Death Row Tidbits—Did You Know?

People often ask me, “How do I explain being convicted by a ‘jury of my peers’?”

There is a very good answer.

• I had attorneys who openly admitted, then and now, that they had no desire to defend me!
• I had a judge who would not allow me to fire my attorneys, would not allow them to quit, and would not allow me to represent myself.
• Also, in the State of Washington, in a capital case where the death penalty is being sought, the accused does not get a jury of his peers! If a prospective juror does not agree with the death penalty, he or she is not allowed to sit on the jury! How can this possibly be a true and fair jury of peers when a large segment of our population is automatically eliminated from the jury because they don’t believe that our system of justice should reduce itself to the level of a common killer? Does this really seem fair to you? The make up of a death penalty case jury is naturally inclined to convict!

I think it would be very interesting to truly find out just how many millions of taxpayer dollars this designed system of murder sucks out of society for each case. Millions upon millions of dollars are wantonly spent on each case, and the only ones who benefit are the ones who designed this system—the judges and the lawyers on both sides. But wait! In reality it is only the lawyers who benefit; they designed the system and the judges are lawyers! But the average citizen will probably never hear a truthful or accurate account of their senselessly spent public treasures.

The State of Washington has a legal murder team of four men. Three of them work at the Washington State Penitentiary (W.S.P.) in Walla Walla and the fourth used to work there. These paid professional killers have actually only been able to execute one man since 1974. But they have assisted in the suicide of three others. These three individuals were extremely weak me in that they all attempted suicide before they killed others, but could not finish the deed on themselves. They knew that the State of Washington would do for them what they could not do to themselves. So in the past the qualifications of these professional killers have never been looked at. In essence the State of Washington has a secret death squad whose qualifications are only known by a few Department of Correction officials, W.S.P. Superintendent, Steven Sinclair, being one. So far the courts have shamefully ruled that we really need to keep our professional death squad killers a secret and even the judges are not allowed to know if they are legally qualified as killers or not! I have challenged this secret legal-killer system in court.

Doesn’t it stand to reason that if this system and this team and this killing mission are so righteous and honorable in what they do, it should not need to be kept such a secret? Do the citizens of Washington really want a secret death squad team of killers committing legalized murders in their names?

My attorneys have tried to learn the identities and qualifications of this team, but the courts ruled again that their identities should be kept secret. But finally a judge decided that this system sounded a little too much like Germany in the late 30’s and ordered Supt. Sinclair to turn over his killer squads’ qualifications. Just their qualifications—not their names, addresses, or anything like that—in order to see if they meet all the qualifications to be legal murderers. The day after this ruling, all of the death squad resigned! This reaction told us that all or some of them were not qualified or that their credentials were bogus, and they resigned to try to fend off their discovery.

There are a lot of mail-order degrees here at W.S.P. to help employees move up the pay scale ladder a little quicker. So as of now, the State of Washington does not have a secret team of killers to carry out executions.

The latest rumor at W.S.P. is that Supt. Sinclair is planning on importing his own private squad of killers from Texas! He went down there in February to watch a couple of people be legally murdered, and he liked the people that he met and is now interested in hiring them to carry out this state’s legal murders. Is this what the citizens of Washington want their tax monies spent on?

In a recent deposition, Supt. Sinclair was asked how much he paid each member of the death squad. His response was that for my murder, which was supposed to take place last December, he was going to give each team members a $3200 bonus. Apparently they were a bit upset at not getting this bonus. There was another execution scheduled for March and to make it up to the killer team members, Sinclair was going to raise that bonus to $3500! The loss of this blood money was quite upsetting to the team when that scheduled murder was cancelled. I wonder how much of a bonus Washington taxpayers will be charged for the next scheduled murder to take place in their names?

Another example of this shady and underhanded legalized-murder system took place when Supt. Sinclair ordered and possessed illegally the drugs that were to be used to kill me. He ordered the W.S.P. pharmacist to give him these controlled substances without obtaining the legally required prescription for them. This illegal action so upset the head of the D.O.C’s Health Services Director, Marc Stern, M.D., that Stern resigned his position when Sinclair refused to return the drugs and go about procuring them in a lawful manner!

A good percentage of the over 2000 people that Sinclair oversees at W.S.P. are there for less serious drug charges than Supt. Sinclair committed! In acknowledging that he broke some controlled-substance possession and delivery laws (after my murder was stayed and his actions were brought to light), Sinclair finally applied for a permit to store these drugs in his office. He will not be charged with ordering controlled substances without a prescription!

In reality I not only received ineffective assistance of counsel from my appointed attorneys, I received no assistance of counsel! But the claims of ineffective assistance of counsel were dropped by my appellate attorneys, over my objections. They told me that it is almost impossible to get courts to acknowledge that such a thing could possibly happy in their legal system. Traditionally, none of the courts want to accuse a fellow attorney of being ineffective. A longstanding and very cruel joke among judges and lawyers is that if an attorney is not drunk and if he is not sleeping in court, he is considered to be effective!

Before the judge in my case, Kenneth Williams, became a judge, he represented Prosecutor Bruneau’s wife in their divorce case. Apparently Attorney Williams secured a much better settlement for Mrs. Bruneau than Mr. Bruneau wanted. Because of this action, Bruneau verbally attacked Judge Williams’ rulings many, many times publicly, even going so far as to tell the press that after my case he would never bring a another case in front of Judge Williams again.

Then Judge Williams heard from my attorney, Fred Leatherman, that he thought his client (me) was guilty and would not be putting up a vigorous defense for me. So Judge Williams is in a great position to extend an olive branch of sorts to Bruneau because Port Angeles is a very small community. They all eat at the same restaurants and belong to the same organizations so it is very important for a judge and a prosecutor to at least be civil to each other! And all Judge Williams has to do to extend this olive branch and hopefully dim some of his very vocal and public criticism from Bruneau is to deny my every request for justice. This denial served the desires of Judge Williams and Fred Leatherman. They both had scheduled vacations coming up and neither one of them wanted to have to change their plans. They openly discussed these plans halfway through my trial. Even before my guilt or innocence had even been decided by the jury, they decided that I was guilty and planned when to schedule the sentencing hearing so that it would not interfere with their vacation plans. Vacations were deemed to be of much more importance to them than justice for me.