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The Latest Word
Henderson in Hotel Kalifornia
Wayne Henderson has written for Steamshovel Press practically since its
inception. His analysis of the California prison system as seen from the
perspective of an innocent man on the inside,"Hotel Kalifornia," originally
appeared in Steamshovel Press #4 and has been widely anthologized. Here for
the first time he discusses in-depth the circumstances of his own
incarceration. Henderson's tribute to his good friend Jim Keith will appear
in the next issue of Steamshovel.
GOT A MINUTE?
CONSIDER THIS...
You've been traveling cross-country, just a leisurely 'working vacation' by
car: you stop in San Francisco, and agree to split rent, temporarily, with
what seems like a nice young couple.
Unfortunately, it turns out that the 'nice young couple' have criminal
records, are selling 'crank' (methamphetamine) out of the apartment, and
worse yet, owe a major chunk of change to local biker gangs. In the meantime,
your car has been towed for a parking violation, you're strapped for cash to
get it out of hock, and death-threats from the biker stepuglies are flying as
thick as divorce lawyers in Tijuana.
You finally acquire transportation - the nice young couple agree to trade
their broken-down panel truck to you in lieu of repaying you for covering
half of the rent, let alone the pizza delivery bills - so you gladly leave
Frisco behind and head back East, to civilization. Sometime in the next few
days after you leave, your roomies end up very dead.
There are numerous witnesses to the death-threats; one of them is a known
police informant (who lived with the 'nice young couple' before you did, and
got out when the death-threats began). The money disputes between your
ex-roomies and the biker stepuglies is common knowledge, and one of the
killers was gracious (and stupid) enough to leave his fingerprint, in engine
grease, on one of the bodies. While you could reasonably expect to be called
as a material witness (you're one of several witnesses to an altercation in
which one of your roomies got the crap beat out of him by a creditor, and
another in which the same creditor smacked the same roomie over the head with
a wooden cane), and you're obviously broken up about your roomies' deaths
(you spent Xmas partying with them, and now they're in the morgue), you're
expecting that the strongest impacts of this incident on your own life will
be 1) to keep you from ever even considering getting involved in retail crank
sales, and 2) to make you very happy that you got the hell out of Frisco when
you did.
Except for a possible appearance as a witness, your involvement in all this
is over, right? 'Fraid not...not by a long shot.
My name is Wayne Henderson, and I'm a writer - you might've read some of my
work in any number of 'zines, DHARMA COMBAT, STEAMSHOVEL PRESS, Donna Kossy's
KOOKS among them - in addition to that, I'm also currently a 'guest' of the
Hotel Kalifornia, and have been incarcerated here for sixteen years now. Why?
Read on, and you tell ME...
I've lived the situation I've just described...my girlfriend and I were the
ones who got the hell out of Frisco - on 12 January 1982 - and the 'nice
young couple', Ray and Angie, were alive and well (if somewhat stressed by
their biker creditors) when we left. Angie talked to the landlord on the
phone, on the afternoon of 13 January - more than 24 hours after we'd left
California; and our neighbors in the front apartment - Ron and Carol - had
seen Ray and Angie in and around the place as late as the weekend, 16-17
January...Ron and Carol had also witnessed one of the death-threats from the
biker stepuglies, made against everyone in the house.
The Frisco police themselves proved our whereabouts...we were in Reno, Nevada
at 1:30PM, on 12 January 1982, 24 hours before one of our alleged victims
spoke to the landlord on the phone; we didn't return to California until the
cops dragged us there, months later.
And why were we arrested? Again, you tell me...all the witnesses told the
cops about the death-threats, the drug debts, and how we'd been included in
those threats - just because we shared an apartment and partied with Ray and
Angie. It's beyond obvious that we weren't even in California when the
murders occurred, and wouldn't have any reason to kill people who, for
whatever faults they might've had, certainly knew how to party. But it gets
weirder, much weirder...
After repeated visits from the cops, witnesses either changed their stories
(disagreeing wildly with their recorded initial statements, even to the point
of stating impossibilities) or suffered odd and inexplicable memory loss...
The murder bullet, a .22 slug showing no rifling (and therefore likely fired
by Ray's own .22 pistol, which has never been found) is altered - and the
alteration is documented - in the hope that it can be made to fit the "class
of characteristics" of a .22 rifle I'd subsequently sold to a friend in
Florida. The alteration, it should be noted, was not altogether successful,
and the prosecution was forced to admit in a rare moment of candor that the
bullet couldn't really be matched to the rifle in question.
Remember the fingerprint? The cops took our fingerprints more than 20 times
after the arrest, from every conceivable angle and with every possible
pattern of smudging - and in the end, it was painfully obvious, even to the
cops, that the fingerprint belonged to somebody else. So what do they do -
check the print against their extensive files? Not hardly...they ignored it.
The prosecutor even told the jury, at one point, that fingerprints aren't
good evidence. Remember that, if your fingerprint ever shows up where it
oughtn't be...
Even after the cops were done trampling every stick of evidence in their
path, we were still able to amass enough evidence to prove our innocence, or
at the very least to expose the gaping holes in the cops' story - and all our
evidence was invariably excluded by a 'prosecution friendly' judge, no matter
how relevant it was. On the other hand, the cops and prosecution were allowed
to present rank speculation as though it were evidence, perjure themselves,
and violate Federal law and rules of evidence, without restriction. No, I'm
NOT just making this up - you can see the proof for yourself.
The jury never got to hear anything but what the cops and prosecution wanted
them to hear - and it's taken sixteen years of life and death struggle with
the California legal system to finally file a petition for writ of habeas
corpus with the state supreme court...and even with the proof in front of
them, they continue to drag their feet...
If I sound like some bitter prisoner shouting "I didn't do it", I've got to
admit that that's a fair assessment. Unlike the popular image, however, I
have proof; evidence not only of my own innocence, but also of the
illegalities committed by a small clique of politically-ambitious cops and pro
secutors.
Sixteen years; Ray and Angie have been dead for sixteen years, I've been
locked up, the actual killers have walked free - for sixteen years. While one
of the prosecutors - William Fazio - proved to be too dirty even for his
buddies, and was forced out of the DA's office during an unsuccessful bid to
become DA himself, another prosecutor - James McBride - is now a municipal
court judge; interesting occupation for a man who forged a subpeona duces
tecum form, then crossed several state boundaries in order to illegally
access my medical records (a Federal crime). The cops, Prentice Sanders and
Napolean Hendrix (yes, Napolean really is his name) are still cops; both of
them perjured themselves, continue to make arrests - Sanders has even been
promoted to Deputy Chief of Police.
Why should you care? There are others who've been in similar situations,
people you've heard of: Clarence Chance and Benny Powell, Mumia Abu-Jamal,
Geronimo Pratt, and others - who have the backing of an enviable media machine
to get their stories out. Geronimo Pratt - whom I've met, in prison - owes
his freedom to FM 94 KPFA radio in Berkeley, California, a station I listen
to almost every day; Clarence Chance and Benny Powell had the help of Rev.
James McClosky of Centurion Ministries, in my home state (New Jersey) - I
have no such backing; I've got to hope that I can pique the interest of
someone out there who will be both willing and able to actually look at the
evidence I've amassed - proof of police perjury, subornation of perjury;
witness, evidence, and jury tampering; and judicial misconduct - and lend a
hand.
I've got to hope that you will be concerned enough about your own safety - if
they can do it to me, they can do it to you - to get involved.
John E. Dupont, O.J. Simpson, John and Patsy Ramsey, and those like them have
automatic access to the best lawyering money can buy; even in those rare
occasions when their behavior is too obvious and too reprehensible to avoid
scrutiny, they never pay the price...but when poor folks - like you and I -
are accused, our innocence buys us nothing - we don't have Johnny Cochran for
the defense, we have only each other.
If you can help in any way - publicity, legal assistance, moral support -
contact C.G. Hodges at [EMAIL PROTECTED] - if you're seriously able to help,
we can lend you a copy of the proof on disc...no need to take my word for it,
when you can see the evidence and judge for yourself.
Consider: if only 5% of all prisoners in this country are wrongly
incarcerated, we have 85,000 innocent people behind bars...I'm one of them,
and if cops like Sanders and Hendrix, and prosecutors like Fazio and McBride
aren't stopped, YOU could be next!!!
FIGHT BACK -
WHILE YOU STILL CAN!!!
Wayne Henderson
Previous Latest Word Column
Steamshovel!
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Aloha, He'Ping,
Om, Shalom, Salaam.
Em Hotep, Peace Be,
Omnia Bona Bonis,
All My Relations.
Adieu, Adios, Aloha.
Amen.
Roads End
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