July 19 TEXAS: Prosecution continues its case in Stocker trial Prosecutors continued to build their capital murder case against Josh Stocker in a Canyon courtroom Monday while defense attorneys bided their time, raising questions about the state's witnesses in preparation for their turn at the plate. "We're just continuing to poke holes as best we can," said defense attorney Mike Watkins. "There are a lot of inconsistencies in these stories." Stocker is facing a capital murder charge in the brutal killing of Dustin Pool, who was beaten, bound, gagged and finally buried under several feet of cement in March 2003. Randall County Criminal District Attorney James Farren continued Monday calling witnesses - including fellow defendants Destry Keeling and Josh Bledsoe - to bolster their argument that Stocker participated in the murder of Pool as part of a rivalry between drug gangs. "Everybody's saying the same thing," Farren said. "Everybody has little spins to protect their own butts, but the core story is always the same." Farren will move on to the scientific aspects of his case this morning when he calls forensic and DNA experts to the stand. He said he hopes to have his case wrapped up by late Wednesday or early Thursday. Watkins said he and fellow defense attorney C.J. McElroy will be ready to present their case, which could take another day or day and a half. (source: The Amarillo Globe-News) ****************** Circuit court rejects convicted killer Cobles' appeal The 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals has rejected triple murderer Billie Wayne Coble's latest appeal, moving the 15-year death row inmate a step closer to the execution chamber. In a 29-page opinion written by Circuit Judge Emilio M. Garza and issued Monday, a 3-judge panel affirmed a September 2000 ruling by U.S.District Judge Walter S. Smith Jr., of Waco, to reject Coble's application for a writ of habeas corpus. After local officials receive the final ruling from the New Orleans-based federal appellate court, 54th State District Judge George Allen likely will set a new execution date for Coble, McLennan County District Attorney John Segrest said Monday. Segrest said Coble's attorney likely will ask the appellate court to reconsider its ruling. "This case was tried way back before I took office by (former district attorney) Paul Gartner and we have been working ever since to get it through the appellate process," Segrest said. "This is just another of the hurdles that we had to cross before justice can be attained." Coble has been on death row since his conviction in Waco in April 1990 in the shooting deaths of his estranged wife's parents, Robert and Zelda Vicha, and her brother, Waco police Sgt. Bobby Vicha. Coble also kidnapped his wife, Karen Vicha, after killing her parents and brother in August 1989 at their Axtell residences and tying up her daughter and nephew. Coble was arrested after he and Karen Vicha were injured in a traffic accident in Bosque County the night of the murders. Judge Ralph Strother, who helped Gartner prosecute Coble, said Monday that the court ruling is overdue. "It's high time," Strother said. "He confessed in the hospital to a number of people what he had done. There wasn't any question of him doing it. It was just a cold-blooded execution of three innocent people. They didn't get their day in court and he had his." Smith granted Coble a stay of execution in May 1999 after Coble's death-row appeal reached the federal level. Coble had been scheduled for execution in June 1999. The Texas Court of Criminal Appeals and the U.S. Supreme Court have rejected Coble's state appeals. Coble has alleged that he was not afforded effective legal representation during his trial by court-appointed attorneys Hoagie Karels and the late Ken Ables. He also alleges that the jury was not properly allowed to consider mitigating evidence that might have led to a life sentence rather than the death penalty. Trial testimony revealed that Coble was despondent about the impending breakup of his third marriage and because he faced prison time on charges that he restrained Karen Vicha against her will on a previous occasion. (source: The Waco Tribune-Herald) ARKANSAS: Prosecutors drop murder charges In Magnolia, 2 years after being charged with capital murder and aggravated robbery in the death of a convenience store owner, Jacqueline Curry of Camden is now free. Charges against her husband, Craig, were dropped earlier this month. Prosecutors said then that evidence led investigators away from the Currys and toward a new suspect. The Currys had been charged in the death of Jerry Dean Anderson, the owner of J.D.'s Quick Stop in McNeil. Anderson was shot during a robbery April 20, 2003. A co-defendant, Curtis Ray Flowers of McNeil, was convicted and sentenced to life without parole plus 10 years. Craig Curry faced trial, but jurors deadlocked 7-5. His retrial had been scheduled for July 21 until prosecutor Jamie Pratt of Camden dropped the charges. (source: Texarkana Gazette) USA: 5 From the 5th Circuit Mentioned for High Court ---- Southern Appeals Bench Known for Conservatism It wasn't all that long ago that the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 5th Circuit was on the cutting edge of the civil rights movement, a liberal pocket of scholars aggressively enforcing the Supreme Court's demand for speedy desegregation in the Deep South. But things have changed mightily in 20 years. Today, the New Orleans-based appellate court is considered among the most conservative in the land -- but it is still at the center of politics and history. As both sides dig in for what is expected to a be contentious ideological struggle over a successor to Sandra Day O'Connor on the Supreme Court, five of the judges mentioned as possible nominees are on the 5th Circuit: Edith Brown Clement, Emilio M. Garza, Edith Hollan Jones, Priscilla R. Owen and Edward C. Prado. "A court is made up of more that just individual judges. It has a tone or a mood. The fact that the president is looking at so many judges from the 5th Circuit tells us more or less what he may be looking for," said University of Pittsburgh law professor Arthur D. Hellman. "He may not want just a conservative judge, but one that comes from a conservative environment and is more likely to think in those terms." The 5 judges will face varying degrees of opposition. Democrats say 2, Jones and Garza, are unacceptable because the judges have denounced Roe v. Wade , the 1973 decision establishing a woman's right to an abortion. Clement has fewer opinions on social issues to parse, and Prado, who was appointed by Bush, is considered moderate by many Democrats. The court -- which covers Texas, Mississippi and Louisiana -- is known for its independence, and the Supreme Court has reversed it in a number of high-profile cases. The high court has also openly rebuked the 5th Circuit in death penalty cases, signaling that the appeals court crossed the line in denying defendants' rights. On one occasion, O'Connor, writing for the majority, accused the lower court of applying its own "restrictive gloss" to the standard set by the Supreme Court for establishing a condemned convict's retardation. In another recent capital case, the Supreme Court reversed the 5th Circuit 6 to 3, stating that the appeals court was wrong not to order a new trial in the face of strong evidence that prosecutors deliberately excluded blacks from the jury. The majority opinion, by Justice David H. Souter, said the 5th Circuit decision was a "dismissive and strained interpretation" of how the Supreme Court had previously ruled. In that case, some legal analysts said, the high court expressed its frustration because it had sent the same case back to the circuit court 2 years earlier with an 8 to 1 majority, directing the court to review its decision. In another key case, the Supreme Court voted unanimously to reverse the 5th Circuit and overturned the conviction of accounting firm Arthur Andersen over jury instructions. Still, the lower court shows no sign of backing down. "It really is quite unusual for a lower federal court to thumb its nose at the Supreme Court so explicitly," said Peter B. Edelman, a professor of constitutional law at Georgetown University law school. "If you look at some of the other courts, I doubt you'll find the same kind of flaunting defiance." Theodore M. Shaw, the director of the NAACP Legal Defense Fund, said it is "extraordinary" how many times the Supreme Court felt it necessary to chastise the 5th Circuit. "We are not talking about a liberal Supreme Court," he noted. "We're talking about a conservative Supreme Court that apparently became frustrated with the 5th Circuit's failure to meaningfully review criminal convictions for constitutional infirmities . . . cases involving prosecutorial misconduct, police misconduct, racial discrimination. Those problems were not being addressed by the 5th Circuit, so the Supreme Court had to step in." Others suggest that too much can be read into the high court's reversals and reprimands. "Reversals are overrated," said John S. Baker Jr., who teaches criminal law at Louisiana State University. "A court should follow Supreme Court rulings as precedent dictates. But there can be a value in a judge adding a viewpoint that encourages the Supreme Court to reconsider the issue." Tom Fitton, president of Judicial Watch, a conservative watchdog group, said of the death penalty reversals: "It tells me the Supreme Court is to the left of the majority of Americans, which favor the death penalty. The 5th Circuit's rulings reflect the majority." Of the five judges mentioned for the Supreme Court, Jones, 56, is considered by lawyers who practice before the 5th Circuit to be the most intellectual, the most abrasive and the most ideological. Although she is a favorite of the Christian right, both Democrats and Republicans question whether Bush would risk the inevitable Senate fight if he nominated her. In an opinion last year, she criticized the Supreme Court on Roe , writing: "The perverse result of the Court's having determined through constitutional adjudication this fundamental social policy . . . is that the facts no longer matter. This is a peculiar outcome for a court so committed to 'life' that it struggles with the particular facts of dozens of death penalty cases each year." Both Jones and Garza, 57, were serious Supreme Court candidates for Bush's father, President George H.W. Bush. Jones was interviewed for the appointment that went to Souter, and Garza was brought to Bush's home in Maine to interview for the seat that went to Clarence Thomas. This go-round, some conservatives have pushed Garza instead of the president's friend and attorney general, Alberto R. Gonzales, if the president wants to appoint the first Hispanic to the court. Clement, 57, is considered conservative but has not left much of a paper trail. Lawyers interviewed for the Almanac of the Federal Judiciary described her while a district judge as pro-government, pro-business and pro-defendant in civil cases. Democrats consider Prado, 58, to have an even temperament and a balanced approach to the law. As a district judge, he once overturned a death sentence and ruled that background checks for handgun purchases did not violate the Constitution. Democratic lawmakers who met with Bush to discuss the court reportedly told him that Prado could be confirmed. Legal scholars have been studying the ideological change in the 5th Circuit, which they pinpoint to 1981, when President Ronald Reagan committed to appointing conservative judges. In his 1981 book "Unlikely Heroes," writer Jack Bass described how a group of 4 legendary judges dominated the court in the 1950s and '60s, aggressively interpreting the Supreme Court's civil rights rulings to accelerate racial equality in a resistant South. The 5th Circuit of today is made up of 16 active judges, 12 of whom were appointed by Republican presidents. Because it covers Texas -- which has the highest execution rate in the country -- the court sees a lot of death penalty appeals. Most frustrating to foes of the death penalty and to civil rights lawyers is that the court has a record of rarely siding with defendants. Last year, even conservative lawyers paused when a three-member panel of the court ruled 2 to 1 that a death penalty defendant was not entitled to a new trial even though his attorney had slept through part of his trial. "It would seem to anyone in support of the death penalty that a defense attorney ought not sleep through a trial," Shaw said. The majority, which included Jones, wrote that it "cannot determine whether [the defense attorney] slept during a 'critical stage' " of the trial. When the full 5th Circuit reviewed the decision, the court reversed itself. "It is not a happy place for civil rights lawyers to be," said Mary Howell, a lawyer in New Orleans who has argued before the court. "For many of us, practicing before the court means avoidance. What's unfortunate is that lawyers are becoming very selective about which cases they chose to take to the court, and many cases that have merit don't make the cut. It has had a chilling effect." (source: The Washington Post) ******************** Limits on Appeals -- Proposal would be setback for wrongly convicted DNA and other post-conviction exonerations have exposed ugly cracks in the criminal justice system. Most people now know innocent people wind up in prison and even sentenced to death. The appeals process serves as a safeguard, but that safety net will be all but shredded if Congress approves bills that would severely limit federal oversight over flawed convictions in state courts. The Streamlined Procedures Act, sponsored by Sen. John Kyl, R-Ariz., in the Senate, and Rep. Dan Lungren, R-Calif., in the House, would prevent federal review of capital cases from states that the U.S. Department of Justice has certified as providing competent defense counsel. In effect, it would leave it to federal prosecutors, instead of the federal courts, to determine whether states are violating the U.S. Constitution. The bill would still allow certain appeals if there is evidence of innocence, but that means almost nothing. Exonerations often start by exposing a procedural flaw in the case, such as an incompetent defense lawyer, jury bias or a prosecutor withholding evidence, before establishing the truth with further investigation. Equally onerous, the bills would prevent inmates from seeking federal review of constitutional issues not brought up on initial appeals because of ineffective counsel. East Lansing Attorney F. Martin Tieber, former deputy director of the State Appellate Defender Office, said the proposal would affect most Michigan inmates with lengthy sentences, especially the poor, who often don't get adequate legal counsel but couldn't appeal serious due process violations later in federal court. When mounting evidence shows a disquieting number of innocent people are in prison or on death row, Congress ought not make it harder for the wrongfully convicted to get justice. (source: Editorial, Detroit Free Press) CALIFORNIA: Judge upholds death penalty in 1984 Santa Ana slaying Convicted killer says appeal didn't focus on proving his innocence. Convicted killer Kenneth Clair recently lost his latest bid in a 2-decade-long fight to escape execution, a fight Clair contends was directed too much at saving his life and too little at proving what he says is his innocence. "I was playing pool, watching sports and watching girls when the murder took place," Clair said in a telephone interview a short time before the June 30 decision in which U.S. District Judge Gary L. Taylor upheld the 1987 death sentence. "I didn't do it." He contends that lawyers for the Federal Public Defender's office focused his appeal on the penalty phase rather than on the guilt phase. Mark R. Drozdowski, one of the lawyers representing Clair, said the policy of the Federal Public Defender's office bars him from commenting on a pending case. Deputy California Attorney General Barry Carlton said the evidence of guilt had been litigated during the most recent appeal. Clair has spent more than 21 years incarcerated since his arrest for the Nov. 17, 1984, killing of baby sitter Linda Faye Rodgers, 25, a partially paralyzed woman who was minding her 6-year-old daughter and four other children in a Santa Ana home. Rodgers was tied up and gagged, stabbed in the neck and back, strangled with clothing, and beaten on the head with a pipe. 2 of the children have said the killer was white. Clair is black. He was convicted in large part on the testimony of his ex-girlfriend Pauline Flores, who said Clair showed her items stolen from the house where the babysitter was murdered. She sent a statement to the court last month saying she might have been manipulated by police to incriminate Clair. She also secretly taped conversations with Clair at the behest of police. The recorded statements were characterized by the prosecution at the trial as incriminating, but they fell short of an outright confession. "My lawyer feels I'm guilty as charged," Clair said. He said his lawyers "are fighting for me to die a natural death in jail." Taylor said in a decision handed down on the last day before he retired from the federal bench that the children gave conflicting statements to investigators. He added that Flores' statement "has an uncertain character. She is not so much recanting as informing the court that she has been told that she could not have seen what she testified to, and that therefore she wishes to recant." C.J. Ford, a private investigator from Placentia, said he has spent hundreds of hours over the past 8 months investigating the Clair case. He said he found an alibi witness that investigators for the Federal Public Defender's office had been unable to locate. The alibi witness places Clair in a pool hall at the time of the killing. He also said Clair found the stolen items and showed them to Flores several days before the murder. Ford also said that he discovered that fingerprints found by police at the crime scene did not match Clair and have never been run through a national database in search of a match. "I checked the log at the evidence room and nobody has looked at the evidence in this case since the '80s," Ford said. Carlton said evidence of guilt had been litigated in the recent appeal, as shown by the judge's remarks about the children's statements and the "recantation" of Flores. He said he was unaware of the question about the fingerprints. He said he anticipated the decision will be appealed to the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals. Rodgers' family could not be reached for comment. (source : Orange County Register) ******************** >From Prison to a Paradise for ATMs----An L.A. man wrongly incarcerated for 18 years invested lawsuit money in cash machines. He's now in Hawaii, and still pinching himself. His living room opens onto a dazzling white beach and a panoramic ocean view. At night, he falls asleep listening to the crashing surf. DeWayne McKinney has made a fortune selling convenience. He owns cash machines at nightclubs, pedestrian malls and other busy locations across the island of Oahu. Whenever a tourist withdraws cash, McKinney takes a cut. He spends his days traversing the island in his black Mercedes-Benz, checking on his ATMs. Sometimes, he'll stop at Pipeline, the legendary surf spot, sip coffee and watch the waves glide to shore. McKinney could be forgiven for wondering if this could possibly be happening to him. Until 5 1/2 years ago, he was in a California prison, serving a life sentence for murder. "Sometimes I pinch myself. I'm living here? I know I've come a long way from there," McKinney, 44, said recently. "I'm at peace. In there, there's no peace. Every day is a day of worry and fear. Here, that doesn't exist." The gunman entered the Burger King in the city of Orange near closing time Dec. 11, 1980. He leaped over the front counter and forced three employees into a walk-in cooler. In the back of the restaurant, Walter Horace Bell Jr., the 19-year-old night manager, was counting the evening's receipts. The gunman forced Bell to open the safe, then shot him in the back of the head. 6 days later, police arrested McKinney, then 20, and charged him with the killing. McKinney grew up in South Los Angeles and Ontario, lost his mother when he was 12 and spent his teenage years running with a gang. Once, he cut a woman with a knife. A few years later, he and some friends were arrested with a gun outside a jewelry store. For attempted robbery, he was sent to the California Youth Authority. He became a suspect in the Burger King slaying after detectives collected dozens of gang members' mug shots from the Los Angeles Police Department. One of the Burger King employees saw McKinney's photo and thought he looked like the gunman. McKinney was several inches shorter than the man described by witnesses. He walked with a limp; the shooter did not. But at McKinney's trial in 1982, 4 witnesses identified him as the killer. "About the only way to bring in better evidence is if we had a movie of it," said Tony Rackauckas, then a deputy Orange County district attorney. McKinney was convicted of first-degree murder and robbery. Rackauckas asked for the death penalty, but the jury deadlocked and McKinney was sentenced to life in prison without parole. He spent the next 18 years in 5 California prisons, including Folsom and San Quentin. He attempted suicide, contracted tuberculosis and twice was stabbed by fellow inmates. He passed the time reading western novels by Louis L'Amour. He found religion and earned his high school equivalency degree. In 1999, two inmates gave statements admitting that they were involved in the Burger King robbery and asserting that McKinney had been wrongly convicted. They identified another man, a career criminal, as the killer. Investigators with the public defender's office contacted two of the trial witnesses whose testimony had helped put McKinney behind bars. Shown a photo of the man implicated by the prisoners, the witnesses said that he - not McKinney - was the gunman. After an investigation, Rackauckas, by then Orange County district attorney, agreed that McKinney should be freed. A judge threw out the conviction. On Jan. 28, 2000, McKinney walked out of the state prison in Lancaster without a driver's license, a Social Security number, a change of clothes or a toothbrush. Because he had been serving a life term, the state did nothing to prepare him for freedom. Job training would have been considered a waste of money. McKinney said he would have been happy to work as a janitor and live in a cheap motel. He had no expectations. But he was not a broken man. In prison, he had made a promise to himself. "I always said if I was given an opportunity, I'd take advantage," he said. Faith Sustained Him He moved into a Costa Mesa apartment provided by the owner of a drug counseling center who had been touched by his story. New friends from the public defender's office helped him get a job operating audio-visual equipment at a UC Irvine lecture hall. McKinney became a celebrity on the Christian lecture circuit, holding audiences spellbound with his story of how faith sustained him during his years of confinement. He praised Rackauckas for admitting that a wrong had been done, and even endorsed the district attorney's reelection bid in 2002. He accepted a tearful apology from the judge who sent him to prison for life. He reconnected with a son born shortly after he went to prison. He became a grandfather. He fell in love and got married. In the summer of 2002, the city of Orange paid $1.7 million to settle McKinney's lawsuit against its Police Department and the detective who built the case against him. When he collected his check, about $1 million after attorneys' fees and expenses, McKinney gave no thought to an expensive vacation or a new car. He'd heard stories about lottery winners and others who squandered unexpected riches. "If I wasn't careful, it would be gone and it wouldn't benefit anyone," McKinney said of the money. "I just put it in the bank and tried to find the best interest I could." He tapped everyone he met for investment ideas. Some computer science students at UC Irvine suggested he fund a start-up company for which they would design computer games. Too risky, he decided. An investment advisor said he should consider a diversified portfolio of stocks and bonds. McKinney didn't like that idea, either. "I didn't really want to gamble," he said. "To me, that's what it was: a gamble." The first idea he liked came from his mother-in-law, a real estate agent. She suggested he buy rental properties. He snapped up half a dozen condominiums in La Mirada. Then, something clicked at a men's group meeting at Zoe Christian Fellowship in Whittier. The participants included a Walt Disney Co. executive, the owner of an advertising firm and the head of a construction company. The ad man mentioned that deregulation had made it possible for individuals to buy and operate automated teller machines. "The other guys, they were so successful, they weren't really paying attention," McKinney recalled. "I said, 'Hey, that sounds interesting.'" At a political fundraiser a month later, he heard about a businessman who sold cash machines to private investors. They, in turn, found busy locations for the machines and profited from the fees customers paid to withdraw cash. ATMs cost about $5,000 apiece, McKinney learned, but can pay for themselves within a few months. The business has been growing since surcharges were first allowed in 1996. Today, there are about 400,000 machines in the United States, many of them owned by individuals. McKinney called a contact he had made at the fundraiser and was soon introduced to Carl Stein, whose company, Automated Cash Management Systems of Mira Loma, sells and installs ATMs in several Western states. Stein encouraged him to find business owners willing to have the machines on their premises. McKinney rounded up 2 buddies: a former car salesman he had met at church, and a parolee from the Lancaster prison. Together, they hit the streets. The ex-salesman negotiated the first deal, with the owner of a Unocal station in Santa Ana. McKinney put up the money for the machine. Stein installed it in an exterior wall so customers could use it 24 hours a day. McKinney and his friends drove the streets of Los Angeles and Orange counties, looking for other locations. Each time one of his buddies sealed a deal, McKinney paid him $250. Within a few months, McKinney had 20 machines in operation. In a good month, they generated more than $10,000 in fees. Still, McKinney was restless. Life in Southern California was fast-paced and stressful. His wife, Jeanine, talked constantly about moving back to her hometown, Honolulu. "In California, it was a nervous feeling. L.A. to me is almost like being in prison. The nervous energy, it never ceased," McKinney said. A year earlier, he and Jeanine had used cash from wedding gifts to travel to Hawaii. They snorkeled at Hanauma Bay, relaxed on the sand at Waikiki. He told Jeanine that he'd move from Southern California, as long as they could find a place on the beach. In 2003, she found a fixer-upper in Laie, near Oahu's North Shore, and jump-started her husband's business on the island by signing deals with businesses that wanted ATMs. McKinney, meantime, sold his California cash machines. On Oahu, he found that business conditions were almost as perfect as the weather. There were lots of tourists and relatively few ATMs. Good at Networking Prison didn't teach McKinney much, but it did teach him to make the most of his connections. He used cigarettes to bribe fellow inmates for help landing a job, getting his toilet fixed or obtaining some homemade wine. In the business world, it's called networking, and McKinney was good at it. Every acquaintance became a possible lead, like the auto detailer who introduced McKinney to a market owner who agreed to house a cash machine. McKinney tipped the detailer $500 for the lead. Now, all the workers at Island Auto Detail have his business card and are keeping their eyes peeled for ATM locations. A meeting with his insurance broker led to another deal. The agent's brother, it turned out, operated the snack shop at the Honolulu Zoo. McKinney soon had an ATM there. It brings in about $1,250 a month. "Right off the bat, within the first few months, we had the best accounts on the island," McKinney said. One day, he stopped at the International Marketplace, a shopping plaza where he has two machines. After a couple of smoothies, he had another tip: Duke's Lane, an adjacent shopping area, didn't have an ATM. After a year of negotiations, McKinney had a machine there too. Last year, he and his wife divorced and divided the machines. McKinney said that his years behind bars had left him ill-equipped for marriage. In prison, "you've got to stand your ground. I started to realize that's how I responded to my marriage," McKinney said. "I don't know how to give in, whether I'm right or wrong. I don't know how to say, 'OK, you're right.'" After the divorce, McKinney retained nine ATMS on Oahu. He built his holdings back up to 20 machines, including two in Kona on the Big Island. Some of his ATMs handle hundreds of transactions per day, charging customers $1.75 to $2.50 for each one. McKinney gives a cut of the fees to store owners. He said his machines are on pace to bring in $30,000 this month alone. ATM owners typically fill their machines with money borrowed from a bank. They recoup the funds electronically from customers' accounts and repay the bank with interest. McKinney, in contrast, stocks his machines with money from his nest egg, thereby avoiding borrowing costs. It's a low-overhead business. McKinney has no employees. He tracks his machines via the Internet on his home computer. He can tell which need service, which are performing well and how much money has been withdrawn that day. If a bill jams or an ATM runs out of cash, McKinney doesn't get paid. So he befriends employees at the stores, shopping centers and bars where he has machines. They have McKinney's cellphone number and call him if there's a problem. Other than the flashy car, McKinney hardly looks the part of a successful entrepreneur. He wears shorts, sandals and a T-shirt most days. He's quick to flash a "hang loose" sign, and he calls his friends "brudda," the Hawaiian equivalent of "dude." Stein, who helped McKinney launch the business, says the former inmate's business acumen is astonishing. "How many people could go to prison two years and do as well as DeWayne has? He was in prison 20 years, and now he's on his way to being a millionaire." McKinney says he's always had a head for business. "I was working and selling since I was a kid. Selling papers. Washing dishes. Bagging groceries. Selling candy. Cut people's grass. Everything I wanted, I worked and saved for all my life." Tapping His Intuition McKinney used to leaf through travel magazines in the prison library and dream about places like the Hawaiian Islands. Now, he lives there. In 2003, he paid $740,000 for a beachfront compound in Laie with 5 units. He lived in one and rented out the others. He built his living room around a plasma screen television - a symbolic centerpiece for a man who saved $10 a month from his prison job for 2 years to buy a TV for his cell. McKinney recently sold the property - for $2.7 million, he said - and invested in more real estate on Oahu, including a beachfront home in Honolulu, where he now lives. He estimates his net worth at more than $3 million. "I've just been lucky. I rely on my intuition a lot. I don't have a [college] degree. The way I look at it, God is still watching out for his boy. What else could it be?" he said. In January, he marked the fifth anniversary of his release from prison. It was like any other day in paradise. "I finally found my place," McKinney said. "I enjoy being able to breathe the fresh air, feel the wind on my face and know I'm free. I enjoy watching the sun set and the sun rise. I lay in my house with the doors open, feeling the breeze." (source: Los Angeles Times)
