|
Alan
Gell | Lonnie Erby | North Carolina Moratorium Coalition
| Sister Helen Prejean |
Calvin
Willis
-
- A Crusade
Pays Off
- Calvin Willis is exonerated
-- and Janet Gregory has reason to celebrate
By Katy Reckdahl, September
30, 2003
Rarely is an inmate exonerated
without someone "outside" crusading for his or her
release. Most often it seems to be mom. Other times, it's a brother
or girlfriend or dad or auntie. For Calvin Willis, that crusader
was someone he'd never met -- Janet Gregory.
Willis -- who was exonerated
on Friday, Sept. 19, after 22 years in the Louisiana State Penitentiary
at Angola -- was quick to credit Gregory for his release at a
press conference last Tuesday attended by national Innocence
Project head Barry Scheck and Baton Rouge attorney Jim Boren.
The Innocence Project and Boren had thrown themselves into Willis'
case, and Willis thanked them.
But it was Gregory who truly
made it happen, Willis says. It was all because she had worked
as a paralegal for an attorney hired by Willis' grandparents.
The attorney had worked only briefly on the case before being
killed by a lightning strike. Gregory left the job, but she couldn't
leave two clients behind. One of them was Willis, who in 1982
had been convicted of raping a 10-year-old Shreveport girl and
had been sentenced to life without parole.
Compared to today's DNA profiles,
the 1982 lab tests were crude. "At the trial, they had shown
that the rapist was a Type O secretor and that Calvin is a Type
O secretor," Gregory explains. "But 60 percent of the
male population are type O secretors." That, and testimony
from the girls that the assailant had been wearing a cowboy hat,
were enough to convict Willis, who also was known for wearing
a cowboy hat.
Willis was sent to Angola,
labeled a child rapist. "A charge like that is not like
an armed-robbery charge, not even like a murder charge,"
Willis says. When people asked what he was in for, he recalls,
"I would say, 'A child molestation charge, but I didn't
commit it.' And they would say, 'Yeah, sure,' but you could see
in their eyes how they really felt."
For her part, Gregory never
thought that Willis was guilty. It wasn't that the assailant
had left behind a pair of size 40 boxers and that Willis wore
size 30. Or that the girl said that the rapist had a beard and
Willis was clean-shaven. Or that one of the girls present had
talked about another man stopping at the house that night. "Interestingly
enough, it wasn't a detail that necessarily convinced me,"
says Gregory. "It was just one big 'Whoa! He didn't do this.'"
The two -- inmate and crusader
-- first met in 1987, when two Angola guards escorted Willis
to his grandfather's wake. "All of a sudden, I look up and
see this woman coming at me. She just wrapped me up and hugged
me tight," Willis remembers. "I said, 'Who are you?'
It was Janet." They would see each other only two more times
before his release.
Also at that funeral service
were Willis' son, Calvin Jr., and his daughter, Dekesha. "They
were about 5 and 8 at the time," Gregory estimates, "and
I told them, 'You are going to hear some awful things about your
daddy, but they are not true.' And I will go to my grave saying
that."
Gregory left the funeral with
renewed vigor. With Willis' case files stowed in a closet in
her house, she tried legal avenue after legal avenue -- with
no luck. Then about five years ago, after Willis had heard about
the national Innocence Project from another inmate, Gregory submitted
forms to the organization. They were interested, she says, but
didn't have enough money for the DNA testing. So Gregory began
raising it. Eventually this single mom without much cash sent
the Innocence Project $6,000. About a quarter of it was her own
money, she says.
The eventual tab was $14,000
just for DNA testing alone. "Because of the age of the evidence
and the things they had to test," she says, "the costs
just ran up."
But in the end, it was money
well spent -- the DNA results showed that the DNA found at the
scene did not belong to Willis. "Calvin's DNA was not there;
it was not in her fingernail scrapings, it was not on the boxer
shorts," Gregory says.
Since Willis' release, his
case has been on the Today show and has been written about in
all the Louisiana newspapers and in the Los Angeles Times. Even
last Thursday, the TV cameras were still arriving at the little
house where he's living with his 85-year-old grandmother. But
the realities are already hitting home. He has no money, and
no hope -- at this point -- of getting any from the state. Louisiana
-- unlike 17 other states -- does not compensate those who have
been wrongly convicted.
Because of his conviction,
he can't vote in the upcoming election. He has no money. No work.
"I can go to a job right now and I can put 'exonerated'
on a job application," he says. "but people don't know
what exonerated means. I tell them I was in prison for 22 years
and they say, 'Oh, you're an ex-con.' And nobody wants to hire
an ex-con." Meanwhile, the man who is rumored to be the
actual rapist is still riding around town, free. Willis says
the man waved at him from the street last week.
Willis gets serious when he
talks about those topics. But, overall, he's happy, gleeful.
He's grateful for the stars above him, the night air, the two-hour
baths after two decades of showers. He's caught his grandma,
who's tickled to have him home, peeping in on him while he sleeps,
like a baby in a crib. And he's amused by the people who run
up to tell him they've seen him on television. "Women are
so bold now; they kind of scare me," he says, especially
because after all those years in prison, he's not used to people
just coming up and touching him.
Then last Monday, Sept. 22,
he held a new grandson in his arms. He had never held Calvin
Jr. that way because he was in prison by the time his son was
born, on Willis' 23rd birthday. But on Friday, they celebrated
their birthdays together, for the first time ever.
His crusader is still looking
out for him. Last week, Gregory gave him an early birthday present
-- a set of clippers, the case and all the attachments, he says.
He's going to enroll in barber college and he and his son --
who's a barber by day and a rapper by night -- hope to open up
a shop together. They'll probably call it Willis and Willis,
he says.
© 2003, Gambit Communications, Inc.
New youth program provides
motivational speakers, tutoring and jobs
Shreveport Times, March 9, 2005
Teens participating in a new
after-school program operated by Southern University in Shreveport
mix a taste of the real world with reality TV twice a week.
Youth Network Initiative targets
teens at risk of dropping out, young adults who dropped out of
school and young adults with a high school diploma who could
benefit from career training. The program, funded with a $182,000
federal Workforce Investment Act grant, serves 22 students and
will take in another 10 when career training starts.
Middle and high school students
receive tutoring, help with homework and preparation for state
standardized tests. Dropouts can take classes to prepare for
the general equivalency diploma test. The program helps younger
participants find summer or part-time work.
Dominique Jackson and Lisa
Bright, students at Booker T. Washington High School in Shreveport,
said they're looking forward to starting work soon. Bright will
take a part-time job at SUSLA. Jackson doesn't know where she'll
work, but "I'm depending on that check this summer."
"I have good people skills,
so I'm hoping I have a job with the public," Jackson said.
"I do good with kids, too."
Bright and Jackson were among
about a dozen high school students who listened intently Monday
as Shreveporter Calvin Willis described his 22 years in prison.
He was wrongly convicted of rape. DNA evidence freed him from
Louisiana State Penitentiary at Angola in 2003.
Youth Network Initiative provides
a variety of speakers to supplement classroom work and educational
games.
"Hopefully, it will motivate
students to get their education and show them that, even if you
have shortcomings, you can move up from it and move on,"
said Arcenia Anthony, SUSLA continuing education coordinator.
After more than an hour of
give and take with the students, Willis departed and the group
turned to academics, engaging in a raucous game based on the
TV show "Fear Factor." Students wrinkled their noses
as a young man tipped a plastic bag back and swallowed a pinkish-brown
substance.
"It's potted meat,"
Anthony said, laughing.
At another site, five older
teens studying for the GED also are planning two community service
projects. The first, a health fair scheduled for May 7, will
focus on everything that helps a community, including physical
and mental health, substance abuse and violence prevention. One
on May 14, dubbed Community Unity Fair, will focus on food and
clothing drives.
"We're having them research,
talk to people at churches, at the city, at Southern," said
Veronica Crandall, SUSLA's youth programs manager. "They
wanted to make sure we really were going to do this, not just
sit around in class talking about it."
|
Truth can never be
told so as to be understood, and not be believ'd. William Blake, The Proverbs of Hell
