The Innocent Man (34 page)

Her recommendation was denied.

Leslie Delk hammered away at the prison officials. She met with the correctional staff, the medical staff, and the various wardens to lodge her complaints and demand better treatment. Promises were made, then ignored. Benign efforts were made—slight changes in Ron’s medications—but he received no significant treatment. She documented her frustrations with a series of letters to the prison officials. She visited Ron as often as possible, and when she was certain his condition could
not worsen, it did. Leslie worried that he might die at any time.

While the medical staff struggled to treat Ron, the correctional staff was having great fun at his expense. For amusement, some of the prison guards enjoyed playing with the new intercom on H Unit. Each cell had a two-way speaker to the control room, yet another smart toy to keep the guards as far away from the inmates as possible.

But it wasn’t far enough.

“Ron, this is God,” a haunting voice called into Ron’s cell deep in the night. “Why did you kill Debbie Carter?” A pause, then the guards would snicker as they heard Ron screaming through his door, “I didn’t kill anybody! I am innocent!” His deep, raspy voice rattled through the southwest quad and disrupted the quiet. The seizure would last an hour or so, upsetting the other inmates but greatly humoring the guards.

When things were quiet, the voice returned. “Ron, this is Debbie Carter. Why did you kill me?”

His tormented screams would go on and on.

“Ron, this is Charlie Carter. Why did you kill my daughter?”

The other inmates begged the guards to stop it, but they were having too much fun. Rick Rojem believed that two of the more sadistic guards, in particular, lived for the fun of mistreating Ron. The abuse went on for months.

“Just ignore them,” Rick pleaded with his cell mate. “If you ignore them, they’ll quit.”

Ron couldn’t grasp this idea. He was determined to convince everyone around him that he was innocent, and bawling it at the top of his lungs seemed the appropriate way. Often, when he couldn’t scream any longer, when he was physically spent or too hoarse to continue, he would stand with his face close to the speaker and whisper incoherently for hours.

Leslie Delk finally heard of the fun and games and fired off a letter on October 12, 1992, to the manager of H Unit. It read, in part:

Also, I had mentioned to you that I had been hearing from different folks that Ron was being harassed through the intercom by certain guards who apparently find it humorous to taunt the “crazies” and get them to react. I am continuing to hear about this problem and most recently heard that Officer Martin walked up to the door of Ron’s cell and started harassing him and taunting him (I believe that the content of these usually revolve around “Ricky Joe Simmons” and “Debra Sue Carter”). From what I understand, Officer Reading stepped in to get Officer Martin to quit his behavior but had to repeatedly tell him to quit harassing Ron before Martin actually stopped.

I have heard Officer Martin’s name from several different sources now as being one of the people who routinely harass Ron and so I would like to know if you could investigate this matter and take appropriate action. Maybe it would be [beneficial] for you to have some training sessions for your guards who have to deal with those inmates who are mentally ill.

Not all of the guards were cruel. A female guard stopped by Ron’s cell late one night for a chat. He looked awful and said he was starving, said he hadn’t eaten for days. She believed him. She left and returned a few minutes later with a jar of peanut butter and a loaf of stale bread.

In a letter to Renee, Ron said he enjoyed the “feast” immensely and there wasn’t a crumb left over.

Kim Marks was an investigator with the Oklahoma Indigent Defense System who ultimately spent more time on H Unit with Ron than anyone else. When she was first assigned his case, she reviewed the trial transcripts, reports, and exhibits. She was a former newspaper reporter, and her curiosity drove her to at least question Ron’s guilt.

She made a list of potential suspects, twelve in all and most with criminal backgrounds. Glen Gore was number one, for all the obvious reasons. He was with Debbie the night she was murdered. They had known each other for years; thus, he could gain access to her apartment without force. He had a wretched history of violence against women. He had pointed the finger at Ron.

Why had the cops shown so little interest in Gore? The deeper Kim probed into the police reports and the trial itself, the more she became convinced that Ron’s protests were well grounded.

She visited him many times on H Unit and, like Leslie Delk, watched him completely unravel. She approached each visit with a mix of curiosity and apprehension. Never had she seen an inmate age as rapidly as Ron. His dark brown hair was grayer with each visit, and he
was not yet forty. He was gaunt and ghostlike, due in no small part to the lack of sunshine. His clothes were dirty and fit badly. His eyes were hollow and deeply troubled.

A major part of her job was to determine if the client had mental problems, then attempt to find not only adequate treatment but also expert witnesses. It was obvious to her, and obvious to any layperson, that he was mentally ill and suffering greatly from his condition. Early on, she was stiff-armed by the DOC policy of keeping death row inmates out of the Special Care Unit. Like Dr. Foster, Kim would fight that battle for years.

She located and reviewed the 1983 videotape of Ron’s second polygraph. Though at that time he’d already been diagnosed as depressed and bipolar, and perhaps schizophrenic, he was coherent, under control, and able to present himself as a normal person. But nine years later, there was nothing normal about him. He was delusional, out of touch with reality, and consumed with obsessions—Ricky Joe Simmons, religion, the liars at his trial, lack of money, Debbie Carter, the law, his music, the massive lawsuit he would one day file against the state, his baseball career, the abuses and injustices to which he was being subjected.

She talked to the staff and heard their reports of his ability to scream for an entire day, then she got a good dose of it. Because of the peculiarities of the layout of H Unit, the women’s restroom had a vent that carried sounds from the southwest quad, where Ron was housed. On a trip to the restroom, she was stunned to hear him bellowing like a madman.

It rattled her, and, working with Leslie, she pushed even harder to force the prison to provide better treatment. They tried to get an exception to move him to
the SCU. They tried to have him evaluated at Eastern State.

Their efforts were futile.

In June 1992, Leslie Delk, as part of the post-conviction process, filed an application for a hearing to determine mental competency in the district court of Pontotoc County. Bill Peterson filed an objection, and the court denied the request.

This denial was immediately appealed to the Court of Criminal Appeals, where it was upheld.

In July, she filed an extensive application for post-conviction relief. Her claims were based primarily on the voluminous records of Ron’s mental health, and she argued that his lack of competency should have been addressed at trial. Two months later, post-conviction relief was denied, and Leslie appealed again to the Oklahoma Court of Criminal Appeals.

Not surprisingly, she lost again. The next step was a routine and hopeless appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court. A year later it issued a perfunctory denial. Other routine filings were made, more routine denials were entered, and when all state remedies were exhausted on August 26, 1994, the execution of Ron Williamson was set by the Court of Criminal Appeals for September 27, 1994.

He had been on death row for six years and four months.

After two years of freedom, Greg Wilhoit was dragged back into a courtroom to once again face charges of murdering his wife.

After he left McAlester, he settled in Tulsa and tried to reestablish something close to a normal life. It was not easy. He carried emotional and psychological scars from his ordeal. His daughters, now eight and nine years old, were being raised by some friends from church, two schoolteachers, and their lives were quite stable. His parents and sisters were supportive, as always.

His case had gathered some attention. His trial lawyer, George Briggs, had mercifully passed away, but not before having his license to practice revoked by the state. Several prominent criminal lawyers contacted Greg and wanted to represent him. Lawyers are attracted to cameras like ants to a picnic, and Greg was amused to see so much interest in his case.

But it was an easy choice. His pal Mark Barrett had won his release, and Greg was confident he would now win his freedom.

During his first trial, the most damaging evidence was the testimony of the state’s two bite-mark experts. Both told the jury that the wound on Kathy Wilhoit’s breast had been left there by her estranged husband. The Wilhoit family found a leading bite-mark expert, Dr. Thomas Krauss of Kansas. Dr. Krauss was stunned at the discrepancies between Greg’s dental impression and the actual wound. The two were drastically different.

Mark Barrett then sent the bite mark to eleven nationally renowned experts, many of whom usually testified on behalf of the prosecution. They included the FBI’s top bite-mark consultant and the expert who testified against Ted Bundy. The verdict was unanimous—all twelve bite-mark experts concluded that Greg Wilhoit
had to be excluded. The comparisons were not even close.

At an evidentiary hearing, an expert for the defense identified twenty major discrepancies between Greg’s teeth and the bite mark, and testified that each one conclusively excluded Greg.

But the prosecutor pushed on and insisted on a trial, which quickly became a farce. Mark Barrett successfully excluded the state’s bite-mark experts, then destroyed the credibility of the DNA man called by the state.

After the prosecution rested, Mark Barrett made a forceful motion to dismiss the evidence presented by the state and direct a verdict in favor of Greg Wilhoit. Then the judge called for a recess, and they went to lunch. When they returned, and when the jury was back and the courtroom was settled, the judge, in a rare move, announced that the motion would be granted. The case was dismissed.

“Mr. Wilhoit,” he said, “you are now a free man.”

After a long night of celebrating with his family and friends, Greg Wilhoit raced to the airport the next morning and flew to California, never to return to Oklahoma unless it was to visit his family or fight the death penalty. Eight years after Kathy’s murder, he was finally a free man.

By chasing the wrong suspect, the police and prosecutors had allowed the real killer’s trail to grow cold. He has yet to be found.

The new death chamber on H Unit was working just fine. On March 10, 1992, Robyn Leroy Parks, male
black, age forty-three, was executed for the 1978 murder of a gas station attendant. He had been on The Row for thirteen years.

Three days later, Olan Randle Robison, male white, age forty-six, was executed for murdering a couple after he broke into their rural home in 1980.

Ron Williamson was to be the third man strapped to a gurney on H Unit and offered the opportunity to say a few final words.

On August 30, 1994, Ron was greeted at his cell door by a menacing squad of frowning guards who wanted to take him somewhere. He was cuffed at the ankles and wrists, and a belly chain linked all the hardware together. This was something serious.

As usual, he was gaunt, dirty, unshaven, and unstable, and the guards gave him as much room as possible. Officer Martin was one of the five.

Ron was led out of H Unit, into a van, and driven the short distance to the administrative offices at the front of the prison. Surrounded by his entourage, he was taken to the warden’s office, to a room with a long conference table where many people were waiting to witness something dramatic. Still shackled and guarded closely by his sentries, he was seated at one end of the table. The warden was at the other, and he began the meeting by introducing Ron to the numerous staff members seated around the table, all looking rather glum.

A real pleasure to meet you all.

Ron was then handed a “notification,” which the warden began reading:

You have been sentenced to die for the crime of murder at 12:01 a.m. on Tuesday September 27, 1994. The purpose of this meeting is to inform you of the rules and procedures to be followed for the next thirty days and to discuss certain privileges you may be afforded.

Ron became upset and said that he hadn’t killed anyone. Maybe he’d done some bad things in his life, but murder wasn’t one of them.

The warden kept reading, and Ron again insisted that he did not kill Debbie Carter.

The warden and the unit manager chatted with him for a few minutes and calmed him down. They were not there to judge him, they said, but they were just following the rules and procedures.

But Ron had a video of Ricky Simmons confessing to the crime, and he wanted to show it to the warden. Again he denied killing Debbie, and he rambled on about somehow getting on television in Ada to profess his innocence. He mentioned his sister going to college in Ada.

The warden continued reading:

On the morning prior to the date of execution, you will be placed in a special cell where you will remain until the time of execution. While in this cell and until the time of execution you will be under constant surveillance by Correctional Officers.

Ron interrupted again, yelling that he did not kill Debbie Carter.

The warden plowed on, reading pages of rules
regarding visitors, personal belongings, and funeral arrangements. Ron tuned him out and became subdued.

“What should we do with your body?” the warden asked.

Ron was emotional and confused and unprepared for such a question. Finally he managed to suggest that they just ship him to Annette.

When he had no questions and claimed he understood it all, he was marched back to his cell. The countdown began.