Jan. 19 INDIANA: Wallace says he's changed Donald Ray Wallace Jr. has a suggestion for how we should implement capital punishment: Drag the defendant from the courtroom after he's been found guilty and put a bullet in his head. That may seem unusual coming from a man who has spent 23 years on Indiana's death row, fighting to stay alive. But Wallace says he is not the same man he was when a judge sentenced him to die for the Jan. 14, 1980, murders of Theresa and Patrick Gilligan and their 2 children. In letters sent to the Evansville Courier & Press in recent months, Wallace says he has changed from the "deranged dope fiend" who was arrested for the Gilligan murders to a "sane and civilized" man. When looking back on his life, he describes himself as being "pathological" and "insane" when he was released from prison in 1979, when he finished a sentence for drugs. It was 2 months before the Gilligan killings, and he had spent the previous decade accumulating a record of crime, drug abuse and psychiatric problems. "I wasn't fit to be on the streets when I got out," he writes. "I was a danger to myself and others. ... It's taken 25 years to reverse all that." It hasn't been easy, he writes. Life on death row is dehumanizing. The food is lousy, the showers are tiny, 23 hours of the day are spent in an isolated cell and until recently - after Wallace led a monthlong hunger strike - there was no cable TV. But the deprivation, he writes, has meant that he's spent "thousands of days and nights" reinventing himself through deep self-examination and devoted study of religion and philosophy. He writes of having read 4,000 or more books, ranging from the works of Plato and Socrates, to Sigmund Freud and Karl Marx, to Martin Luther and Thomas Merton. Having taught himself Greek, Arabic and Latin, he says he has read the Vulgate, the New Testament and the Quran in their original languages. He's studied Buddhism, the occult and Jewish mysticism. More importantly, he contends, is that he has pulled himself out of the "the mire of amorality" from which he sprung and transferred himself into a moral and peaceful man who now knows that "it is a joy to exist at all." He's become a man of peace, he writes. "I won't even kill a mouse or a spider. Not because I am suddenly pious or observe some religion or philosophy ... just because I can't see good cause to extinguish any life unnecessarily. I can't abide causing pain to anyone anymore." Nor can he tolerate much emotional pain, he says. He writes of having to suffer the loss of people he's come to love: fellow inmates on death row who already have been executed. "You never got to see their good side, but I did," he writes. "And I loved them and it was like a raw murder to me when you killed them or let them be killed in your name." He grieves for his friend, Gerald Bivins, executed in 1992 for having robbed and killed a minister at a highway rest stop. "I wish you could have known Gerald Bivins like I knew him," Wallace writes. "Seen his loyalty, generosity and sly humor. If you had known him like that, and heard that a group of men dragged him from his house and killed him, you'd have been ready to go tear something up. ... The death penalty doesn't even the score. It doubles the pain and anger in the world." Still, not all his fellow inmates on death row instilled that kind of affection. As Wallace writes, "death row isn't Mr. Rogers' Neighborhood." He writes of a death row resident who was "a thug and a bully" who terrorized and troubled his fellow inmates. "(H)e just kept blowing up his karmic balloon," Wallace writes, "until someone couldn't take it any longer and killed him dead." Wallace is concerned about what will happen to the "death row culture" after he and some of the other senior residents are executed. "We keep the flow mellow," he writes. Yet, he says he's resigned to die. "If it weren't for the pain it caused the people who love me, I'd have waived my appeals long ago. Death impressed me in the beginning. But having done time, death has no dominion. Already, I feel lighter of spirit as my date draws near." He vows to go out bravely. "Maybe God really does look out for drunks and fools, and thus I was given this long chance to rise from that dead level of existence and stand erect like a man. After such a bad beginning, who could ask for more than that?" ************* TRANSCRIPT: Wallace writes about his "penitent reflection" on death row In May 2004, Indiana death -row inmate Donald Ray Wallace Jr. began writing a series of letters to the Evansville Courier & Press. The Evansville native was sent to death row in 1982, after he was convicted of killing an Evansville family, Teresa and Patrick Gilligan and their children, Lisa and Gregory, on Jan. 14, 1980. In this letter dated Nov. 18, 2004, he describes his years on death row, where he says he's engaged in "penitent reflection." It's early in the morning. I sit at the end of my bunk, writing on a little stainless steel "table" - a shelf attached to the wall actually. Directly before me is a narrow window, a vertical slit 5 inches wide by 36 inches tall and 10 inches deep. Because it is so deep, the field of view is narrow. But it widens with distance and I can see the cars a passing east and west along Highway 6 some 1,500 yards in the distance, across a farmer's field - wheat this year, corn last year - and past a nearer sewage treatment complex. There are 3 oak trees nearby and this is the 3rd time I'll see them naked and skeletal in the dead of winter soon to come. They were bare when I got here in February of 2003 (when he and other death row inmates were transferred from the Indiana State Prison to the Maximum Control Facility in Westville, Ind., to accommodate renovations being made at the Michigan City facility) I watched Spring magically resurrect them; watched them surge under the summer sun...only to wither and yellow and bare themselves to another season of death. But then comes all the joy of spring again. And dandelions burst forth like fireworks and summer makes everything green and vibrant again. And there is a parade of animals that dance to this silent waltz: Squirrels, woodchucks, skunks, raccoons...and year round Canada geese parade past the double fence (oblivious to its angry snarls of razor wire) with their little fluffy brown chicks in tow. And slowly they grow and fledge and look like carbon copies of their sires and dams. And I sigh. How did I not see all this? A world full of miracles in every direction, a treasure-house for anyone who stops and looks. Somehow I got caught up into an ever-escalating cycle of emotional reaction that blinded me to everything not part of my own projections. And I try to remember who that angry and confused kid was, try to recall what he was thinking...but he is alien to me now - almost incomprehensible. So I wrote all of that to preface an answer to your question about death row culture. It's difficult to answer because it isn't static at all, but is constantly evolving. When I first came to death row, there were only 12 of us there. The death penalty had only recently been restored, so no one was close to death unless they volunteered like (death row inmate) Steven Judy had, and like a few others would later... (M)ost of us, certainly I, were in a state of arrested development. I mean by this that we'd had lives of trouble and reaction that stopped us from integrating either within ourselves or within society as a whole. So we occasionally squabbled and had petty tiffs. But the convict code dealt with all of that, too. We had many who were above average in intellect, too... Someone like Phillip Zimbardo (a Stanford University psychologist specializing on the psychology of evil) would have loved to watch all of this unfold. It would be a social psychologist's dream. We established equilibrium, and then someone new would show up _ an independent variable that changed the whole equation. But we had a good core group of strong and intelligent leaders who were active in keeping things on an even keel. We had enough to worry about with our cases and oppressive prison conditions. Let's not add to it ourselves. This is more difficult to do when the numbers of prisoners increase. But we were fortunate to have established an order that prevailed because it made natural sense. All of this leads to a camaraderie like nowhere else in prison. On the main line of prison there are all kinds of divisions, some very sharply defined, that keep prisoners tense against each other. Race, gangs, city of origin, an a dozen other lesser factors divide prisoners against themselves. But we got past all of these on death row. Only race had to be revisted occasionally. Racism is simply a part of American life. I know we're trained to evade this truth through PC politics and slogans. But the fact is that race issues eat at the underbelly of our culture. On the streets, you segregate from each other and have enough "lebensraum" as it were, to pretend that everything is peachy between you. But it's not. On death row, we were confined to close quarters with each other. So we had to visit the issue of race and racism again and again. And the more you roll up your sleeves and shovel at that pile of dung, the more you see that the problem is deeper, more pervasive and more subtle than you ever imagined. So slow each side began to see each other better, and to work through the hard spots. But mostly we acknowledged that we were all too conditioned by life to eliminate it, and that we'd have to work through things again and again. When you live with the same people 24 and 7, for years and years, you get to know them intimately. No strength or weakness remains hidden in this crucible, and all your slag floats to the top. In the end, you begin to see how much every human being is more alike his fellows than he is different from them. Once you skim off that slag, the base metal is the same. So also this crucible tends to purify you. This is almost ironic. Regular prison, the place that is supposed to correct you, only makes you worse. Everything in it is like the line from (Oscar) Wilde's "The Ballad of Reading Gaol": "The foulest deeds from blackened seeds, grows well in prison air. It's only what is good in man, that wastes and withers there." But death row is more like that Quaker ideal from which we get our word "penitentiary" - a place for penitent reflection. Death row, where we are supposed to rot as the unredeemable condemned, actually promotes redemption in ways ordinary prison cannot. So when we were kids we talked like prison of our heroic amatory & criminal adventures. But within 5 years, most of us were asking what - in a world of relative values with no absolutes is good and true? (source for both: Courier & Press) TEXAS: Friedman plans to shake up the 2006 governor's race -- The Texas icon envisions a return to cowboy days Kinky Friedman, the best-selling author, country singer and friend of stray dogs, next week will officially toss his ten-gallon hat into the ring for the 2006 Texas governor's race, his campaign said Tuesday. Friedman will announce his bid to run as an independent on Feb. 3 near the Alamo, from a hotel at which former U.S. President Teddy Roosevelt founded the Rough Riders. Friedman is known for songs such as Get Your Biscuits in the Oven and Your Buns in the Bed and books including Kill Two Birds & Get Stoned. The humorist however, is deadly serious about his campaign to unseat current Gov. Rick Perry, a Republican who succeeded President Bush. "I have achieved a lot of my dreams in life and I want to see that young Texans achieve some of theirs," Friedman said in a telephone interview, adding, "I want to be governor because I need the closet space." Friedman said the main priorities in his campaign will be reforming the state education system, adding safeguards in a judicial process that makes Texas the nation's leader in capital punishment and establishing a peace corps for the state. Plus, he wants "to fight the wussification of Texas." "I am determined to get back to a time when the cowboys all sang and their horses were smart," he said. Friedman may hope to borrow a page or 2 from the campaign books of other celebrity candidates such as California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger and Jesse Ventura, the former pro wrestler who ran as an independent to become governor of Minnesota. Political observers said the Friedman campaign will be entertaining, but it will be hard for an independent to win in Texas, where every major statewide office is held by a Republican. Friedman has said he expects his campaign to be unconventional, irreverent and star-studded. He knows it will be tough to win in the heavily Republican state, but he thinks he can win votes from people fed up with bland politicians. "We hope the people of Texas are going to reject the choice of paper or plastic," he said. (source: Reuters) *********************** Texas prisons almost full, almost out of money -- Crisis comes as funds are needed for education, CPS Texas prisons are running out of beds more quickly than expected and may need to lease space in county jails by March. But there is no money in the prison system's budget to pay the jails. Prison officials confirmed Tuesday that they may need to ask lawmakers for an emergency appropriation to get through fiscal 2005, which ends Aug. 30. The Legislative Budget Board projected last June that prisons would not exceed capacity until October. The prison crowding crisis comes 2 1/2 years after the state ended 30 years of federal control with the dismissal of the Ruiz prison-reform lawsuit. The news also comes at a particularly difficult time for lawmakers, who are under a judge's order to put billions of dollars in new funding into public education. And, in the wake of hundreds of child deaths, state leaders want to significantly increase spending on its systems to protect children and the elderly. "Based on the offender-population patterns we've seen, we believe it's possible that we may need to contract for beds by March, and so we are briefing various leadership offices at this time," said spokesman Mike Viesca. Viesca said the department has no money in its current fiscal budget to pay for space in county jails. He said the Texas Department of Criminal Justice is compiling information it received last month from county jails about how much space is available. Viesca said that as of Sunday, the prison system held 150,575 inmates, which represents 97.3 percent of capacity. The department considers 97.5 percent of capacity the level that it cannot safely exceed, taking into account the need to house different types of offenders separately. "The fear is that the system itself, like it did in the 1980s, crumbles under the pressure," said Don Lee, executive director of the Conference of Urban Counties. "The prison system has to start releasing people early, jails are constantly overcrowded, and crime goes up." The crowding in the 1980s led to a public outcry over the release of violent criminals and a lawsuit by Harris and other counties over state inmates left for years in county jails. In the early 1990s, the state embarked on a prison-building boom that tripled capacity. Lee said counties that have excess capacity will be glad to contract with the state to house inmates but won't be able to do so indefinitely. Viesca said the TDCJ has asked for $62 million in new prison capacity. News of the prison situation could come as a surprise to some state leaders. House Speaker Tom Craddick said earlier this month that he had not seen any report or study that showed a prison-bed shortage. Craddick said private prisons might be able to house excess prisoners. Robert Black, a spokesman for Gov. Rick Perry, said the governor asked TDCJ last year to begin identifying potential leased space and to assess whether the Legislature needs to build facilities. "The governor was aware of this certainly last year," Black said. Black would not say whether Perry will call for new prison capacity when he gives his State of the State speech Jan. 26. In 2001, Perry proposed spending $95 million to construct facilities to house 1,000 inmates who need to be segregated from the general prison population and 800 "geriatric" inmates. At the time, his staff said the prison capacity would be needed by 2004-05. Lawmakers questioned whether the beds were needed and said it was more important to raise pay for prison guards. Sen. John Whitmire, D-Houston, objected to Perry's proposal at the time and is again questioning whether new prisons are the answer. Whitmire, chairman of the Senate Criminal Justice Committee, discussed prison crowding Tuesday with TDCJ Executive Director Brad Livingston. Whitmire is concerned that 46 percent of the 77,000 inmates who were sent to prison during fiscal 2004 were there because their parole or probation had been revoked. "It's just unbelievable. We almost sent as many people to prison for violating probation and parole as we did by sending them directly from court," he said. "It sounds tough, but it's not smart because we're out of space. And we're going to spend millions of dollars that we don't have for additional capacity that we could be using for drug and alcohol treatment," Whitmire added. Talk of decriminalization and prison diversion could be a hard sell at the Capitol. Rep. Vicki Truitt, R-Keller, has filed a bill to recriminalize vehicle burglaries. She said those property crimes have skyrocketed since 1994, when lawmakers made burglary of a vehicle a misdemeanor. Her legislation would classify car burglary as a state jail felony. (source: Houston Chronicle) ************************** Suspect admits drug ring role----Man eyed in March slayings of 4 pleads guilty to separate crime A suspect in last year's unsolved quadruple murder here pleaded guilty to having a prominent role in a McKinney-based drug ring, police and federal officials announced Tuesday. Jecory Robert May, 23, faces at least 15 years with no possibility of parole for his role in a conspiracy to sell and distribute drugs from an east McKinney neighborhood, in addition to weapons charges, said Assistant U.S. Attorney Maureen Smith. He and 7 other people, mostly McKinney residents, pleaded guilty to the federal charges on Jan. 10. Tyron Shain Tarrant, another suspect, remains at large. "The message is clear: Don't ply your drug trade here. The community doesn't want you and the citizens don't want you," McKinney Police Chief Doug Kowalski said. James Whalen, Mr. May's attorney in the federal case, said his client considered his options before pleading guilty. "We felt based on the evidence and some of the counts that he was charged with, it was in his best interest to plead guilty rather than go to trial," Mr. Whalen said. Mr. May remains a suspect in the shooting deaths of four McKinney residents in March 2004, McKinney police spokesman Capt. Randy Roland said. Police say the motive for the shootings was money and had no connection to drugs. "If he's truly not involved [in the murders], as he has stated, then he should cooperate with us under his plea agreement," Capt. Roland said. "If he is involved in this quadruple homicide, then there's very little incentive for him to cooperate because it could be a death penalty case." McKinney police first learned that a man identified only as Korn was selling drugs in east McKinney in June 2003, but they were unable to find him. The same name resurfaced in February 2004. A month later, as police investigated the shooting deaths of 4 people, Mr. May's name was connected to that alias, Capt. Roland said. Rosa Barbosa, 46, and her nephew Mark Barbosa, 25, were found shot to death in their McKinney home on March 12, along with McKinney North High School football player Austin York. Matthew Self, a McKinney North teammate, died of a gunshot wound hours later at a Dallas hospital. Police dropped capital murder charges against Mr. May and 2 other men on July 15, the eve of a state deadline requiring that the cases be presented to a grand jury within 90 days of a felony arrest. The investigation of the drug ring, which officials say was often operated out of the Manor House Apartments in east McKinney, was a joint effort. McKinney, Plano and Allen police, the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, and the U.S. attorney for the Eastern District of Texas worked together on the cases, which officials called Project Safe Neighborhood. Residents complained of feeling targeted by police, which led to attention from civil rights activists. Since then, city leaders, police officials, residents and the Department of Justice have met to alleviate the tension. With the drug-conspiracy guilty pleas, the participants could receive more prison time than if they had been convicted or pleaded guilty to individual possession, distribution or weapons charges, ATF Special Agent Ron Carter said. Ms. Smith said they used testimony, phone records and other evidence to prove individual connections to the larger drug ring. "Conspiracies tie them together to take out organizations as opposed to one drug dealer at a time," she said. "One of the things that makes this case significant is the amount of crack cocaine and marijuana, and the fact that guns were always involved. That makes this a much more violent group." More than 50 grams of crack cocaine and hundreds of kilograms of marijuana were distributed since 1997, based on accounts, Ms. Smith said. Powder cocaine was also purchased, mainly for the purpose of being converted to crack cocaine, she said. Mr. May also faces separate charges of aggravated robbery and sexual assault against a 16-year-old girl. Mr. May remains in the Hunt County Jail. Others who also pleaded guilty: Jason Jose Hernandez, 23, of Celina; Russell Antonio Perkins, 26, of Lawton, Okla.; and McKinney residents Shannon Renee Smith, 31; Maceo Brice Phillips, 29; Trenton Devon Johnson, 22; Princess LaTonya Brown, 20; and Keylen Paul Holmes, 25. Officials have been searching for Mr. Tarrant of Plano since he was indicted along with the other 8 on the drug and weapons charges in July. (source: Dallas Morning News) GEORGIA: D.A. to seek death penalty for two in Rucker murder District attorney Tim Madison is seeking the death penalty for 2 suspects charged in the September 2004 murder of Paul Rucker, 64, Commerce. Madison has filed a death penalty notice for the case against Donald Andrew Murphy Jr., 19, Arcade, and Torrell McGarrett Young, 32, Athens, for the felony murder charges in the beating death of Rucker. In addition to murder, the two men, along with Roderick Cooper, were charged with burglary, armed robbery, aggravated battery, aggravated assault, tampering with evidence, possession of cocaine with intent to distribute, possession of cocaine and possession of a firearm by a convicted felon. Madison said it would probably be 12 to 18 months before the trial is held. In death penalty cases, numerous motions must be heard before the judge before the trial is held. A 3rd suspect charged in the murder, Carla Joan Simmons, 22, Commerce, has pled guilty to party to the crime of armed robbery, conspiracy to commit murder and tampering with evidence. She has agreed to testify in the trial of the other 2 suspects, and sentencing has been deferred until that time. Rucker was beaten to death and suffered several severe blows to the head. He was found in his home on Sept. 29, 2004. At the time of the murder, sheriff Charles Chapman said that Rucker, who lived alone, was found by his brother, who had been trying to get in touch with him all day. His brother went to his Rucker Road residence Wednesday, Sept. 29. When no one answered his knock on the door, he went inside and found Rucker on the floor of the bedroom. Chapman said the suspects didnt know Rucker, but they had been to his residence a few days prior to the murder with an acquaintance of the victim. The sheriff said at this time robbery appeared to have been the motive. (source: Main Street Newspapers) MASSACHUSETTS----re: federal death penalty will NOT be sought Prosecutors won't seek death penalty in Dorchester gang case Federal prosecutors have decided not to seek the death penalty for 4 members of a Dorchester street gang charged with murder. U.S. Attorney Michael Sullivan recommended against seeking the death penalty, and U.S. Attorney General John Ashcroft agreed. In court documents filed Tuesday, Sullivan said the government will not seek the death penalty for Brima Wurie in the killing of rival Luis Carvalho in February 2000. 3 other men - Amando Monteiro, of Dorchester, Angelo Brandao, of Brockton, and Louis Rodrigues, of Randolph - will not face the death penalty in the killing of Dinho Fernandes on St. Patrick's Day in 1999. The indictment against the four men alleges that between 1996 and 2003 they were members of the Stonehurst Street crew, which carried out 18 shootings to eliminate rival gangs. Massachusetts does not have a death penalty statute, but the men could have faced the death penalty under federal law because the murders were allegedly committed as part of an ongoing drug ring. (source: Associated Press)
