THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Sunday, July 23, 1995 TAG: 9507230037
SECTION: FRONT PAGE: A1 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: BY LAURA LAFAY, STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: JARRATT LENGTH: Long : 240 lines
When prison inmate Michael Stokes told authorities in 1981 that he saw another inmate running away from the scene of a murder, they believed him. Stokes was subpoenaed as a witness in the inmate's trial, which ended with a guilty plea.
In 1994, when Stokes snitched on another inmate for having a homemade bomb, prison officials again took him seriously. The inmate was charged with possession of a chemical compound and later pled guilty to a lesser, related charge.
In the years between the two incidents, Stokes says, he routinely ratted to authorities about illegal activity by inmates. Because he kept making enemies, he was transferred from prison to prison and kept in protective custody.
In late May, after a gun and bullets were found in the typewriter of executed inmate Willie Lloyd Turner, Stokes went to prison officials with another piece of information: He had seen Turner with the gun and bullets three months earlier.
At that moment, his career as a reliable snitch came to an end. Prison officials didn't believe him.
Department of Corrections internal affairs investigators put him on a polygraph. According to DOC spokesman Jim Jones, the polygraph indicated deception, and Stokes then recanted his story. The following day, DOC Director Ron Angelone announced that the department's inquiry into the gun was closed and that investigators had found no evidence Turner ever had the gun inside prison walls.
Those findings, said Angelone, indicated the ``possibility'' that the gun in Turner's typewriter was ``an elaborate hoax.''
But in a prison interview this month, Stokes said he never recanted. Investigators spoke to him for 4 1/2 hours, he said, then he took the polygraph. Then they talked to him for several more hours before asking him to sign a qualified statement. That statement, Stokes insisted, said he saw Turner with what appeared to be a gun and what appeared to be bullets.
Stokes offered to take an independent polygraph at the expense of The Virginian-Pilot, but Angelone refused to allow it.
``When it's to their advantage (to believe him), everything's OK,'' Stokes said of DOC officials. ``But now that they're in the middle of it, they don't want to know.''
On May 30, Gov. George F. Allen ordered the state police to investigate the gun incident. In June, Stokes claims, correctional officers threatened him for snitching about the gun to state police. He wrote letters to the Virginia ACLU and an inmate advocacy group, asking for help and intimating that he was in danger.
On June 27, Stokes says, a correctional officer presided over a retaliatory beating which left him with a wound requiring 32 stitches.
Again, corrections officials said Stokes was lying. The attack, Angelone said in a statement, was a result of ``individual differences'' between Stokes and another inmate.
But now, nearly two months after the gun incident, lawmakers are increasingly questioning the competence and credibility of Angelone's department.
Last week, the Richmond Times-Dispatch reported that state police found a hacksaw blade inside the typewriter. Stokes, in a letter to The Virginian-Pilot dated July 12, had mentioned the ``possibility'' of just such a hacksaw blade. ``But nobody in the (DOC) investigation bothered to check,'' he wrote.
The fact that the department overlooked the hacksaw ``simply adds fuel to the fire,'' said state Sen. Richard J. Holland, D-Isle of Wight, chairman of the state Crime Commission's prison subcommittee.
``It's obvious the Department of Corrections should not be investigating themselves,'' said Holland. ``And there's a school of thought that says an agency such as the state police, which answers to the same administration, shouldn't do it, either.''
Del. Clifton A. Woodrum, D-Roanoke, blames Angelone.
``We should remember that Mr. Angelone came from a much smaller prison system in Nevada,'' Woodrum said Friday.
``Obviously, the Virginia system is more complex than the one he's used to. I just don't know how long we can wait for him to bring himself up to speed here.''
Another prison subcommittee member, Del. Howard Copeland, D-Norfolk, said Friday that he plans to call for a separate investigation into the Stokes beating.
In the fall of 1994, Stokes was moved to a cell next door to Turner's cell on a protective custody tier at the Greensville Correctional Center.
Stokes, 35, who is serving 73 years for the armed robbery of a savings and loan, and Turner, a condemned man waiting to die for the murder of a Franklin jeweler, got to know each other, Stokes said in a July 12 interview at Greensville.
``After a while, he (Turner) said that he liked me,'' said Stokes, a transvestite who prefers to be called ``Michelle.'' ``He would tell me things that he wouldn't tell nobody else.''
Stokes said Turner talked often about ``leaving.'' He also recounted the story of how correctional officers raided Turner's death-row cell at Powhatan Correctional Center in early 1994 and found, among other things, a homemade gun in a ceiling vent and, in the now-notorious typewriter, blueprints detailing an escape plan.
``After that, they took all his property, typewriter and all, and took it to Richmond and went over it with a fine-toothed comb,'' Stokes said.
``He didn't have no property when they transferred him to Greensville. He was here for two months with no property. And they kept the typewriter for even longer. He didn't get the typewriter back until last summer.''
In March, Stokes said, he walked past Turner's cell on the way to the showers.
``He said, `Who is that? Michelle? And I said, `Yeah,' '' Stokes recounted.
``And he said, `You know they're trying to kill me?' I said, `I heard that.' And he said, `Remember when I told you I got a ace in the hole?' And then he told me to stop back by after the shower.''
When he stopped back by, said Stokes, Turner showed him a pillowcase. ``The gun,'' he said, ``was underneath the pillowcase.''
``When I looked, I'm thinking, `He done made a gun out of something.' But then in the other hand, he had the bullets. And I knew he didn't make them, because they was real bullets. Then I remembered everything he used to say about a rude awakening and how people was going to be in for a surprise.''
Stokes said he immediately asked to be transferred to another part of the prison so he could ``get out of Dodge.'' He also said he tried to tell on Turner twice, but prison officials did not respond to messages in which he requested to talk with them. In April, he was transferred.
Stokes said Turner got the gun from a prison employee.
``I told you (the employee) was going to take care,'' Stokes said Turner told him while showing him the gun.
In an interview in Richmond on Tuesday, Stokes' story was recounted to Inspector General Raymond Gomes, who heads the DOC internal affairs unit. Gomes refused to comment on the case and would not release any records or information about Stokes.
The next day, state police arrived at Greensville and took Stokes to Chesapeake for a second polygraph, Stokes said Friday.
According to Stokes, the polygraph was administered twice. During the tests, said Stokes, the operator asked several unrelated questions in quick succession, then paused for several minutes after each question about Turner and the gun. After the tests, Stokes said, the operator told him he was lying and showed him the charts.
``He said, `This is where you're breathing too much here, and that's what makes me think you're lying.' And he said, `Yeah, you're lying.' And I said, `What? If you wait long enough after the question, then quite naturally, I'm going to have to breathe.' ''
Because he could not say whether the bullets he saw in Turner's hand were chrome or brass, said Stokes, a state police investigator also told him he was lying.
``These supposed to be law-abiding people who supposed to be looking for the truth,'' said Stokes. ``But they want it to be something different. I'm only an inmate. There's nothing I can do.''
Stokes, a soft-spoken man with a Snoop Doggy Dogg hairstyle, is nobody's ideal witness. From elbow to hand, his left arm is thick with white scars where he has repeatedly slashed it with a razor out of frustration. Last week, there was a fresh gash from the middle of his forearm to his wrist.
In prison culture, he says, they call people like him ``girls.'' Among the girls, he says, he is special because he is allowed to wear makeup. He clearly craves attention.
Lately, he's not getting much. Since he became the topic of news reports, he said, he has been transferred to an isolation unit where he can have no television, no phone calls, no commissary privileges and no recreation.
The state police investigation is expected to end this week, Superintendent M. Wayne Huggins said Thursday. ILLUSTRATION: Color photo
Michael Stokes said he knew of Willie Lloyd Turner's gun three
months before the execution.
Photo
LAURA LaFAY/File
On May 25, less than two hours after Willie Lloyd Turner was
executed, his lawyer found a gun in the inmate's typewriter. Later,
police found 12 bullets stashed under the weapon.
Graphic
CHRONOLOGY
May 25: Death-row inmate Willie Lloyd Turner is executed at
Greensville Correctional Center. Less than two hours later, Turner's
lawyer, Walter Walvick, discovers a gun in Turner's typewriter and
calls the Emporia Police Department. A police officer takes the
typewriter to department headquarters, where he finds 12 bullets in
a plastic bag underneath the gun.
May 26: The Department of Corrections begins an investigation
into the incident. Inmate Michael Stokes tells DOC internal affairs
investigators that he had seen the gun in Turner's cell in March.
He is given a polygraph, and then, according to DOC officials,
recants his story. Stokes will later deny recanting.
May 27: The Department of Corrections ends its investigation
after less than 36 hours. Reports of the gun in the typewriter are
``unfounded and raise questions about the possibility of an
elaborate hoax,'' corrections director Ron Angelone says in a
statement.
May 30: Gov. George F. Allen orders an independent investigation
of the gun. Also on this date, Stokes writes a letter to the
Virginia ACLU, saying he has told DOC of his knowledge of the gun,
but investigators ``are trying to keep it covered up.'' He
concludes: ``. . . If anything happens to me . . . publish this
letter, because I have been threaten(sic).''
June 8: Stokes again writes the ACLU, asking that the
organization help him contact Walvick or the state police to have
them ``come and talk to me'' about his knowledge of the gun
incident.
June 12: A state police investigator visits Greensville for more
than two hours, according to a prison logbook. This is about the
time Stokes says he was interviewed by state police. His interview,
Stokes says, lasted only about 20 minutes.
June 21: Stokes writes to an inmate advocacy organization, saying
he has been threatened for talking to state police. In the letter,
he says one officer ``stated that was just the beginning, and I
should learn to keep my mouth shut.'' Also on this date, Stokes
files an emergency prison grievance form, saying he wants to see a
prison official as soon as possible ``before matters explode beyond
understanding.''
June 27: Stokes is severely beaten and suffers a concussion and
wounds requiring 32 stitches. He tells his parents he was beaten by
another inmate while a guard looked on, in retaliation for telling
state police investigators what he knew about the gun.
July 5: DOC spokesman Jim Jones acknowledges that Stokes was
beaten by another inmate but says the beating was not related to the
death-row gun investigation.
July 8: Stokes files another emergency grievance in which he
claims a correctional officer told him, ``Some officers want to see
you hurt real bad . . . because some have lost there (sic) job, or
have heat on them and they are very mad.''
July 12: In a letter to The Virginian-Pilot, Stokes writes that
there was ``very well the possibility of a hacksaw blade'' in
Turner's possession on death row. The discovery of a hacksaw blade
in the typewriter is confirmed the following week.
Also on July 12, Stokes, in an interview at Greensville, requests
an independent polygraph exam, which he claims will indicate he is
telling the truth about the gun incident.
July 18: Citing the ongoing state police probe, Inspector General
Raymond Gomes, head of the DOC's internal affairs unit, refuses to
discuss the DOC probe even though it ended May 28 and the two
investigations are separate. Stokes' story is recounted to Gomes in
his office. Gomes refuses to comment about Stokes or to release any
of Stokes' prison records.
July 19: Through a department spokeswoman, Angelone says he will
not allow The Virginian-Pilot to pay for an independent polygraph of
Stokes. Meanwhile, Stokes says, state police take him to their
Chesapeake headquarters, where they administer a second polygraph
and tell Stokes is he lying.
KEYWORDS: MURDER PRISONS DEATH ROW CAPITAL
PUNISHMENT HANDGUNS INFORMANT by CNB