-Caveat Lector- an excerpt from: Loud and Clear Lake Headly and William Hoffman©1990 Henry Holt and Company 115 W. 18th St. New York, NY 10011 ISBN 0-8050-1138-2 272 pps — out-of-print/one edition --[20]-- 20 Convictions Overturned! "Lake, have you heard?" It was February 25, 1980, about 2 P.m., and the voice on the other end of the line belonged to Max's wife, Barbara. "Heard what?" I feared something might have happened to one of the Dunlap children, an auto accident perhaps. "Oh, Lake, I'm so happy. It came over the radio, and Murray Miller just confirmed. The supreme court overturned the convictions. There will be new trials." "Hooray! That's great news, Barbara." "The kids and Max's mother are coming over. Will you and Terri drop by?" "We're on our way." I hung up and stared at Terri. "Well?" she asked. "Where are we going?" My face was wreathed in a smile as bright as the Arizona sun, the dawn after a long night of storm and near-tragedy. "Come on, Lake, don't tease me with that cat-who-ate-the-canary grin." "Is your camera loaded? You're about to have a once-in-a-lifetime photo opportunity." "For Pete's sake, tell me what happened." "The supreme court overturned the convictions." "All right!" she shrieked with joy. "There will be new trials," I said. "Where Schafer gets laughed out of court." "You bet!" I tried to call Devereux, another who owned a big role in this triumph, but couldn't reach him. He would find out soon enough. So would all of Arizona. Terri and I chattered happily on the fifty-block ride to Max's house. "Do you know the reason the supreme court used to overturn?" she asked. "Barbara didn't say. Maybe those justices read the Progress. It took long enough," I said, suddenly bitter, thinking of the more than two years Max and Jim spent eying the door to the gas chamber. But today wasn't the time for negatives. "Savor the moment, Terri Lee," I said. "This is a big one. Not many turn out like this." I reached over and pulled her closer. At Max's home I glowed all over. Six of the seven Dunlap children were there, including the fourteen-year-old twin boys, and I figured the missing daughter, Susan, twenty-five, was probably on the way from her Flagstaff home. The children hugged one another, and us. Here I knew were memories to treasure a lifetime: the heartfelt "if it hadn't been for you" and "you're a wonderful man" and plenty of "God bless you, Lake." Tears of relief and happiness flowed unashamedly at Max's home, and a lump clogged my throat. Barbara Dunlap looked like a woman just given a ticket to heaven. The doorbell rang. "That will be Max's mother," Barbara said. "Lake, she wants to see you. Why don't you answer the door?" When I did, seventy-seven-year-old Elizabeth Dunlap gave me a big hug. "This is a wonderful day," she said through tears. "The happiest day of my life." Terri Lee and I stayed perhaps forty-five minutes. Shortly afterward I reached Devereux, who took my earlier negative feeling a step further: "I don't see why everyone's so happy; this should have happened a long time ago." "Do you know the details of the court's decision?" I asked. "It was unanimous. Five to zero. They ruled that the defendants' constitutional rights were violated when Adamson was allowed to plead the Fifth Amendment and not answer certain questions during the trial." "Well, that's one hook they could use. I can think of a hundred others, right at the top of the list being that Max and Jim are innocent. So what's this about new trials?" "It's not clear if they'll be tried separately or together. First there's a period allowed for rehearing or continuance motions. Then the trial or trials must be scheduled within sixty days, or the charges dropped." "I say they'll drop the charges. I'd love new trials, and Dunlap and Robison would, too. They want their names cleared in a court of law." "I know they do." "Has Schafer made any comment?" "Yeah. Can you believe that guy? He said the decisions didn't surprise him. He claimed that at the supreme court stage it's a fifty-fifty shot this will happen." "He said fifty-fifty?" "Exact quote." "Jesus Christ. More like one in a thousand, I'd say. But," I said, joking, "maybe with him it is fifty-fifty, if he handles all his homicides like he did this one. What did he say about new trials?" "He's going for them." "Good. He'll get blown away in a retrial." There were plenty of kudos to go around in the heady days following the overturn of the convictions. David Fraser, a bellwether of the Dunlap Committee, at first much maligned and alone in questioning and attacking the trial court verdict, issued a statement to the press: "We accomplished the three things we set out to do to this point-.' "We changed the atmosphere of the community regarding the Bolles murder and the complicity in it of Max Dunlap. The Scottsdale Daily Progress was a key to that effort. "We raised the money for a first-class private investigator in Lake Headley. "We kept enough money coming in to retain Murray Miller, a first-class attorney and criminal lawyer. In the new trial, he will demonstrate very clearly that Max Dunlap is innocent." And Jim Robison, too. Robison lacked only the wonderful friends Dunlap had. David Fraser could also have singled out his own committee as a substantial force toward ending the nightmare. Without the unwavering support of Max's supporters, he and Jim would have been doomed. Jonathan Marshall, his heart certainly bursting with pride, wrote an editorial he had long waited to pen: The Arizona Supreme Court unanimously ruled Monday to overturn the convictions of Max Dunlap and James Robison for the murder of reporter Don Bolles on June 2, 1976. The two men have been on death row since their sentencing in January 1978. Robison and Dunlap steadfastly have maintained their innocence. They and their friends have charged that oth-ers were involved in the case and that the true story has not been revealed.... This time the community will not be calling for revenge, and the trial should be conducted more calmly and objectively. Whether it is held again in Phoenix and whether the two are tried separately remains to be seen.... If justice is to be obtained and if the truth about the killing is to be known, it is essential that all information now should be revealed. This should be done even if it embarrasses the prosecution and prominent members of the community. Marshall had risked a lot with his long, lonely, courageous stand. A Phoenix weekly, New Times, pointed out, "It hasn't been easy for Marshall and his small Scottsdale Progress—circulation, 21,000—to go after the biggest story in Arizona and one of the biggest in the country. For a while over the last couple of years, he had police protection. He was advised not to travel the same road home every night. He was warned to be careful; to leave 'well enough alone,' to watch out because he was 'getting too close to some very big people.'" Molly Ivins also had to feel a deserved sense of accomplishment as she wrote the lead paragraph of her New York Times article: "In a unanimous decision, the Arizona Supreme Court yesterday reversed the convictions of two men in the 1976 murder of Don Bolles, the Phoenix newspaper reporter fatally wounded when a bomb blew up his car." How about Robison and Dunlap themselves? I drove to the Arizona State Prison the day after the verdict. "Say, fuck this!" Robison growled. "I shouldn't have been here in the first place. But don't get me wrong. I'm grateful to you and Devereux. If you two hadn't done all that digging, and he hadn't kept grinding out all those stories, Max and I never would have seen a reversal." Max said enthusiastically: "What a turnaround! I'm looking forward to the new trial. I don't want them dismissing these charges. Jim and I deserve to be vindicated." I agreed. And it could and should happen twice. It wasn't fair to either Robison or Dunlap to be tried together. They had never met before their arrests for "conspir[ing] to kill Bolles." Let Schafer, Sellers, Babbitt, and the rest eat a double portion of crow. Could Schafer really be serious about new trials? In my head I made a partial list of the many witnesses who would be called, a few of whom would be vindicated, others embarrassed, and some destroyed: John Adamson Bradley Funk Betty Funk Richardson Ned Warren H. Monte M. Kobey Neal Roberts Antje Roberts Eileen Roberts Gail Owens Kay Kroot Barry Goldwater Michael JoDon Keith Nation James McVay Lawrence Wetzel Jon Sellers Michael Butler Harry Hawkins Jack Weaver William Wright Hank Landry John Zollinger Terrell Bounds ... plus a conglomeration of additional police officers and prosecutors who had overlooked, hidden, and destroyed evidence vital to the defense. Previously, the Dunlap Committee literally couldn't buy publicity for its cause. Now, AP, UPI, the Boston Globe, and papers in places like Idaho and South Carolina jumped on the bandwagon. The headline of a follow-up Molly Ivins story in The New York Times said it best: "A Reporter's Death Puts State on Trial." On March 7, 1980, Murray Miller announced he would seek bail for Dunlap, a move opposed by Attorney General Corbin. Robison didn't qualify for bail. After being arrested for the Bolles murder, he had been convicted in a separate assault case, and given a twenty-six-year sentence. I believed, and Robison swore, that he stood innocent of this crime, also. What put him away: largely the testimony of John Harvey Adamson. On March 13, 1980, we again were reminded of the erratic nature of Arizona justice. The state—despite its generous dispensation of immunity agreements to key figures in the Bolles case—had decided Michael JoDon needed to be taught the seriousness of a twenty-dollar drug sale to an undercover agent. JoDon's first trial had ended in a hung jury, but on this date Maricopa County Superior Court judge David L. Grounds found him guilty. judge Grounds tentatively scheduled sentencing for April 10, with JoDon facing five years to life! Perhaps emboldened by this outrage, Schafer and Corbin talked confidently about plans for the retrials of Max and Jim. They weren't, evidently, prepared for the bombshell their own lying snitch, John Harvey Adamson, dropped in their laps on April 9. Adamson, in a letter to prosecutors, listed a series of "demands" he wanted met before agreeing to testify again. They included: full immunity from any crime he had ever committed; immediate release from prison; a new identity; a new wardrobe; money; protection for his ex-wife; and an education for his son. If the prosecution didn't agree to his terms, Adamson declared, he would not testify against Robison and Dunlap. Murray Miller saw the matter differently: "The unmitigated gall of this convicted assassin will make the attorney general's office a laughingstock across the nation." Miller suggested that "since the Waldorf Astoria is not readily available" for Adamson, prosecutors "should take advantage of spring and summer rates at the Arizona Biltmore or Camelback Inn." What was Adamson up to? Surely he didn't want to reenter the courtroom arena as a lamb against lions. But did he actually expect the state to grovel so abjectly? Or did he purposely put an inflated price tag on his testimony to keep himself from being ripped apart on the stand and perhaps forced to name his true co-conspirators? He had referred to them once, saying, "My people don't give immunity." Except for denying Max and Jim the chance to hear themselves publicly acquitted, it didn't matter one way or the other what this lowlife did, but watching would be fun. pps. 212-219 --[cont]-- Aloha, He'Ping, Om, Shalom, Salaam. Em Hotep, Peace Be, Omnia Bona Bonis, All My Relations. Adieu, Adios, Aloha. Amen. Roads End Kris DECLARATION & DISCLAIMER ========== CTRL is a discussion and informational exchange list. Proselyzting propagandic screeds are not allowed. Substance—not soapboxing! These are sordid matters and 'conspiracy theory', with its many half-truths, misdirections and outright frauds is used politically by different groups with major and minor effects spread throughout the spectrum of time and thought. That being said, CTRL gives no endorsement to the validity of posts, and always suggests to readers; be wary of what you read. CTRL gives no credeence to Holocaust denial and nazi's need not apply. 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