Wrongful Convictions Read online

  Wrongful Convictions

  Thank you to the people that helped me with the things I am not very good at:

  Shawna and Dolly Poncelet, Monica Tappe, Brianna Hurlburt, Jana Alberg, Chastity Peterson, Zina Evje, Theresa Renecker, Jenny Tuck, Janet Poncelet, Abby Flottemesch Robinson, Evy Schneider, Leslie Blakeburn, Troy Russell, Brian Dewitt, Ted Snyder, Dorothy Barnes, Brodey Kroupenske, Aaron Zierden, Beth Ott, Debbie Peterson, Jaime Moulder, Adam Gack, Dominic Chiapusio, Phil Demulling, Jeff Haugen, Elizabeth Pangerl, Kate Arens, Tina Mitts, Ryan Ladd, Debbie Tuck, Niklas Liedtke

  Prologue

  1999

  The Crown Victoria roared down the gravel road, shattering the tranquility of the warm sunny June morning. A dust cloud woke from its slumber to furiously chase after the rusted beast. The wheels of the titanic auto ripped across the washboards left by the recent grading of the backwoods thoroughfare. The Vic really couldn’t be distinguished from any number of cars that traveled this road; a modestly kept former logging trail that connected the main highway to the heart of the Leech Lake Reservation. The car was obscene in its size and shabby appearance; its price more than made up for its dilapidated exterior. The interior of the car was in no better shape, with the exception of the stereo system added by its teenage owner. This was the one modification necessary to allow its owner to forget that the quarter panel of the vehicle had been completely eaten through by rust, and the doors on either side were not far behind. The cancer on this vehicle was terminal; its owner however was not yet ready to give the automobile its last rights. Despite the shortcomings of it aesthetics, the 305 cubic inch V8 roared with the same ferocity it had the day it rolled off the assembly line in Detroit ten years earlier, and it was for that reason that the beast still had not been put to pasture.

  The road traveled by the behemoth was particularly well maintained as far as gravel roads in Cass County were concerned. With the exception of these few washboards common to all gravel roads, overall this road was unusually smooth and exceptionally wide. It was not the main road to Old Agency but cut several miles off the paved highway that came out of Walker past the casino. This road was closed in the winter, as funds were not available to keep it plowed and most residents of the reservation used the “Onigum Road” instead, a direct route from Onigum to Walker across frozen Leech Lake.

  The occupants of the vehicle sat in an unusually muddled silence for teenage boys. Their gazes focused on the trees that blew past the windows. There were four of them, the oldest no more than seventeen. This trip was atypical of most trips taken by kids this age. The stereo normally blaring loud abusive rap music was silent; there was no playful banter about the boys. No conversations about the Minnesota Twins season, or talk of the local girls, instead they sat in resolute silence their minds singularly focused on the task at hand.

  The driver was the oldest of the boys, with long black hair pulled back into a ponytail and the thin mustache of a boy in the midst of puberty. The passenger was a particularly ugly kid with gnarled red hair and crooked teeth; he wore a dark sweatshirt with the hood pulled over his matted mass of hair despite the seasonably warm temperatures. Two more kids sat in the back, a baby faced boy who resembled the driver as brothers resembled each other. The other was the youngest in the group. A twelve gauge shotgun in his lap, however, suggested he should be taken the most seriously. He wore a Pittsburgh Pirates baseball cap backwards and twisted to the left, and sported a Native Mob tattoo on his left arm: a representation of his affiliation with the Vice Lords. The young man wore each with pride.

  As the vehicle approached its destination, the driver took one last hit from the sherm, a combination of PCP and marijuana, and passed it to the Vic's other occupants. The ugly kid with the red hair was fondling a .32 caliber revolver in his sweatshirt pocket. He took the cigarette in his left and took a deep drag coughing a little as he inhaled. The boy in the back passenger seat finished the forty ounce bottle of malt liquor he was drinking before taking the cigarette and burning it almost down to his fingers. The killer behind the driver waved off the roach when it was offered. He wanted his head clear for this; he needed to prove his loyalty. He was on a mission.

  The silence of the trip was broken only once, when the boy with the shotgun pulled the slide back to make sure that a shell was chambered. The driver’s knuckles turned white around the steering wheel. Sweat beaded on his forehead, as the car approached a corner they saw their destiny in the clearing in front of them.

  ** *

  Harold sat on the rickety porch in front of a ramshackle trailer house. The white tin building was heaped in a pine clearing just off the gravel road. The yard was adorned with two decrepit vehicles; one was completely charred to cinders, the other, an old Pontiac, looked as though it hadn’t been used in a thousand years. Prairie grass grew up through its floorboards, the sun faded paint was covered with a thick layer of dust. All of the tires were flat.

  The trailer house itself was in marginally better shape, though the siding was filthy from the dust churned up by passing cars. Most of the windows were broken and the panes replaced with cardboard. save the one just to the right of the porch.

  Harold had been out of prison for only a week. He had been a resident of the Oak Park Heights Correctional facility for the last five years. Every day that he had been out he had started with a cigarette on the porch. He enjoyed the feeling of the warm sun on his face while he smoked. He sat, his eyes fixed on the bend in the road and the sound of an approaching engine in the distance. He wore no shirt this morning. His chest decorated with a tattoo that read “Native Pride” over his heart and the symbols of the Red Nation gang were emblazoned on his right pectoral and both arms. Another tattoo on his chest, a six point star with a pitchfork protruding out of the top right, it had been done in a jail-house, rough but clear. Harold had been a member of the Native Disciples gang while he lived on the Red Lake reservation with his mother before going to prison, but prison had changed him. He loathed every second of the experience and vowed never to return. He no longer wanted to be part of the gang; being locked in a cage away from his home and family had changed him. Simply thinking about this caused him to look down at his chest with regret. He rubbed the tattoo and felt the resentment of five wasted years. His mother had died while he was in prison. His aunt had taken in his little brother, then she offered him a place to stay once he was released. He had taken her up on the offer in an attempt to escape the pitfalls awaiting him in Red Lake if he were to return. Harold had also landed a job working for the Chairman of the Leech Lake Tribe, Clifford Banks as his head of security. He felt he had a new lease on life.

  Harold’s brother was in the house looking out the one good window at him. Harold looked over his shoulders and waved, and the boy waved back. He had gone into prison an arrogant punk kid and came out a man who understood his responsibilities to his family. He knew that his brother was more important than any of the bullshit he had been involved in before he went away. He knew it was dangerous for a Red Laker to be in Leech Lake and even more dangerous that he was about to give up some information on one of the leaders of the Leech Lake Native Mob. It was the deal he had made with the devil, he was no snitch, but he had a job now. His job was security and he had to do what he had to do. While in prison he had learned the name of a man who was the largest supplier of drugs on the reservation. The deal he made had gotten him this new job and his new boss had helped him get out of prison early. He doubted anyone knew he had been released early. He was sure that no one knew he was the snitch. Banks had his back. Banks was power. As the Crown Victoria rounded the corner and he got a clear view of it, he realized that nothing could have been farther from the truth.

  1


  2009

  Marcel Wright had been taught that boxing is a difficult sport. He learned that It took discipline, strength, speed. But most importantly it took heart. Heart, Marcel knew, wasn't something people were born with, it was something forged out of struggle. He had been a student of the sweet science and knew the all time greats had come from the world’s toughest corners; Brooklyn, Tijuana, Manilla. He couldn’t imagine a world champ coming from Beverly Hills or Dubai. His reasoning was simple: for people that are faced with a fight for survival everyday, simply surviving the ring is nothing. On the other hand, for people who have a safety net and no real fear of what tomorrow has to offer, it is impossible to find the motivation to dig deep enough into one’s heart to stand toe to toe with another man - hurting, completely exhausted, and entirely alone - and go another round. He hadn’t known that world, but held firm that this was more fact than a personal opinion. Marcel knew the only way to become truly great at the sport was when a man only had one true possession, dignity. The experts told him that It was the same reason most world champions didn’t go out on top. Once they earned the pay days and the lifestyle of a champ, there was nothing left to fight for. Marcel defined it in simpler terms: they lost the fire. Marcel had seen a documentary on Mike Tyson. He had explained this proposition very eloquently. He said every time he fought he was afraid he was going to lose, he was afraid of being humiliated, he was afraid of everything. He said while he was training, he was always afraid the guy he was going to fight was going to beat him. He dreamt about the guy beating him. That was early in Tyson’s career and it is what got him to the top. By the time he fought Buster Douglas, he no longer had that fear. For guys like Mike Tyson and Marcel, losing meant going back to the streets. It meant a life not really worth living, and that was all the motivation Marcel needed.

  Marcel snapped a double jab at the heavy bag, then followed with a left cross, right hook, left cross and quickly moved to his right, dancing around the bag. Sweat poured from his face. His sleeveless t-shirt was drenched and there were a thousand dots on the concrete floor beneath him where the perspiration was spraying. The warehouse gym he worked out in wasn’t equipped with air conditioning and in the one hundred degree August heat the gym trapped the smell of sweat and dying air inside the building and all around him. The front door to the gym, a loading bay fifty years earlier, was open and several industrial sized fans made futile attempts to circulate the dense air through the gym. Though they moved air, they did little to move the mercury down from ninety two inside the gym. There was no saving grace on a day like this. The humidity in the air made it feel like a hundred and forty degrees. There was no escape. Minnesota had been experiencing a severe drought and the air simply refused to let go of all the water it had stored up since May. It was as if the air knew it had to rain but the clouds had forgotten, caught up in the magnificent warmth of the sun.

  Marcel loved to work in the heat. Cutting weight was easier but the heat and humidity did so much more for his stamina. Just as cyclists went to Denver to train in the thin mountain air, a blanket of hot moist air could do wonders for a boxer. Though this heat was excessive, it didn’t slow him down. Marcel simply bore down and pushed himself a little bit harder. Marcel had motivation.

  Marcel was also determined and disciplined. He got into the fight game after being uprooted from Minnesota to go live with his grandfather in Longmont, Colorado. Marcel’s grandfather Henry was a police officer who trained amateur fighters, many of whom were cops. Henry insisted on teaching his grandson self-reliance and the importance of hard work. Henry also strove to teach the importance of education, but Marcel preferred to focus on discipline. These had been lessons that Henry had failed to teach his own son, Marcel’s father. It was a mistake he wouldn’t make again.

  Marcel took to the sport immediately. He was a natural. His grandfather had the opportunity to see him win his first Golden Gloves title when he was sixteen, two weeks before his grandfather died of a massive heart attack. Even though Marcel spent the next few months bouncing around various foster homes, he had acquired the values that his grandfather had tried to teach. Those values made the foster homes tolerable. Marcel studied at the gym when he wasn’t working out and set his sights on bigger things.

  Marcel’s foster homes weren’t the kind that showed up in a Channel Four expose, but they weren’t the loving families that other kids in his class grew up in either. He didn’t like spending his free time there and regularly escaped to the gym to do his geometry homework or just training before going to live with Jarvis. He was seventeen years old when the Olympic trials for the 2004 games in Athens rolled around. If you had asked any of the old boxing people around the area, he was the odds on favorite to make the team. In his first two fights, he looked like a lock to make the team. However, a broken hand in his third fight was the end of his Olympic dream as well as the first loss of his amateur career. He won a scholarship from USA Boxing to the University of Colorado Boulder and graduated with honors despite the disappointment, or perhaps because of it. He had considered another run for the 2008 games in Beijing, however around the same time he had been accepted to Law School at St. Stevens in St. Paul, Minnesota. He decided that he would turn pro and set his sights on a Middleweight title.

  Jarvis Lane was a long time trainer, and a man who had been the face of amateur boxing in the Western US for forty years. He demonstrated the virtue of a Spartan lifestyle; he explained to Marcel how guys like Bernard Hopkins and Roy Jones never drank or smoked. He had taught Marcel to eat right and treat his body like a temple. The only TV Jarvis ever watched was Friday Night Fights on ESPN. His time, he had once told Marcel, was much too valuable to spend watching other people’s lives and fantasies. He would much rather live out his. Jarvis for the most part, had lived his fantasy. He had trained three different world champions, and he had traveled all over the world for fights. Furthermore, he had also fulfilled his life’s ambition of owning his own business, a gym.

  Jarvis had stayed in Colorado through Marcel’s college days and it had been on his suggestions that prompted Marcel to return to Minnesota for law school.

  Law school had been Marcel’s grandfather’s dream for him. His grandfather had wanted him to become a prosecutor for the US Attorney’s office. In Henry Senior’s years on the force he had dealt with many attorneys, and the ones that most impressed him had been the US attorneys. Those men and women had put a few dipshit defense attorneys in their place on more than one occasion. Henry had always been tickled by that. Marcel on the other hand, had never really been too keen on being a lawyer. Nothing about wearing a suit all day and sitting in a stuffy courtroom had ever appealed to him. His love was boxing, but Jarvis had convinced him that the more education a man has, the more doors that would be open to him. In the end, the offer of a scholarship at St. Stevens had closed the deal. St. Stevens wasn’t necessarily Marcel’s first choice, but as Jarvis often said, a man gets to chose his own path, he just doesn’t get to choose where it leads.

  Marcel was a little apprehensive about returning to Minnesota to say the least. It had been a long time and he desperately wanted to continue training with Jarvis. But Marcel’s discipline and Jarvis’s encouragement won the round, so he packed all the possessions he owned into a single backpack and got into Jarvis’ van. He never looked back.

  “We got abs.” The gravel in Jarvis’ voice followed the bell to signify the end of the round.

  Abdominal work with Jarvis was twelve grueling minutes that began with crunches and came to a crescendo with the old man slamming a twelve pound medicine ball into Marcel’s midsection every time he did a sit-up. The workout was intense, but effective. Marcel’s torso was cut from steel and he was better than most fighters at absorbing punishment to the body. Marcel knew the problem with body shots were twofold. First, getting hit in the right spot is devastating. Marcel watched on pay per view as Oscar De La Hoya, who Marcel considered one of the greatest fighters of all time, was KO’d with a
liver punch from Hopkins. Second, a punch to the liver leads to another problem. Fighters who go down from body shots have their heart questioned. That was exactly what happened with De La Hoya, though fans and experts all over boxing claimed he took a dive. In reality, it doesn’t take much of a shot to that part of the body to leave the toughest champion all but paralyzed for several seconds, maybe even several minutes. Once others start questioning a fighter’s heart, it is only a matter of time until the fighter begins to question himself. Jarvis had preached that once self doubt creeps in, and a fighter starts to question whether or not they can still go on, their career is over. Jarvis had preached the story of Oliver McCall over and over. His promising career came to a crashing halt in his second fight with Lennox Lewis, when he gave up in the fifth round and began sobbing. Shortly thereafter his life began spiraling out of control and he ended up in prison. Marcel had no interest in being knocked down with a body shot or having anyone question his heart, so he endured the grueling workout thanking Jarvis when it was over.

  When the final bell of the work out sounded, Marcel grabbed a seat on a bench ringside a cold towel draped over his head. He took a second dry towel and mopped as much sweat from his face as he could. The towel quickly became soaked and he tossed it into a bucket on the floor in the corner.

  “Coming by for dinner?” Jarvis said as he sat down next to him. During camp, Jarvis always cooked for his fighters, he was a master nutritionist and had no intention of leaving such an important facet of training to one of his youngsters.

  “I have class, first night, I brought a turkey sandwich,” Marcel answered. He could hear exhaustion in his own voice.

  “No cheese?” Jarvis inquired.