Leroy White: Zero

Leroy White is scheduled to be executed by the state of Alabama on 13 January 2010. I have reviewed his case for any possibility of actual innocence. I find none.

I repeat below the facts of the case as presented in White v. State 587 So.2d 1218 (1990). Brackets are in the original.

The victim in this case, Ruby White, was the estranged wife of the defendant, Leroy White. The parties had separated during the month of August or September, 1988, when Ruby White left the marital dwelling at 2217 Evans Drive, Huntsville, Alabama, and moved into a shelter for abused spouses. During previous difficulties between the defendant and his wife, the defendant had shot her in the leg.

Following their separation, Ruby White employed an attorney and filed a petition for divorce. A ... hearing was scheduled at which time the defendant and Ruby White verbally agreed that the defendant would move out of the dwelling at 2217 Evans Drive and would allow Ruby White and her two children to return to the dwelling. The residence at 2217 Evans Drive was owned solely by Ruby White prior to her marriage to the defendant.

After her return to 2217 Evans Drive, Ruby White changed the door locks and her sister, Stella Lanier, moved in with Ruby and her two children. The children were Brian Smith, age 16, son of Ruby White and a former husband [John Smith] and Latonia White, age 17 months, daughter of Ruby White and Leroy White.

On the afternoon of October 17, 1988, the defendant, Leroy White, purchased a shotgun from Blue Springs Pawn Shop. After purchasing the shotgun, he went to Larry's Pawn Shop and purchased some double-aught shotgun shells. After making these purchases, the defendant drove to the home of Ruby White at 2217 Evans Drive. The testimony indicated that the defendant had been drinking alcoholic beverages during the day. On his first arrival at the home on Evans Drive, the defendant pulled his car into the driveway and almost ran over his 17 month old daughter. Stella Lanier observed this and the defendant and Stella got into an argument about his driving. The defendant then placed his daughter in the car and drove off.

At approximately 5:15 p.m. the defendant returned to the Evans Drive residence of his wife and exited his vehicle armed with a [12 gauge] shotgun and a [.38 caliber] pistol. Ruby and Stella observed the defendant pull up and get out of his car with the shotgun and pistol. They went into the house and locked the doors. Brian Smith was sent to a rear bedroom by his mother and told to hide under the bed. Latonia White was still in the defendant's car.

The defendant then came up to the front door of 2217 Evans Drive and finding it locked, shot the glass out of the storm door and shot the lock off the wooden front door. He then kicked the door open, entered the house and began to scuffle with Ruby and her sister, Stella. As Stella tried to flee the house, the defendant ran out on the front porch and shot four times. Stella fell in the yard [having been wounded in her right arm and right leg].

The defendant then went back in the house and confronted Ruby who was begging and pleading for her life. After a brief confrontation, Ruby ran out into the front yard at which time the defendant told her to stop or he would blow her legs off. She stopped and the defendant confronted her with the shotgun. Ruby grabbed the barrel of the shotgun and continued to plead for her life. Her daughter Latonia was in the defendant's car and her son Brian was in the house.

Finally, the defendant shoved Ruby away from the gun and fired at her at point blank range with the double-aught buckshot. The blast tore the flesh from her right arm as she tried to shield herself and the pellets penetrated her chest and abdomen. Ruby fell to the ground moaning but she was not dead. Testimony revealed that the defendant then went back into the house and called for Brian to come out of his hiding place. When Brian came out, the defendant told him to tell his daddy that "... when I get out of this, I'm going to kill him, too."

The defendant then went back outside, walked up to where Ruby lay on the ground moaning and said, "Bitch, you ain't dead yet." He then went to his car, re-loaded the shotgun, picked up his 17 month old daughter and walked back over to where Ruby lay on the ground. As he placed the muzzle of the shotgun to her neck, he said, "Bitch, this is the last thing you will see." He then smiled and pulled the trigger.

The blast tore a hole in Ruby's neck where the gun shot entered and blew off the back side of her head where it exited.

At this time, the police arrived and the defendant surrendered without incident.

With respect to the death penalty in the case of Leroy White, I stand mute.

Billy Alverson: Zero

Billy Alverson is scheduled to be executed by the state of Oklahoma on  6 January 2010. I have reviewed his case for any possibility of actual innocence. I find none.

I repeat below the facts of the case as presented in Wilson v. State 983 P.2d 448 (1998). I have marked the references to Alverson in bold.

Michael Wilson and Richard Yost were employees at the QuikTrip convenience store located at 215 North Garnett Road in Tulsa, Oklahoma. Wilson and his friends planned to rob the convenience store at least two weeks before this crime actually occurred. The plan commenced on February 25, 1995. Wilson had completed his shift at 11:00 p.m. with Yost beginning his shift at that time. Wilson and his three friends came into the store during the early morning hours of February 26 and waited for the most opportune time to accost Yost. The QuikTrip surveillance camera captured the events as they unfolded. The video of the events is quite telling.

Yost was cleaning the windows on the coolers with Wilson and the codefendants surrounding him. As Yost was walking near a passage way to the back room, all four defendants attacked him and dragged him to the back room. One of the defendants, identified as Billy Alverson came back out and picked up some items that were knocked from the shelves and kept watch for customers. A few moments later, Alverson and Richard Harjo walked out the front door of the store. While they were going out, Yost was yelling and screaming for help, possibly thinking that a customer had entered the store. Alverson and Harjo re-entered the store with Harjo carrying a black aluminum baseball bat. He carried the bat to where Yost had been taken. The surveillance camera picked up the sounds of the bat striking Yost. Circumstantial evidence showed that the baseball bat struck the handcuffs on Yost's wrists which Yost was holding above his head to ward off the blows. As the blows were being struck, Wilson walked from the back room, checked his hands, put on a QuikTrip jacket, got behind the counter and tried to move the safe. While Wilson was behind the counter, several customers came in. Wilson greeted them with a friendly greeting, sold them merchandise, then said "thank you, come again" or "have a nice day."

All this time Wilson continued to try and pull the safe from underneath the counter. He took money from the cash drawer and pulled money out of the currency change machine. At some point after this, Wilson left the counter area and took the video from surveillance camera recorder. The defendants then loaded the safes into Wilson's car using a dolly from QuikTrip.

Yost's body was discovered by Larry Wiseman, a customer, at about 6:00 a.m. Yost was laying on the floor in a pool of blood, milk and beer. Yost's ankles were taped together with duct tape. One handcuff was found near Yost's body. The other cuff was missing from the scene. Detectives learned that Wilson was at the store between the hours of 4:00 a.m. and 6:00 a.m.

Wilson failed to show up for work at the scheduled time of 3:00 p.m. on the same day. Officer Allen set up surveillance on Wilson's house and at about 4:00 p.m. he spotted Wilson get into a gray vehicle. The vehicle was stopped. Wilson was taken into custody. Also arrested were the other occupants in the vehicle: codefendants Alverson, Harjo, and Darwin Brown. Large sums of money were recovered from all of the defendants except Wilson.

Wilson was questioned by Detective Folks. He told Folks that they planned on robbing the QuikTrip and that he knew Yost would be killed. He said that they had been talking about the robbery for about two weeks. The plan was for him to assume the role of sales clerk once Yost was "taken care of."

Officers searched Alverson's place of abode where they discovered the drop safe, the dolly, QuikTrip glass cleaner, money tubes and the store surveillance video tape. A search was conducted of Wilson's house but nothing of value was discovered. The next day Wilson's mother called Officer Makinson to come to her house. Once there, the detectives found several items of evidence on the front porch, including the baseball bat, a bloody QuikTrip jacket with Yost's name on it, Wilson's Nike jacket matching the one worn in the store video and the other cuff of the set of handcuffs.

With respect to the death penalty in the case of Billy Alverson, I stand mute.

Johnny Frank Garrett: Not The Last Word

Reader Anonymous left a comment on my post What's Up With Johnny Frank Garrett? He informs us that The Last Word is now available on Netflix for instant viewing. The Last Word is an award winning documentary about  the obviously wrongful execution of Johnny Frank Garrett.

The 90 minute documentary provides more detail than I provided in my post Actual Innocence: Johnny Frank Garrett and Bubbles the Clairvoyant. If you have a Netflix subscription, you should watch the documentary. I suggest you wait until you have time to be sad and discouraged.

Jeff Blackburn is a Director for The Innocence Project of Texas. He appears in the documentary. Repeatedly. I'd say he's a bit angry about this case. Here's what he had to say about then Governor Ann Richards.

She should have stopped this execution and commuted his sentence. She could do it. There's no question about that. The governor has that power. She was arguably one of the best governors if not the best governor the 20th century had ever produced, and the best she could do is go along with the mob. That tells you how far things have gone in Texas.

To understand Ann Richards you've got to understand that she was a great Texas politician. To be a great politician in Texas means you've got to be a lousy human being. You cannot be governor of the state of Texas and be anything other than rotten to the core.

Johnny Frank Garrett made me personally change my whole view of Ms. Richards, a view that I had fostered on me and nurtured in me since childhood. She did the wrong thing, and for the wrong reason. And she did it for the sake of what they call political effectiveness, which really means keeping your career intact.

It was wrong and lousy and it still is wrong and lousy.

That's a bit harsh, but Ann Richards did in fact allow Johnny Frank Garrett to be executed. Rick Perry did in fact allow Francis Elaine Newton and Cameron Todd Willingham to be executed. All three were almost certainly innocent. It was wrong and lousy that we killed them.

Those three people died in vain. We have not learned from the injustice we inflicted upon them, and injected into them. We are going to do it again.

We are going to do it again in twelve days.

I'll write of that case tomorrow, on the first day of the new year.

The Stupidity of Ezra Klein

I avoid writing of politics, religion, and weather. On such matters, I have no unique experience or perspective to share. Furthermore, I have no desire to alienate anybody who shares my desire to reduce our rate of wrongful conviction and imprisonment. So when I hear people say seemingly stupid things about politics, religion, or weather, I don't write about them.

For Ezra Klein, however, I'll make an exception.

Appearing on MSNBC as their policy wonk, Washington Post blogger Ezra Klein wants the world to know two things about the U.S. Constitution.

One is that it has no binding power on anything, and that two the issue is not that people don't read the text and think they're following it, the issue is that the text is confusing because it was written more than one hundred years ago and what people believe it says differs from person to person and differs depending on what they want to get done.

Ezra doesn't seem to have as much respect for the U.S. Constitution as he does apparently for ... lemme think here ... let's say ... Nazi Germany. That's right. Ezra Klein felt the world should know that the Nazis, while evil, still had some really good ideas. I quote from an Ezra Klein post at The American Prospect.

Not everything the Nazis touched was bad. Hitler was a vegetarian. Volkswagen is a perfectly good car company. Universal health care is a perfectly good idea. Indeed, the Nazis actually did a pretty good job increasing economic growth and improving standards of living (they were, many think, the first Keynesians, adopting the strategy even before Keynes had come up with it), pushing Germany out of a depression and back into expansion. Unfortunately, they also set out to conquer Europe and exterminate the Jews. People shouldn't do that.

One possibility is that Ezra Klein is a clever public figure who promotes himself by saying outrageous things that other lesser beings, such as I, will foolishly write about and thereby spread his fame and increase his fortune. 

Another possibility is that Ezra Klein is a muffin-brained black hole of stupidity who sincerely doesn't know  that the U.S. Constitution does in fact have binding power on all actions of the U.S. government, that elected officials take an oath to defend and uphold the Constitution.

Perhaps another possibility still is that there is some cosmic law mandating conservation of stupidity and Ezra Klein took a massive stupid pill so that twenty other people wouldn't have to be stupid. How else could Ezra be unable to understand such straightforward writing?

The House of Representatives shall be composed of Members chosen every second Year by the People of the several States ...

The Senate of the United States shall be composed of two Senators from each State ...

The executive Power shall be vested in a President of the United States of America. He shall hold his Office during the Term of four Years ...

In all criminal prosecutions, the accused shall enjoy the right to a speedy and public trial, by an impartial jury of the State and district wherein the crime shall have been committed.

Excessive bail shall not be required, nor excessive fines imposed, nor cruel and unusual punishments inflicted.

[T]he right of trial by jury shall be preserved, and no fact tried by a jury, shall be otherwise re-examined in any Court of the United States ...

The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people.

I would never suggest that anyone, other than Ezra Klein's clones and acolytes, would be unable to understand the clear and unambiguous language of the Constitution. I recognize there is substantial debate about how to observe the Constitutional limitations and implement the Constitutional mandates. That is far from saying, however, that the Constitution "has no binding power on anything."

Rue the day Ezra Klein should ever be right.

This just in: England, a progressive country unimpeded by a Constitution, has decided that the King's subjects can forthwith be tried multiple times for the same crime.

Just in: Venezuela, a progressive country unrestrained in its governmental powers, has granted Hugo Chavez the power to rule by decree.

Just in: Sudan, a progressive country unencumbered by a Bill of Rights, literally whips its women into submission.

ADDENDUM
Satirist Iowahawk executes a brilliant takedown of Ezra Klein without referring to him as a "muffin-brained black hole of stupidity."

Taking a Bite Out of Crime

As I was working on the introductory chapter for my monograph On The Rate of Wrongful Conviction, I stumbled across a case I figured you might enjoy, particularly if you are Mike Tyson. I'll get straight to it.

In 1997, West Virginia Judge Joseph Troisi had just denied post-conviction bond reduction for William Witten. Witten had been convicted and sentenced on two felony counts of breaking and entering.

With the magic of Present Tense, I'll take you back to the events as they happened that day.

Witten is being led from the courtroom by a state trooper. Witten mutters something about the judge being a "fucking asshole."

Judge Troisi overhears the remark and orders the trooper to return Witten to the bench.

Troisi descends from the bench. He unzips his black robe and lets it drop to the courtroom floor.

Troisi gets in Witten's face and taunts him. It looks as if Troisi is trying to bait Witten into striking a judge.

Witten puts his hands in his pockets.

Witten: "You know I can't touch you."

Troisi: "When you get out of the penitentiary, you look me up."

Witten: "I'll make a point of it."

Troisi chest-bumps Witten twice and forces him backwards against the bench.

Troisi snaps his teeth near Witten's face.

On the second snap, Trosi bites a piece of flesh from Wittnen's nose.

Troisi spits the piece of Witten's nose onto the floor.

Witten just stands there as blood runs down his face.

The state trooper, who is apparently on a first name basis with the defendant, says: "Come on, Bill." He once begins to lead Witten from the courtroom.

Troisi: "Do something about your nose."

Troisi picks up his robe, puts it back on, returns to the bench, and calls for the next case.

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For his assault, Troisi faced up to 10 years in jail and a fine of $250,000.  Even judicial immunity has its limits.

Troisi resigned from the bench, pled no contest to a charge of criminal battery, spent five days in jail for the assault, and was placed on probation. As part of his plea agreement, Troisi agreed to counseling for impulse control.

The counseling apparently didn't take. Soon after being released from jail, Troisi verbally assaulted a court clerk who had testified against him. Even though no body parts were consumed during that confrontation, ex-judge Joseph Troisi was returned to jail for six months for violating his probation.