The Innocent Man (36 page)

On August 11, 1995, a bizarre execution took place. Robert Brecheen, a forty-year-old white male, barely made it to the death chamber. The day before, he swallowed a handful of painkillers that he had somehow smuggled in and stockpiled. His suicide was to be his final effort at telling the state to go to hell, but the state prevailed. Brecheen was found unconscious by the guards and rushed to the hospital, where his stomach was pumped and he was stabilized enough to get hauled back to H Unit for a proper killing.

Judge Seay directed his staff through a tedious evaluation of every aspect of the Williamson case. They pored over the transcripts, which included the preliminary hearing and every other court appearance. They cataloged Ron’s lengthy medical records. They studied the police files and reports from the OSBI experts.

The workload was divided among Vicky Hildebrand, Jim Payne, and Gail Seward. It became a
group project, with no shortage of ideas and eagerness. The trial was rotten, a clear miscarriage of justice had occurred, and they wanted to correct it.

Judge Seay had never trusted hair evidence. He had once presided over a federal death penalty case in which the star witness was to be the FBI’s top hair expert. His qualifications were beyond reproach and he’d testified many times, but Judge Seay was not impressed. The expert didn’t testify and was sent away.

Vicky Hildebrand volunteered for the research on hair evidence. For months she read dozens of cases and studies and became convinced that it was all junk science. It was so wildly unreliable that it should never be used in any trial, a conclusion Judge Seay had long since reached.

Gail Seward concentrated on Barney Ward and the mistakes he made at trial. Jim Payne tackled the
Brady
issues. For months the team worked on little else, putting Williamson aside only to tend to pressing matters. There was no deadline on their work, but Judge Seay was a taskmaster who didn’t tolerate an idle docket. They worked nights and weekends. They read and edited each other’s work. As they peeled away more layers, they found more mistakes, and as the trial errors piled up, their enthusiasm increased.

Jim Payne had daily briefings with Judge Seay, who, as expected, offered no shortage of comments. He read the team’s initial drafts, did his editing, sent them back for more work.

As it became obvious that a new trial would be ordered, the case began to bother Judge Seay. Barney was an old friend, an old warrior past his prime who would be deeply hurt by the criticism. How would Ada react to
the news that their former judge had taken sides with the notorious killer Ron Williamson?

The team knew that their work would be scrutinized at the next level, at the Tenth Circuit Court of Appeals in Denver. What if they got reversed? Were they convinced enough in their cause? Could they argue so persuasively that the Tenth Circuit would be convinced?

For almost a year, the team labored under the guidance of Judge Seay. Finally, on September 19, 1995, one year after the execution had been stayed, he issued a writ of habeas corpus and granted a new trial.

The opinion accompanying the order was exhaustive, one hundred pages long, and a masterpiece of judicial analysis and reasoning. In clear yet scholarly language, Judge Seay threw the book at Barney Ward, Bill Peterson, the Ada Police Department, and the OSBI, and though he held his fire on the unfortunate officiating by Judge Jones, he left little guesswork as to how he felt about it.

Ron deserved a new trial for many reasons, chief among them ineffective assistance of counsel. Barney’s mistakes were numerous and harmful. They included the failure to raise the issue of his client’s mental competency; failure to thoroughly investigate and present evidence against Glen Gore; failure to flesh out the fact that Terri Holland had also testified against Karl Fontenot and Tommy Ward; failure to inform the jury that Ricky Joe Simmons had confessed to the murder and had even done so on a videotape that Barney actually possessed; failure to attack Ron’s confessions and suppress them before trial; and failure to call mitigating witnesses during the penalty phase.

Bill Peterson and the cops were faulted for hiding the 1983 video of Ron’s second polygraph; using confessions obtained by questionable means, including Ron’s dream confession; calling to the stand and putting under oath jailhouse snitches; presenting a case with almost no physical evidence; and sitting on exculpatory evidence.

Judge Seay analyzed the history of hair evidence and ruled, rather dramatically, that it was too unreliable and should be banned from all courts. He criticized the OSBI experts for their mishandling of the samples in the Fritz and Williamson investigation.

Bill Peterson, Judge Jones, and Judge John David Miller were faulted for not stopping the proceedings and inquiring into Ron’s mental health.

Judge Jones was wrong for holding a
Brady
hearing on exculpatory materials
after the trial was over
! His denial of Barney’s request for a forensic expert to rebut the testimony from the OSBI gang was reversible error in itself.

With the precision of a surgeon, Judge Seay cut through every aspect of the trial and laid bare the mockery of Ron’s conviction. Unlike the Oklahoma Court of Criminal Appeals, a tribunal that had examined the case twice, Judge Seay saw a bad conviction and questioned everything.

At the end of his opinion, he added something unusual—an epilogue. He wrote:

While considering my decision in this case, I told a friend, a layman, I believed the facts and the law dictated that I must grant a new trial to a man who had been convicted and sentenced to death.

My friend asked, “Is he a murderer?” I replied simply, “We won’t know until he receives a fair trial.”

God help us, if ever in this great country we turn our heads while people who have not had fair trials are executed. That almost happened in this case.

As a courtesy, Judge Seay sent a copy of his opinion to Barney Ward, with a note saying he was sorry but he had no choice. Barney would never speak to him again.

Though Vicky Hildebrand, Gail Seward, and Jim Payne felt strongly about their work, they were still somewhat apprehensive when it was made public. Giving a new trial to a death row inmate was not popular in Oklahoma. Ron’s case had consumed their lives for a year, and though they were sure of themselves, they did not want Judge Seay and his office criticized.

“Prosecutors Vow to Fight Order for New Trial,” read the headline in the
Ada Evening News
on September 27, 1995. On one side of it was a high school photo of Ron Williamson, on the other was one of Bill Peterson. The report began:

An angry Bill Peterson said that he would be “more than happy” to make an appearance before the United States Supreme Court, if necessary, in order to overturn a recent federal judge’s ruling which has ordered a new trial for convicted Pontotoc County murderer Ronald Keith Williamson.

Fortunately, at least for Peterson, he would not get the chance to go to Washington and argue the case. He went on to say that he had been assured by the state’s attorney general that he, himself, would personally handle the “immediate” appeal to the Tenth Circuit in Denver. He was quoted as saying:

I’m flabbergasted, bumfuzzled, angry, confused and a lot of other things. To have had this case go through so many appeals and so much scrutiny without ever having anyone question the conviction, and then for this opinion to come down, it simply doesn’t make any sense.

He neglected to say, and the reporter neglected to point out, that all death penalty convictions go the habeas corpus route and end up in federal court, where, sooner or later, an opinion of some sort is delivered.

But Peterson was on a roll. He continued:

This case has been considered by the U.S. Supreme Court on two occasions. And, on both occasions, the Court reaffirmed the convictions and denied the requests for rehearings.

Not exactly. The U.S. Supreme Court never considered the merits of Ron’s case; in fact, by denying certiorari, the Court refused to hear the case and sent it back to Oklahoma. This was standard practice.

Peterson saved his tallest tale for the end. Judge Seay had cited, in a footnote to his opinion, Robert Mayer’s book
The Dreams of Ada
and made a reference
to the number of convictions based on dream confessions coming out of the same courtroom. Peterson was upset that the book had been mentioned in a court ruling and said, evidently with a straight face:

It is simply not true that any of these three men—Williamson, Fontenot, or Ward—were convicted based on dream confessions.

The State of Oklahoma appealed Judge Seay’s ruling to the Tenth Circuit Court of Appeals in Denver. Though Ron was pleased with the turn of events and the prospect of a new trial, he was still in prison, surviving day by day as the process dragged on.

He was not, however, fighting alone. Kim Marks, his investigator, Janet Chesley, his lawyer, and Dr. Foster were relentless in their efforts to obtain proper treatment. For almost four years, the prison had refused to admit Ron to its Special Care Unit, where better medications and better conditions were available. The SCU was within view of H Unit, an easy walk, but officially off-limits to death row inmates.

Kim Marks reported this description of her client:

I was so frightened, not of him, but for him. I insisted that we try and get somebody higher up in the penal system to get some help, because his hair had grown out to his shoulders, he had yellow streaks in them where he’d been pulling, because you could see the nicotine stains completely down his fingers and on his hands, not just on the tips; his teeth were literally
rotting out of his mouth. I think he had been twisting them. His skin was gray, because he had, obviously, not bathed in weeks; he was skin and bones; his shirt looked like it hadn’t been washed, much less hung up or ironed, in months; and he was pacing; he could barely talk, and every time he did talk spit would fly from his mouth. He was not making any sense whatsoever, and I was really afraid we were going to lose him, that he would die in prison from physical health problems related to his mental health problems.

Janet Chesley, Kim Marks, and Ken Foster badgered the various wardens who came and went at McAlester, as well as deputy wardens and assistants. Susan Otto, the director of the Federal Public Defender’s Office and Janet’s supervisor, managed to pull some strings at the Department of Corrections. Finally, in February 1996, James Saffle, then a higher ranking official with DOC, agreed to meet with Kim and Janet. As the meeting began, Saffle announced that he had authorized Ron Ward, the current warden at McAlester, to make an exception for Ron Williamson and to transfer him immediately to the SCU.

Ron Ward’s memo to the director of the SCU admitted that the unit was officially off-limits for death row inmates. It read, in part:

I am authorizing an exception to the Standard Operating Procedures for the Special Care Unit of the Oklahoma Penitentiary which states: “Any OSP inmate except those on Death Row are eligible for Special Care Unit Services.”

What was behind this of heart? Two weeks earlier, a prison psychologist sent a confidential memo to a deputy warden concerning Ron Williamson. Among other comments, the psychologist gave some valid reasons for moving Ron to the SCU:

In our team discussion we agreed that Mr. Williamson was psychotic and would likely benefit from major adjustment to his medication. We also noted that he has steadfastly refused even to consider or discuss any such adjustment.

As you know, the Special Care Unit has the latitude to force medicate when need be.

The H Unit staff was tired of Ron and needed a break. The memo went on:

There is little doubt that Mr. Williamson’s condition is deteriorating week by week. I have noticed it, and H-Unit staff have brought it up regularly. Earlier today, Mike Mullens made emphatic mention of this deterioration and of the adverse effect the inmate’s psychotic outbursts were having on our Southwest Quad.

But the best reason to move Ron was to speed up his execution. The memo concluded:

In my opinion, as things stand now with Mr. Williamson, his psychosis has reached a level that would probably render him less than competent to
be executed. A period at our SCU could well restore him to an appropriate level of competence.

Ron was walked over to the SCU, admitted, and given a nicer cell with a window. Dr. Foster changed his medications and monitored their intake. Though Ron was far from healthy, he was quiet and not in constant pain.

He was also extremely fragile, his mania barely under control. Progress was made, then suddenly, on April 25, after three months in the SCU, Ron was abruptly pulled out and taken back to H Unit for two weeks. There was no medical authorization for the transfer; Dr. Foster was unaware of it. No reason was given. When he was returned to the SCU, he had regressed considerably. Dr. Foster sent a memo to the warden and described the damage the sudden transfer had inflicted on the patient.

Coincidentally, Ron’s sudden transfer on April 25 just happened to occur the day before another execution. On April 26, Benjamin Brewer was put to death for stabbing a twenty-year-old coed in Tulsa in 1978. Brewer had been on death row for over seventeen years.

Even though he was at the SCU, Ron was still a death row inmate. He couldn’t be allowed to miss the drama of another killing at H Unit.

Janet Chesley suspected the sudden transfer had something to do with the legal maneuverings. The state of Oklahoma had appealed Judge Seay’s ruling to the Tenth Circuit in Denver, and oral arguments were scheduled. To prevent her from arguing that her client was so mentally incompetent that he had been moved to the Special Care Unit, Ron was moved back to H Unit.

She erupted when she first heard of the transfer. She berated the prison officials and the attorneys for the state who were handling the appeals. Finally, she promised not to mention during her oral argument that Ron was in the SCU.