He was 15 sentenced to LWOP, he deserves a 2nd chance!
The Issue
A 15-Year-Old Sentenced to Life Without Parole
This is the story of someone very special to me that I would like to share in hopes of getting enough signatures to make the judge stop and think before passing his judgement. This is the story of a 15-year-old boy, now a 44-year-old man, who was sentenced to LWOP and has been in prison for 29 years. This is the story of a grown man who has never had a driver’s license, never had a checking account, never had a job, never bought his own groceries, or pumped his own gas. This could be anyone’s story, its so easy to make the wrong choice, to make rash decisions and ruin the rest of your life. I do not say his name in his story because his name shouldn’t matter, the facts do.
Born in Colorado to a construction worker who was a high up member of a prominent motorcycle gang and an unemployed mother. His parents split when he was 2 years old and for a while he lived with his dad until his mother kidnapped him and took him to California. That was the start of the turmoil in his life. His father took his mother to court for custody, but the judge gave custody to his mother, and from then on, he only saw his dad on weekends and during the summer. HIs mom and him moved around a lot because she had a lot of boyfriends(his words), they would move in with them until they split and then they'd be by themselves for a little while and then it was on to the next boyfriend or husband. In California alone they lived in 5 different cities, multiple places in each city, within 4 or 5 years. When he was 10, they moved out of California and moved back to Colorado for maybe two years then they were moving again. From Colorado they went from hotel to hotel, only staying in places long enough for his mom’s boyfriend to get some odd jobs to give him enough money for them to go again, this went on for 3 to 4 months. This traveling was during the school year, and he was not being sent to school. Their last stop was in Massachusetts before his mom’s work sent her to Stockholm, Sweden. They lived there for about five months and then they were sent to Naples, Italy for seven months. When he was around 11 or 12, they made it back to the United States, Florida to be exact. They lived in Florida for a few years and in those years, they lived in at least seven different places. From Florida, they made it to Alabama, he was around 14 years old at the time. During all those years and all those many moves he never went to the same school from the start of a year to the end of a year. He had a younger brother and a sister who he was left in charge of a lot, his mom wasn’t the best or even close to it, and she would leave them alone to fend for themselves most of the time leaving him to take care of his younger siblings. He would have to make sure they ate, took showers, got to school, did their homework, and got in bed most days. The only people in his life who ever really cared about him and treated him as such was his grandparents and they lived in Colorado. He was raised in a volatile environment, with fights and arguments at home, witnessing a number of violent things through his father’s motorcycle gang, being taught to never trust authority, being taught to fight by his father, and having had firsthand experience with someone’s abuse of power. He was a troubled 15-year-old kid, with a lot of anger built up from the life he had lived to that point.
In 1994 in Springville, Alabama he did something that would change his life forever, he killed someone. He hadn’t lived in Alabama long but as a 15-year-old he was frustrated with his mother, he was tired of moving around constantly, and tired of being the parent of his two younger siblings so he decided he was going to run away from home. He left where he was living in Gadsden, Alabama on his bicycle, his only thought was to leave and try to find a way to get to Florida, where he had family, and get them to get him to his dad. He made it to Springville and came across a house where he saw some apples that he could get because by this point, he was hungry, so he parked his bike at the train tracks and went to the house to take some apples and get some water from the hose pipe. An elderly lady found him and after questioning him and getting him to explain himself she invited him in and fed him fried chicken and gave him some milk to drink. She told him to call his mother and let her know where he was and that he could stay there the night and she could get him the next morning. He pretended to call his mom when she asked him to, he had no intention of going back home. The lady showed him where he could sleep and readied herself for bed. When she went to sleep, he pretended to as well and when he knew she was asleep he got up and started looking around for something to steel to aid him in getting to Florida. Something woke her from sleep, and she caught him rummaging through her things and he snapped. He put her in a “sleeper” hold in order to knock her out long enough for him to get away, he was already freaking out thinking the police were on the way. While he was panicking around her house trying to find anything to help him get away, she started to wake up and so he put a cord around her neck in hopes that it would keep her asleep. He didn’t realize he had killed her and was still scared she would wake up and he would definitely be in trouble then, so he found her keys and some cash in her room and stole her car to get away. He was 15 years old and didn’t have even a permit to drive and had never driven before really but he managed to get her car and drive it to Montgomery where he wrecked it. He walked to a gas station, called a taxi, and got him to take him to the bus station where he got a ticket to Florida. He arrived a day later, late that night he was picked up by the police because he was about to walk into a convenience store when they pulled up, he panicked and ran. He hadn't slept in 2 days, he tried to lie but couldn't really pull it off. After almost being sent to a runaway shelter the police took him to a youth detention center in Florida. The next morning Alabama investigators, who found out who he was because of his bicycle that he left by the lady’s house, fingerprints found in her home and a friend of his who told the police, took him to a court hearing about taking him back to Alabama. The lawyer he had was fighting to keep him in Florida even though he told him he wanted to go back, the judge said he would remain in Florida until the next day and told his lawyer to give her the case on it then. The judge did not want to release him to Alabama because his parents were not present. Alabama investigators had other plans and took him straight from the Court House to the airport and flew him back to Alabama. When the Florida judge found out that Alabama had taken him anyway, she informed them that if he was not found guilty, she would be pressing charges against the State of Alabama for taking him across state lines without parents’ consent. ABI and the detective for St. Clair County took him straight to juvenile when they brought him back from Florida. He had an arraignment hearing where they charged him with murder, he plead not guilty. He had a certification hearing and a psychological evaluation to certify him as an adult at 15. After the certification hearing where they completed his certification, he was then sent to St. Clair County Jail where he was kept for a year until his trail.
There was an article posted in the local newspaper stating that he went to the lady’s house that night to rape her and when she resisted, he beat and strangled her, this was told to the newspaper reporter by the investigating officer, Larry Flippo - ABI, it was later disproved but it had already done its damage. If you know anything about St. Clair County Alabama, you know that everyone in the judicial system all know each other, justice and punishments that are handed down aren’t about what’s right and wrong it’s about who you know or who you hurt. In this case the lady was a well-known schoolteacher in the community and the judge, William E. Hereford, the DA, Van Davis, the Court Appointed Atty (CAA) and some of the people on the jury either knew the victim personally or knew her family. The victim’s family also had ties to Fob James who was running for Governor of Alabama at the time and ended up winning that election. The judge had a close relationship with the victim’s brother and was even heard during the trail arranging a cookout and golf trip with him. The comments made to the reporter were made before the trail and therefore helped to further influence the jury, the Court appointed attorney (CAA) stated that it was grounds for a mistrial and the DA was willing to accept felony murder and theft of property, which would have given him a 25-year sentence, but the judge wouldn’t allow it. The CAA also requested a change of venue because of conflict of interest but the judge wouldn’t allow that either. His attorney, Don Hamlin of Pell City, stated that to the local newspaper that “he is remorseful, but very immature. He doesn’t really comprehend what he has done. He doesn’t realize the finality of this lady’s death, and he doesn’t comprehend the finality of his sentence.” During his trail they twisted facts around so that they could try him with two felonies in order to get the maximum sentence, he was tried as an adult with Capital Murder. In 1995 when he was sentenced the only sentence available for Juvenile’s convicted of Capital Murder was Life Without Parole (LWOP). At the time of sentencing, he was 16 years old, he was convicted, sentenced, and sent to adult prison all in the same day. From what we can find through our own research he is the only one in Alabama to ever have this happen to them. Until Evan Miller he was the youngest person in the State of Alabama serving JLWOP. The day of his sentencing and subsequent transfer to Kilby Prison, the sheriff who was transporting him took him to the county jail instead of the prison because he did not believe that was where they meant for him to take him. When they arrived at the county jail the sheriff received a call clarifying the fact that the judge ordered for him to go straight to Kilby Prison for intake. When the sheriff, they called him Moose, was taking him to Kilby for processing he told him that he didn’t think he deserved that sentence, that he needed help but not life in prison with no chance for parole. When they got to Kilby he told the processing officer that he expected to be sent back to pick “this kid” back up that he didn’t belong there, he was wrong.
Kilby is where everyone goes for processing and then they are sent from there to wherever they will be housed, he was sent to St. Clair Correctional Facility. He was kept in lockup for almost 2 years, he was told for his own safety because of his size, he was barely able to see out the window in his cell. When he was sent to prison, he told his mother not to worry about him, for her to make sure his younger siblings were taken care of and that his actions didn’t have any backlash on them, he didn’t think she would completely abandon him when he told her that. He was a child in this God awful place, he had no one on the outside putting money on his books or helping with anything that you have to pay for in prison. He had to learn how to take care of himself, protect himself, he had to learn how to be an adult, how to support himself and the only way he knew how to, was what he was taught, you fight. He was an angry teen with a bad attitude and many of the others didn’t want him in a cell with them, they didn’t want to be around him, he thought they were all crazy, it took him years to realize he was the problem. The older men in prison with him and the female guards helped raise him, his nickname was “Teenager”, from the angry young boy who entered prison to the man he is today.
When he was around 17 or 18, he received a letter from the Appellate Court of Alabama stating that his appeal had been denied because it wasn’t filed on time by his original CAA. He had no one on the outside to help him with finding out what he needed to do so he had to rely on the “jailhouse lawyers” inside with him, they told him he needed to file a Rule 32 in order to be able to appeal the original decision. When he went to court for the Rule 32,he went without a lawyer, the judge asked him if he wanted a lawyer and when he told him he did the judge assigned him the same one he originally had who already let his case fall through the cracks. Instead of consulting him about what he wanted to do or how he wanted to go about the appeal the lawyer filed a No Merit Brief on his behalf without his consent or understanding, which from the way he understood it meant he could no longer appeal anything on his case. Because of his sentence it is standard practice to file some form of argument about the sentence instead of just accepting the original sentence, something he did not realize or understand until later. Since that brief was filed nothing more was done on his case until the Supreme Court ruled on the Miller vs. Alabama case in 2012 stating that only having one sentencing option available for JLWOP cases was unconstitutional and those individuals should be resentenced. The Court suggested instead of LWOP that they get a 30-year max sentence, but it was only a suggestion, therefore, each state has the ability to do what they want on these cases. He was appointed Erskine Funderburg as his CAA on his resentencing case in 2016but until 2019 nothing was done on his case. In 2019 his lawyer filed an order for a psych evaluation.
He came into my life in 2021, we met through a pen pal program. All those years behind bars he rejected anyone from the “free world” because of the way he had been treated during his trail and the way his family had done him. When he found out there was a chance that one day,he would be able to be free again he decided to start trying to make friends on the outside, and he found me. It took a while for him to tell me his story and before he would tell me he gave me his full name and told me to do a search on him, he knew I would find the news article. He wanted to see what my reaction to him would be after reading that article, I had questions. So, from there he told me his story, the good, the bad and the ugly. The more I learned about him and his life the angrier I got at his family and most of all the judicial system. I started writing, at first, I was just writing anything I could about his story, keeping note of everything, doing research into his sentence and the Miller case, and then I started writing anyone I could think of that might help. I wrote emails and mailed letters on his behalf to legislators, his lawyer, the Governor, the judge on his case, and even the President. Nothing had been done on his case in years, it was stagnant. I couldn’t get his attorney to respond to anything I sent him, and he didn’t accept phone calls from the prison so I started sending letters to criminal lawyers all over the state trying to find out if anyone would help. His attorney finally did respond, and things started happening on his case. In August he received notice from the court that he had a hearing scheduled for October of 2022, we had no idea what the hearing was about as his lawyer was still hard to get to answer. When he was picked up and taken to St. Clair County Jail in Ashville he was shocked as that is the first time he had been to court for any hearing since his appeal when he was 17 years old, he’s 43. During this hearing we found out yet again that there is conflict of interest in this case. When his CAA mentioned the only living member of the victim’s family,he only mentioned him by his first name and everyone knew who he was referring to, from our understanding the family has always been one well known in the community. Come to find out the hearing was to certify a psych evaluation because we had told his lawyer that he hadn’t had one even though it had been ordered in 2019. When he got there, he was told that a psych evaluation was done without him present and submitted to the court, the judge certified this evaluation after it was read aloud at the hearing, even though he wasn’t present when it was done. He was then given another court date in December for his Rule 32 hearing which was later changed to his resentencing hearing because the judge ruled on the Rule 32 out of court, or so we were told. He received notification in early December that the resentencing hearing would be postponed until some time in the spring because of a conflict of responses from the only living relative of the victim, her grandson. His CAA stated that he told him he was ok with the resentencing, but the DA stated the opposite. At the end of December, he received a letter from a Mitigation firm that had been hired by his attorney to work his case. In early January he received a notification that his Rule 32 hearing would be in May and that secondary council had been added to his case, Mr. Phil Roberson. Through all of this there has only been one communication between his CAA and me and the only time he had spoken to him was at his hearing in October. This is currently where his case stands, the waiting period. He is awaiting a meeting with the mitigation group and a psychologist who specializes in juvenile cases.
He is currently in the honor dorm where he is imprisoned, hasn’t had any disciplinary issues in over 10 years, works in the library, got his GED, and has worked in the psych department. He is a different person than he was 29 years ago, he’s 44 not the 15-year-old who committed this crime. I have written this petition asking for signatures of anyone who believes that this man deserves a second chance. Even though his family isn’t in his life he yearns for family, acceptance, love, structure, and a home (one he never had even before prison).
In his words, “I'm not trying to say I'm innocent or I should've never been locked up. I committed a terrible crime against an elderly lady that was simply trying to help a "lost" kid. I accept the fact that I should be punished. But I'm hoping that one day I'll get a second chance at life.... I'm extremely sorry for what I did. I want so bad to change my narrative. To do the right things in life, to maybe help people along the way. I try every day to become a better person. Someone that anybody can call a friend or loved one and be proud of it.....”
Thank you for taking the time to read and hopefully sign this petition, I hope to present it to the judge in an attempt to get him to grant him relief in his resentencing.
382
The Issue
A 15-Year-Old Sentenced to Life Without Parole
This is the story of someone very special to me that I would like to share in hopes of getting enough signatures to make the judge stop and think before passing his judgement. This is the story of a 15-year-old boy, now a 44-year-old man, who was sentenced to LWOP and has been in prison for 29 years. This is the story of a grown man who has never had a driver’s license, never had a checking account, never had a job, never bought his own groceries, or pumped his own gas. This could be anyone’s story, its so easy to make the wrong choice, to make rash decisions and ruin the rest of your life. I do not say his name in his story because his name shouldn’t matter, the facts do.
Born in Colorado to a construction worker who was a high up member of a prominent motorcycle gang and an unemployed mother. His parents split when he was 2 years old and for a while he lived with his dad until his mother kidnapped him and took him to California. That was the start of the turmoil in his life. His father took his mother to court for custody, but the judge gave custody to his mother, and from then on, he only saw his dad on weekends and during the summer. HIs mom and him moved around a lot because she had a lot of boyfriends(his words), they would move in with them until they split and then they'd be by themselves for a little while and then it was on to the next boyfriend or husband. In California alone they lived in 5 different cities, multiple places in each city, within 4 or 5 years. When he was 10, they moved out of California and moved back to Colorado for maybe two years then they were moving again. From Colorado they went from hotel to hotel, only staying in places long enough for his mom’s boyfriend to get some odd jobs to give him enough money for them to go again, this went on for 3 to 4 months. This traveling was during the school year, and he was not being sent to school. Their last stop was in Massachusetts before his mom’s work sent her to Stockholm, Sweden. They lived there for about five months and then they were sent to Naples, Italy for seven months. When he was around 11 or 12, they made it back to the United States, Florida to be exact. They lived in Florida for a few years and in those years, they lived in at least seven different places. From Florida, they made it to Alabama, he was around 14 years old at the time. During all those years and all those many moves he never went to the same school from the start of a year to the end of a year. He had a younger brother and a sister who he was left in charge of a lot, his mom wasn’t the best or even close to it, and she would leave them alone to fend for themselves most of the time leaving him to take care of his younger siblings. He would have to make sure they ate, took showers, got to school, did their homework, and got in bed most days. The only people in his life who ever really cared about him and treated him as such was his grandparents and they lived in Colorado. He was raised in a volatile environment, with fights and arguments at home, witnessing a number of violent things through his father’s motorcycle gang, being taught to never trust authority, being taught to fight by his father, and having had firsthand experience with someone’s abuse of power. He was a troubled 15-year-old kid, with a lot of anger built up from the life he had lived to that point.
In 1994 in Springville, Alabama he did something that would change his life forever, he killed someone. He hadn’t lived in Alabama long but as a 15-year-old he was frustrated with his mother, he was tired of moving around constantly, and tired of being the parent of his two younger siblings so he decided he was going to run away from home. He left where he was living in Gadsden, Alabama on his bicycle, his only thought was to leave and try to find a way to get to Florida, where he had family, and get them to get him to his dad. He made it to Springville and came across a house where he saw some apples that he could get because by this point, he was hungry, so he parked his bike at the train tracks and went to the house to take some apples and get some water from the hose pipe. An elderly lady found him and after questioning him and getting him to explain himself she invited him in and fed him fried chicken and gave him some milk to drink. She told him to call his mother and let her know where he was and that he could stay there the night and she could get him the next morning. He pretended to call his mom when she asked him to, he had no intention of going back home. The lady showed him where he could sleep and readied herself for bed. When she went to sleep, he pretended to as well and when he knew she was asleep he got up and started looking around for something to steel to aid him in getting to Florida. Something woke her from sleep, and she caught him rummaging through her things and he snapped. He put her in a “sleeper” hold in order to knock her out long enough for him to get away, he was already freaking out thinking the police were on the way. While he was panicking around her house trying to find anything to help him get away, she started to wake up and so he put a cord around her neck in hopes that it would keep her asleep. He didn’t realize he had killed her and was still scared she would wake up and he would definitely be in trouble then, so he found her keys and some cash in her room and stole her car to get away. He was 15 years old and didn’t have even a permit to drive and had never driven before really but he managed to get her car and drive it to Montgomery where he wrecked it. He walked to a gas station, called a taxi, and got him to take him to the bus station where he got a ticket to Florida. He arrived a day later, late that night he was picked up by the police because he was about to walk into a convenience store when they pulled up, he panicked and ran. He hadn't slept in 2 days, he tried to lie but couldn't really pull it off. After almost being sent to a runaway shelter the police took him to a youth detention center in Florida. The next morning Alabama investigators, who found out who he was because of his bicycle that he left by the lady’s house, fingerprints found in her home and a friend of his who told the police, took him to a court hearing about taking him back to Alabama. The lawyer he had was fighting to keep him in Florida even though he told him he wanted to go back, the judge said he would remain in Florida until the next day and told his lawyer to give her the case on it then. The judge did not want to release him to Alabama because his parents were not present. Alabama investigators had other plans and took him straight from the Court House to the airport and flew him back to Alabama. When the Florida judge found out that Alabama had taken him anyway, she informed them that if he was not found guilty, she would be pressing charges against the State of Alabama for taking him across state lines without parents’ consent. ABI and the detective for St. Clair County took him straight to juvenile when they brought him back from Florida. He had an arraignment hearing where they charged him with murder, he plead not guilty. He had a certification hearing and a psychological evaluation to certify him as an adult at 15. After the certification hearing where they completed his certification, he was then sent to St. Clair County Jail where he was kept for a year until his trail.
There was an article posted in the local newspaper stating that he went to the lady’s house that night to rape her and when she resisted, he beat and strangled her, this was told to the newspaper reporter by the investigating officer, Larry Flippo - ABI, it was later disproved but it had already done its damage. If you know anything about St. Clair County Alabama, you know that everyone in the judicial system all know each other, justice and punishments that are handed down aren’t about what’s right and wrong it’s about who you know or who you hurt. In this case the lady was a well-known schoolteacher in the community and the judge, William E. Hereford, the DA, Van Davis, the Court Appointed Atty (CAA) and some of the people on the jury either knew the victim personally or knew her family. The victim’s family also had ties to Fob James who was running for Governor of Alabama at the time and ended up winning that election. The judge had a close relationship with the victim’s brother and was even heard during the trail arranging a cookout and golf trip with him. The comments made to the reporter were made before the trail and therefore helped to further influence the jury, the Court appointed attorney (CAA) stated that it was grounds for a mistrial and the DA was willing to accept felony murder and theft of property, which would have given him a 25-year sentence, but the judge wouldn’t allow it. The CAA also requested a change of venue because of conflict of interest but the judge wouldn’t allow that either. His attorney, Don Hamlin of Pell City, stated that to the local newspaper that “he is remorseful, but very immature. He doesn’t really comprehend what he has done. He doesn’t realize the finality of this lady’s death, and he doesn’t comprehend the finality of his sentence.” During his trail they twisted facts around so that they could try him with two felonies in order to get the maximum sentence, he was tried as an adult with Capital Murder. In 1995 when he was sentenced the only sentence available for Juvenile’s convicted of Capital Murder was Life Without Parole (LWOP). At the time of sentencing, he was 16 years old, he was convicted, sentenced, and sent to adult prison all in the same day. From what we can find through our own research he is the only one in Alabama to ever have this happen to them. Until Evan Miller he was the youngest person in the State of Alabama serving JLWOP. The day of his sentencing and subsequent transfer to Kilby Prison, the sheriff who was transporting him took him to the county jail instead of the prison because he did not believe that was where they meant for him to take him. When they arrived at the county jail the sheriff received a call clarifying the fact that the judge ordered for him to go straight to Kilby Prison for intake. When the sheriff, they called him Moose, was taking him to Kilby for processing he told him that he didn’t think he deserved that sentence, that he needed help but not life in prison with no chance for parole. When they got to Kilby he told the processing officer that he expected to be sent back to pick “this kid” back up that he didn’t belong there, he was wrong.
Kilby is where everyone goes for processing and then they are sent from there to wherever they will be housed, he was sent to St. Clair Correctional Facility. He was kept in lockup for almost 2 years, he was told for his own safety because of his size, he was barely able to see out the window in his cell. When he was sent to prison, he told his mother not to worry about him, for her to make sure his younger siblings were taken care of and that his actions didn’t have any backlash on them, he didn’t think she would completely abandon him when he told her that. He was a child in this God awful place, he had no one on the outside putting money on his books or helping with anything that you have to pay for in prison. He had to learn how to take care of himself, protect himself, he had to learn how to be an adult, how to support himself and the only way he knew how to, was what he was taught, you fight. He was an angry teen with a bad attitude and many of the others didn’t want him in a cell with them, they didn’t want to be around him, he thought they were all crazy, it took him years to realize he was the problem. The older men in prison with him and the female guards helped raise him, his nickname was “Teenager”, from the angry young boy who entered prison to the man he is today.
When he was around 17 or 18, he received a letter from the Appellate Court of Alabama stating that his appeal had been denied because it wasn’t filed on time by his original CAA. He had no one on the outside to help him with finding out what he needed to do so he had to rely on the “jailhouse lawyers” inside with him, they told him he needed to file a Rule 32 in order to be able to appeal the original decision. When he went to court for the Rule 32,he went without a lawyer, the judge asked him if he wanted a lawyer and when he told him he did the judge assigned him the same one he originally had who already let his case fall through the cracks. Instead of consulting him about what he wanted to do or how he wanted to go about the appeal the lawyer filed a No Merit Brief on his behalf without his consent or understanding, which from the way he understood it meant he could no longer appeal anything on his case. Because of his sentence it is standard practice to file some form of argument about the sentence instead of just accepting the original sentence, something he did not realize or understand until later. Since that brief was filed nothing more was done on his case until the Supreme Court ruled on the Miller vs. Alabama case in 2012 stating that only having one sentencing option available for JLWOP cases was unconstitutional and those individuals should be resentenced. The Court suggested instead of LWOP that they get a 30-year max sentence, but it was only a suggestion, therefore, each state has the ability to do what they want on these cases. He was appointed Erskine Funderburg as his CAA on his resentencing case in 2016but until 2019 nothing was done on his case. In 2019 his lawyer filed an order for a psych evaluation.
He came into my life in 2021, we met through a pen pal program. All those years behind bars he rejected anyone from the “free world” because of the way he had been treated during his trail and the way his family had done him. When he found out there was a chance that one day,he would be able to be free again he decided to start trying to make friends on the outside, and he found me. It took a while for him to tell me his story and before he would tell me he gave me his full name and told me to do a search on him, he knew I would find the news article. He wanted to see what my reaction to him would be after reading that article, I had questions. So, from there he told me his story, the good, the bad and the ugly. The more I learned about him and his life the angrier I got at his family and most of all the judicial system. I started writing, at first, I was just writing anything I could about his story, keeping note of everything, doing research into his sentence and the Miller case, and then I started writing anyone I could think of that might help. I wrote emails and mailed letters on his behalf to legislators, his lawyer, the Governor, the judge on his case, and even the President. Nothing had been done on his case in years, it was stagnant. I couldn’t get his attorney to respond to anything I sent him, and he didn’t accept phone calls from the prison so I started sending letters to criminal lawyers all over the state trying to find out if anyone would help. His attorney finally did respond, and things started happening on his case. In August he received notice from the court that he had a hearing scheduled for October of 2022, we had no idea what the hearing was about as his lawyer was still hard to get to answer. When he was picked up and taken to St. Clair County Jail in Ashville he was shocked as that is the first time he had been to court for any hearing since his appeal when he was 17 years old, he’s 43. During this hearing we found out yet again that there is conflict of interest in this case. When his CAA mentioned the only living member of the victim’s family,he only mentioned him by his first name and everyone knew who he was referring to, from our understanding the family has always been one well known in the community. Come to find out the hearing was to certify a psych evaluation because we had told his lawyer that he hadn’t had one even though it had been ordered in 2019. When he got there, he was told that a psych evaluation was done without him present and submitted to the court, the judge certified this evaluation after it was read aloud at the hearing, even though he wasn’t present when it was done. He was then given another court date in December for his Rule 32 hearing which was later changed to his resentencing hearing because the judge ruled on the Rule 32 out of court, or so we were told. He received notification in early December that the resentencing hearing would be postponed until some time in the spring because of a conflict of responses from the only living relative of the victim, her grandson. His CAA stated that he told him he was ok with the resentencing, but the DA stated the opposite. At the end of December, he received a letter from a Mitigation firm that had been hired by his attorney to work his case. In early January he received a notification that his Rule 32 hearing would be in May and that secondary council had been added to his case, Mr. Phil Roberson. Through all of this there has only been one communication between his CAA and me and the only time he had spoken to him was at his hearing in October. This is currently where his case stands, the waiting period. He is awaiting a meeting with the mitigation group and a psychologist who specializes in juvenile cases.
He is currently in the honor dorm where he is imprisoned, hasn’t had any disciplinary issues in over 10 years, works in the library, got his GED, and has worked in the psych department. He is a different person than he was 29 years ago, he’s 44 not the 15-year-old who committed this crime. I have written this petition asking for signatures of anyone who believes that this man deserves a second chance. Even though his family isn’t in his life he yearns for family, acceptance, love, structure, and a home (one he never had even before prison).
In his words, “I'm not trying to say I'm innocent or I should've never been locked up. I committed a terrible crime against an elderly lady that was simply trying to help a "lost" kid. I accept the fact that I should be punished. But I'm hoping that one day I'll get a second chance at life.... I'm extremely sorry for what I did. I want so bad to change my narrative. To do the right things in life, to maybe help people along the way. I try every day to become a better person. Someone that anybody can call a friend or loved one and be proud of it.....”
Thank you for taking the time to read and hopefully sign this petition, I hope to present it to the judge in an attempt to get him to grant him relief in his resentencing.
Petition Updates
Share this petition
Petition created on January 18, 2023