The Innocent Man (35 page)

He forgot to call Annette. Two days later she was riffling through her mail when she came across an envelope from the Department of Corrections in McAlester. Inside was a letter from a deputy warden:

Ms. Hudson:

It is with empathy that I must inform you that your brother, Ronald Keith Williamson (#134846) is scheduled to be executed at the Oklahoma State Penitentiary at 12:01 a.m. on Tuesday, September 27, 1994.

Visiting during the day prior to the execution date will be limited to Clergymen, Attorney of Record, and two other persons who have been approved by the Warden.

As difficult as it may be, funeral arrangements must be considered, and these arrangements are the responsibility of the family. If this responsibility is not assumed by the family, the State will attend to the funeral. Please inform me of your decision.

Sincerely, Ken Klingler

Annette called Renee with the horrible news. Both were distraught and worked hard to convince each other that it couldn’t be true. Other conversations followed, and they decided that they would not bring his body back to Ada. It would not be put on display at Criswell’s funeral home for the town to gawk at. Instead, they would have a private service and burial in McAlester, by invitation only. Only a few close friends and a few family members would attend.

They were informed by the prison that they would be allowed to witness the execution. Renee said she couldn’t do it. Annette was determined to be there at the end.

The news swept through Ada. Peggy Stillwell was watching the local TV station when she heard the rather surprising report that an execution date had been set for Ron Williamson. Though this was good news, she was angry because no one had informed her. She had been promised that she would be allowed to witness the execution, and she certainly wanted to. Perhaps someone would call in a few days.

Annette kept to herself, and tried to deny it was happening. Her visits to the prison had become less frequent, and shorter in duration. Ronnie was out of his mind and would either yell at her or pretend she wasn’t there. Several times she had left after seeing him for less than five minutes.

C H A P T E R  13

O
nce the Oklahoma courts were finished with Ron’s case and the date of execution was set, his attorneys hustled to federal court and began the next stage of appeals. The proceedings are known as habeas corpus—Latin for “you should have the body.” A writ for habeas corpus required that an inmate be brought before the court to determine the legality of his detention.

His case was assigned to Janet Chesley, a lawyer with the Indigent Defense System in Norman. Janet had extensive experience with habeas work and was accustomed to the frenetic pace of filing last-minute motions and appeals while watching the clock race toward an execution. She met with Ron, explained the process, and assured him he would get a stay. In her work such conversations were not unusual, and her clients, though understandably jittery, always came to trust her. The
execution date was serious, but no one was put to death until the habeas appeals had been exhausted.

But Ron was different. The formal pronouncement of a date with death had pushed him even deeper into insanity. He was counting the days, unable to believe Janet’s promises. The clock had not stopped. The death chamber was waiting.

A week went by, then two. Ron spent much time in prayer and Bible study. He also slept a lot and stopped screaming. His drugs were being liberally dispensed. The Row was quiet, and waiting. The other inmates missed nothing and wondered if the state would really execute someone as insane as Ron Williamson.

Three weeks went by.

The U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Oklahoma is in Muskogee. In 1994, there were two judges, neither of whom was particularly fond of habeas corpus appeals or jailhouse lawsuits. They came in by the truckload. Every prisoner had issues and complaints; most claimed innocence and abuse. The death row boys had real lawyers, some from big firms working pro bono, and the briefs were thick and creative and had to be reckoned with. The general population prisoners were usually represented by themselves, with no shortage of advice from the writ writers who held sway in the law libraries and sold their opinions for cigarettes. If the inmates weren’t filing habeas appeals, they were filing lawsuits over bad food, cold showers, mean guards, tight handcuffs, lack of sunlight. The list was long.

Most prisoner suits lacked merit and were dismissed outright, then sent to the Tenth Circuit Court of
Appeals in Denver, home base for the sprawling federal district that included Oklahoma.

The habeas corpus appeal filed by Janet Chesley was randomly assigned to Judge Frank Seay, a Jimmy Carter appointee who took the bench in 1979. Judge Seay was from Seminole, and prior to his federal appointment he had served for eleven years as the trial judge in the Twenty-second District, which included Pontotoc County. He was familiar with the courthouse there, and the town and its lawyers.

In May 1971, Judge Seay had driven to the village of Asher and delivered a high school commencement speech. One of the seventeen graduates was Ron Williamson.

After fifteen years on the bench, Judge Seay had little patience with the habeas corpus appeals that landed in his office. The Williamson petition arrived there in September 1994, just a few days before the execution. He suspected—in fact he knew—that the death penalty lawyers often waited until the last possible moment to file their petitions so that he, and other federal judges, would be forced to grant stays while the paperwork got sorted out. He often wondered what the poor convict was going through, sweating the hours on death row while his lawyers engaged in a bit of brinksmanship with a federal judge.

But it was good lawyering, and though Judge Seay understood it, he still didn’t like the process. He’d granted a few stays, but never a new trial in a habeas corpus matter.

As always, the Williamson petition was first read by Jim Payne, a U.S. magistrate in the federal court office. Payne was known to have conservative leanings and a
similar dislike for habeas work, but he was also highly regarded because of his innate fairness. It had been his duty for many years to plow through each habeas corpus filing and search for valid claims, which, though rare, did exist often enough to keep the reading interesting.

To Jim Payne, the job was crucial. If he missed something buried in the voluminous briefs and transcripts, then an innocent man might be executed.

Janet Chesley’s petition was so well written that it captured his attention in the first paragraph, and by the time he finished it, he had some doubts about the fairness of Ron’s trial. Her arguments centered on the issues of inadequate defense counsel, mental competency, and the unreliability of hair evidence.

Jim Payne read the petition at home, at night, and when he returned to the office the following morning, he met with Judge Seay and recommended a stay. Judge Seay had great respect for his magistrate, and after a long discussion about the Williamson petition he agreed to stop the execution.

After watching the clock and praying fervently for twenty-three days, Ron was informed that his execution had been delayed indefinitely. His brush with death had taken him to within five days of getting the needle.

Jim Payne passed the habeas petition on to his law clerk, Gail Seward, who read it and agreed that an in-depth review was called for. He then gave it to the office rookie, a law clerk by the name of Vicky Hildebrand, who, because of her complete lack of seniority, had been assigned the unofficial title of “death penalty clerk.” Vicky had been a social worker before law school, and she had quickly and
quietly assumed the role as the token bleeding heart in Judge Seay’s moderate-to-conservative office.

Williamson was her first habeas case involving the death penalty, and as she read his petition, she was captivated by the opening paragraph:

This case is a bizarre one about a dream that turned into a nightmare for Ronald Keith Williamson. His arrest came nearly
5
years after the crime—after Mr. Williamson’s alibi witness was dead—and was based almost entirely on the “confession,” related as a dream, of a seriously mentally ill man, Ron Williamson.

Vicky read on, and was soon struck by the paucity of credible evidence offered at his trial and by the haphazard strategies of his defense. When she finished it, she had strong doubts about Ron’s guilt.

And she immediately asked herself if she had the nerves for such a job. Would every habeas petition be so persuasive? Was she going to believe every death row inmate? She confided in Jim Payne, who devised a plan. They would draft Gail Seward, more of a centrist, and get her opinion. Vicky spent an entire Friday copying the lengthy trial transcript—three copies, one for each member of the conspiracy. Each spent the entire weekend reading every word of Ron’s trial, and when they huddled early on Monday morning, the verdict was unanimous. From the right, left, and center, all agreed that justice had not been served. Not only were they certain the trial had been unconstitutional; they also believed Ron might very well be innocent.

They were intrigued by the reference to
The Dreams of Ada
. Janet Chesley’s petition made much of the dream confession Ron had allegedly made. He had been reading the book shortly after his arrest, and had it in his cell when he gave his own jailhouse dream to John Christian. Published seven years earlier, the book was out of print, but Vicky found copies in used bookstores and libraries. The three read it quickly, and their suspicions of the authorities in Ada were greatly magnified.

Since Judge Seay was known to be rather abrupt when dealing with habeas matters, it was decided that Jim Payne would approach him and break the ice on the Williamson case. Judge Seay listened carefully, then got an earful from Vicky and Gail. The three felt strongly that a new trial was in order, and after hearing them out, the judge agreed to study the petition.

He knew Bill Peterson and Barney Ward and most of the gang down in Ada. He considered Barney an old pal but had never cared for Peterson. Frankly, he was not surprised at the sloppy trial and flimsy evidence. Strange things happened in Ada, and Judge Seay had heard for years that the cops had a bad reputation. He was particularly bothered by the lack of control Judge Ronald Jones had exerted over the proceedings. Bad police work and slanted prosecutions were not unusual, but the trial judge was supposed to guarantee fairness.

Nor was he surprised that the Court of Criminal Appeals had seen nothing wrong with the trial.

When he became convinced that justice had not been served, he and his staff launched into a thorough review of the case.

Dennis Fritz had lost contact with Ron. He had written one letter to his old friend, but it went unanswered.

Kim Marks and Leslie Delk drove to Conner to interview Dennis in connection with their investigation. They brought the Ricky Joe Simmons video and played the confession. Dennis, like Ron, was angry that someone else had confessed to the murder they were convicted of committing, yet this information had not been available at his trial. He developed a correspondence with Kim Marks, and she kept him posted on the developments in Ron’s case.

As a fixture in the law library, Dennis heard all the legal gossip and knew the latest rulings from around the country. He and his fellow jailhouse lawyers missed nothing in the field of criminal procedure. DNA testing was first mentioned in the early 1990s, and he read everything he could find on the subject.

In 1993, a segment
of Donahue
was devoted to four men who had been exonerated by DNA testing. The show found a wide audience, especially in the prisons, and served as a catalyst for the innocence movement across the country.

One group that had already gained attention was the Innocence Project, founded in 1992 by two New York lawyers, Peter Neufeld and Barry Scheck. They set up shop in the Benjamin N. Cardozo School of Law as a nonprofit legal clinic where students handled the case work while staff attorneys supervised. Neufeld had a long history of legal activism in Brooklyn. Scheck was an expert on forensic DNA and became famous as one of the attorneys for O. J. Simpson.

Dennis watched the Simpson trial closely, and
when it was over, he considered the possibility of contacting Barry Scheck.

After receiving numerous complaints about H Unit, in 1994 Amnesty International conducted a thorough evaluation of the place. It found many violations of international standards, including treaties adopted by the United States and minimum rules set forth by the United Nations. The violations included cells that were too small, inadequately furnished, unlit, unventilated, windowless, and without access to natural light. Not surprisingly, the exercise yards were found to be unduly restrictive and much too small. Many inmates skipped their one hour a day so they could have the privacy of the cell without their roommate. Other than a high school diploma course, there were no educational programs, nor were the inmates allowed to work. Religious services were restricted. Isolation of individual prisoners was too severe. The food service needed a thorough review.

In conclusion, Amnesty International found that conditions on H Unit amounted to cruel, inhuman, or degrading treatment in violation of international standards. The conditions, when “applied over a period of time, can have a detrimental effect on the physical and mental health of prisoners.”

The report was issued, but was not binding on the prison. It did add fuel to some of the prisoner lawsuits that had been filed.

After a three-year hiatus, the death chamber machinery cranked up again. On March 20, 1995, Thomas Grasso, male white, age thirty-two, was executed after only two years on The Row. Though it had been difficult, Grasso was able to stop his appeals and get things over with.

Next came Roger Dale Stafford, the infamous steak-house murderer, who had one of the more notable executions. Mass murders in big cities draw more press, and Stafford went out in a blaze of glory. He’d spent fifteen years on death row, and his case was used by police and prosecutors and especially politicians as a prime example of the flaws in the appeals process.