Contacting Kareema

In my last my last post, The Troublesome Case of Lamont Reese, I invited you to join me as we investigate the case of Kareema Kimbrough. It seems one of the first things we need to do is contact Kareema and see if she is even interested in our help. If she is, we will be able to create an initial contact list of people to talk to. Hopefully, those contacts will lead to documents which we can review. First things first however.

I took it upon myself to contact her. I did so using an online service call JPay. For $0.42 per page, I sent her a one page letter. The letter will be printed somewhere on the Texas side of the transaction, and delivered to her tomorrow or the next day.

She may have difficulty contacting me. I'm guessing she is not allowed access to the internet or email. I'm reluctant at this point to give out my home address so that she can snail mail me. I have given out my home address to an inmate before, but that's not my starting point. I provided my phone number instead.

Inmates are frequently allowed to place pre-paid calls. Those receiving the calls will be informed it's from an inmate and will have to affirmatively accept the call before either party can hear the other. The phone rates for inmates, however, are substantially higher than they are for those of us on the outside, and inmates have very little money. Typically, I will provide an inmate money to cover the cost of the phone calls, but that too has to be arranged.

No matter how you try to work it, the bit-rate between anyone on the outside and anyone on the inside is very low.

I include below the body of my introductory letter. Please don't  take offense if I was willing to share my phone number with a convicted murderer but not willing to share it with you. I'll let you know if and when I get a response.

Ms. Kareema Kimbrough,

I am interested in the issue of wrongful convictions. I have nearly completed my second book in a planned series of ten books intended to improve our jury pool. I call the series The Skeptical Juror. I host a blog by that name as well.

I have been reviewing each of the 450+ executions in Texas since the state re-instituted the death penalty. I am paying particular attention to those cases where I believe the person executed may have been factually innocent. I took special note of the case of Lamont Reese recently primarily due to the plea made by Michael Toney back in 2004. (I was saddened to learn that Michael was exonerated only to die in a car crash a month after his release.)

Compared to the other cases I have looked into, there is very little information to be found on the internet regarding Lamont Reese. I have no way of knowing, therefore, whether or not he was factually innocent. His case, however, has the telltale markings of a wrongful conviction.

Normally I would simply report on such cases and move on. There is not much I can do once a person has been executed. Lamont's case is different than most, however. His case is your case. If he was factually innocent, then so too must you be. And that is why I write.

If you would like me to look into your case with whatever feeble resources I can muster, I will do so. Understand that I am not an attorney, nor am I a private investigator, nor am I a journalist in a conventional sense. I am merely a citizen that has managed to help a couple people so far. I make no promises whatsoever. I offer only to look into your case if you would like me to do so, and only if you are willing to speak with me.

If you are interested, email me (or have a friend email me) at skepticaljuror@gmail.com. Alternatively, you can call me directly at ---.---.----.  That's in California, so I am two hours ahead of you. If you placed a call in the evening, there is a decent chance I would be at home to accept it.  Once we make initial contact, we can devise some reasonable means of communicating with one another.

Regards,

[electronically signed]

The Troublesome Case of Lamont Reese

I have written of Lamont Reese twice before. (See The Possibly Transformative Case of Lamont Reese and The Disturbing Case of Lamont Reese.) Now I will tell his story in a slightly different format, present his Actual Innocence Scorecard, and then use his case as a subject no more. I will refer to his case as appropriate, but you will see no more Skeptical Juror titles similar to The Adjective Case of Lamont Reese.

I'll explain why when I'm finished telling Lamont's story from a different perspective. It's not for the reason you think.

8:30 PM, 1 March 1999, Fort Worth, TX: A car pulls up outside a convenience store and drops off several well-armed men. Using handguns and semi-automatic rifles, the men spray the area with bullets. They kill three gang bangers and injure two bystanders. The car returns, the men hop back inside, and the car speeds away.

2 March 1999, Fort Worth, TX: Steven Kindred shoots Curtis Sealy, allegedly to silence him about the convenience store shooting the day before.

March 1999, Fort Worth, TX: Steven Kindred is arrested for the shooting of Curtis Sealy.

Facing the needle, Kindred begins offering the police stories in exchange for his life. The police are picky shoppers; not just any story will do. They reject the initial stories. Kindred, desperate to make a deal, offers a shiny new story. It's the story of Lamont Reese, a crack dealer known to police already.

The police are smart shoppers, however. Surely, they tell the vendor, your life is worth more than that of Lamont Reese. Kindred agrees and throws in Lamont's girlfriend, Kareema Kimbrough. Still not good enough. The haggling continues for a while, and eventually Kindred throws Jason Leadly and Brian Johnson into the mix.

That is still not good enough. It's a buyer's market; the police know it and Kindred knows it. In exchange for his life, he gives up the next best thing in the store: his freedom. Kindred admits to being involved in the convenience store shooting and to the shooting of Curtis Sealy. The entire package for his life and a possibility of parole.

Deal, but only if Kindred throws in a lifetime warranty. No problem. If they would just allow him to talk to his girlfriend, he could have them a warranty in no time.

March, 1999, Fort Worth, TX: The police begin bargaining with Steven Kindred's girlfriend. If she will simply stand behind the bill of goods offered by Steven, they would not charge her with aggravated sexual assault. It turns out that Steven Kindred was a mere 15 years old, while the girlfriend was 25.

Deal. The girlfriend explained she had been smoking crack that day, all day long. Sometime a bit before 9 PM, Lamont Reese and the others dropped by her home. Lamont bragged about shooting three men with an assault rifle, then went to a video store with Kareema.

Here's how it all played out.

The State had some gang bangers taken off the street for them, plus five convictions to boost their conviction rate, plus another execution to show they're tough on crime, AND a voting public more willing than ever to vote for "tough-on-crime" candidates.

Steven Kindred, who confessed to the convenience store shootings AND the shooting of Curtis Sealy, avoided the needle and was rewarded with a chance for freedom in a few decades, one of which has already flown by.

Kindred's girlfriend got "transactional immunity." In other words, because she testified as promised, she did no hard time for seducing the unworldly 15-year-old Steven Kindred with her crack-enhanced charms.

Jason Leadly and Brian Johnson, who were late to the sale, got a few decades in prison, assuming they keep their noses clean. I presume clean noses would include never changing their stories about what happened that night.

Kareema Kimbrough, who apparently refused to bargain, ended with life in jail.

Lamont Reese, who absolutely refused to bargain, ended with a needle in his arm.

Their daughter, two years old at the time they allegedly took her to a massacre and then to a video store, ended up an orphan, at least effectively so.

As I mentioned in the previous posts, this case is distinguished by its lack of information. It's not surprising, therefore, that when I worked through my Actual Innocence Scorecard for Lamont Reese, I ended up with an ambiguous score. I scored him at 53. That means I calculate, based on the information I now have at hand, that there is a 53% chance he was actually innocent as he claimed, and a 47% chance he was actually guilty as Texas claims.

15 June 2004, Livingston, TX: Michael Toney put out an "urgent plea" for his fellow death-row inmate, Lamont Reese. Michael Toney's letter would be the one and only document I could find making a case that Lamont Reese was innocent. Lamont, he explained however, was more interested in obtaining justice for his girlfriend Kareema Kimbrough than he was about saving his own life.

20 June 2006, Huntsville, TX: Lamont Reese was executed for the convenience store shooting on 1 March 1999.

2 September 2009, Livingston, TX: Michael Toney was released from death row and from prison, having been exonerated of the bombing for which he was to die. He had been accused and convicted based almost exclusively on the testimony of someone who traded a story for reduced prison time.

3 October 2009, East Texas: Michael Toney died in a car crash, a month and a day after gaining his freedom.




There's something about this story that gets to me. I see Lamont Reese and Michael Toney staring at me. I read Michael's plea, and I'm moved by Lamont's concern for Kareema. I knew when I first wrote of them that the story wasn't over.

I don't know if Steven Kindred lied about Lamont Reese. If he did, then he probably lied about Kareema Kimbrough, and may have lied about Jason Leadly and Brian Johnson to boot. I intend to learn more. No one can save Lamont or Michael. Perhaps someone can help Kareema.

Join me if you wish as I investigate The Possibly Transformative Case of Kareema Kimbrough.

***** CORRECTION *****
I referred to Kareema and Lamont's child as their daughter. They had a two-year-old son at the time of the shooting.

Those Who Judged Hank Skinner

Forgotten among those harmed by wrongful convictions are the jurors who were manipulated and deceived into casting an improper guilty verdict. I am particularly sensitive to those folks, having myself been the target of such manipulation and deceit.

In my case, my skepticism spared a kind, decent, and innocent gentleman from what would have effectively been a life sentence. Over the course of eight days of deliberation, I transformed a jury leaning 11 to 1 guilty, into a jury voting 10 to 2 not guilty. During the retrial, I worked closely with the defense, on a volunteer basis, to prepare them for the response they should expect from the next jury. I had access to all the case documents, and spent hundreds and hundreds of hours pouring over them. There is no doubt in my mind that my initial skepticism was justified. That decent and gentle person went home to his family a free man, assuming you  can ignore a half million dollars in legal bills and a life's work tarnished. I went home to my family a transformed individual.

While I am frustrated with jurors who I perceive to be insufficiently skeptical of the State, I have trouble faulting them. Jurors are all too frequently lied to and manipulated by the prosecution, the defense, and the judge. Crucial evidence is withheld from them. They are frequently sequestered, kept under house arrest in someone else's house. They are frequently not allowed to take notes, or have the transcripts read back to them. They are seldom allowed to ask questions, even though those questions would be filtered by the judge. They may be bombarded by expert testimony beyond their comprehension.

Jurors have no training or preparation for the difficult job society asks them to do. They are paid hardly at all for their service, far below the minimum wage the State demands of every other organization. They are put in a terrible position to weigh evidence, then are expected to do just that. As far as the trial courts are concerned, jurors are the judges of fact. As far as the appellate courts are concerned, jury verdicts are not to be questioned.

I feel for those jurors who later learn that they may have condemned an innocent person. The experience is so traumatizing that most jurors are loath to admit they made a mistake, even when overwhelming evidence makes it obviously so. Jury expert Douglas Keene apparently agrees with me: "Over time, they become more cemented into that original view because they can't even tolerate the view that they might have made a mistake on something so serious."

It is perhaps therefore remarkable that most of Hank Skinner's jurors, those asked to judge the facts of his case, are now willing to question their verdict. Students from the Medill Innocence Project located and interviewed most of them.

I won't paraphrase that article describing their work. It's better that you read it in its entirety. But I will borrow three quotes from the article. The first I have already used. It's the quote from Douglas Keene. The second and third I'll use to close this post.

"It would have been reasonable doubt," said juror Tiffany Daniel, wiping away tears. "Especially if we had all that evidence, and another person's fingerprints was on it, or if someone else's skin was underneath Twila Busby's fingernails. That's reasonable doubt that it could be somebody else."

"What's right is right and what's wrong is wrong," said juror Jerry Williams. "It should have been tested before ... Somebody's life is at stake."

A Response to Lynn Switzer: Hank Skinner's Statement to the Police

A couple weeks ago, I published Lynn Switzer's defense for her withholding of potentially probative DNA evidence in the death penalty case of Hank Skinner. I published her defense in its entirety and without comment, promising only to comment later. The time has come.

This will be the first of a four (or thereabout) part series in which I respond to the arguments she makes. In this post, I will address one of the most surprising aspects of her defense: the mention of "Mr. Skinner's videotaped statement to police about how he and Twila had fought with a stick", which she equated to the axe handle used to bludgeon Twila Busby.

I was not previously aware that Hank had given a statement, hence my surprise. I was surprised next to learn that it was my own fault for being unaware. Lynn Switzer, as it turned out, had extracted that tidbit from the transcript of a federal evidentiary hearing, and Hank Skinner, as it turned out, had posted that transcript on his website. (See www.hankskinner.org, then click The Case of Hank Skinner / Legal Documents / Evidentiary Hearing Transcript Volume 1)

While Hank Skinner has certainly not been advertising the existence of that statement, since it seems to be generally unfavorable, he was not keeping it a secret. He put it on his own site for anyone to find, at least anyone willing to look. I guess I was so busy bloviating when I first began writing about his case that I failed to carefully read through all the material he had made available. I did read much of it to be sure, but obviously not all of it. I'm officially contrite, and it's time to move on.

Hank Skinner apparently provided the statement around 9 AM, on New Year's Day of 1994 That would be the morning following the murder of Twila and her two sons on New Year's Eve of 1993. The statement was 10 minutes long and was recorded on video tape. All parties at the evidentiary hearing seemed to accept it as "involuntary" and "without counsel".

Rob Owen, for example, asked John Mann, the DA who prosecuted Hank Skinner, the following question. "Directing your attention specifically to the Skinner case, did you conclude that there was a risk that the video taped statement taken from Mr. Skinner by Detective Terry Young on January the 1st of 1994 might not be admissible?"

To which John Mann replied: "I didn't conclude that there was a risk that it might not be admissible. I knew darn well it wasn't admissible."

Though the tape was inadmissible for trial, Lynn Switzer argued during the evidentiary hearing that the tape should be subject to testimony in that hearing because it provided insight into the defendant's state of mind. The judge granted her leeway on the issue. She used that leeway to introduce into testimony the following, presumably carefully-selected excerpts.

I don't even remember Scooter being there except for it seems like when me and his momma were fighting, I -- it seems like he come up and grabbed me behind the neck and got me off of her, and that's how I got throwed in the floor, but I ain't sure if he done it or not, or if I just fell. (Page 186)

Well, I remember her hitting me in the back with a stick and knocked me down. She got on top of me and she had the stick across my throat and I don't remember if I throwed her off or if she got up off of me or -- or what happened, but the fight ended for a minute and she went -- I was still in the living room, I think, and I believe she went in the back room or something, ... No, no, that's not right. We were fighting and arguing at first and I pushed her down and the fight ended. She went in the back room and then came back with a stick and hit me in the back with the stick, and then she knocked me down -- it knocked the breath out of me and then she knocked me down on the ground. Then she was on top of me and she had the stick across my shoulders. (Page 198)

At some point the fight kind of let up for a minute and I asked her where she had been. She told me she had been over at Howard Mitchell's house, she was forbidden to go over there by me because there's nothing but a bunch of drunks over there, and they just are no-good people, and I don't want her around them. (Page 198)

I have several observations regarding these excerpts:

1) Those people advocating for Hank Skinner's execution are aware of Hank's statement, and are describing it as Hank Skinner's "confession." Lynn Switzer too used that term  liberally during the evidentiary hearing. In her defense of withholding evidence, however, she is more restrained and describes the statement only as a statement.

2) In her defense for withholding evidence, Lynn Switzer excerpted the excerpts she managed to introduce into the evidentiary hearing.

3) She has provided no context. Context is important. So that we may consider the excerpts in the context they were provided, I challenge Lynn Switzer to publish Hank Skinner's entire statement. If she provides that statement to me, in its entirety, I will post it here, in it's entirety. If she claims she is not allowed to make public that document, she might explain instead her legal basis for publishing an excerpt from it.

4) Hank makes no mention of an axe-handle. He said stick. Lynn Switzer equated the two. It's not at all clear that Hank equated the two. It's not at all clear Hank was in any condition to do any equating.

5) Hank had no wounds to his throat consistent with being choked by either a stick or an axe handle. He had no scratches on him consistent with any fighting.

5) Hank is having trouble telling a consistent story. I think, and I believe she went in the back room or something, ... No, no, that's not right. We were fighting ...

I believe that Hank was confabulating. (From the www.thefreedictionary.com -- Confabulate: To fill in gaps in one's memory with fabrications that one believes to be facts.)

Even the prosecution team seemed to consider that a possibility. I submit more excerpts from the evidentiary hearing. In the following Q&A, Ms. Georgette Oden of the prosecution team is questioning Dr. William Lowry of the defense team. (See Volume II, page 351.)

Q Now you previously testified that drug and alcohol abuse causes organic brain damage?

A Yes.

Q And with organic brain damage you can have what's called confabulations at any time?

A Yes.

Q You don't just have confabulation when you're taking the alcohol or when you're taking the drug?

A Correct.

Q And when you say confabulation you mean the brain is filling in blank when it doesn't know what happens?

A Correct.

Q And just because you're doing that doesn't mean you're taking drugs at that moment?

A Correct.

As more evidence of confabulation, consider the following excerpts from Andrea Reed's recantation. Recall that Hank Skinner showed up at Andrea Reed's door after the murder. He was bloody and claiming he had been shot.

When I described in my written statement how Hank said that he thought that he tried to kick Twila to death because he found her in bed with her ex-husband, I left out the fact that Hank gave me a ridiculous description of Twila's ex-husband that did not fit him at all. This is one of the reasons why 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.

I falsely testified that out of all of the stories that Hank told me on the night of the murder, the only one that he made me swear not to reveal was his story about kicking Twila to death. The truth is that he swore me to secrecy or made me promise not to tell each time that he gave me a different story about what happened.

Clearly, Hank Skinner was telling story after story about what happened that evening, and getting none of them correct. He was shot. He had kicked Twila to death. Scooter grabbed him from behind by the throat. Twila came up from behind and tried to choke him with a stick. He told Andrea Reed multiple stories and swore her to secrecy "each time he gave me a different story about what happened." He told the police multiple stories of what happened.

Lynn Switzer carefully selected a few excerpts from Hank Skinner's "involuntary" police interview, the one taken "without counsel." Switzer then published those excerpts without any context as part of her defense for not testing potentially probative DNA evidence before executing Hank Skinner. It's unseemly, at best. As penance, I suggest Lynn Switzer read about the terrible injustice associated with false confessions.

Having now waded through all 845 pages of the Hank's evidentiary hearing transcripts (so you don't have to), I have grown weary of trying to sort out all the "he said", "she said", "but earlier he said", "oh yeah, earlier she said" business. It seems so silly to be doing so when we might be able to positively establish Hank Skinner's guilt or innocence by simply testing the damn DNA.

In the next post responding to Lynn Switzer, I believe I'll discuss the issue of Hank declining to test all the DNA prior to his trial. I believe I'll subtitle it "Harold Comer: The Gift That Keeps On Giving."

Radley Strikes Again

Radley Balko, aka "The Agitator", has another good article on the net, this one for Slate. He argues that it would be prudent for prosecutors to test all probative DNA evidence before trial, rather than argue whether more should be tested after trial. He uses the Hank Skinner case as an example of the problems associated with the "Test Some and Argue More" later approach.

Given the length of his article, he provides what may be the best and most balanced summary of Hank's complex case I've seen so far. If you are following Hank's case, Radley's article is certainly worth a read. It also has a rather unflattering picture of Rick Perry, perhaps the most unflattering I've seen so far.

That makes it tough to resist, doesn't it?