem is that the system is simply too big. Each year, the state paroles about 138,000 inmates, overloading parole officers with as many as 100 parolees each, about two-thirds of whom end up back in prison.

Very few parolees are murderers serving life sentences. Under Governor Gray Davis, who was notoriously tough on crime, just eight murderers out of the hundreds of potential parolees were released. Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger has been far more permissive, but many lifers have gotten a fair shake only after case law changed the requirements for denying parole.

Until 2008, the commissioners often denied parole based on the heinousness of an offense. Defense attorneys argued that this wasn’t fair; that year, they prevailed in appellate court via the case of Sandra Davis Lawrence. After the state Supreme Court refused to intervene, Lawrence was released on parole, and the board was required to provide additional evidence that an inmate posed an unreasonable risk if released. That was when the phrase “inmate lacks insight” became popular at parole hearings.

Attorney Keith Wattley says his clients are routinely denied with this vague assertion. Furthermore, he says, the board is unfairly stacked with conservative commissioners. The state penal code requires that commissioners come from a cross-section of backgrounds that reflects the population of California, but at the moment, nearly all are or have been police officers, investigators, sheriffs, wardens, and correctional officers.

In 2006, Wattley started his Oakland law firm, Uncommon Law, to combat what he felt were arbitrary denials of parole for deserving individuals. He often takes pro bono cases he deems important; Morris’ was one of those. In fact, Wattley says, Morris’ case has a lot going for it beyond the fact that the inmate is rehabilitated.

For one thing, Morris is old. Research has shown that elderly inmates are significantly less likely to commit further crimes. They also cost the state two to three times more money to keep incarcerated. (Taxpayers recently financed Morris’ first hip replacement, and he needs a second one.) For this reason, the state’s Legislative Analyst Office, a nonpartisan body, recommended in 2003 that thousands of older inmates be paroled early.

Another bonus for Morris: He has plenty of housing and job offers, so a transition to life outside wouldn’t be difficult. One woman even offered to buy him clothing.

At the parole hearing, Gillingham had turned over the proceedings to the deputy commissioner, Linda Rose, who presented the psychological evaluation. Morris’ overall risk for violence was low, she said, but there was a troubling diagnosis that seemed to hang in the air long after it was uttered: Antisocial personality disorder.

It’s not that Morris currently displays such tendencies. He was diagnosed with the disorder just after he entered prison in the late ’70s. But with antisocial personality disorder, the diagnosis never goes away. It will appear fresh on each of his psychological evaluations for the rest of his life.

Rose brought up the crime partner issue yet again, and mistakenly said that a psychiatrist had expressed concern about it. In fact, Wattley countered, the psychiatrist had done no such thing. “The decision to avoid naming the individual is somewhat confusing,” Wattley read from the doctor’s evaluation. “Unfortunately, there is no way to objectively determine whether this is a relevant variable in determining how fully Mr. Morris has explored his underlying motivations.”

Given his turn to speak, Contra Costa County deputy district attorney Jack Waddell immediately accused Morris of not having insight into his crime. Although he acknowledged that the inmate had an impressive number of letters of support (29, to be exact, and nine from current and former prison staff), he also called Morris a “media darling” and questioned whether his good works were merely part of a veneer disguising a still-dangerous man. “The prior record of the inmate is scary, to say the least,” he said.

Wattley countered that Morris should not be judged solely on something he did 32 years ago. For an inmate to examine his own motives and history wasn’t the same as trying to make excuses, he contended.

The victim’s family members, including June Wheeler, were the last to speak. “Lonnie, you have caused us much pain, and we will never forgive you for what you have done,” she read from her statement. “We were all sentenced to a life without Bob, and we want justice.”

A nephew of Wheeler’s took a final opportunity to bring up the crime partner issue again. “Lonnie Morris says he respects the rights of others, and yet he won’t turn over his partner,” he said. “He won’t allow us to take that man off the streets. To me, that shows a continued criminal mindset. He’s not doing what’s right.”

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At around 9 p.m., Gillingham called everyone back into the courtroom. The board had reached a decision.

Scooting back to his chair, Morris searched Gillingham’s face for clues. She remained focused on paperwork before her, perhaps thinking about the larger issues.

In her hands was the fate of a man who had committed society’s most egregious crime: He killed somebody. An officer of the law. For no good reason. Now she was supposed to make a decision based on one thing and one thing alone: If released, does this man pose an unreasonable threat?

The answer is pretty simple. Morris certainly doesn’t appear to be dangerous. But there are deeper questions. Should society let a repentant murderer free, even as he refuses to fully submit to society’s laws? How long must he wait for this privilege? How does society know when he’s truly ready?

When thinking about whether Morris deserves his freedom, it’s also hard to ignore the possibility that with his incredible story of redemption, he might make a difference in people’s lives on the outside.

Without meeting the inmate’s eyes, Gillingham called the meeting back to order. “In the matter of Lonnie Morris, M-O-R-R-I-S,” she said, “the panel has reviewed all relevant information and determined that the prisoner poses a present risk of danger, a current, unreasonable risk, if released.”

And that was that. For Morris, a parole denial used to mean waiting a year and then trying again. But in late 2008, voters passed Marsy’s Law, a victim’s-rights bill guaranteeing that prisoners denied parole cannot go back before the board for at least three years. So he will have to wait until Dec. 9, 2012.

Looking like he’d been punched, Morris retreated to a bench and waited to be taken back to the clinic, where he has been recovering from his hip replacement. Morris felt more certain than ever that he had been denied parole because he wouldn’t give up his crime partner. But that realization didn’t chip away one bit at his resolve to keep the secret. “My principles are saying that’s the right thing to do,” he said. “I am who I am, and they can’t take that away from me.”

Source: SF Weekly

Private prison company finds gold in California

In the intensifying debate over budget-driven releases of state prison inmates, the state’s cash problems are well known. But at least one private correctional company is reaping major rewards.
In three years, a private-prison construction and management company, the Corrections Corporation of America, has seen the value of its contracts with the state soar from nearly $23 million in 2006 to about $700 million three months ago – all without competitive bidding. Even in a state accustomed to high-dollar contracts, the 31-fold increase over three years is dramatic.
During the same period, the company’s campaign donations rose exponentially, from $36,750 in 2006, of which $25,000 went to the state Republican Party, to $233,500 in 2007-08 and nearly $139,000 in 2009.  The donations have gone to Democrats, Republicans and ballot measures. The company’s largest single contribution, $100,000, went to an unsuccessful budget-reform package pushed last year by Gov. Schwarzenegger.

The lack of competitive bidding has raised concerns about in the Democrat-controlled Legislature about prison-system procurement.
But the state and the company note CCA’s ability to respond quickly and efficiently to California’s prison overcrowding emergency. “We couldn’t be happier with their (CCA’s) responsiveness and performance,” said Scott Kernan, the undersecretary for operations at the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation. Overcrowding is just one critical problem facing the state’s prisons. The prisons’ health-care system is under federal supervision, and the correctional system’s financial problems — always severe — are especially difficult in a state budget facing a $20 billion shortage through next year.
CCA, a national leader in private correctional work handling more than 80,000 state, federal and local inmates across the country, also has spent heavily on lobbying in California, more than $840,000 over the past decade, according to state financial disclosure records.
Typically, it spends between $30,000 and $45,000 per quarter on lobbying. The level of spending is not unique: Major companies doing business with the state often contribute to candidates and hire lobbyists.
Nashville-based CCA won its first, $22.9 million contract in October 2006 immediately following Gov. Schwarzenegger’s emergency proclamation to send prisoners outside the state to relieve overcrowding.  Its most recently updated contract is worth a total of about $700 million over several years, or about $197 million annually, according to an Assembly analysis. Another corrections company also won an early out-of-state transfer contract, but later pulled out.
The emergency proclamation triggered the out-of-state transfers and, in effect, allowed an end-run around formal bidding procedures which, Kernan said, “would have pushed us back months, seven to nine months.” Later, legislation solidified the process.
“We have been able to deliver immediate relief to overcrowding,” said CCA spokeswoman Louise Grant. “We have done it very cost effectively and we have done it by focusing on delivering the best quality corrections operations.”

Kernan and CCA agree that the company’s ability to speedily accommodate California’s inmates in high-security settings is a key to CCA-state relationship. One example: CCA built the 3,060-bed La Palma Correctional Center in Eloy, Ariz., in nine months and had it fully operational in 12, far less than the three-year window for a government-built prison.
The rise in the dollar value of the contract is mirrored by the increase in the numbers of California’s out-of-state prison inmates – most of whom are handled by CCA.
In the first departure of inmates in January 2007, about 80 prisoners were transferred. Now, more than 8,000 are housed out of state, and CCA has just been contracted to handle some 2,500 more – for a total of 10,468. New plans call for an additional 5,000 inmates to be sent out of state. It has not yet been decided where those prisoners will be located, and within the private correctional industry there is a scramble for the new state business.
Costs vary, but CCA receives about $63 per day per inmate, or about $23,000 annually. Under the contract, the state will pay the CCA about $200 million annually.
State officials speak highly of CCA, and note that CCA likely would have received its contracts, competitively bid or not. In a difficult industry, the company has performed, they said.
But not everyone is so complimentary.

The California Correctional Peace Officers Association, which represents some 28,000 prison officers, has been critical of the  inmate transfers. CCPOA’s web site is peppered with stories about lack of security at CCA and comments about CCA-run institutions. The chairman of the Assembly Oversight Committee, Assembly Hector De La Torre, is critical of the magnitude of the contract and the succession of high-dollar amendments. He opposes expansion of the private-prison contracting without competitive bidding.

CCA is one of three companies that currently contract or have contracted in the past to  provide private prisons.
The others are GEO Group and Cornell Corrections. Cornell operates about six dozen facilities in 15 states and Washington, D.C., with a national total service capacity of more than 18,000 beds. Both groups have operated several facilities in California.
The in-state, dormitory-style community facilities handle a lower security level inmate than CCA’s out-of-state prisons.
Last fall, the state ordered the closure of three of the private community correctional facilities – including two of Cornell’s institutions in Baker and Bakersfield, and a GEO facility in McFarland. The state said the closures would save some $15.2 million, and were prompted by a declining number of low-security inmates.
CCA operates five out-of-state facilities for the state of California.
Three are in Arizona – the Florence Correctional Center, La Palma Correctional Center and Red Rock Correctional Center. The other two are the Tallahatchie County Correctional Facility in Mississippi and the North Fork Correctional Facility.
The prisons hold a total of about 8,060 inmates, with an expected increase to 10,468 inmates under CCA’s latest contract, according to the Out-of-State Correctional Facility, a section of the state prisons’ administrative system, which supervises California inmates who have been shipped to out-of-state institutions.

Source: Capitol Weekly

Clerical error delays CA state layoffs

(01-28) 04:00 PST Sacramento - –

Up to 850 state prison workers who were supposed to be laid off Jan. 31 will receive a one-month reprieve because the state didn’t give them adequate notice.

The error will cost the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation up to $7 million, said Mary Fernandez, an undersecretary at the agency.

The envelopes containing the layoff notices were postmarked with a postage meter on Dec. 31. But because of a clerical error, Fernandez said, many had to be redone, and about 900 were not mailed until later that week or the next week. Many workers did not receive the notices until the first or second week of January, and the state is legally required to give 30 days’ notice before layoffs.

The problem came to light when a prison worker in Riverside County received a layoff notice Jan. 8, but noticed that it had been metered Dec. 31. The worker, Don Wiley – a member of Service Employees International Union Local 1000- marched down to the local post office. Eventually, the local postmaster determined that the letter had not been sent until Jan. 6.

Wiley, as well as Cindie Fonseca, a vocational printing and graphic arts instructor at the California Rehabilitation Center in Norco, said the omission appears to be intentional.

“The fact that the department would lie to me and break federal law is disgusting,” Fonseca said. “Why not come to us and say, ‘We have a problem.’ “

Fernandez said the delay was “absolutely not intentional,” adding that the clerical workers and student employees who made the mistake did not realize the importance of the delay and that nobody higher up “was really paying attention.”

The department is trying to place as many of the workers as possible in other vacant positions, Fernandez said, adding that the department has promised to absorb the cost of keeping the workers on the state payroll for another month but is not sure how they will do it.

Source: SF Gate