THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1996, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Sunday, June 30, 1996 TAG: 9606300054
SECTION: FRONT PAGE: A1 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: BY JUNE ARNEY, STAFF WRITER
LENGTH: 309 lines
It's 8 a.m. and Jon Babineau walks into the Portsmouth Jail - his first stop of the morning, before court in Norfolk, before a return trip to Portsmouth.
Inside, he meets Truvelle Faulk, an 18-year-old with a soft voice and a quick smile.
They exchange playful banter about jail food, family visits and books, on telephones separated by glass.
``Are you playing chess?'' Babineau asks.
``That's about the only fun game in here,'' Faulk says.
``Can you beat 'em all?''
``I can beat a lot of 'em,'' Faulk says. The two laugh.
Part of Babineau's job is to be counselor, cheerleader, friend.
By Faulk's account, it seems to have worked.
``He makes me laugh at times,'' Faulk said. ``He makes me feel good when I'm down.''
Despite the gentle cajoling and light conversation, Babineau's relationship with Faulk is as serious as relationships get. Babineau may be the only thing standing between Faulk and a death sentence.
In fact, the lives of two other teenages accused in unrelated killings also hang in the balance of Babineau's skills as a defense lawyer.
Faulk pleaded guilty to capital murder in February to escape the death penalty, but prosecutors continue to ask for death for Babineau's two other youthful clients - Chauncey Jackson and Royale Stewart. All three were 16 when they were charged with their crimes: murder.
``I've represented a lot of adults charged with capital murder,'' Babineau said in a recent interview. ``Fortunately, no one has been sentenced to die. But this is a different picture. These are kids the state is talking about putting to death.''
Babineau, who once ran unsuccessfully for Norfolk commonwealth's attorney, is handling all three cases this summer. Stewart is set for trial July 8, Jackson for trial Aug. 21 and Faulk for sentencing in September. No date has been set.
Faulk and Stewart are now 18, Jackson is 17.
In February, Faulk pleaded guilty to his role in the killing of an Isle of Wight County man. Faulk was one of three youths charged after Merrell Britt was abducted from a convenience store and forced into the trunk of his car, beaten, then dumped into a river.
Babineau has trouble reconciling these two images: Faulk as a polite, easygoing kid. Faulk as a killer.
``He's a good kid - it's just he made an awful, awful mistake,'' Babineau says.
Cheryl Brown, Faulk's mother, visits him every Friday night. She is allowed 15 minutes with her only child, whom she calls ``Ron,'' for his middle name, LaRone. Brown is still grateful to the judge who allowed her to hug her son after a court hearing. It had been a long time.
``I'll just be glad when it's over and I know what I'm dealing with,'' she said. ``It's hard to get on with your life when your child is gone and you don't know when he's coming home.''
Brown feels that the system didn't work in her son's case. When she tried to get help after he took her car twice without permission, she was told he hadn't done anything serious enough to be locked up. About a month later, he was charged with capital murder.
``If they would have helped me then, he might have been locked up when this happened,'' she said. ``I want people to know what I tried to do. They might think I was just a parent who let my child run the streets.''
Brown works two jobs to pay her son's legal expenses. She is a hospital laboratory aide by day and a waitress by night.
``I know he would have never done this if he'd had a straight head,'' she said. ``All I do is pray every day. Sometimes prayers are answered.''
On the evening of Nov. 28, 1995, Merrell Britt stopped at the 7-Eleven in Isle of Wight County near Union Camp Corp. Faulk and another boy allegedly forced Britt into his car, a 1994 Mazda, with Faulk holding the gun. They then drove to the Airway Shopping Center and forced Britt into the trunk of his car. They then drove to pick up a third friend.
For about two hours, Britt's captors drove him around while they drank the beer Britt had just bought and smoked blunts - cigars filled with marijuana and crack cocaine.
Then they took him to an area near the Nottoway River, where they tied him up with jumper cables and beat him with rocks and an umbrella. They then dumped his body into the river.
Irene Britt, Britt's sister-in-law, said she thinks about juvenile crime every time she picks up the newspaper and reads about the latest atrocities.
``I think what I wrestle with myself about is that there is no justice,'' she said. ``If I had to sit on a jury and see some of these kids, I don't know what decision I could reach. I would have to look deep inside and say what is best for the child and for the public.''
The first day the youths accused of killing Merrell Britt appeared in court, they laughed, Irene Britt recalls.
``I didn't sense that they had any remorse whatsoever, and it angered me,'' she said. ``I don't know if they realized the seriousness. I think it has begun to come home to them.''
Britt used to be a regular at the 7-Eleven where her brother-in-law was abducted, but can't bring herself to go there anymore.
The unknowns haunt her. ``It's not knowing what really happened,'' she said. ``It's the questions that aren't answered. . . . I get the feeling that there were many hours in there - many hours they could have changed their mind,'' she said.
Britt hopes that some explanation, some motive will surface.
``What did they want?'' she asked. ``Was it that he bought beer or had a fairly new car? Or did it even matter? Was it whoever the next person was? . . through to be beaten to death. I think we're going to hear things that make us sick to our stomachs.''
The hardest part for Babineau is knowing that he represents two teenagers he might one day have to accompany to Greensville Correctional Center, where Virginia's death chamber is located.
``That's what gives you the sleepless nights,'' he said, ``knowing that these are kids who are potentially going to have to decide how they want to die . . . and what we can do to keep them out of the electric chair or from being strapped down on that gurney. . . . I think about all my cases, but I think about these three cases just about every minute. I wake up in the middle of the night thinking about them.''
During those sleepless hours, Babineau sometimes calls his office and leaves messages for his secretary about court papers to file or other work to be done.
Similarities in the lives of his three young clients do not escape Babineau's notice. The highest grade any of the three completed is eighth or ninth, he said. Yet they work at only a 4th- to 7th-grade level.
``We can't take someone who has the functioning of a 4th- to 6th-grader and kill them,'' he said.
All three have grown up in low-income families, raised by single mothers with no father for a role model. In each case, the mothers work - sometimes at more than one job - to make ends meet.
With the mothers gone so much of the time, the boys roam the streets and get in trouble, he said.
``Their role models are selling drugs, their role models are stealing, their role models are killing people,'' Babineau said. ``Their society is unruly, it's wild. You do as much as you can get away with.''
Babineau, 35, with boyish looks and seemingly endless energy, came to be a lawyer through a different route than most attorneys. He read for the law - meaning he studied independently rather than attending law school - while he worked as a Norfolk police officer. For three years, he spent 18 hours a week studying in a legal clinic. He then took the bar exam and passed. He is married to Terri, a doctor, and they have three children ages 1, 3 and 6. Babineau's license plate reads ``No ZZZ.''
``I like the intensity of these kind of cases,'' he said. ``These cases need so much attention. They need someone who's going to take the time and have the devotion. . . . You really have to limit your other work.''
Nevertheless, Babineau estimated he has another 200 cases in the works - 100 criminal and the others a combination of cases such as domestic, personal injury and wills.
Babineau said he struggles to switch gears from thinking about his teenage days of movies, parties and dating to the lives of these teens accused of capital murder.
``They're saying there's nothing left for these kids, there's no hope for them in a civilized society,'' he said. ``I have a problem living in a civilized society and talking about killing kids . . . I don't think we'll have a national consensus that says let's throw away 15- and 16-year-olds.''
Kevin Gallegos stopped at the 7-Eleven on Hampton Boulevard near Old Dominion University about 3:30 p.m. on Feb. 10, 1995, to make a call on the outside pay phone. He was delivering supplies for a courier service. As he talked, three men pulled into the parking lot.
Royale Stewart walked up to Gallegos and demanded money, according to police. The dispatcher on the other end heard Gallegos say, ``I'm sorry, I don't have any money.'' Stewart then allegedly shot Gallegos in the chest. The dispatcher heard the phone go dead.
In a statement to police, Stewart said he thought the safety was on. He also said that when he ran back to the car after the shooting, his codefendants, Ocie Wilson and Gerald Crandle, laughed at him. He went to his girlfriend's house, where he and his girlfriend cried and prayed togather, the statement said.
Malinda Gallegos, the widow of the man Royale Stewart is accused of gunning down in broad daylight, is alone these days.
She is unable to bring herself to travel by Old Dominion University and the busy Norfolk convenience store where her husband died.
She said he was the kind of man who gave money to those who needed it - particularly an old man who begged at the grocery store where they shopped. Her husband would always hand him $5 or $10, she said.
But his killer never got a penny from Kevin Gallegos, the man she married on May 14, 1986. Her husband died with $19 in his pocket.
``I've thought about sending (her husband's accused killer) the money in a letter and telling him, `It meant enough for you to kill him over, I want you to have it,' '' she said in a recent interview at her home.
When she first went to court to face her husband's alleged killer, she hoped for answers.
``The first time I saw him, I wanted to look in his eyes,'' she said. ``I wanted to see if anything was there.''
She was surprised when she saw Stewart and his two co-defendants. They weren't what she had expected. They were nicely dressed young men who should have been working in a department store, not held behind bars, she said.
But their demeanor sent a different message. They acted like it was her fault they were there, she said.
``I probably could have had some sympathy for them if they had shown any little bit of remorse for what they'd done,'' she said. ``But they're arrogant. They looked at us like they hated us. You have to have nothing in your heart to kill somebody you don't even know.''
She watched the videotape from the convenience store security camera that captured the final minutes of her husband's life: ``You hear him moaning. You hear the lady behind the counter screaming, `They shot my customer, they shot my customer,' and yelling for someone to call an ambulance.''
In one encounter in the courtroom, Stewart's mother and grandmother apologized to her.
``I told them I was very sorry for what was going to happen to their son, but I don't feel sorry for Royale,'' she said. ``I have tried very hard not to hate these people, but it's there.''
At first Gallegos said she thought that if Stewart received the death penalty, she would want to watch his execution. ``He took everything away from me and my son,'' she said. ``He took away the one person I knew I never had to doubt.''
But she no longer is adamant.
``If they give him life without parole, I'd be just as happy,'' she said. ``At least he'd have to think about it every day . . . I don't ever want him to walk on the street again. I don't think there's anything that could turn him around.''
Gallegos sees a certain balance between her life and that of Stewart's family members.
``Regardless of whether he gets the death penalty or spends the rest of his life in jail, he's not there anymore,'' she said. ``They've lost him.''
Babineau has heard teenagers accused of murder described as having no soul, no conscience. But that has not been his experience with these three. Each one seems to offer a spark of hope. They are quiet and respond well to having structure in their lives, he said.
``These are serious charges, but I sit down and laugh with them,'' he said. ``When you talk to them like a parent talking to a child, they respond wonderfully. They act like kids. But when they get on the streets, they take in their own vices with no checks.''
Babineau has a good rapport with the young men. It shows in the easy way he throws an arm around a shoulder in greeting in the courtroom, and the way attorney and client lean toward one another, whisper and laugh.
``This is about . . . first saving their lives and second coming up with a disposition that can balance all the interests,'' he said. ``The worst feeling in the world would be to represent someone in a life or death situation and have them get death, especially if you feel like you didn't turn over every stone.''
He recently estimated that he and his co-counsel, John R. Doyle III, have each put 300 to 400 hours into the Stewart case. One time-consuming aspect was listening to 60 hours of audiotapes. Prosecutors have told Babineau they have 87 prosecution witnesses.
The judge has issued a gag order on the Jackson case, so Babineau is not allowed to discuss it. He is working with co-counsel James O. Broccoletti on that case.
Attorneys retained in capital cases make an average of $90 an hour out of court and $125 in court, Babineau said. But the presiding judge can change those rates.
He said he has spent more than 200 hours on the Faulk case. His hourly rate in that case is higher, because he was retained by Faulk's mother.
The hours he lists on his bill don't come close to accounting for all the time he spends thinking about the case, he said.
The fact that all three of his youthful clients confessed to police only makes his job more challenging.
``It's hard,'' he said. ``It usually doesn't sell in court or with juries or at the appeals level that you call all the police officers a bunch of liars.''
Babineau said he has to break the statements down and analyze them more closely.
``What sometimes looks like a bald-faced confession really isn't,'' he said.
Ronald G. Bonney Jr., 28, had been drinking at a bar the night of Aug. 31, 1994, and left to give a man a ride home to the 1500 block of Vine St. in Diggs Town. The man got out and went into the house while Bonney waited outside. Jackson's co-defendant, Calvin Outlaw, then walked over to Bonney and asked him if he had any money he wanted to spend.
By that time, Jackson had climbed into the passenger seat, pointed a gun and told Bonney to ``give it up,'' according to Outlaw. Jackson told Outlaw to back up, and allegedly shot and killed Bonney.
For Becky Roberts, Bonney's sister, the wait for justice seems endless.
``It's past being disappointing now, it's just anger with the system,'' said Roberts, 32. ``The hardest part of all of this is wondering deep down inside if some lawyer can get a cold killer off on some technicality.''
Roberts and her family went through additional pain when Jackson was released on bond in December and allegedly committed more than a dozen additional crimes - including abduction, attempted robbery, breaking and entering and firearms violations. After he was rearrested and returned to jail, he made telephone calls to some of the victims and their families, according to a prosecutor.
``We have no trust in the system,'' Roberts said. ``We expect something to go wrong every time we walk into that court. We expect the judge to favor the defense every time we walk into that court.''
When Roberts thinks about Jackson, she feels anger. ``Nothing can heal until this crime is taken care of,'' she said. ``There is no way to get over the pain and suffering that you know your brother went through in the murder.''
She would like to see Jackson spend the rest of his life in prison if convicted.
``It would be nicer to know that he'd be suffering in jail for the rest of his life,'' she said. ``Death would be too easy on him.'' ILLUSTRATION: Photo
MARK MITCHELL/The Virginian-Pilot
Attorney Jon Babineau talks to his client Truvelle Faulk in the
Portsmouth Jail. Part of Babineau's job is to be a cheerleader and
friend to the 18-year-old confessed killer as he awaits sentencing.
Graphics
Photos
Truvelle Faulk
Royale Stewart
Chauncey Jackson
How often are Virginia youths sentenced to death?
[For complete graphic information, please see microfilm]
KEYWORDS: MURDER CAPITAL PUNISHMENT DEATH
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