On Murderers and Babysitters (Part One)

As I near my 70th birthday I have been asking myself why I spend so much of my remaining time in life consulting for the defense of gang members who are charged with murder. While some may be innocent, most are guilty.  How can I justify this?

For many of the lawyers I work with defending gang members means upholding civil liberties and giving their client the best defense they can offer.  I’m not a lawyer and many cases boil down to technical disagreements and narrow applications of the law more than issues of justice. 

On the one hand, ethically, I do not believe people who kill should get away with it.  I feel empathy for offender and victim.  On the other hand I think our sentencing policy is draconian.  Incredibly, one in every five African Americans in prison today are serving life sentences and two thirds of all inmates serving life are minorities.   Human beings, even those who kill, are still human beings and I do not think they should be caged like wild animals for their natural life.  

During sentencing I try to explain gang involvement in such a way that a judge can have a bit more understanding, if not compassion.  A gang member’s life should not be reduced to a snapshot of a crime scene, but considered as one frame in a life long movie of change and maturation. I believe everyone deserves a chance at rehabilitation.

I’ve been immersed for two decades in the literatures on how we think in stereotypes,  but I began my court work not through books but experience. What directly pulled me into this field was getting to know gang members who killed and learning how their trials were conducted.  Let me introduce you to Ike Easley.

Ike Easley's current IDOC photo

Ike was one of the first expert witness cases I took and I’m afraid explaining his importance will take three blogs over the next three days.  The issue with Ike was not whether he killed: he committed not one, but two homicides. Let me walk you through his case from its beginning to the commuting of his death penalty sentence by then Gov. Ryan of Illinois. 

Ike was a severely abused child who was bullied at school. When his sister was being repeatedly struck by her boyfriend and threatened his mother,  Ike intervened. When the the abuser went for a gun, Ike shot him first.  Wolfgang calls this victim-precipitated homicide and this kind of murder is quite common. Ike reasonably argued it was self defense. He had no criminal record and was taken by utter surprise by a guilty verdict and a sentence of 20 years in prison.  Cook County Jail was also a shock, and Ike’s membership in the then Black Gangster Disciples was both a protective factor and an emotional response to what he saw as an unjust sentence.

Ike’s second killing got headlines and a high profile trial. Ike stabbed and killed Robert Taylor,  the Assistant Superintendent of Pontiac Correctional Center.   Taylor was a widely admired African American administrator and his murder sparked outrage among prison officials and prosecutors.   Ike’s trial resulted in a guilty verdict and the death penalty.  I got involved with the case through Ike’s appellate lawyer, Aviva Futorian, on a habeas petition of ineffective counsel in his original trial.  

I traveled to Menard where Ike was incarcerated and awaiting an execution date. I did not know what to expect in meeting this double murderer.  He had been transferred from Tamms, Illinois’ super max prison that was recently closed.  He was singled out in media accounts as among the “worst of the worst.”  This didn’t fit with the man I met.   I found Ike to be a gentle giant, soft spoken and an astute cultural critic. He was keenly aware of the culture of violence  promoted on TV and on the streets where he grew up. He admitted he experienced the effects of this culture personally and felt an obligation to warn youth of its dangers. In my statement to the court I compared him to troubled white kids I knew growing up in Clintonville, Wisconsin.

Magic to My Soul by Ike Easley

On my first visit we had an intense four hour conversation about what had happened on the day of his lethal assault on Taylor and exchanged personal experiences and outlooks.  Ike had never admitted to the murder and his vivid description of the incident to me was one of the most emotionally draining experiences of my life.  Ike is extremely emotional and his pent up rage contributed to both murder charges.  He also displayed a sensitive, artistic side and questioned me about my own children and life.  I'll explain the "babysitter" in the title in a later blog.  We connected on a human level in the first and subsequent meetings.

My conversations with Ike were the beginnings of my realization that gang members, like all of us, have multiple conflicting identities. While Ike had killed he also loved and at most times lived a life of peace. In prison he had often functioned as a peacemaker, breaking up fights.  For abused children like Ike who have faced unjust, racist treatment throughout their life extreme events can trigger inner violence.  This is what happened at Pontiac in 1987 as Ike snapped.

The events surrounding the murder were much more complex than presented at the trial as a cold blooded gang-ordered “hit.”  Conditions at Pontiac were described by many observers as “out of control.” Gangs were at war within the prison and weapons and drugs were everywhere. The year after Ike’s conviction, 16 guards were indicted for drug trafficking at the prison, This confirmed Ike’s sober explanation to me of how prison corruption was related to the murder.

According to Ike, various persons and factions within the prison administration were maneuvering to get their share of drug profits by allying with the Vice Lords and El Rukns against the Black Gangster Disciples. One of Ike’s best friends, Billy Jones or “Zodiac” was killed by guards and Ike and others believed his killing was part of a power play by guards and their new gang allies to seize control of the drug trade.  The guards claimed Zodiac swallowed a bag of cocaine and “accidentally” died but Ike told me he saw the assault on his best friend and became enraged.  Soon after Zodiac’s death Ike entered Taylor’s office with a “shank” and stabbed him to death. Tragically, there is no evidence Taylor was corrupt but only an available target for Ike’s out of control rage. 

While Ike’s history of abuse may be mitigating, his crime is surely deplorable. It is easy to see why any prosecutor or jury would be outraged. “Outrage” also isn’t a bad word to describe his trial as well.  In the next blog let me describe Ike’s trial in Joliet IL which to me is symbolically adjacent to Salem, MA.

Wolfgang, Martin E. 1957. "Victim Precipitated Criminal Homicide." The Journal of Criminal Law, Criminology, and  Police Science 48(1):1-11.

Winning Over the Other Side (Part 3 of 3)

Once upon a time, in a galaxy not so far away, Chicago’s Gangster Disciples invaded Mahnomen, Minnesota, a bustling “metropolis”  235 miles north of Minneapolis.  Fear tore through the northlands as the “gang frame” was imposed to explain a local homicide.

A Gangster Disciple branch had secretly formed in upper Minnesota, two men said in a  plea deal.  They claimed the murder they committed was not their fault but ordered by Timothy Shanks, the “Pharaoh” of the gang. 

The Minnesota Attorney General was so alarmed by their state being invaded by a notorious Chicago gang that they sent in a team of Minneapolis lawyers to make sure Shanks would be convicted for this heinous gang-related crime.

This trial is a successful illustration of reframing, one of George Lakoff’s key techniques on persuasion.  Lakoff’s Don’t think of an Elephant was written in the wake of George Bush’ 2000 Republican electoral victory. Lakoff argues that Democrats tried to beat the Republicans by accepting their language and their “strict father” frame of reality.  

For example Lakoff points out that when the right says “family values” they mean obedience to the rules of a “tough love” father and an absolute sense of right and wrong based in obedience to God the Father. The sanctity of unborn life is enshrined in the Bible and God and priest need to be obeyed.  Rather than talk about family values as adherence to rules, Lakoff says we should “reframe” or suggest a different understanding of family, ie. the capacity of a mother to nurture and properly care for her child and who should be able to make her own decisions about her body.  Lakoff’s books give numerous, rich examples of reframing, of getting others to see things through shared, empathetic values.

Lakoff doesn't deal at length with crime, perhaps because crime (and gangs) in a courtroom immediately and powerfully cue the strict father frame through our System 1 reasoning.  From the judge sitting on high and a prosecutor who casts moral blame,  gang-related trials reverse the presumption of innocence.  Gang members are assumed guilty and defense attorneys need to prove otherwise. It worked that way in Mahnomen.

The prosecution of Timothy Shanks began as a gang-related murder and looked hopeless from the start. The judge who appointed local attorney Peter Cannon to defend Shanks, privately told his long time friend to forget about putting up a defense. The Minnesota Attorney General’s office had vast resources and in a trial of a black gang member in an all-white Scandinavian community, conviction seemed to be guaranteed. 

Like many of my stories, the real hero is an attorney who refuses to surrender to stereotypes. Something didn’t sound right to Peter Cannon and after many phone calls looking for a “gang expert”  he finally reached me. I talked with Mr. Shanks and quickly concluded that not only was this crime not gang related but Shanks was completely innocent. Shanks was being tried by the gang frame, not by facts. The actual shooters had got off with only a couple of years sentence by claiming Timothy, the “Pharaoh" of the GDs had ordered the “hit.” The key to this trial was to persuade the judge that the crime had nothing to do with gangs. And if it had nothing to do with gangs, there was no evidence whatsoever to charge Shanks.

My first reason for thinking the gang-related charge was bogus was that there is no rank of “Pharaoh” in the Gangster Disciples. In a written affidavit and later in testimony in court I disputed the gang frame in its entirety and went through all of the evidence, giving an alternative story that explained the crime without the gang frame. By doing so i encouraged the court to use System 2 reasoning and not settle for System 1 stereotypes.

Timothy Shanks was a black man from Gary making his living on the carnival circuit in northern Minnesota. He had a faded tattoo from his youth of the GD six pointed star. Having such a tattoo I explained was not evidence of current gang membership, but  was normal for many poor black kids in the Chicago area and meant little a decade or so later.  What about his “order” to murder?  At a party the two shooters asked Shanks what they should do about money owed to them by the victim? By all accounts, Shanks, who was surrounded by several local girls, huffed “Do what you gotta do.” That was it.  No gang meetings or evidence of any other gang activities.  Just words at a party impressing a couple of young white girls.

Shanks’ murder charge, I argued, could be reduced to a desperate ploy by the shooters to cut a deal with gullible prosecutors.  My cases are filled with allegations by jail house snitches or co-defendants claiming a crime actually was gang related in order to get a favorable deal for themselves.  In this situation the two pleaders got the gang leader title wrong, but in others cases I’ve discovered “gang evidence” was completely fabricated. What is amazing is that such skimpy evidence could invoke a “gang as evil” frame that would cause prosecutors to imagine Timothy Shanks ordering a murder. This is the definition of System 1 thinking.

There was one other piece of evidence tying the carny worker to the Gangster Disciples. It was established in testimony that Shanks often used the expression “What’s up Folks.” By the time this came up in the trial things were already getting dicey for the prosecution. My reframing the crime as a ill-informed plea deal plus the rather questionable notion of gangs running wild in Mahnomen was raising doubts to the judge and even the prosecutors.  I calmly explained that “what’s up folks” is a common greeting in black communities, not necessarily gang related. If everyone who said “What’s up folks” was a gang member, I testified,  then the court ought to indict Porky Pig and his Disney folks gang. 

Well the judge had had enough. He called the Assistant Attorneys General to the bench and it was agreed to drop all charges. Peter Cannon dug into his pocket and gave Timothy bus fare back to Gary.  Justice was served, though Timothy had spent months in jail awaiting trial in what was truly a “gang frame-up.”

Lakoff gives four pieces of advice in how to win over the middle: Show Respect; Respond by Reframing; Think and Talk at the Level of Values; and Say What You Believe. In the Mahnomen courtroom I responded with reason and facts but mainly reframed the crime as having nothing to do with gangs. Rather than an actual gang hit what we had was 1. Two guys trying to avoid long prison terms; 2. The stereotype that black men + a murder means they must be in a gang; and 3. All-too-common macho talk at a party.  Shanks’ old tattoo, his saying “What’s Up Folks,” and being black in Mahnomen are flimsy evidence to prove he was a “gang leader” who called a hit.

Unlike the Tennessee judges, these prosecutors were open to my arguments when I activated a different frame. They had read People & Folks, my first book, and in cross examination I was treated with respect and I gave it back on the stand. Prosecutors aren’t always so reasonable and most of my clients are not innocent.  But the lesson is that among those who disagree with you there are some who can be won over by conscious reframing.  In blogs to come, I’ll draw on more of my cases to explain the power of stereotypes in court and relay different tactics I’ve used to combat them. 

Kahneman, Daniel. 2011. Think Fast and Slow. New York: Farrar, Strauss and Giroux.

Lakoff, George. 2004. Don't think of an elephant! : know your values and frame the debate : the essential guide for progressives. White River Junction, Vt.: Chelsea Green Pub. Co.