Wasted (37 page)

“I’ve already been convicted,” Thomas stated. “What am I trying to get away from?”

“And I’m talking to you about under what circumstances you’re willing to lie to a jury.” He asked if Rafael Noriega had been his drug supplier.

“I won’t answer that.”

“You already admitted it to Martin Silva on tape, didn’t you?”

“Okay,” Thomas responded. “But I won’t admit to it on the stand.” A rule of the Mexican Mafia was don’t be rat.

Hughes pointed out that Dorothy Brown had testified that Noriega was Thomas’s supplier. “Was she telling the truth?”

“That’s your assumption,” Thomas answered.

“Was it accurate?” Hughes repeated.

“I don’t want to answer that.”

“Well, with me, that’s not an option you have.”

“I’m not answering you, Mr. Hughes.”

Judge Boren ordered Thomas to answer.

“I do not want to answer that question, Your Honor.”

“I understand that you don’t want to, but I’m ordering you to.”

Hughes decided to simply rephrase his question. “You’re not going to deny that it was accurate, are you?”

Thomas didn’t respond.

“Are you refusing to answer any further questions?”

“In regard to him, yes, sir.”

“Now, you said you stopped using drugs from time to time. Is that right?”

“Yes, sir.”

Hughes glared at Thomas. “I’m sorry. Something funny? I just saw you smile, maybe a laugh. Did I miss something?”

“I smile quite often, Mr. Hughes.”

“I didn’t miss anything?”

“No, sir.”

Hughes emphasized that the real reason Thomas didn’t want the jail deputy to get injured on the shank hidden in Thomas’s boxers was because an injured deputy would only make Thomas’s jail life worse. He stated that despite the fact that Thomas hadn’t used meth since July 5, 1995, he had used inhalants while incarcerated.

“Paint thinner,” Thomas clarified.

Repeatedly Hughes stressed—and Thomas agreed—that Thomas had chosen not to use. For Thomas, drugs weren’t a need, an obsession, a craving. They were a choice, just as his entire life had been. “The path you’ve chosen?”

“Yes, sir.”

“The warrior spirit you’ve adopted?”

“Yes, sir.”

“No other reason than that?”

“No, sir.”

 

 

Darryl Exum stood. “Now, we’ve all heard it’s true, you know, law of the jungle in prison. Somebody’s going to get you or you’re going to have to get somebody. Is it really like that?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Okay. In prison, do you do your best to protect yourself?”

“Yes, sir, every day.”

“Okay. Why? Why don’t you just let somebody kill you?”

Thomas laughed.

“I’m not trying to be silly,” Exum insisted.

“No, I know what you’re trying to do again.”

“Sorry,” the attorney said.

“What was your question again?”

“Why don’t you just let somebody kill you?”

“I don’t want to die.

The following day, against Justin Thomas’s wishes, Darryl Exum called S. Alex Stalcup, M.D., to the stand. On September 14, 2004, Stalcup had written a letter to Pete Scalisi outlining the doctor’s previous February 2004 visit with Justin Thomas.
Addiction is predominantly an inherited disease; approximately 70 percent of addicts have a family history of addiction with 2 generations,
he wrote.

Judy Thomas had smoked marijuana and gotten drunk every single day of her pregnancy with Justin, according to Justin’s uncle Andy Anchondo. According to Dr. Stalcup, fetal alcohol syndrome damaged Justin Thomas’s brain, impaired his reasoning abilities, logic, memory of good and bad consequences, self-worth, appreciation of right and wrong, and impulse control. Judy Thomas’s continued substance abuse after Justin’s birth, combined with her depression, as well as Jim Thomas’s addictions and depressions, caused a serious attachment disorder.
Apart from the toxic results of alcohol and drug use during pregnancy, attachment disorder is an ominous predictor of subsequent maladaptive behavior in later years,
Stalcup wrote.

Thomas had told Stalcup he “got overboard into drugs” his senior year in high school, after suffering a football injury that prevented him from playing: “I got introduced to meth on a grand scale, pounds of it.... I was using a lot, and had trouble because I was using as much as I was dealing; it was hard to stay ahead of my debts.” When playing semipro ball, “it got me,” Thomas said. “I used until my nose was raw. I started smoking it until I lost my voice. I shot up until I lost my veins, then I rotated them.” Justin Thomas was injecting seven to fourteen grams of speed into his body every single day. He was going two or three weeks without sleep. Twice, he was robbed. He was making drug deals with people he didn’t know, moving pounds of meth. He described himself as a “gold mine” for Rafael Noriega.

“Then I got behind. It was ‘pay up or else.’ I thought everyone was out to get me. ‘What the hell do I do now?’ I always had weapons. There was a legitimate threat. I believed it, took it all serious. My death was imminent if they found me.”

As a result of his own—yet inherited—drug abuse, Justin Thomas became severely mentally ill, suffering methamphetamine toxic psychosis, Stalcup said. The doctor referred to meth toxic psychosis as “a deadly psychotic behavior.” It worsened Thomas’s already pitiable reasoning abilities and impulse control.
Consequently, in a threatening environment Mr. Thomas would be at extremely high risk for displaying paranoid, impulsive behavior,
Stalcup penned.

Thomas told Stalcup, “I lost my mind, for months. I had the TV telling me things; I got paranoid. I got suspicious of friends. I saw rocks and bushes move. I’d shoot at things I thought were video cameras.... My dad taught me that there was a separate reality and only the select few could tap into it. I thought I was tapped into it. I had guardian angels, eyes, telling me what was what. I believed what they told me.”

In 2007, Stalcup summed up: “In my opinion, to understand Mr. Thomas, it is necessary to place his behavior in the broad context of his strong genetic predisposition to addiction and mental illness, fetal alcohol exposure, attachment disorder, and uniquely early onset drug addiction. Mr. Thomas suffered all of these injuries before he had any consciousness of what was occurring. He has no responsibility for his genetic heritage and fetal damage; nor is he responsible for the injury done to him by his alcoholic and drug-addicted parents, who gave him addicting drugs throughout childhood. . . . This is the patho-physiologic basis for the poor judgment and impaired ability to inhibit impulses exhibited prominently and consistently by Justin Thomas.”

 

 

At 2:29
P.M.
on December 19, 2007, the jurors began deliberating the life-or-death fate of Justin Thomas. By noon on December 21, 2007, they declared they were at an impasse. Further deliberation most likely would not be helpful, the foreman told the judge. The defense asked for a mistrial. The prosecution asked for further deliberation. Court was adjourned until January 3, 2008.

On January 3, 2008, the jurors required a mere two hours to reach their decision. At 3:27
P.M.
, court clerk Heather Chavez tried to read the verdict. She couldn’t. Her tears wouldn’t let her. Judge Boren read, “‘We, the jury, in the above entitled action, fix the penalty for the murder of Rafael Noriega, in count one, as death.’”

Justin Thomas gave Heather Chavez a thumbs-up.

The women jurors cried too, but the panel believed Justin Heath Thomas showed no remorse at all.

Thomas believed his California death penalty conviction would allow him the funds to research his appeal in Texas. But his appeal time in Texas had long since run out. His only hope was a federal appeal based on new evidence proving his innocence. Such evidence didn’t seem to exist. Still, Thomas had hope. That hope included freedom and spending time at a brothel, followed by taking time to adjust to freedom. After all, routine, he knew, was what had kept him alive in prison. And he must maintain routine to stay alive in the world. Justin Thomas believed he could have that routine by starting an Internet porn business. He’d be good at that, he thought with a grin.

Thanks to death, life was beginning, at least in Justin Thomas’s brain.

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