Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SUNDAY, November 6, 1994 TAG: 9411080045
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: A-1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: DIANE STRUZZI STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: PRINCETON, N.J. LENGTH: Long
"He can write us. ... He should write us," she emphasizes, her voice rich and resonant like the vibrations from a cello.
Since early morning, the phones at Centurion Ministries Inc. have created a constant backdrop of chatter. The previous night, the prisoner-advocacy organization was featured on CBS' "48 Hours" in a segment on clemency.
Most of Centurion's cases begin with a prisoner's letter, Germond says after hanging up. It's how she met Edward Honaker, the Roanoke man who was released from prison last month after serving almost 10 years for a rape he did not commit.
Honaker wrote Centurion on Feb. 15, 1988.
"I've prayed every night for the last four years for God to get me out of this place," he wrote. "It says in the Bible that He works in mysterious ways. Maybe you're His way of helping me."
Centurion takes only cases where inmates have exhausted their appeals, where they have nowhere else to go, says Germond, an investigator with the organization. Honaker fit that description perfectly.
Across the Hudson River, in lower Manhattan, is the workshop of Honaker's attorney, Barry Scheck. The Innocence Project is run by Scheck, a handful of professors and about 18 law students at the Benjamin N. Cardozo School of Law in New York.
Here, a defendant's genetic makeup can often mean the difference between prison and freedom.
Students participate as members of the school's criminal law clinic, where they get experience as defense attorneys. They track down a defendant's physical evidence - often lost or misplaced over time - and they scrutinize transcripts of the defendant's case. Under the direction of the professors, they gradually build a post-conviction defense based on genetic testing.
Scheck, a professor at the law school, has been in the forefront of pushing for the use of accurate DNA test results in the courtroom. Since the late 1980s, along with colleague Peter Neufeld, he has litigated some of the more highly publicized criminal cases where DNA has figured prominently.
Most recently, his expertise in the evolving field won him a spot on the O.J. Simpson defense team.
Aware of Scheck's background with DNA, Germond wanted him to help in Honaker's post-conviction defense. Before she had a chance to call, Scheck contacted her about the two organizations working together.
"It was God speaking to us," she said of the phone call.
Honaker's was the first case to combine the efforts of Centurion Ministries and the Innocence Project. And from that point on, proving his innocence became largely a matter of science.
"There were upwards of seven duplicate DNA tests done" on Honaker, Scheck said, including those completed by Virginia state forensic specialists.
"They were all done carefully, they were all consistent, and they were all exclusions," he said.
Scheck is fast-talking, quick-stepped, and can subtly slip his own spin on a topic into a conversation. Ask him about the controversies surrounding DNA testing - its impact on criminal cases - and his speech is rapid but methodical.
"If the technology is used responsibly, with the highest scientific standards, it will change the way we do business in our courts, the way we look at ourselves and the way we look at illness, I'm afraid," Scheck says. "It exposes the fact that the criminal-justice system is far from perfect."
Germond's approach is more brash. She is in-your-face, direct, unrelenting.
"I'm prepared to do battle," she said. "Give me a hard time, I don't pack my bags and want to leave. I want to come back."
Their personalities reflect their jobs. To watch each work is to view a contrast of styles in pursuit of the same goal: Germond peeling back the layers of a defendant's case by returning to the scene and reinterviewing witnesses; Scheck carefully navigating the unchartered legal waters of forensic DNA testing.
In Honaker's case, the teaming was a success.
'A slam-dunk case'
Edward Honaker was convicted of raping a Newport News woman at gunpoint in summer 1984. The state's case was built primarily on the victim's identification and one piece of forensic evidence that linked a hair on his head to one found on the victim's shorts.
During Germond's initial investigation, she revealed two elements in the prosecution's case that were questionable. First, Honaker had undergone a vasectomy in 1977 and was incapable of producing sperm. Yet, sperm had been found on the victim's vaginal swab.
Secondly, the victim - who at first told a park ranger that she was unable to see her attacker clearly - identified Honaker as the assailant only after she was hypnotized at the request of investigators. Hypnotically enhanced recollections have been inadmissable in Virginia courts since 1974.
There were other inconsistencies: The victim said her attacker spoke at length about his Vietnam experience, appeared to be left-handed and drove a yellow and light-colored Blazer.
Honaker was never in Vietnam and was right-handed; his Blazer was blue.
"The fact that sperm was found on the swab, I figured it was a slam-dunk case," Germond said. "The window dressing was the victim's description of her attacker."
DNA testing of the semen found on the victim's vaginal swab was the next step. In March, the first round of genetic tests revealed that neither Honaker nor the victim's then-boyfriend matched the sample on the vaginal swab. Hopes were high that clemency was near.
But the victim told investigators who were reinterviewing her that she had sex with a third man before the rape. State forensic specialists said the third man's sperm could have masked Honaker's semen.
Honaker's advocates set out to prove the sperm belonged to the rapist. A DNA sample was taken from the third man. Further genetic tests, which compared a wider variety of fragments of the DNA samples, proved that semen found on the swab was not that of Honaker, the victim's boyfriend or the third man.
Within weeks, Honaker was free.
"Kate is my earthly angel, my hero," Honaker said from his new home in Martinsville. "Without her I wouldn't be talking to you. She's always the best friend at the other end of the line."
The law works both ways
Above a boutique that sells lingerie in the town surrounding Princeton University are the offices of Centurion Ministries. On its walls are the organization's decade-long history, told through newspaper clippings:
There is Joyce Ann Brown, who was convicted and sentenced to life in prison in 1980 for the robbery and murder of a fur-store owner in Dallas. She was freed nine years later after Centurion Ministries revealed that an inmate lied to convict her.
There is Matthew Connor, who served 111/2 years in prison for the 1978 rape and ice-pick murder of an 11-year-old girl in a Philadelphia housing project. Centurion investigators found that testimony against Connor was false.
And there is George De Los Santos, who was the inspiration for the organization. De Los Santos was serving a life sentence in New Jersey for the 1975 murder of a Newark used-car salesman. He told a then-Princeton theological student named James McCloskey that he was innocent.
McCloskey was a son of privilege, who left his life as a Philadelphia executive to answer a spiritual call to become a Presbyterian minister. When he heard De Los Santos' story, he never looked back, and never was ordained.
Instead, he embraced the work of freeing those who claimed they were innocent and began Centurion Ministries. The name is a biblical reference to the soldier who declared Christ's innocence while standing at the foot of the cross.
"We're trying to undo something that is done. It's like a square knot that is tied tight and is long forgotten and no one cares," McCloskey says. "Trying to undo that now, without tearing it into shreds and making it whole again, is an extremely difficult task."
But the organization has succeeded in unraveling that knot throughout the years, helping to release 14 individuals who have been wrongfully convicted. It accepts only rape and murder cases in which the person has been sentenced to life in prison or death. Once free, the former inmates owe nothing.
The nonprofit agency is supported by contributions through churches, individuals and grants. To prove Honaker's case cost Centurion about $15,000, a good portion going to pay for the DNA testing.
"We answer every letter we receive," Germond said. "Lots of times we answer, 'No.' They'll say, 'I just drove the guy.' If you're present, you're involved. We're not about splitting hairs. It's over factual evidence."
One of the first things Germond and McCloskey do after they investigate is approach those who prosecuted the case with new information. If the prosecutor says that they're on the wrong track, or they find the prisoner is truly guilty, "we'll go away immediately," she said.
In Honaker's case, Germond went to the current Nelson County commonwealth's attorney, Phillip Payne. He listened and later became a vocal advocate of Honaker's cause, joining in a request for executive clemency from Gov. George Allen.
"Sometimes I tended to think the information she came up with exonerated [Honaker], but the information she had was not definitive," he said.
Payne allowed them to take the physical evidence that had been kept throughout the years and do DNA tests that were not available when Honaker was tried.
"The law has to work both ways," Payne says. "Here it exonerated."
In some cases, the facts don't measure up to the standards of the criminal justice system. Two of their clients were put to death despite their pleas of innocence and Centurion's efforts. Louisiana executed Jimmy Wingo for murder in 1987. And in 1992, Virginia electrocuted Roger Coleman, the Grundy coal miner whose claim of innocence landed him on the cover of Time magazine.
McCloskey spent four years trying to prove Coleman was not involved in a 1981 rape and murder of a 19-year-old housewife. To this day, Centurion has not abandoned the claim and continues to try to prove it.
"I shared [Coleman's] last meal with him, a cold pizza from Domino's," McCloskey said. "When you know in your heart of hearts that he's innocent, then he's executed by the electric chair, it doesn't get worse than that ... But I'm saved by throwing myself into other cases, reinvesting myself.
"Then there are joys like Ed Honaker."
`Considered upstarts'
Eight years ago, Germond first read about McCloskey's efforts in a New York Times story about the freeing of Nathaniel Walker. He had been sentenced to life plus 50 years for raping a New Jersey woman. A vaginal swab from the victim proved Walker's innocence.
Germond was captivated by the story and offered to help organize McCloskey's efforts.
"I ended up getting hooked in this work," she said.
McCloskey came from the conservative, money-driven world of business. Germond was a product of the '60s, who embraced the era's drug culture and communal lifestyle. Her experience in investigations is sheer inquisitiveness and guts. And she knows all the stereotypes about those who sympathize with the wrongfully imprisoned.
"I think we're considered upstarts, weak-kneed liberals and all the other negatives [applied to] those who suggest that there are flaws in the system," she said. "There are those who really think we're on the lunatic fringe ...
"But I believe that how we treat the least of our citizens is how we treat God. And that sure as hell means justice is really important."
Germond has held many jobs in her 47 years. She's worked for a gourmet coffee company, set up soup kitchens, worked at rape-crisis centers and with senior citizens. She's always had a sense that she wouldn't be doing it for her whole life.
"It became apparent quickly that I am where I belong," she said of her work with Centurion. "I have a real peace about what I'm doing."
In her office, three portraits are prominent. In each, the photographer has snapped Ed Honaker during his early moments of freedom. Germond appears near the edges of each, smiling.
Leaning just a bit forward in her chair, she says, "I feel satisfied that I've pulled one back from the fire."
by CNB