Injustice

Injustice seems to be running rampant because of ambitious prosecuting lawyers who have an uncontrollable desire to win a conviction even if the defendant is obviously innocent. Why is this happening?

Joe Swan explains injustice this way:

As a very young lawyer, from books that I read
I thought justice and law were the same;
But I soon put that juvenile thought from my head
And I studied the rules of the game.

More than a decade ago, a friend was telling me about a true crime book that she had read. At that time, my reading time was devoted to how-to-do-it books, computer books and an occasional science fiction book. The story my friend was telling me sounded very much like a science fiction story, unbelievable, so it immediately caught my attention. In 1998 I started developing this website dedicated to this injustice.  The story goes something like this.

In 1992 twin sisters, Betty Wilson and Peggy Lowe, were accused of supposedly contracting James White, a schizophrenic, delusional  alcoholic, ex-convict to kill, for the price of $5,000, Dr. Jack Wilson, Betty's wealthy husband, a prominent, well-liked, and well-known ophthalmologist.

The doctor was found in the upstairs hallway of his home brutally beaten and stabbed to death. White was arrested and after endless hours of interrogation accused the twins of hiring him to kill the doctor. The only connection the twins had with White was the benevolence they had bestowed upon him.

He was facing the electric chair, Yellow Mama as it was affectionately called, so he copped a plea agreement with the police. He would testify against the twins in exchange for a live sentence with the possibility of parole.  The sisters were arrested and tried. Betty, the alcoholic rich bitch who slept around especially with black men in the State of Alabama, was convicted and sentenced to spend the rest of her natural life in prison. Peggy, the saintly, churchgoing twin was acquitted.

Peggy's lawyer hired an outside forensic pathologist for a second opinion. He surmised that the doctor had not been killed at his home but another location and his body was planted in the upstairs hallway.  He also concluded that the doctor had been killed by two or three persons.

In 1994 the White recanted his trial testimony saying he had been coerced by the police and the twins had nothing to do with the murder of the doctor and that he had not killed the doctor. The night before White was to appear in court with this new evidence, he received a visit from the prosecuting district attorney who told him that if he recanted his original testimony, he would be committing perjury and would go to the electric chair. The White took the 5th at the hearing. Not only that, ten years later a witness, an ex-marine and former undercover agent, came forward with proof that White and two others participated in the murder of Dr. Wilson, but the witness was betrayed by a backwoods southern lawyer, a dimwitted college professor and a two-bit PI. So, Betty Wilson remains in prison for a crime she did not commit.

This latter incident inspired me to write a book about this injustice. For more information click here Kill for Hire - The Final Chapter of the Alabama Twins Murder Case