Rape victim tells parole board to keep attacker in prison
By Angela Rozas
Tribune reporter
February 20, 2008
For years, he was behind every closed door she passed,
every darkened room. In the months after he attacked her, she cut her long,
red hair, thinking maybe that was why he had made her his target.
She was his last rape victim, the one who helped police catch him, ending
his reign of terror on the streets of
Chicago.
And now, nearly three decades later, Paul Bryant's final
victim is hoping she can once again stand between him and freedom.
Bryant, 58, is up for parole before the
Illinois Prisoner
Review Board. At a hearing Wednesday, Cook County prosecutors are expected
to read a letter of protest from the woman expressing her bewilderment that
Bryant, convicted of two murders and five rapes, has even a remote chance to
be released.
"I gave up so much in order to stay alive," the woman, now 60 and living in
Kansas City, Mo., said in a telephone interview last week. "I went crazy,
and I was so traumatized in so many ways. But now ... now I want this guy
out of my head."
The Cook County judge who sentenced Bryant in 1980 to 500 to 1,500 years in
prison for just one of the murders said then he wanted to send a message to
parole boards in the future that Bryant should never be released. Since
then, all of Bryant's attempts at parole have been denied.
By law, Bryant appears before the parole board every year or so, and each
time prosecutors have argued against his release.
The
Missouri woman, who
asked not to be identified, was raped at knifepoint in her North Side
condominium in August 1979. Two nights later, Bryant climbed into her home
through a bathroom window and attacked her again. She quickly called police
after he fled, and Bryant was arrested nearby. She identified him as her
attacker on the scene but never had to testify in court after he pleaded
guilty to both rapes.
Just two weeks ago, an investigator for the state's attorney's office called
to tell her that Bryant was up for parole again.
"All of the details [of the rapes] just came flooding back," said the
victim, then a 32-year-old divorced waitress.
She recalled the mirror in her condo that Bryant broke when he slammed her
against it. She thought of the distinct, terrifying scar on his arm. She
remembered trying to pretend she was sick, pregnant, anything to get him to
leave her alone.
Each year in Illinois, as many as 300 inmates convicted of crimes before
1978 may be up for parole hearings. Called C-number inmates, they were given
indeterminate sentences, requiring that they go before the parole board to
decide whether their incarceration will continue.
But the law changed in 1978, so judges now issue determinate sentences with
set release dates.
In addition to five rapes, Bryant was convicted of killing Frances Parro,
59, whose throat he slashed during a robbery in 1976, and LaDonna Warren,
16, whom he robbed, beat, strangled and set on fire in 1977. Because some of
the crimes for which he was convicted occurred before 1979, Bryant had the
option of being sentenced under the pre-1978 law.
The hearings are hard on surviving families and victims, said Assistant
State's Atty. Gina Savini, who handles parole hearings.
"Whatever sentence the inmate got, the victim's serving a far worse one
because they have to live with this crime," Savini said. "A lot of these
people have to continue to live in fear that [offenders] might get paroled."
Although each rape victim deals with the trauma differently, the recurring
parole board hearings can inflict new trauma, according to experts.
"I think the lengthiness of our criminal justice process for our victims
actually draws out the experience of rape," said Sharmili Majmudar,
executive director of the Chicago-based Rape Victim Advocates. "Regardless
of when, whether it's right after or 50 years later, it still takes a
tremendous amount of courage and strength for someone to come forward and
identify themselves as a survivor and tell their story."
For many years after her attack, the Missouri woman said, she lived in a
fog, unable to keep jobs in Chicago or relationships with friends. She
blamed herself.
"I turned into a plant practically, immobile, [a] vegetative, quivering mass
of fear," she said. "Everybody I knew thought I was nuts. Everybody wanted
to be far away from me. I was cruel. I didn't know who was being nice to me.
I would lash out. I would scream."
She moved from Chicago to live with her mother. And slowly, she started to
rebuild her life. She married a "wonderful man," she said, and told him a
few years ago about the attacks.
Fearful of therapy in the early years, she has since sought professional
help. Thoughts of Bryant, while never gone, lessened, she said.
She has grown stronger, she said. Perhaps now, if she told her story, others
might benefit, she said. Perhaps now she will be the one to wield power over
his life, instead of him over hers.
So she wrote a letter, describing to the parole board the lasting effects
Bryant's attacks.
"He has stifled my life long enough," she said in the interview. "You need
to be able to say, 'This is evil and I survived it and if you need to know
how, I can tell you how I did it.'"
The parole board is expected to make a decision in a few months.
By Angela Rozas Chicago Tribune staff
reporter
Published June 27, 2007
A week after he was released from prison for violating
parole for a previous robbery, Paris Gosha was charged Tuesday with
robbing and killing a South Side Leona's restaurant manager last year, the
fourth person charged in the case.
Gosha, 19, is accused of killing Corey Ebenezer, 26, in the Hyde Park
restaurant on Jan. 15, 2006, a slaying authorities say was in retaliation
for Ebenezer firing a waitress there.
Gosha had been in the
Illinois Department of Corrections since November after violating parole
for a 2005 aggravated robbery conviction, but was released June 19. Police
said they didn't expect Gosha to be freed until next month, but a
spokesman for the Department of Corrections said that Gosha earned an
early release because of education-related credits and that the agency
alerted police on June 18 that Gosha's release was pending. The spokesman
would not say whom the department called. Wentworth Cmdr. Patricia Walsh
said the department did not inform police.
After Gosha's release, police issued an alert for him, and tracked him
down to the 5100 block of South Prairie Avenue, where he was arrested
Tuesday.
Gosha is a cousin of the fired waitress, Erika Ray. Last week, police
announced murder charges against Ray, 25, and a 15-year-old cousin, who
was transferred to Juvenile Court because he was 14 at the time of the
killing. Lorenzo Wilson, 19, a former neighbor of Ray, was arrested in
Florida June 2 and is accused of shooting Ebenezer.
Authorities have said Ray went to Wilson's neighborhood after being fired
and persuaded him and the others to go to the restaurant to retaliate
against Ebenezer. Ray drove the group there after closing time, leading
everyone through a back door that Ray told them always is left open,
authorities said.
The group found Ebenezer inside the restaurant, counting money from the
day's receipts. They attacked him and he fought back before Wilson shot
him, police said. The group took $1,700 and fled, officials said.
Walsh said that police knew early on there had been a fight in the
restaurant the day of the slaying, but that it took time to put the case
together.
The case's big break came in November when a witness gave them information
about one of the suspects and evidence, she said. Wilson, who fled to
Mississippi and then Florida, confessed to the shooting as he drove south
with a friend, prosecutors said.
Another person, who witnessed the crime, also gave police information,
prosecutors said.
Violent crime rose by double-digit percentages in cities across the country
over the last two years, reversing the declines of the mid-to-late 1990s,
according to a new report by a prominent national law enforcement association.
While overall crime has been declining nationwide, police officials have been
warning of a rise in murder, robbery and gun assaults since late 2005,
particularly in midsize cities and the Midwest. Now, they say, two years of
data indicates that the spike is more than an aberration.
“There are pockets of crime in this country that are astounding,” said Chuck
Wexler, the executive director of the Police Executive Research Forum, which
is releasing the report on Friday. “It’s gone under the radar screen, but it’s
not if you’re living on the north side of Minneapolis or the south side of Los
Angeles or in Dorchester, Mass.”
Local police departments blame several factors: the spread of methamphetamine
use in some Midwestern and Western cities, gangs, high poverty
and a record number of people being released from prison
[ed. emphasis]. But the biggest theme, they say, is easy access
to guns and a willingness, even an eagerness, to settle disputes with them,
particularly among young people.
“There’s a mentality among some people that they’re living some really violent
video game,” said Chris Magnus, the police chief in Richmond, Calif., north of
San Francisco, where homicides rose 20 percent and gun assaults 65 percent
from 2004 to 2006. “What’s disturbing is that you see that the blood’s real,
the death’s real.”
The research forum surveyed 56 cities and sheriffs’ departments — as small as
Appleton Wis., about 100 miles northwest of Milwaukee, and as large as Chicago
and Houston. Over all, from 2004 to 2006, homicides increased 10 percent and
robberies 12 percent.
Aggravated assault, which is usually accompanied by the use of a weapon or by
a means likely to produce severe injury or death, according to an F.B.I. Web
site, increased at a relatively modest 3 percent, but aggravated assaults with
guns rose 10 percent. And some cities saw far higher spikes.
Homicides increased 20 percent or more in cities including Boston, Cincinnati,
Cleveland, Hartford, Memphis and Orlando, Fla. Robberies went up more than 30
percent in places including Detroit, Fort Wayne, Ind., and Milwaukee.
Aggravated assaults with guns were up more than 30 percent in cities like
Boston, Sacramento, St. Louis and Rochester.
Seventy-one percent of the cities surveyed had an increase in homicides, 80
percent had an increase in robberies, and 67 percent reported an increase in
aggravated assaults with guns.
This study relies on numbers from cities, rather than yearly F.B.I. totals,
which are typically released in the fall. The group collected similar numbers
last year, and those numbers were largely borne out by the data from the
Federal Bureau of Investigation.
Police chiefs say the trends in aggravated assaults are particularly alarming.
They are often considered a better gauge of violence than homicides; the
difference between the two is often poor marksmanship or good medical care.
“Had we not had some of the trauma rooms we have here in Rochester, our
homicide numbers would be higher,” said Mayor Robert Duffy, who served as a
police chief for seven years, before becoming mayor two years ago.
While murder rates hit 11-year highs in places like Boston, police officials
note that they are not seeing the highs of the late 1980s and early 1990s,
when crack cocaine fueled spikes in homicides, particularly in large cities.
Some cities like Denver and Washington had declines in homicides.
Still, the overall trend is mirrored in other places not covered by the
report. New York City, for example, which had enjoyed remarkable declines and
seemed immune to the rising murder rate elsewhere in 2005, reported a 10
percent increase in homicides in 2006. In Chicago, which had been cited as
another model of declining violence, homicides rose 4 percent from 2004 to
2006.
Police officials say the violence tends to happen among young men in their
late teens and early to mid-20s. In some cases, it is random. But in many
cases, it is among people who know one another, or between gangs, as a way to
settle disputes. Arguments that 20 years ago would have led to fistfights,
police chiefs say, now lead to guns.
“There’s really no rhyme or reason with these homicides,” said Edward Davis,
the police commissioner in Boston. “An incident will occur involving
disrespect, a fight over a girl. Then there’s a retaliation aspect where if
someone shoots someone else; their friends will come back and shoot at the
people that did it.”
In Richmond, Chief Magnus said he would often go to the scene of a crime and
discover that 30 to 75 rounds had been fired. “It speaks to the level of
anger, the indiscriminate nature of the violence,” he said.
“I go to meetings, and you start talking to some of the people in the
neighborhoods about who’s been a victim of violence, and people can start
reciting: ‘One of my sons was killed, one of my nephews,’ ” he said. “It’s
hard to find people who haven’t been touched by this kind of violence.”
Many chiefs blame the federal government for cutting back on police programs
that they say helped reduce crime in the 1990s. But they also say the problem
is economic and social. “We seem to be dealing with an awful lot of people who
have zero conflict-resolution skills,” Chief Magnus said.
In Rochester, Mr. Duffy said his city had the state’s highest dropout rate —
half of all students drop out— and the highest child poverty rate, with 40
percent of children under 18 living below poverty level.
“There’s a direct correlation between the kids who drop out of our high
schools who get involved in selling drugs and who end up in homicides,” Mr.
Duffy said.
As a police chief, Mr. Duffy brought in programs that had reduced crime in
other cities: a project cease-fire to end gun violence, a Compstat data
collection program to identify the areas of most stubborn crime. But it has
not helped.
“We’re doing all the right things consistently, but we have not seen relief,”
he said. “It takes much more than law enforcement.”
The family of the victim
of killer John Outlaw has been
notified every year that his killer has come up for parole, except this year.
Each year, they have been able, as is their right, to provide input and
statements of the impact this brutal killing has had on their family.
2007 was different. In
2007, the family was not notified that the Prisoner Review Board was
considering the release of John Outlaw. And that year, Outlaw
was released.
The family, and victims of Illinois
everywhere are outraged by this flagrant denial of the victims' rights in this
case. The family has sent a letter to the Prisoner Review
Board requesting that they withdraw the granted parole citing a lack of due
process.
There is a new group in
Illinois advocating for the early release of long term inmates convicted of
the most serious violent offenses. They are using the term
"earned release" to refer to this new kind of parole. Their website is
www.ilcer.org.
We have some questions
for those who want to restructure the determinate sentencing system in
Illinois:
What will be the objective measurable outcomes, to
borrow a term from our educational colleagues, required for those who would
qualify for "selective release?"
Why can't their concept of "selective release" be
accomplished through revising existing avenues of review without instituting
parole throughout the corrections system?
What socialization and educational programs will
be required of inmates to qualify for "selective release" to minimize the
risk to public safety?
Are those parole reform advocates who are so
adamant about releasing inmates to the communities willing to put their
money where their mouths are and be willing to vouch personally for those
who are "selective released," giving their time, fortunes, and energies to
be full-time on-call mentors for these inmates to help keep them from
falling into criminal temptation?
Why is the paroled inmate in this article able to
maintain a "model prisoner" deception all during his incarceration, only to
commit a monstrous crime following his release?
How can anyone who has called for parole reform in
Illinois guarantee that this will not happen in Illinois if parole is
introduced?
Noted prison reform scholar, Lawrence Jablecki, PhD of the
University of Houston, Clear Lake, sent us this letter that he wrote giving
his position on the concept of "earned release" for prisoners and the
abolition of Life Without Parole. Thank you, Dr. Jablecki, for
reinforcing our position on these very important topics.
Dear Mr. R (Founder of Illinois Citizens for Earned
Release):
Since 1989, I have been on the adjunct faculty of the University of Houston at
Clear Lake. All of my students are prison inmates housed in the Ramsey Unit of
the Texas Department of Criminal Justice.
One of my current students in a master's level course called The Justification
of Punishment brought your campaign to my attention and I have read your
position paper and that of IllinoisVictims.org. It appears that you share some of the
same beliefs and goals, but disagree on some very important issues. I am
writing to share my thoughts which are grounded in 18 years as the Director of
an adult probation department and my teaching of philosophy classes to several
thousand inmates, most of whom were incarcerated for violent offenses.
First, many inmates experience profound changes during their incarceration,
specifically, they are "better" persons who are no longer a danger to the
public and have earned a chance to redeem themselves in society. Some,
however, are incorrigibly mean and evil and fully deserve to be incarcerated
for life without parole because of their past crimes. I do not believe in the
death-penalty primarily because of the fact that some innocent folks are
convicted and executed.
Texas has a very broken parole system which is under the gun of the current
legislative session because for many years the decision makers have failed to
consistently follow their own release criteria. Thousands of non-violent
offenders remain locked up despite having completed many programs and earning
time for good conduct.
Your goal of re-instating parole will never win a legislative consensus unless
you bring all interested parties to the discussion, victims groups,
prosecutors, judges, human rights advocates, probation and parole,
psychologists and criminologists. I truly would like to see an earned release
model put in place, but this cannot be done quickly. If you Google my name,
you will find much that I have written on this subject and discover that I am
a strong supporter of what I call "habilitation", a civilizing process is
which the power of ideas grab a mind and change the direction of a life. I
believe in restorative justice, but this paradigm will never get an
opportunity to work absent the buy-in of victims and survivors whose pain and
suffering are almost beyond belief.
I applaud your goals, but not everyone deserves to earn their release. If you
abolish life without parole, I hazard the guess that this will fuel the fire
of death-penalty groups.
The following article appeared on the Chicago Tribune's
front page on January 26, 2007. It shows all too clearly the dark side
of the parole issue and the dangers of recidivism.
Father's nightmare relived
--------------------
Allen Learst's son was murdered by Danny Rouse. Despite Learst's
pleas, Rouse was freed. What happened next was unthinkable.
By Rex W. Huppke
Tribune staff reporter
January 26, 2007
MANKATO, Minn. -- Allen Learst's phone rang the day after Halloween. He
answered, heard a woman's voice, a television reporter from Indianapolis.
"Is this Allen Learst?" she asked.
"Yes, it is."
"Are you the same Allen Learst whose son was killed by Danny Rouse?"
"Yes," Learst said. "I am."
Rouse. That awful name, burned like a brand on his memory nearly three decades
ago. Late October 1979. Learst was told his 5-year-old boy, Jason, had been
murdered, his throat slit while he slept.
Danny Rouse did it. He was convicted and was supposed to spend his life in a
Kansas prison.
For Learst, justice made sense. But in 1994, after only 15 years, Rouse became
eligible for parole.
Horrified, the father showed up before the Parole Board. He spoke of how
Rouse's crime tore him and his family to pieces. He begged them to show no
mercy.
A cycle began. Every few years Rouse would go before the board and Learst
would write impassioned letters sparing no detail, forced to relive the worst
moments of his life.
It worked. Until last year. In March, Rouse was set free, paroled to a
brother's home in Indiana. Without explanation, a life sentence had been
shortened to 26 years.
About seven months after Rouse's release, Learst got the call from the
reporter.
"There's a girl gone missing here in Indiana," she said. "They've picked up
Danny Rouse."
Learst winced. The room blurred.
Two desperate words escaped.
"Oh no."
Stephanie Wagner grew up in Royal Center, a tiny town in the pancake-flat
heart of north-central Indiana. She was 16 and met Danny Rouse last fall after
landing her first job as a waitress at the Indian Head Restaurant, a diner
about 15 miles north of her home.
Rouse was a dishwasher. Quiet. The boss routinely yelled at him to work
harder.
Stephanie was sweet and attentive to customers, always keeping busy.
"You don't meet many 16-year-olds who want to work hard," said owner Mike
Fitousis.
On Halloween night, after the restaurant closed, Stephanie prepped the tables
for the next morning's customers and Rouse sat in a corner booth by the
gumball machine rolling silverware in white paper napkins. He didn't usually
do this--it was Stephanie's job. When she saw how he'd helped, she thanked him
politely.
She walked into the kitchen, punched her time card and headed for the door,
with Rouse not far behind. Under the pink glow of the parking lot's security
light, Rouse and Stephanie said good night to each other. Each got in their
car and drove off.
That was the last time anyone saw Stephanie Wagner alive.
Allen Learst's son was born in 1974 in Michigan's Upper Peninsula. The boy's
parents were in their 20s, a couple of hippie kids trying to find their way.
They split in 1977. Kathryn Crowley took Jason with her to Wichita, Kan., to
start a new life.
Learst always kept in close touch with his son by phone, and they spent time
together whenever possible. In the summer of 1979, Learst was in Michigan
doing fieldwork for the federal fish and wildlife service.
Earlier that year, Crowley had met Danny Rouse, a friend of a friend. Rouse
was a native of northwest Indiana and had recently moved to Kansas.
He worked as a drill press operator at a Wichita factory. Crowley got a bad
vibe from him at first, but eventually felt comfortable enough to let him stop
by her duplex from time to time.
On the night of Oct. 28, Jason was tucked in bed asleep. With Halloween
coming, he'd been making plans to wear a snap-button cowboy shirt and a pair
of toy six-shooters.
Rouse came over about 8 p.m. with some beer. He and Crowley had a couple of
drinks, smoked two joints and watched "One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest" on TV.
When the movie ended, Rouse asked Crowley if she wanted to have sex. She said
no. Rouse said he was going to leave and asked her to get the rest of his beer
from the refrigerator.
As she reached into the fridge, Rouse struck her from behind and began
stabbing her.
"I didn't think he would stop stabbing me unless he thought I was dead, so I
fell limp," she testified during Rouse's trial.
Rouse, believing he'd killed Crowley, went to Jason's bedroom and slit his
throat, killing him.
"I heard my son die," Crowley said during the trial. "He didn't cry out or
anything. It was just the sound of him dying."
Rouse then went to the bathroom, washed blood from the knife and from himself.
He removed the empty beer cans from the trash, turned off the television,
pulled down several window shades, turned off the lights and left, locking the
door behind him.
He drove off, sold his car to a friend for $20 and boarded a bus bound for
Chicago.
U.S. Highway 35 runs north and south through the Indiana town of Winamac, its
two lanes curving past the front of the Indian Head Restaurant. On Halloween
night, a cook standing outside saw Stephanie Wagner turn her green Chevy
Lumina north on U.S. 35, likely to run a quick errand or stop and get gas. She
would eventually head south, toward her home in Royal Center.
Danny Rouse left the restaurant at the same time and drove south. The cook
didn't think anything of this, but it was odd. Rouse lived with his brother in
Monterey. He should've taken the highway north.
As Stephanie made her way home, through tiny Star City, past the towering
grain elevators of Thornhope, police believe her headlights shone on a SUV
pulled over on the west side of the road.
It was Rouse's Geo Tracker. The hood was up.
That Stephanie would pull over on a dark, rural highway to help a 51-year-old
man she barely knew was no surprise. Friends say that was just her nature.
Until about a year before, she was a high school student in Royal Center, a
member of a public service club and a manager of the girl's basketball team.
But she dropped out last November to be home-schooled, hoping to spend more
time helping raise her 5-year-old brother.
Stephanie never talked much about college or plans for the future. Jennifer
Hayden, 17, a close friend, said she lived in the moment, loved to socialize,
thrilled at blowing her weekly paycheck at the nearby Wal-Mart.
She was trusting, helpful.
And on Halloween night, police say she and Danny Rouse were alone on a dark
stretch of road flanked by two harvested cornfields.
At a probable cause hearing on Nov. 2, Cass County Sheriff's Detective Tom
Wallace recounted Rouse's explanation of what happened next: "Mr. Rouse told
us that this feeling that he really can't describe come over him, and that he
attacked Stephanie Wagner."
Learst had spent the summer and early fall of 1979 roaming the tributaries of
the Great Lakes for the fish and wildlife service, looking for signs of sea
lamprey, an eel-like fish that preys on trout and salmon. When his boss told
him the trip was being cut a day short, it was no surprise. It was a rainy
fall. Their work was winding down anyway.
His boss knew what had happened to Learst's son but couldn't bear to tell him.
When Learst returned to his apartment in the little town of Marquette, Mich.,
his girlfriend was waiting.
"I've got something to tell you," she said, "and it's going to be the hardest
thing you'll ever hear in your life."
Jason was dead. Murdered. Kathryn was clinging to life in a Kansas hospital.
The words--Jason is dead--became a marker cemented in time. Learst's life was
forever split into before and after, and the after became a slow parade of
sorrowful events.
They buried Jason in eastern Michigan. It was raining at the funeral. The
leaves were off the trees. Learst remembers little more than that.
Rouse was arrested the day after the murder, taken off a Chicago-bound bus
that had stopped in Bolivar, Mo. He was convicted of first-degree murder on
May 23, 1980 and was sentenced to life in prison.
Learst tried to move on. He continued working, but thoughts of Jason were
never far, surfacing without provocation.
He began drinking heavily, calling it "partying." But he was trying to forget.
It took him years to realize that was never going to happen.
At 3:54 a.m. on Nov. 1, 2006, a 911 call came in to the Cass County Sheriff's
Department in Indiana. Jane Gonzalez said her 16-year-old daughter, Stephanie
Wagner, had not returned home from work at the Indian Head Restaurant.
The mother told police what kind of car she was driving, that she'd been
wearing black pants, a white shirt and pink and black shoes.
Heidi Fitousis, who owns the restaurant with her husband, awoke to a phone
call from a sheriff's deputy. He asked if she'd seen Stephanie leave the
restaurant with anyone.
"It was really weird," Fitousis told the deputy. "She walked out with the
dishwasher, Dan."
She said she knew Danny Rouse had served time in prison, believed he'd killed
a boy and tried to kill the boy's mother, but wasn't sure of the details.
They'd hired him as a favor to a waitress whose mother was dating him.
Law-enforcement officers began searching for Rouse. They found him at the
restaurant when he arrived for work at his normal start time.
"That son of a bitch," said owner Mike Fitousis. "At 10:30 a.m. he walked in
the door like nothing happened."
At age 37, a decade after his son's death, Allen Learst found a new calling:
writing. He quit the fish and wildlife service and went back to school in
Michigan, eventually earning a graduate degree in English and teaching
creative writing.
He fell in love with words, often writing about deeply personal experiences,
including his combat service in Vietnam. But he could never find the voice to
write about his son's death.
In 1994, a letter arrived from the Kansas Department of Corrections. Danny
Rouse was coming up for his first parole hearing.
Learst couldn't believe it. How is that possible? Rouse was given a life
sentence. It had only been 15 years.
Rouse was sentenced under laws enacted during a time when Americans believed
more in prisoner rehabilitation. Though he was given a life sentence, his fate
after 15 years rested in the hands of a three-member Parole Board charged with
deciding when he was fit to re-enter society.
Learst wrote a letter to the board months before it met, and he and his
ex-wife appeared in person to protest.
Rouse's parole was denied. He came up again in 1997, 1999, 2001, 2003, 2004
and 2005.
Each time Learst sent letters, saying Rouse's crime was "methodical and
calculated," warning that the man posed a "dangerous threat to society." Each
time parole was denied.
Until March.
Danny Rouse walked out of prison on the 21st of that month, paroled to his
brother's Indiana home. The Parole Board's reason for releasing him is
unclear. Their deliberations are confidential. Parole Board administrator
Colene Fischli spoke only in general terms about the release.
"There comes a time when this person has absolutely done everything that they
can," Fischli said. "I think there comes a time when the board feels that he
or she has done everything that we've asked and they really have no other
reason to deny them parole."
Learst was furious. He couldn't shake the feeling that Rouse was still a
danger. He phoned Rouse's parole agent in Indiana and told him to keep a close
watch.
Then, about seven months later, a TV reporter from Indianapolis placed a call
to Minnesota. Allen Learst was sitting in his basement office, his world about
to be torn apart yet again.
Rouse was taken into custody Nov. 1. Police say that during questioning he
admitted murdering Stephanie Wagner after she spotted his vehicle on the side
of the road and stopped to help.
"He said he attempted to strangle Stephanie Wagner and he thought that he had
strangled her to death," Wallace, the Cass County detective, said during
Rouse's probable cause hearing. "And then he noticed that . . . she was not
dead and he used what he described as an 8-inch hunting knife, an 8-inch blade
... and he stabbed her."
Wallace testified that he drew a map and Rouse pointed out where he'd dumped
Stephanie's body. She was found about a mile from her abandoned car, two rows
deep in a field of corn.
Cass County Superior Court Judge Thomas Perrone found probable cause for
Rouse's arrest.
"Am I going to need a lawyer?" Rouse asked the judge.
"Yes, sir, you will," Perrone said.
Rouse was formally charged with murder and criminal confinement the next day.
He faces up to 65 years in prison on the murder charge. The judge entered a
not guilty plea on his behalf, and Rouse's attorney, Bradley Rozzi, declined
to comment on the case, which is set for trial Feb. 7.
For all his years of writing, it wasn't until March that Learst managed to lay
down words about his son's murder. They came to him just days after Rouse was
paroled, perhaps swept out by a turbulent mix of anger and sadness and fear.
He finally typed: "My son was murdered."
And he acknowledged: "There are details I remember about Jason, but what
troubles me is how they lose their definition, their sharp edges, like snowy
winters, when the landscape is blurred."
Learst sobbed when he learned of Stephanie's death. He was 27 years into the
horrible journey her family was just beginning.
"What torments me the most is that I know from that day forward, their lives
are altered in ways they could never imagine," he said. "In the next year or
two they're going to relive it over and over and over again. It's going to
stretch them to the point where they'll wonder if they can survive."
The only comfort he can offer is that he has survived. He has moved on with
his life, holding fast to the image of a child stuck in time. Knowing the
image fades, but never disappears.
----------
rhuppke@tribune.com
Copyright (c) 2007, Chicago Tribune
AND THE LINK FOR THE SIDEBAR STORY WHERE ILLINOIS LAW IS DISCUSSED
Here is Sidebar story that refers to Illinois' laws:
Killer's penalty preceded
harsher sentencing laws
By Rex W. Huppke
Published January 26, 2007
The concept of releasing prisoners on parole before they
complete their full sentence has been a cornerstone of correctional systems
for much of the 20th Century, born of the belief that most criminals can and
should be rehabilitated.
But rising crime rates in the late 1970s caused a seismic shift in the
country's attitude--rehabilitation went out the window and harsh punishment
came into vogue. The mission of parole was lost in the rush to give
offenders long mandatory sentences, and parole policies began to vary widely
from state to state.
Sources for this story
This story is based on
interviews with Allen Learst and a review of his writing; a review of
court records and newspaper stories from Danny Rouse's 1980 trial;
interviews with current Wichita District Atty. Nola Foulston; an interview
with Colene Fischli, administratorof the Kansas Parole Board; an audio
recording of Rouse's probable cause hearing Nov. 2 in Indiana; records
from the Cass County Sheriff's Department and the prosecutor's office;
interviews with Rouse's attorney, Bradley Rozzi; an interview with the
owners of the Indian Head Restaurant; and interviews with friends of
Stephanie Wagner, her high school principal and residents of Royal Center,
Ind.
Illinois, like many states, switched to
determinate sentencing in the 1970s. That meant the length of each
inmate's sentence was predetermined. The state's Parole Board now only
has the power to parole inmates sentenced under the old laws.
Danny Rouse, convicted of killing Allen Learst's 5-year-old son in
Wichita, Kan., was sentenced to life in 1980, right on the cusp of these
sweeping changes. At the time, a life sentence in Kansas meant a minimum
of 15 years in prison, after which parole became a possibility.
Had Rouse committed the crime just a few years later, it's likely he
would still be locked up.
Grandfathered in under the old laws, Rouse was able to start making a
case for freedom in 1994. Though repeatedly denied, he finally persuaded
the Kansas Parole Board to release him last March.
In November he was charged with murdering 16-year-old Stephanie Wagner
in Royal Center, Ind.
Colene Fischli, administrator of the Kansas Parole Board, said
Rouse met all their requirements and had been a model prisoner.
The board's deliberations are not public record.
Naturally, Stephanie's friends and relatives, and the father of the boy
Rouse killed in 1979, question Rouse's release. They want answers and
accountability, but neither is likely to come.
"The board doesn't have a crystal ball," Fischli said.
"Certainly if they had information that the person was a risk they would
not have released him."
The Chicago Tribune has
developed a five-part video special report on the pending release
of a C# prisoners who was convicted of killing a police officer.
It includes the victim's family discussing the impact of the
parole process on them. It also shows the PRB at work in one
of their meetings.
The report can be viewed here.
Bivens family are opposing
clemency for man who killed guard in 1978 bank robbery
By RON INGRAM - H&R Staff Writer
DECATUR - Family members of Donald L. Bivens Sr., a Decatur
bank guard killed in a 1978 robbery, are opposing the
executive clemency petition of Cornelius Lewis, the man
convicted for the crime.
Lewis, 63, is serving a prison sentence of life without
parole for shooting Bivens on Dec. 14, 1978, as he, his sister
Bernice, Willie Sangster and Maurice Farris took $62,061 from
five Citizens National Bank tellers that Bivens was escorting.
Farris, driver of the getaway car, cooperated with
prosecutors and testified at Lewis' trial that after the
robbery, Lewis said the guard went for his gun and "I had to
burn him." Lewis, his sister and Sangster were convicted of
first-degree murder, armed robbery and aggravated kidnapping.
Bivens' sons, Steve and Donald Jr., are opposing Lewis'
request to Gov. Rod Blagojevich for clemency as is Macon
County State's Attorney Jack Ahola and his first assistant,
Richard Current, who prosecuted the case and won the
convictions in 1979.
A hearing on Lewis' petition is scheduled before the
Illinois Prisoner Review Board on Jan. 17 in Springfield. A
review board spokesman said the board's recommendations are
secret and the governor rules on those recommendations at his
discretion.
"I intend to be there," said Steve Bivens, the late guard's
youngest son. "My brother, Don, will try to be there, too.
This (petition) came out of the blue. It's been 28 years and
it seems like there is no end to it."
In a letter to the prisoner review board, Steve Bivens
described his shock on Dec. 14, 1978, when his brother called
to tell him their father had been killed. He said the call
came as he was preparing to take fall semester exams at
Illinois State University.
"I had listened to what he just told me but it seemed like
a dream," Bivens wrote. "Thus a 28-year ordeal started for my
family that continues to this day."
Bivens' letter continued, "Unlike Cornelius Lewis, my
father was an outstanding citizen and a dedicated public
servant. He was a police patrolman, a detective, a probation
officer and a genuinely highly respected member of the
community. He even had the local juvenile center named after
him."
The letter concluded by asking the board to dismiss Lewis'
request for clemency and allow him to remain imprisoned for
the rest of his natural life.
Current also wrote the prisoner review board a letter
opposing Lewis' request.
"The evidence (at trial) showed that the defendant was a
criminal who was a mercenary," Current wrote. "He was a
Minnesotan recruited (by Sangster) to commit a bank robbery in
Illinois, a state to which he had no ties."
Lewis previously had been convicted of bank robbery in
Minnesota and sentenced to 20 years in prison, Current said.
Early on Dec. 14, 1978, Lewis and his three accomplices
drove to the parking lot of a Decatur day care center,
kidnapped a woman who had just dropped off her child, taped
her hands and eyes and placed her in the trunk of her car,
Current said. That car was used in the robbery with the woman
still trapped in the trunk, he said.
The quartet drove to the Citizens National Bank, exited the
car and went into the bank's parking garage where Bivens was
just starting a van holding five female tellers, each with a
briefcase full of cash, Current said.
Lewis pulled the right hand van door open, leaned in,
ordered the tellers to be silent and shot Bivens, who died
within a few minutes, Current said. Lewis and his sister took
three of the briefcases and fled, he said.
"The defendant executed Donald Bivens Sr. for $62,061.32,"
Current said.
For an act expressed in mere words, forgiveness inspires
fierce reactions.
Awe at the sight of forgiveness extended from a sea of grief.
Perplexity at forgiveness granted in situations in which we
ourselves cannot imagine doing so.
Fury on the part of those struggling through their own grief
when outsiders urge them to forgive.
Forgiveness came into view last week in the words of Sue
Pilgreen, whose 21-year-old son, Jerod, was one of four young
people killed in a North Side fire.
Within only two days of confronting a parent's worst
nightmare, Pilgreen forgave the homeless woman who has been
charged with arson and four counts of murder.
"I firmly believe that the woman that they have arrested, if
she has done this, she must have had something wrong with
her," she told the Tribune's Jeff Long. "I have forgiven her
because I don't think she was in her right mind."
Even to an expert whose professional life is devoted to urging
people to find peace through forgiveness, it seemed
remarkable.
"The murder or death of a child is the single hardest thing
that people seem to be able to recover from.... Most people
require a good degree of time to process the horrible wounding
before they think of forgiveness," said Fred Luskin,
co-founder and director of the Stanford University Forgiveness
Project, which has conducted and studied forgiveness training
in various settings, including with families of murder victims
in Northern Ireland.
More commonly, he said, people reluctantly decide to forgive
someone because they are desperate to end a long period of
suffering.
"They say, There's only so much I can take, so much grief, so
much anger. I'm going to eat myself alive, there has to be a
better way."
The exceptions tend to be people motivated by faith, such as
the Amish in Lancaster County, Pa., who stunned outsiders in
October by forgiving the gunman who killed five girls and
wounded five others at a school before killing himself.
Indeed, it was Pilgreen's faith that moved her to forgive, she
said, reflecting days later on her swift reaction.
"All I could think of was that Jesus forgave the two criminals
that were on the cross next to him when he was crucified,"
Pilgreen said. "That is my belief. If Jesus can forgive them,
then that is what we should do. And then maybe this would be a
better place if people would just not hold grudges."
But faith does not lead all people to the same place.
Patricia Nichols, of the South Side, is a church-going woman.
"I am a believer; I do believe," she said. "And I know that
God says we're supposed to forgive. But I'm not there."
Nichols is in agony. Her only child, Tasha Nichols Mack, was
murdered in North Carolina four years ago at age 27. Mack's
estranged husband has been charged in the murder.
Nichols can imagine forgiving a person who did not intend to
cause harm. But someone who stabbed her daughter to death? No.
"Do I forgive? Right now I can tell you, No, I don't," said
Nichols, 54, a retired Chicago Police Department personnel
employee who with her husband helped start the Chicago-area
chapter of the National Organization of Parents of Murdered
Children.
People sometimes tell her that she should forgive her
daughter's killer.
It makes her furious.
"It's easy for a person to tell you what you should or you
should not do when ... they cannot even imagine what you are
going through," she said. "That was my only child. She was my
life. It happened May 1, 2003, and this is 2007 and I think
about her every single day. And it seems as though it just
happened yesterday. That's what people don't understand. It's
nothing you can just get over like that."
Looking past murder
There are people who do forgive deliberate acts of violence.
When Essy Glenn, a South Side woman whose college freshman son
was fatally shot in Jacksonville, Fla., saw her son's accused
killer in court, she mouthed the words at him, "I forgive
you."
"Early on, after I thought I hated him and the entire city of
Jacksonville, I told God that if you could find the murderer
or murderers, I would forgive him and never hate him," she
told the Tribune's Tonya Maxwell last year, after the gunman
was convicted.
"Every day I wake up and say, `Let me forgive this person and
not be consumed by the hatred.'"
But others choose not to forgive. Their choice should be
respected, said Nancy Ruhe, executive director of
Cincinnati-based Parents of Murdered Children. Instead, they
are often pressured to forgive.
Forgiveness makes for a story people find comforting, she
said, while parents' profound anger is upsetting to behold.
And it is easier for society to urge people to forgive than to
genuinely support grieving parents, she said.
A story such as the one about the Amish families extending
forgiveness is painful for families of murder victims, Ruhe
said.
"I got a million phone calls saying, `Gosh, these people are
forgiving; isn't this wonderful?' And I'm thinking, no,
there's a family out there thinking, I'm a leper because I
can't do that."
Ruhe thinks it's fine if someone truly can forgive, though she
also thinks it's exceedingly rare. "Just don't make a
prerequisite," she said. "You don't have to forgive to move
forward. ... You will just have one less thing to be angry
about."
But that anger is a very large thing, say those who research
forgiveness, and losing it can transform lives.
Studies have shown that people who forgive those who have hurt
them experience substantial benefits.
"There is less anger, less hurt, less stress, less depression,
more hopefulness, more compassion and lower blood pressure,"
said Luskin, the author of the 2001 book "Forgive for Good,"
which offers a nine-step program on learning to forgive.
That was true even in studies he conducted among people who
had experienced the worst of life's horrors, Luskin said, such
as the mothers of children murdered in the violence of
Northern Ireland.
Robert Enright, a professor in the department of educational
psychology at the University of Wisconsin and one of the
founders of the International Forgiveness Institute in
Madison, Wis., has done such studies on female incest
survivors.
Those who were able to forgive their abusers--it took an
average of 14 months of weekly counseling sessions--emerged
from depression and anxiety and showed increased self-esteem
and hope for the future.
"A person [who forgives] is quite literally set free from the
bondage of resentment," he said.
Professor sees paradox
Forgiveness is a paradox, Enright said: It is a gift given by
a person who has been hurt to a person whose actions have
rendered him undeserving, but the person who benefits is the
one who gives the gift.
"A lot of times those who perpetrated terrible things don't
even care," he said. "We're the ones who are collapsing in on
ourselves."
Victims' families often are aware of the benefits of
forgiveness, even if they are not ready to grant it, said
Kimberly New, director of the Victim Witness Assistance
Program in the Cook County state's attorney's office.
"We do have a number of people who express that one day they
hope to reach a path of forgiveness, that they do not want to
spend the rest of their lives angry," she said.
Enright has been researching and promoting forgiveness for 23
years.
The International Forgiveness Institute is currently doing
forgiveness training with Milwaukee schoolchildren in a
program intended to reduce anger, depression and anxiety, and
improve academic achievement and behavior.
But as deeply as Enright believes in the benefits of
forgiveness, he said he would never pressure a Patricia
Nichols to forgive.
Forgiveness is a gift, he emphasized. "It is in the realm of
mercy."
And it is no simple gift. The words are generally the final
step of a long, painful process.
Sometimes a wound is too recent for people to consider
forgiveness, Luskin said; sometimes people think they have an
obligation to keep a grievance alive.
"For people who feel mistreated ... a complete lack of
reconciliation [seems] to be a kind of righteous response," he
said.
Forgiveness is not a pardon, Enright has written in studies,
and it should not depend on an offender's apology, because
that would give the power of healing to the offender.
Forgiveness also is not magic. Luskin admires Sue Pilgreen's
expression of forgiveness, but hopes no one mistakes it for
closure.
"I would be surprised if the emotional release would be
complete at this point, because a devastating loss like that
requires time," he said.
Even in her grief, Pilgreen herself has a clear sense of what
forgiveness is, and is not.
"It doesn't mean she shouldn't be punished," she said. "We are
forgiven by God, but there is still punishment.
"I'm Catholic, and confession is an important part of the
Catholic Church. When you go to confession, you do penance."
by JASON CLAYWORTH; DES MOINES REGISTER STAFF WRITER
Bhasker Dave has seen what can happen when Iowans with mental
health problems are released from prison but cannot afford
medication to manage their illnesses once they are free.
They do OK at first, largely because of the one-month supply
of medication provided by the state. But when that runs out,
the former convicts can go downhill quickly.
It's a problem for all Iowans, even those with no direct link
with such inmates, said Dave, superintendent of the Mental
Health Institute in Independence. Why? Because the estimated
900 people with mental illnesses released from Iowa prisons
each year end up back behind bars at a rate nearly that of
other inmates.
That costs Iowa taxpayers millions of dollars every year. The
one-day cost to keep a person in prison averages $64.02,
according to the Iowa Department of Corrections.
Iowa lawmakers appear ready to take a hard look at the issue.
The House is expected to vote today on a 3-½ year study that
would provide free medical care to hundreds of former inmates
with mental illnesses.
Supporters say the program would be the first in the nation.
It would cost Iowa taxpayers roughly $6 million; the federal
government would provide an additional $16 million.
The money offers a "really great opportunity to try a
different approach and see if it works," said Jennifer
Vermeer, assistant director of Iowa Medicaid Enterprise, which
is part of the Iowa Department of Human Services.
The study is "very worthwhile ... because I think it can
actually save us money later," said state Rep. Ro Foege, a
Democrat from Mount Vernon. "If this is successful, this can
be a model for the nation."
The free medication would come with conditions: Former inmates
must be employed.
The program would also offer other mental health services,
such as counseling and specially trained mental health parole
officers.
Without help to land and keep jobs, former inmates often go
back to a nonproductive lifestyle, said Kevin Concannon,
director of the human services department.
After their release, most inmates are not eligible for
assistance such as Medicaid, the health program for people
with limited income, corrections officials said. This means
that inmates with mental illnesses are often left without the
prescription drugs needed to manage their health.
The idea that former inmates could pay for their prescription
drugs out of their pocket is illogical, Dave said. Some drugs
cost more than $200 a month, and it's common for some people
to need multiple types of medication.
"If they're not taking their medications regularly, they
deteriorate," Dave said.
The program is dependent upon final grant approval from the
federal Centers for Medicine and Medicaid. A decision is
expected within the next two weeks, state officials said.
The proposal is included as part of the $1.1 billion health
and human services budget that was to be debated by the House
on Thursday.
As an example of parole boards getting things wrong, I refer
you to the New York Times article on the horrific rape, murder
and arson in Connecticut allegedly commited this summer by two
men out on parole (“When Horror Came to a Connecticut Family”,
August 7, 2007, p. 1). The two men, Steven J. Hayes and Joshua
Komisarjevsky, allegedly broke into the home of the Petit
family in Cheshire, Connecticut and terrorized the family. The
mother, Jennifer Hawke-Petit, was raped and strangled. Her
daughter Michaela, 11, was sexually assaulted, and, along with
her older sister Hayley, 17, was tied to her bed, doused with
gasoline and set on fire.
The New York Times reported that one of the men, Komisarjevsky,
in 2002 “confessed to more than a dozen burglaries, and was
sentenced to nine years in prison followed by six years of
supervised parole. But the state’s Board of Pardons and
Paroles has admitted mishandling his case by granting him
parole in April 2007 without first reviewing a copy of the
2002 sentencing transcript, in which the judge called him a
‘calculating, cold-blooded predator.’ “
State governments, facing leaner budgets this year as the
national economy struggles, are exploring strategies to
contain surging prison populations without building costly new
correctional facilities, according to a report released
Wednesday (Jan. 23).
At least 18 states took steps last year to free up space at
overcrowded prisons, prevent recidivism and otherwise stem the
rising costs of corrections, according to “The State of
Sentencing 2007,” a review of last year’s major criminal
justice trends in the states. Actions included amending or
agreeing to study sentencing or parole policies, expanding
inmate rehabilitation programs and tweaking other criminal
justice practices.
The study was conducted by The Sentencing Project, a
Washington, D.C.-based advocacy organization that pushes for
the elimination of mandatory minimum sentences and other
changes to state and federal criminal justice policies.
According to the report, four states (Arkansas, California,
Nevada and Wisconsin) in 2007 approved the early release of
some low-risk prisoners. In Nevada, for example, lawmakers
expanded “good-time credits” to let some inmates return to
society. California legislators granted local jail
administrators the power to release some offenders convicted
of misdemeanors.
California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger (R) this month announced
a much broader plan to release as many as 22,000 low-risk
offenders from the Golden State’s crowded prison system to
rein in spending by the state Department of Corrections.
California is facing an overall budget shortfall of more than
$14 billion over the next year and a half.
The study identified four states (California, Hawaii,
Louisiana and Washington) that last year expanded “re-entry
services” to help inmates transition to life outside prison
and ensure they don’t return. As many as half of those behind
bars return to prison within three years of their release, the
report said.
Meanwhile, three states (Colorado, Maine and Nevada) set up
panels to study the effectiveness of current sentencing
practices, while two other states (New Mexico and
Pennsylvania) directed existing commissions to study specific
aspects of their sentencing schemes, such as use of mandatory
minimums.
Taken together, last year’s state laws represent a shift in
thinking among lawmakers, according to the report.
“Although legislative sessions seldom close without some
penalty enhancements being added to the criminal code, the
tone and focus of many state legislative bodies has
demonstrably shifted and, as a result, there is increasing
opportunity for reform,” the report said.
In an interview with Stateline.org, the study’s author, Ryan
King, said state lawmakers are more willing to change criminal
justice policies because of the financial pressures states are
under. Corrections trails only health care, education and
transportation in taking state dollars.
“There’s simply not enough money in state budgets,” King said.
“That has brought a lot of legislators to the table with a
willingness to look at alternatives (to building prisons).”
There are signs states will continue to seek alternatives to
prison construction this year. In his State of the State
address Jan. 7, for example, Idaho Gov. C.L. “Butch” Otter (R)
proposed converting a warehouse to a 304-bed rehabilitation
center to help inmates with drug and alcohol problems to
ensure they don't break the law again.
