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The Hitman and the Bank Robber
In the summer of 1992, after finally being accepted in to The Kansas Defender Project - one of the many legal clinics at the University of Kansas School of Law - I traveled to Leavenworth Federal Penitentiary a couple of times a week to visit clients. I had three clients that summer, but I only visited two - one was a bank robber and the other was a hitman. It was my junior year of law school. While my work was to an extent supervised by attorneys, I was for the most part on my own.
The drive to Leavenworth Penitentiary took about two hours one way. Maybe less, depending on traffic and whether I got lost. I'd gotten lost about twice on the winding maze of country roads, the only landmarks a few farmhouses here and there. Leavenworth Penitentiary was located north west of Lawrence, Kansas, in the foothills and close to the city of Leavenworth - although city feels a bit of a misnomer, town or township is perhaps a better description. The country side in some respects is reminiscent of Pennsylvania, rolling hills, trees, farms, and winging dirt roads. That summer, we had massive flooding in the area, so the roads were not so much dirt as mud. Some were even shut off.
The first time I visited the Penitentiary, I remember being a bit surprised. I'd expected to find what I'd seen on tv shows and movies - the steel bars, and the bullet proof see-through plastic windows, which the prisoners sat behind, while you held a phone up to your ear to listen to them. On TV - you get about twenty minutes to chat, you can't touch them or hand anything to them. Or you'll meet them in a cold room with cold steel tables. Sometimes picnic tables outside. That was not the case here.
The room I entered, after passing through security, was similar to an airport lounge or a doctor's waiting room, complete with small coffee tables, a vending machine, and a few magazines. The prisoners would come in from a gate at the back, guided by guards. They weren't handcuffed and wore orange scrubs. Bright orange. And we sat across from each other, just the knee high coffee table separating us. If they wanted to, they could reach across and hug me. Guards stood at the entrances to the room, arms folded, watching. The room was long, rectangular in shape, no windows, and everything was mauve or brown. I remember thinking how far away the guards and entrances seemed.
For my first couple of visits I was accompanied by a colleague, after that I was on my own. My clients, and I counted myself lucky, were the aforementioned hitman or the more appropriate term "murder for hire" and a bank robber or "armed bank heist/armed robbery". One was serving a life sentence, the other 10-15 years. He was about five years past the 15 year mark. My colleagues, the two legal interns sitting next to me, were assisting prisoners in for violent and serial rapes, and a senior intern, who'd done it for three years, was waiting to see a guy who was a lifer and a serial killer.
Leavenworth being a Federal Penitentiary got prisoners from all 50 states, many were from Florida and New York. The crimes were all federal. The serial killer was quite an artist, and we were defending his right to express himself and be treated humanely - which meant not placed in a dark room, confined, with no light, just bread and water, and no contact. He had his fans amongst the people in the clinic. And we were warned on more than one occassion by the professor who lead the clinic not to believe or trust our clients - that they knew how to manipulate people and could be quite charming. I never met the serial killer, although I did see his artwork and I was vaguely familar with his case.
[It is probably worth noting that Kansas did not have the death penalty in 1992. It was reinstated in 1994, while I was working for a State Senator. I stood in the State Senate Chamber and listened to the Senators debate and eventually pass the bill that reinstated the death penalty. It is equally worth noting that most serial killers do not receive the death penalty, the majority of cases are felony murder - or robberies that go wrong. And that the death penalty is more expensive than life imprisonment. I know I did a financial analysis of it in 1994. And according to this link, I was right: http://primebuzz.kcstar.com/?q=node/17037. But in 1992, it was not an issue.]
My two clients, the bank robber and the hitman had specific and separate needs. The murder-for-hire - wanted to have his case reviewed and potentially dismissed on the basis of ineffective assistance of counsel. He also wanted to get his court transcripts released to his custody. He believed that he had had an unfair trial. While the bank robber just wanted someone to represent him at his parole hearing, get him released from Federal custody and hopefully from state custody as well. The best we could do was Federal, we had no jurisdiction over the State of Ohio - which had a detainer and a right to imprison him after the Federal government released him.
I met the hitman first, and only a couple of times, which were more than enough. It is important to state that while he claimed he was innocent of the crimes he was currently serving for, he did not claim to be innocent of murder. He was a hit man, who killed people for money. He never denied it. His eyes were yellow streaked with red and his pupils large in the light. And on his arms were faded white scars, track marks from heroine. I knew looking at him that he did not feel any quilt or remorse for what he'd done and believed himself to be the victim. But it was my job, as his attorney, to defend him. I was 26 years of age. It was the first time in my life that I had met someone who actually killed another human being and did not appear to care. His life was a wreck. I think he had a family somewhere in New York. And when I finally was able to get his crappy attorney to release his transcripts to me, I realized that he was probably guilty of these crimes as well. While one of his attorney's had clearly been ineffective, the other was definetly not. He'd had two attorneys on the case and both had tried it. I spoke with them both.
Ineffective assistance of counsel is one of the best ways, and often a long-shot, to get a ruling overturned. Many lifer's try it. You don't have to prove you are innocent, you just have to prove that your attorney was incompetent and hurt your case. It must be both attorneys. You can't have one good one and one horrid one. My job was to prove that his counsel was incompetent and I had to do it long distance, since his attorney's resided in South Carolina.
I met with my client two to three times, I talked to him on the phone four or five times. Avoided seeing him in person as much as possible. He made my skin crawl - in a way - I'm not sure I can describe. The people he had been accused of killing were not saints, they were part of a huge drug organization that spanned a good portion of the South East. From my dim memory of the transcripts - which were a bit like reading a teleplay of the Wire or Homicide Life on the Streets, except a lot gorier, somewhat amusing in places, and not as interesting - the people he'd killed were planning on either testifying against his bosses or were stealing a portion of the cut. Court transcripts look a lot like screenplays or teleplays. All you have is the dialogue and a brief description of the witness. All the people involved in the case were dirt poor, uneducated, and drugs - was their only livelyhood. They were a mixture of races. The hitman was black as were most of his victims. The trial took place in South Carolina, while the hitman was from New York. The hitman claimed he'd never been to South Carolina. Or south of New York. Evidence presented proved otherwise. A jury convicted him.
The man I saw in prison was not like the ones we see on tv. Nor were the other prisoners that I saw in that room. They looked like people I see on the street each day. People I pass on my way to the subway. I remember feeling proud of obtaining his transcripts, the last four interns who'd had his case failed in this regard. I could do nothing else to help him. He had no case and my supervisor supported my judgement.
The second client - was the bank robber. He was nothing like the first one. Educated. Articulate. Charming. Also black. About 50% of the inmates that I saw during my visits were black or hispanic. The serial killer - was white. The bank robber had salt and pepper hair cut close to his head and reminded me a bit of a much older Denzel Washington. He had worked to rehabilitate himself. He had written a pamphlet explaining the hazards of drug use for children. Ran one to two group counseling sessions with a prison psychologist regarding substance abuse at the prison. And had, he hoped, beaten his own addiction to crack cocaine. The bank robberies he'd committed in Ohio - he explained, had been in order to fuel his addiction.
My most vivid memory of my time at the Penitentiary was on a Friday in late July, we'd arrived as a group early that morning to start a day's worth of parol hearings. After much preparation and at least four delays, I was finally going to do my first and only parol hearing. The hearings had been delayed by a lock down. Four days prior, there had been a knife fight at the penitentiary - where four prisoners and two guards had been killed. The prisoners had been put in lock down after that - confined to their cells. On my tour of the penitentiary at the beginning of the summer - I discovered much to my surprise that the cells did not have bars. They had electronic doors that slide closed with the press of a button. The doors had a tiny window at the top and were pink steel. Or perhaps mauve. Each cell had a tiny window that let in light, but that was it.
On the day of the hearing, there was a thunderstorm that lasted all day long. Lightening and thunder crashed against the sky. The prison was dimmer than usual due to the thunderstorm and lockdown, so the lightening lit it up when it flashed. And the thunder appeared to rock it, or that may have been the wind battering against the walls. I remember wondering at the time what would happen if there was a blackout, I must have muttered my fear aloud, because one of the guards informed me that they had generators.
The hearing was on the third floor of the prison, in a bunch of tiny rooms encircling a rotunda. We waited in metal chairs facing the rotunda, outside each room, waiting for our turn. We arrived at the rotunda around 11 am or thereabouts, we were not called for our hearing until around 3 pm.
As the hours rolled by, I stared up at the lightening flashing in the window in the ceiling of the rotunda and wondered if you could escape via that route. I voiced this aloud to the bank robber sitting next to me. Our legs barely touching. I was in a skirt and short heels. He was in his orange scrubs, politely averting his gaze from my exposed thighs. He told me that no, you couldn't. I got nervous and said, not that I was suggesting it, just curious.And he said that if you tried - there was still the barbed wire, the tall walls, and the snipers in the guard towers to get around, assuming you didn't kill yourself climbing down from the rotunda.
Then he told me, after a brief pause, it's not the walls that are so bad, it's the people that you are stuck with. That's what makes a prison. When I asked why, he said, simply, there are some people you do not want to meet, who have done crimes you cannot imagine. Such as? I asked, still curious. The one's who hurt the children are the worst - the pedofiles. Everyone stays clear of them. And there are the murderers - who beat their wives or children to a pulp. Who would sink a knife or fork under your ribs it they had the chance. People make the prison.
He paused then. And began again, after a moment. Prison is not about rehabilitation, he told me. It's about punishment. People are not here to be redeemed or rehabilitated. We are being punished.
I don't remember what I said. I just remember the thunder outside making me jump and looking over my shoulder at the small room that sat behind us.
After about two moore claps of thunder, and a couple lightening strikes, the bank robber asked me if I thought once he got out on parole - if he could be a better person. If he would fall back on his old ways. Did I think he had a chance to reunite with his family, to get a job, to have a life. To not fall back into the old patterns. To be a substance abuse counselor and help others avoid the mistakes he'd made.
I remember looking at him then and said, "I don't know. I know that I do not have the right to judge you for what you did. I have no clue what I would have done if I'd lived your life or been born in your situation. I know that you have tried to do better here. You've tried to become a better person and have taken steps to show you can live a better life on the outside.
But I don't know if that will happen."
And he thanked me for my honesty and support. We had the hearing. I was nervous and too emotional. But the bank robber informed my supervisor that the emotion was a good thing - it demonstrated to him and to the parole officers that I cared. That this was not just a job. It wasn't - I did care about this man's wellbeing, even though I knew he'd done some horrible things.
He got parole from Leavenworth - I'd won our case - although that was more or less a given, as long as I did not screw up. The man should have been paroled five years ago. He begged me to help get him released from his retainer - but my hands were tied. There was nothing I could do. I remember crying in my supervisor's office about it.
That was 16 years ago. I don't know what happened to either man. I can no longer remember their names. But their visages remain imprinted in my memory. I often find myself wondering what happened to the bank robber. If he made it home, if he was reunited with his family, if he was able to become a substance abuse counselor. I hope and pray in my heart this is what happened. But I don't know. I have no way of knowing. And part of me doesn't want to know.
The hitman was damaged, possibly beyond hope. The drugs he'd taken had destroyed him, taken him over. He babbled. His speech was slurred. And I could tell watching him that he ached for a fix. It had become all about the drugs to him, or so it seemed. They were his lover and his mistress. He craved them much the same way a vampire may crave blood.
The bank robber was trying to become a better man, to become the man he was before the drugs took over and destroyed his life.
I found myself blaming the drugs for what these two men became. But I know now that it is not that simple. And I am still in no position to judge either man for their crimes, because I have not lived their lives and I do not know what I would have done if I'd been in their place.
The experience haunts me. It is not one I want to revisit. And when people ask from time to time - why aren't you a practicing attorney, I provide a range of answers - never quite sure how to answer it. I know with absolute certainity that I do not miss it. And that it took another year and a half to realize it was not something I wanted. I'd gone to law school - believing somewhat self-righteously, and perhaps a tad arrogantly, that I could change things, help. I left a bit jaded and tired.
I don't quite know why I felt the need to share these stories with you. Except that I think that we need to share stories like these with one another. By doing so, we learn from each other's experiences and to a degree from our own. And we understand one another a little better. I'm not sure what you'll get out of what I shared above. I'm still not sure what I learned or got out of it - except that the world is not what I thought nor as cut and dried as I once believed. And I wish I could find the words to convey the memories in my head far better than I have. Words at times feel...inadequate.
The drive to Leavenworth Penitentiary took about two hours one way. Maybe less, depending on traffic and whether I got lost. I'd gotten lost about twice on the winding maze of country roads, the only landmarks a few farmhouses here and there. Leavenworth Penitentiary was located north west of Lawrence, Kansas, in the foothills and close to the city of Leavenworth - although city feels a bit of a misnomer, town or township is perhaps a better description. The country side in some respects is reminiscent of Pennsylvania, rolling hills, trees, farms, and winging dirt roads. That summer, we had massive flooding in the area, so the roads were not so much dirt as mud. Some were even shut off.
The first time I visited the Penitentiary, I remember being a bit surprised. I'd expected to find what I'd seen on tv shows and movies - the steel bars, and the bullet proof see-through plastic windows, which the prisoners sat behind, while you held a phone up to your ear to listen to them. On TV - you get about twenty minutes to chat, you can't touch them or hand anything to them. Or you'll meet them in a cold room with cold steel tables. Sometimes picnic tables outside. That was not the case here.
The room I entered, after passing through security, was similar to an airport lounge or a doctor's waiting room, complete with small coffee tables, a vending machine, and a few magazines. The prisoners would come in from a gate at the back, guided by guards. They weren't handcuffed and wore orange scrubs. Bright orange. And we sat across from each other, just the knee high coffee table separating us. If they wanted to, they could reach across and hug me. Guards stood at the entrances to the room, arms folded, watching. The room was long, rectangular in shape, no windows, and everything was mauve or brown. I remember thinking how far away the guards and entrances seemed.
For my first couple of visits I was accompanied by a colleague, after that I was on my own. My clients, and I counted myself lucky, were the aforementioned hitman or the more appropriate term "murder for hire" and a bank robber or "armed bank heist/armed robbery". One was serving a life sentence, the other 10-15 years. He was about five years past the 15 year mark. My colleagues, the two legal interns sitting next to me, were assisting prisoners in for violent and serial rapes, and a senior intern, who'd done it for three years, was waiting to see a guy who was a lifer and a serial killer.
Leavenworth being a Federal Penitentiary got prisoners from all 50 states, many were from Florida and New York. The crimes were all federal. The serial killer was quite an artist, and we were defending his right to express himself and be treated humanely - which meant not placed in a dark room, confined, with no light, just bread and water, and no contact. He had his fans amongst the people in the clinic. And we were warned on more than one occassion by the professor who lead the clinic not to believe or trust our clients - that they knew how to manipulate people and could be quite charming. I never met the serial killer, although I did see his artwork and I was vaguely familar with his case.
[It is probably worth noting that Kansas did not have the death penalty in 1992. It was reinstated in 1994, while I was working for a State Senator. I stood in the State Senate Chamber and listened to the Senators debate and eventually pass the bill that reinstated the death penalty. It is equally worth noting that most serial killers do not receive the death penalty, the majority of cases are felony murder - or robberies that go wrong. And that the death penalty is more expensive than life imprisonment. I know I did a financial analysis of it in 1994. And according to this link, I was right: http://primebuzz.kcstar.com/?q=node/17037. But in 1992, it was not an issue.]
My two clients, the bank robber and the hitman had specific and separate needs. The murder-for-hire - wanted to have his case reviewed and potentially dismissed on the basis of ineffective assistance of counsel. He also wanted to get his court transcripts released to his custody. He believed that he had had an unfair trial. While the bank robber just wanted someone to represent him at his parole hearing, get him released from Federal custody and hopefully from state custody as well. The best we could do was Federal, we had no jurisdiction over the State of Ohio - which had a detainer and a right to imprison him after the Federal government released him.
I met the hitman first, and only a couple of times, which were more than enough. It is important to state that while he claimed he was innocent of the crimes he was currently serving for, he did not claim to be innocent of murder. He was a hit man, who killed people for money. He never denied it. His eyes were yellow streaked with red and his pupils large in the light. And on his arms were faded white scars, track marks from heroine. I knew looking at him that he did not feel any quilt or remorse for what he'd done and believed himself to be the victim. But it was my job, as his attorney, to defend him. I was 26 years of age. It was the first time in my life that I had met someone who actually killed another human being and did not appear to care. His life was a wreck. I think he had a family somewhere in New York. And when I finally was able to get his crappy attorney to release his transcripts to me, I realized that he was probably guilty of these crimes as well. While one of his attorney's had clearly been ineffective, the other was definetly not. He'd had two attorneys on the case and both had tried it. I spoke with them both.
Ineffective assistance of counsel is one of the best ways, and often a long-shot, to get a ruling overturned. Many lifer's try it. You don't have to prove you are innocent, you just have to prove that your attorney was incompetent and hurt your case. It must be both attorneys. You can't have one good one and one horrid one. My job was to prove that his counsel was incompetent and I had to do it long distance, since his attorney's resided in South Carolina.
I met with my client two to three times, I talked to him on the phone four or five times. Avoided seeing him in person as much as possible. He made my skin crawl - in a way - I'm not sure I can describe. The people he had been accused of killing were not saints, they were part of a huge drug organization that spanned a good portion of the South East. From my dim memory of the transcripts - which were a bit like reading a teleplay of the Wire or Homicide Life on the Streets, except a lot gorier, somewhat amusing in places, and not as interesting - the people he'd killed were planning on either testifying against his bosses or were stealing a portion of the cut. Court transcripts look a lot like screenplays or teleplays. All you have is the dialogue and a brief description of the witness. All the people involved in the case were dirt poor, uneducated, and drugs - was their only livelyhood. They were a mixture of races. The hitman was black as were most of his victims. The trial took place in South Carolina, while the hitman was from New York. The hitman claimed he'd never been to South Carolina. Or south of New York. Evidence presented proved otherwise. A jury convicted him.
The man I saw in prison was not like the ones we see on tv. Nor were the other prisoners that I saw in that room. They looked like people I see on the street each day. People I pass on my way to the subway. I remember feeling proud of obtaining his transcripts, the last four interns who'd had his case failed in this regard. I could do nothing else to help him. He had no case and my supervisor supported my judgement.
The second client - was the bank robber. He was nothing like the first one. Educated. Articulate. Charming. Also black. About 50% of the inmates that I saw during my visits were black or hispanic. The serial killer - was white. The bank robber had salt and pepper hair cut close to his head and reminded me a bit of a much older Denzel Washington. He had worked to rehabilitate himself. He had written a pamphlet explaining the hazards of drug use for children. Ran one to two group counseling sessions with a prison psychologist regarding substance abuse at the prison. And had, he hoped, beaten his own addiction to crack cocaine. The bank robberies he'd committed in Ohio - he explained, had been in order to fuel his addiction.
My most vivid memory of my time at the Penitentiary was on a Friday in late July, we'd arrived as a group early that morning to start a day's worth of parol hearings. After much preparation and at least four delays, I was finally going to do my first and only parol hearing. The hearings had been delayed by a lock down. Four days prior, there had been a knife fight at the penitentiary - where four prisoners and two guards had been killed. The prisoners had been put in lock down after that - confined to their cells. On my tour of the penitentiary at the beginning of the summer - I discovered much to my surprise that the cells did not have bars. They had electronic doors that slide closed with the press of a button. The doors had a tiny window at the top and were pink steel. Or perhaps mauve. Each cell had a tiny window that let in light, but that was it.
On the day of the hearing, there was a thunderstorm that lasted all day long. Lightening and thunder crashed against the sky. The prison was dimmer than usual due to the thunderstorm and lockdown, so the lightening lit it up when it flashed. And the thunder appeared to rock it, or that may have been the wind battering against the walls. I remember wondering at the time what would happen if there was a blackout, I must have muttered my fear aloud, because one of the guards informed me that they had generators.
The hearing was on the third floor of the prison, in a bunch of tiny rooms encircling a rotunda. We waited in metal chairs facing the rotunda, outside each room, waiting for our turn. We arrived at the rotunda around 11 am or thereabouts, we were not called for our hearing until around 3 pm.
As the hours rolled by, I stared up at the lightening flashing in the window in the ceiling of the rotunda and wondered if you could escape via that route. I voiced this aloud to the bank robber sitting next to me. Our legs barely touching. I was in a skirt and short heels. He was in his orange scrubs, politely averting his gaze from my exposed thighs. He told me that no, you couldn't. I got nervous and said, not that I was suggesting it, just curious.And he said that if you tried - there was still the barbed wire, the tall walls, and the snipers in the guard towers to get around, assuming you didn't kill yourself climbing down from the rotunda.
Then he told me, after a brief pause, it's not the walls that are so bad, it's the people that you are stuck with. That's what makes a prison. When I asked why, he said, simply, there are some people you do not want to meet, who have done crimes you cannot imagine. Such as? I asked, still curious. The one's who hurt the children are the worst - the pedofiles. Everyone stays clear of them. And there are the murderers - who beat their wives or children to a pulp. Who would sink a knife or fork under your ribs it they had the chance. People make the prison.
He paused then. And began again, after a moment. Prison is not about rehabilitation, he told me. It's about punishment. People are not here to be redeemed or rehabilitated. We are being punished.
I don't remember what I said. I just remember the thunder outside making me jump and looking over my shoulder at the small room that sat behind us.
After about two moore claps of thunder, and a couple lightening strikes, the bank robber asked me if I thought once he got out on parole - if he could be a better person. If he would fall back on his old ways. Did I think he had a chance to reunite with his family, to get a job, to have a life. To not fall back into the old patterns. To be a substance abuse counselor and help others avoid the mistakes he'd made.
I remember looking at him then and said, "I don't know. I know that I do not have the right to judge you for what you did. I have no clue what I would have done if I'd lived your life or been born in your situation. I know that you have tried to do better here. You've tried to become a better person and have taken steps to show you can live a better life on the outside.
But I don't know if that will happen."
And he thanked me for my honesty and support. We had the hearing. I was nervous and too emotional. But the bank robber informed my supervisor that the emotion was a good thing - it demonstrated to him and to the parole officers that I cared. That this was not just a job. It wasn't - I did care about this man's wellbeing, even though I knew he'd done some horrible things.
He got parole from Leavenworth - I'd won our case - although that was more or less a given, as long as I did not screw up. The man should have been paroled five years ago. He begged me to help get him released from his retainer - but my hands were tied. There was nothing I could do. I remember crying in my supervisor's office about it.
That was 16 years ago. I don't know what happened to either man. I can no longer remember their names. But their visages remain imprinted in my memory. I often find myself wondering what happened to the bank robber. If he made it home, if he was reunited with his family, if he was able to become a substance abuse counselor. I hope and pray in my heart this is what happened. But I don't know. I have no way of knowing. And part of me doesn't want to know.
The hitman was damaged, possibly beyond hope. The drugs he'd taken had destroyed him, taken him over. He babbled. His speech was slurred. And I could tell watching him that he ached for a fix. It had become all about the drugs to him, or so it seemed. They were his lover and his mistress. He craved them much the same way a vampire may crave blood.
The bank robber was trying to become a better man, to become the man he was before the drugs took over and destroyed his life.
I found myself blaming the drugs for what these two men became. But I know now that it is not that simple. And I am still in no position to judge either man for their crimes, because I have not lived their lives and I do not know what I would have done if I'd been in their place.
The experience haunts me. It is not one I want to revisit. And when people ask from time to time - why aren't you a practicing attorney, I provide a range of answers - never quite sure how to answer it. I know with absolute certainity that I do not miss it. And that it took another year and a half to realize it was not something I wanted. I'd gone to law school - believing somewhat self-righteously, and perhaps a tad arrogantly, that I could change things, help. I left a bit jaded and tired.
I don't quite know why I felt the need to share these stories with you. Except that I think that we need to share stories like these with one another. By doing so, we learn from each other's experiences and to a degree from our own. And we understand one another a little better. I'm not sure what you'll get out of what I shared above. I'm still not sure what I learned or got out of it - except that the world is not what I thought nor as cut and dried as I once believed. And I wish I could find the words to convey the memories in my head far better than I have. Words at times feel...inadequate.