Gov Watch - George Bush

Salon Special                                 Report Oct. 13, 2000 |
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Gov. Bush's office
            ignored murder confession
Two and a half years later, the two men convicted of the crime still sit in prison.

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By Alan Berlow

On Feb. 25, 1998, the office of Texas Gov. George W. Bush received an extremely unusual letter. Handwritten in curly script across the top of the first page, just above the salutation -- "Dear Governor Bush Sir" -- were the words "RE: Murder Confession."

In the four-page letter its author, Achim Josef Marino, a 39-year-old state prison inmate serving a life sentence for aggravated robbery with a deadly weapon, described how he had "robbed, raped and shot" 20-year-old Nancy DePriest at a Pizza Hut in Austin in October 1988. Marino explained that at the time of the murder "I was insane," and that since then he had undergone a "Christian conversion" and "spiritual awakening" and was fully prepared to be executed for killing the young woman.

Perhaps most startling about Marino's letter was his assertion that two innocent men were serving life sentences for a crime he himself committed. "Governor Bush Sir, I do not know these men nor why they plead [sic] guilty to a crime they never committed," Marino wrote, "but I tell you this sir, I did this awfull [sic] crime and I was alone."

Presented with evidence about a murder in the form of a confession and the possibility that two innocent men had been languishing in a Texas prison since 1988, what did Bush do? Nothing, according to Bush spokesman Mike Jones. Jones said the governor receives more than 1,400 letters from prisoners each year and, although he cannot recall ever receiving another murder confession by post, he insisted the letter was almost certainly not brought to Bush's attention. It was referred instead, Jones said, to the governor's general counsel and criminal justice staff, none of whom responded to Marino. Nor did anyone from Bush's office follow up on the matter with the Austin police, district attorney or, as Marino himself suggested in his letter, the two men convicted of the crime and their attorneys.

According to Jones, "no additional action was taken by us" because Marino wrote in his letter that he had already referred his allegations to the district attorney's office and the police. Bush's office took Marino at his word. "There was really no other role for the governor's office," Jones said.

Rosemary Lehmberg, first assistant district attorney for Travis County, confirmed she received no communication from Bush's office concerning any of Marino's claims. "I think I would know about that," she said. "I'm not aware of any contact."

Long after Marino wrote Bush's office, according to Lehmberg, her office finally began looking into the case. Lehmberg added that the Austin Police Department has also been looking into the allegations for "some time." A spokeswoman for the Austin police said the department does not talk about "ongoing homicide cases."

The possible existence of Marino's letter to the governor was first reported a few weeks ago on KVUE, the Austin ABC-TV affiliate. Salon was able to obtain a copy of the letter from the governor's office. (The office initially told reporters that it had no copy of the confession, before it was pointed out that the office was misspelling Marino's last name.)

Although Bush's office was under no legal obligation to turn over evidence relating to the crime, its failure to do so raises serious questions about the diligence of Texas' highest law enforcement authorities. Austin attorney Bill Allison represents Christopher Ochoa, one of the two young men whom Marino alleges were wrongly convicted for his crime. (The other is Richard Danziger.) According to Allison, Bush's office had a clear obligation after receiving the confession in the mail: "They should have turned it over to law enforcement."

Marino, who has been convicted on three charges of assault with a deadly weapon, felony possession of a firearm and sexual assault, can hardly be held up as a model of virtue. But in the conclusion of his letter to Bush, Marino took a moral position difficult to disagree with: Bush was "morally obligated to contact Dansinger [sic] and Ochoa's attorneys and famalies [sic] concerning this confession."

The disclosure about Marino's letter and the failure of Bush's office to act on it comes at a time when the governor's criminal justice record has been under intense scrutiny. In June, the Chicago Tribune reported that among the 131 men and women executed under Bush up to that point, 40 were condemned in trials where the defense attorneys presented no mitigating evidence or only one witness during sentencing, while another 29 went to their deaths based in part on testimony by a notorious state-financed psychiatrist, Dr. James Grigson, whom the American Psychiatric Association found unethical and untrustworthy.

To date, Bush has signed off on 145 executions, including several in which troubling questions have been raised. The most prominent recent case was the June execution of Gary Graham, who was convicted on the basis of testimony from a single witness, and executed even though exculpatory witnesses were never allowed to testify on his behalf.

Bush has consistently touted Texas' death penalty procedures, most recently in his Wednesday debate with Vice President Al Gore, in which he suggested that capital punishment is the best way to deal with "hate crime" homicides. Bush has stated that "there is no doubt in my mind that each person who has been executed in our state was guilty of the crime committed" and that all of his state's condemned prisoners have had "full access to the courts ... and to a fair trial."

The two men Marino claims took the fall for his crimes were not sentenced to death but to life in prison because of the peculiar way in which the case developed. But like those heavily scrutinized Texas death penalty cases, the convictions of Ochoa and Danziger raise profound questions about justice in the Lone Star State.

Ochoa's case never came to trial because he confessed to murdering DePriest. But University of Wisconsin law professor John Pray insists Ochoa's was no ordinary confession. Pray's nonprofit research group, the Wisconsin Innocence Project, undertook its own investigation of Ochoa's case last year. "Ochoa confessed because of threats that if he didn't he would receive the death penalty," Pray said. "What this says about the death penalty is that it corrupts the system even in cases where a defendant wasn't sentenced to death. It can create a situation in which an innocent person will plead guilty" to save his life. Pray, who along with Allison is one of the attorneys representing Ochoa, said his client was also threatened by Austin police officers with physical violence if he refused to confess.

Authorities in the district attorney's office would not discuss the case.

Allison said there are actually three Ochoa confessions in which "the facts kept changing" and were "getting better and better" from the state's point of view. The attorney said the confessions show how police hammered away at an apparently innocent man until they got him to say what they wanted. In the first confession, asserted Allison, "Ochoa basically said, 'Somebody else did it and told me about it. In the second confession, Ochoa's response was, 'I participated,' and in the third, it became, 'I did the shooting.'"

Fortunately for Ochoa and his co-defendant, Richard Danziger, DNA evidence from the rape of DePriest was preserved and, following requests from the Wisconsin Innocence Project earlier this year, the Travis County District Attorney's Office agreed to have it tested. Although the district attorney has not released the results of that test, Allison said he is confident they will confirm an earlier test conducted by the state's own lab that demonstrates Marino was telling the truth: that he was the one who raped DePriest. The test showed that the DNA discovered on the victim did not match Ochoa's or Danziger's. It did, however, match Marino, the new focus of the D.A.'s office. Marino's story is further substantiated by claims he made about physical evidence in his letter to Bush. Marino said that keys from the Pizza Hut and two bank money bags from the restaurant could be picked up from his parents' home. Sources close to the investigation say police did recover the evidence exactly where Marino said it would be.

According to his attorneys, Ochoa, who had no criminal record prior to his arrest on the murder charge at age 22, was afraid for years to assert his innocence because he thought prosecutors might retaliate and seek a death sentence.

Danziger, who was 18 when he was arrested while on parole in connection with a forgery conviction, maintained his innocence throughout his 1990 trial, insisting witnesses against him, including homicide detectives, were lying. He is currently confined to a prison mental institution. After his homicide conviction, he had no legal representation until Oct. 6, when the state appointed him counsel as it was considering the second DNA test of Marino.

Marino claimed on the KVUE broadcast that he has confessed the details of the murder to various public officials -- including Bush -- in letters dating back as far as 1996. The state, meanwhile, still has not appointed him a lawyer -- even though his confession could subject him to a death sentence. Refusing to comment directly on the case, assistant district attorney Lehmberg said, "He's not charged with anything for one thing; he's here from the penitentiary where he's been convicted, so there's nothing pending against him."

salon.com | Oct. 13, 2000

About the writer
Alan Berlow is the author of "Dead Season: A Story of Murder and Revenge." His writing has appeared in the Atlantic Monthly, Harper's, the New Republic and the American Prospect.

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The state's highest criminal court has rejected an appeal from a death row inmate who says he was involuntarily drugged during his trial and denied access to key evidence.

In an unusual move, the judge who presided over the case had recommended that the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals order a new trial for Ernest Willis after appellate attorneys brought the drugging to his attention. Verilyn Willis of Grenada, Miss., said her husband had been optimistic about his chance for a new trial when she visited him earlier this week on death row in Livingston.

"This is going to knock him right off his feet - mine, too," she said. Mr. Willis' appellate attorneys said Thursday afternoon that they had just received the opinion and had not had a chance to analyze it.

"We view this as a setback, but we're more than 100 % behind Ernest Willis," said James Blank. "We'll do whatever we have to prove his innocence and that he didn't get a fair trial."

The Willis attorneys previously said they would pursue the appeal in federal court if they lost in the state's highest criminal court.

Mr. Willis, 55, was sentenced to death for the 1986 arson murder of 2 women - Gail Jo Allison, 25, and Elizabeth "Betsy" Belue, 26, in Iraan, in far West Texas - the 1st death sentence in Pecos County since the 1800s.

After winning the conviction, prosecutor J.W. Johnson was jubilant, telling reporters that he was surprised by the victory. "Our chances were about 10 % even going into it. ... We didn't have any eyewitnesses. We didn't know what type of flammable material was used. It was all circumstantial ... ."

Mr. Johnson could not be reached Thursday for comment. One of the nation's largest law firms, Latham & Watkins, volunteered to handle Mr. Willis' appeals. Mr. Blank and other attorneys on the team uncovered evidence that showed Mr. Willis was involuntarily drugged into a zombie-like state during trial, that he was denied access to evidence that was favorable to him, and that another man, former death row inmate David Long, had confessed to the crime.

The lawyers eventually persuaded 112th State District Judge Brock Jones to recommend a new trial for Mr. Willis last summer. The judge found that he had been denied effective assistance of counsel during his trial and was not told about a psychological examination that was favorable to his case. Judge Jones' 33-page ruling concluded by saying that Mr. Willis "sat through his trial under the debilitating influence of significant doses of 2 anti-psychotic medications that were administered to him by the state... without any medical basis or justification."

The drug-induced stupor kept him from helping his lawyers prepare his defense and was used by prosecutors who referred to his animal-like demeanor, records show.

In rejecting the judge's recommendation, the Court of Criminal Appeals found that there was no record that Mr. Willis ever objected to the drugs and ruled that he had failed to demonstrate that the medicines were administered involuntarily.

"Under such circumstances, the trial judge was never called upon to determine whether [his] medication was compelled and if so, whether such compulsion was necessary to accomplish essential state policy," the court wrote in a 6-page opinion. The court also disagreed with Judge Jones' finding that the suppressed psychological report on Mr. Willis was favorable to his case and that he was denied adequate legal representation.

At trial, Mr. Willis was represented by 2 attorneys, Steven Woolard and Ken DeHart. Mr. Woolard subsequently surrendered his law license after being sentenced to 10 years' probation on a cocaine charge. Mr. DeHart became a state District Court judge. The court said Mr. Willis failed to demonstrate "deficient performance" by both his attorneys and said it found nothing in the record "that overcomes the presumption DeHart provided applicant with effective assistance of counsel."

(source: Dallas Morning News)

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TEXAS/USA                          Dec. 17, 2000

 George W. Bush has been a jet fighter pilot, a business owner, and chief executive of a state bigger than most European countries. But across Europe, the president-elect is known primarily for something else: “He’s the world champion executioner,” said former French justice minister Robert Badinter. “He is a horrible symbol of your mania for the death penalty.”

 What we know about the new president,” echoed Claudia Roth, a member of the German Parliament, “is just 2 things. He is the son of President Bush, and he has sent 150 people to their death in Texas, including the mentally ill.”

 However successful the president-elect may be in his push for “reconciliation and healing” back home, he is facing political fire in Europe because of his close identification with a practice that people here widely consider barbaric. On a continent where capital punishment has been designated an abuse on par with torture and genocide - all 3 are banned by the European Convention on Human Rights, signed by 34 countries- George W. Bush is seen as one of its leading proponents. It is no passing concern here. Most U.S. executions get more coverage in the European media than at home. Students hold noisy campus rallies denouncing Texas, the state that leads the nation in executions. European politicians regularly cross the Atlantic to meet with death-row inmates, amid great publicity back home. Accordingly, some death-penalty opponents have welcomed the Texas governor’s political promotion on the theory that it will make their case more visible. “From a campaigning perspective, it’s useful to have the most identifiable villain in the White House,” said Chris Stalker of the British branch of Amnesty International. Stalker said Bush will “have a lot of trouble on this when he comes here” in the form of demonstrations.

In a recent conversation, a German diplomat said both officials and the public in his country are deeply troubled by the number of people executed in Texas and the issue of capital punishment is likely to continue to dog Bush in Europe. He said the issue is likely to sufficiently animate the public to bring people on to the streets when Bush visits, and predicted European politicians will raise the issue in meetings with the new president.

Most of the criticism in Europe comes from the political left, but this is an issue on which conservatives, too, tend to criticize the United States. When a 6-year-old shot and killed a 1^st-grade classmate in Michigan in February, the archconservative British tabloid the Sun editorialized that the most likely American response would be to build a kiddie-size electric chair. The Daily Mail, the farthest right of the British newspapers, noted acidly in a profile of Bush last week that he is “best known for signing 153 death warrants.”

Dan Bartlett, a Bush spokesman, said the president-elect looks forward to working with foreign leaders despite the disagreement on capital punishment. “Governor Bush believes that capital punishment ultimately saves lives and reduces crime,” Bartlett said.

Bush “was sworn to uphold the laws of the state of Texas and he took his responsibility with regard to the death penalty very seriously, and performed the duties that he was sworn to uphold,” Barlett said. “He understands that people can respectfully disagree on the issue, but he remains steadfast in his belief that it can reduce crime and save lives.”

Those who disagree in Europe are not always so respectful. Consider the repartee of Jeff and Stacey Lardburger, a fictional American couple who appear on the satirical British TV show “Big Breakfast.” The Lardburgers fit all the classic European stereotypes of Americans: They are fat, crude and ignorant, and they argue all the time. Last week, Jeff Lardburger hurled a new threat at his wife: “Button it . . . or I’ll sendya to Texas and putya in the chair.”

A front page cartoon in the British newspaper the Guardian on Thursday showed a stockbroker with the message “Bush wins” on his computer screen sending frantic investment advice to clients: “Buy Lethal Injections!” There are clearly political points to be won in Europe by opposing capital punishment in the United States, which is one reason politicians here routinely cross the Atlantic to meet the condemned.

When French Education Minister Jack Lang was preparing to run for mayor of Paris, he traveled to Texas to talk with convicted murderer Odell Barnes Jr., who was executed on March 1, still declaring his innocence. Similarly, Germany’s Roth traveled to Arizona last year to talk with 2 convicted murderers, Karl and Walter LaGrand, before their execution.

Roth said she took particular interest in the case because the LaGrands were born in Germany. But they had spent their entire adult lives in the United States and were unable to converse with her in German when she arrived. No major political party in Europe supports the death penalty - hardly surprising, since opinion polls show that most voters across the continent oppose the practice. Many here are simply baffled that the United States, with its reputation for defending human rights around the world, supports it so strongly.

“I am regularly asked to speak about this at [European] universities,” said Badinter, who ended capital punishment in France in 1981, when he was justice minister. “I wish you could see the students, how perplexed they are, how amazed they are, that the U.S. permits this barbarous deed. “After all, U.S. pop culture is part of their life. U.S. technology is on their desks. But when it comes to the death penalty, the U.S. is not a leader. Your country stands with China, Iran, Saudi Arabia and the Democratic Republic of the Congo in number of executions. And the students say, ‘What the hell has the U.S. to do with those 4 dictatorships?’”

On dozens of occasions, the European Union has formally protested specific executions, usually those involving youthful or mentally deficient defendants. U.S. diplomats in Europe say they are deluged with complaints about capital punishment, some from organized political groups and many from citizens who have read about an upcoming execution in the newspaper. In response, the U.S. Embassy in Paris hands out an explanation of the issue that is defensive in tone. “The death penalty is an emotional and controversial subject,” it says. “Public opinion polls have shown that 66 % of the American public support the death penalty. On the other hand, some major American organizations, such as the American Bar Association and the Texas Catholic Bishops, have called for a moratorium on its use on humanitarian and human rights grounds.” “There are more homicides in Texas than in Britain,” said Owen Williams, a death-penalty opponent who rejects the deterrence argument. “So where’s the deterrent effect? And there is no social value in state-sponsored murder.” One result of the anti-Bush fervor on this point is that Europeans tend to see many more news reports about Texas executions than Americans do. Most U.S. news organizations paid little attention last month when Texas was preparing to execute a convicted rapist and murderer named Johnny Paul Penry. In Europe, though, the event was major news, partly because Penry was said to be retarded - Britain’s Press Association reported that he still believed in Santa Claus - and partly because he was to be the 150^th person executed since Bush became governor. Britain’s 2^nd-biggest daily newspaper, the Mirror, devoted its 1^st 6 pages completely to this story (headline: “The Texas Massacre”). On page 7, it ran an editorial: “Bush makes no apology for his hideous track record. And disturbingly, he has mass support from Americans, driven by their out-of-control gun culture and blood lust for retribution.”

(source: Washington Post)

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