Episode 6: Through the Trenches

Available on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, and wherever else you get your podcasts. New episode every Wednesday. Use #TheAlleyPod to share your thoughts on the the latest episode as we uncover the truth behind DC's 8th and H Case.

An unchecked theory leads to the incarceration of eight young Black men. What is it like to live in prison for decades for a crime you didn’t commit? The accused share their firsthand experience, and criminal justice reform experts Reuben Jonathan Miller, Josie Duffy Rice, Christine Montross, and Melissa Segura “zoom out” to discuss the long-term impacts of incarceration.

Voices & Sounds Heard in this Episode

• Timothy Catlett, one of the accused
• Patrice Gaines, former Washington Post journalist
• Charles Turner, one of the accused
• Levy Rouse, one of the accused
• Chris Turner, one of the accused
• Russell Overton, one of the accused
• Jerry Goren, Assistant U.S. Attorney (archival audio)
• David Fuller, Mrs. Fuller’s husband (archival audio)
• Barbara Wade, Mrs. Fuller’s sister (archival audio)
• Robert diGenova, U.S. Attorney (archival audio)
• Reuben Jonathan Miller, professor and author of Halfway Home: Race, Punishment, and the Afterlife of Mass Incarceration
• Melissa Segura, investigative reporter and former New America Fellow
• Josie Duffy Rice, attorney, former editor of The Appeal, and former New America Fellow
• Christine Montross, prison and jail psychiatrist

Transcript:

Episode 6: Through the Trenches

Gabrielle Sweet: The following story contains descriptions of violence and sexual assault. Listener discretion is advised.

Timothy Catlett: It’s so many nights that you wake up in the middle of the night or you go to open your eyes in the morning and you’re hoping to see the wall that was in your bedroom. And I'm talking about decades after I'm locked up. You still hoping to see that wall.

Narrator (Shannon Lynch): This is The Alley: DC’s 8th and H Case. My name is Shannon Lynch.

Episode 6: Through the Trenches

Last time, we discussed the media coverage of the 8th and H Case. From the get go, most of the media reported the police’s account of events as gospel: Catherine Fuller’s murder had been the result of a vicious gang attack.

The trial began on Halloween in 1985. Prosecutor Jerry Goren kicked off the trial with a graphic opening statement. The prosecution had Calvin Alston and Derrick Bennett serve as star witnesses. Both of their statements had factual errors when compared to the physical evidence. Their statements also differed from each other in several key ways.

The defense attorneys were at a serious disadvantage in challenging the government’s story because three pieces of key evidence had been hidden from them. They didn’t know about witnesses identifying convicted woman-assaulter James McMillian and an accomplice running from the crime scene, the account Aimme Davis shared about James Blue beating up Mrs. Fuller in the alley and, multiple eyewitness accounts of passing through the alley around the time of death and hearing groans coming from inside the small closed garage.

We talked about how hiding this evidence directly conflicts with the Brady Rule, which says prosecutors have a Constitutional duty to share information with the defense that might change the outcome of a trial.

Lastly, we discussed the defense attorneys, and how the defendants were dissatisfied with them. Several of the defense attorneys had never tried a homicide case before. None of the defense attorneys challenged the government’s gang attack theory.

Part 1: Verdicts

On December 9th, 1985, the jury began deliberating.

As mentioned before, Judge Robert Scott was very traditional. He ordered jurors not to take notes during the trial. He also refused to give them testimony transcripts during deliberation. He argued that jurors should make their decisions based on their initial organic impression. In a trial with 10 co-defendants, and many other testimonies, you might see how this could create chaos in the deliberation room.

With so many people involved in the trial, jurors reported not being able to remember who were defendants and who were witnesses. Without a way to confirm what they recalled from the trial, the jury had to come up with their own rule of thumb. They decided If 2 or more jurors remembered something in a certain way, then the group would consider it fact.

Mounting public pressure and a rapidly approaching Christmas holiday were pushing the jurors to reach a decision. On top of all of this, the jury had to be sequestered 4 days into deliberations.

The media reported that one juror’s daughter had a connection to several of the defendants. That juror was never dismissed from their duties because of a conflict of interest, but this revelation did lead Judge Scott to order that the jury be holed up in a hotel until they reached a verdict.

One of the jurors told the Washington Post later, "sequestering broke the whole group," that same juror also said had the jury not been sequestered, the deliberations "would have gone on longer."

Because the prosecution hid key pieces of evidence, the jurors only had one story to go off of: a gang called the 8th and H Crew had robbed, raped, and killed Mrs. Fuller. But even with this tunnel vision, some jurors had their doubts. They couldn’t reconcile Calvin Alston and Derrick Bennett’s testimonies. How had a group of 20+ young people carried out a raucous attack in broad daylight on the busiest day of the month near the busiest intersection in the neighborhood and no independent witnesses – including those street vendors that were just steps from the alley – saw it or heard signs of a struggle?

After a full seven days of deliberation, on December 16th, the jury sent a note to Judge Scott. They’d reached verdicts on 8 of the 10 defendants.

Alphonso “Monk” Harris and Felicia Ruffin were found not guilty.

Charles Turner, Clifton Yarbourough, Timothy Catlett, Levy Rouse, Kelvin Smith, and Steve Webb…guilty, guilty, guilty, guilty, guilty, guilty. The words reverberated through the courtroom.

Author and former Washington Post reporter Patrice Gaines was present when these verdicts were read:

Patrice Gaines: By the time they pronounced guilty as many times as they had to say it, which was incredible. I was just devastated. I felt like I had learned so much about our judicial system

Narrator: The defendants slumped in their chairs. Timothy Catlett recalls:

Timothy Catlett: That broke my heart. It still break my heart to this day. You know, I was like, What do you mean, guilty? Guilty of what?

Narrator: Here’s how Charles Turner felt at the time:

Charles Turner: When the verdict was read I do remember being kind of dumbstruck. I was like not believing it. Like, no, this can't be true, nah. And you know because the way they read it, you know, they read it for each individual. They start at one individual and say, “we find the defendant…we find this defendant”. You know, as it’s reading off you still don’t, at least me, I’m still at this point where they’re gonna find me not guilty, I know I’m gonna be found not guilty.

Narrator: And Levy Rouse

Levy Rouse: He went down the line. Guilty, guilty, guilty. But when he got to me, I must have been guilty 50 times. I mean, that's all he kept pointing to. Guilty, Guilty, guilty, guilty, guilty, guilty. And I was just sitting there and I was like, I'm going to jail for nothing. I just start crying. All the police, they was sitting upfront with pink neckties on, and I was looking at him like they thinks it's a game. And they're taking a life.

Narrator: 8 of the 10 verdicts were in. That meant the jury was still out on two of the defendants. They were ordered to return to the deliberation room to decide the fates of Chris Turner and Russell Overton.

The next day, December 17th, an op-ed ran in the Washington Post in direct reaction to the verdicts. “Bring Back the Death Penalty”, the title read. The author argued the defendants didn’t deserve to live after committing such a heinous crime. The writer suggested it was “time to fire up ole sparky”, referring to the electric chair.

Later that day, Judge Scott received a note from one of the jurors. The note read, “I personally don’t want to deliberate anymore on Russell Overton or Christopher Turner. We have taken a vote on these two defendants more than 10 times, with most of the people never changing their decision.”

Chris Turner’s lawyer moved for a mistrial, but was unsuccessful. Russell Overton’s lawyer held out. He was hoping a not guilty verdict was still possible for his client. Judge Scott never responded to the juror’s note.

The next day, December 18th, Judge Scott received another note from the jury. They’d reached a decision on Chris and Russell’s verdicts. Everyone was called back into the courtroom.

Time stood still as Chris Turner and Russell Overton waited to hear their fates. The foreman of the jury stood. “Guilty on all charges”.

Afterward, outside of the courtroom, two anonymous jurors spoke to the Washington Post. They said the jury voted more than 40 times on the verdicts for Chris Turner and Russell Overton. They stated that more than one of the jurors had held out until the very end to vote guilty. One of them said “I had a real hard time with that.”

Later that day, Chris told a reporter “I feel like dying”. He feared going to prison, but what bothered him the most was that people in his community would now know him as a convicted murderer. He couldn’t bear that.

Chris Turner’s lawyer promised there would be an appeal:

Chris’ Lawyer (WJLA archival audio): There are numerous issues, some of them arcane, some of them very obvious. It’ll be a long appeal process.

Narrator: After leaving the courtroom, prosecutor Jerry Goren stated to the press that he believed many more people besides the defendants in this case were involved in the attack. He said that the government would pursue charges for those people as well in the near future. He also stated his fondness of detectives Sanchez and McGinnis:

Jerry Goren (WJLA archival audio): Policemen spent a great deal of their time over the past year practically living with me in my office. We got to be very close. I have nothing but the utmost respect for each and every one of them.

Narrator: Mr. Fuller took the time to express the relief he felt after the guilty verdicts were read.

David Fuller (WJLA archival audio): It was just like some weight was on my shoulder. But it's gone now.

Part 2: Sentencing

Sentencing began almost a month later, on January 14th, 1986. Just ahead of the sentencing, Jerry Goren’s boss, US Attorney Joseph diGenova didn’t mince words when he talked to the press.

U.S. Attorney Joseph diGenova (WJLA archival audio): The fact is, this crime is so depraved and morally bankrupt and the individuals involved in it are so cruel in the crime that they committed that no punishment is sufficient. We asked for the maximum punishment available under the law. We wish we could have asked for more

Narrator: Timothy Catlett went first. The judge gave him a 35-to-life sentence. On January 28th, the same was handed to Steve Webb.

Russell Overton, Charles Turner, and Chris Turner were all sentenced on February 4th. During the sentencing, they maintained their innocence. Charles Turner told the judge, “I am charged for a crime I didn’t commit…that is all I have to say”. Russell Overton added “I didn’t rob Mrs. Fuller and I didn’t kill Mrs. Fuller”.

When it was his turn to speak, Chris directly questioned the government’s evidence. He reminded the judge that Calvin Alston had not included him in his initial statement, but only in his second statement after the police showed Calvin a list of names. Chris reiterated that all of his character witnesses spoke to the fact that he would never participate in anything like this.

Chris received the most lenient sentence. Judge Scott gave him 27.5 years to life. The judge told him, “You will be just under 50 when you get out. You will have a chance to do something at that time.”

A week later, Levy Rouse received his sentence. Levy was one of the lead attackers in the government’s version of events. They claimed he was the one that sodomized Mrs. Fuller with a pole. He, too, maintained his innocence during sentencing. He stated, “I never hung with no gang.I didn’t do what they said I did. Whatever they said I did, I didn’t do.” But Levy’s words didn’t matter at this point. The prosecutor and media had already painted him a villain. Judge Scott gave him 35 years to life.

Clifton Yarborough and Kelvin Smith received their sentences on February 18th. Cliff said to the judge, “I was afraid. I said anything that I thought would get me out of the situation”. Judge Scott gave Cliff and Kelvin 35 years to life.

Catherine Fuller’s family was pleased with the sentences that were handed out. Here’s her sister, Barbara Wade, again:

Barbara Wade (WJLA archival audio): I'm just overjoyed. I really am. I am really glad that he gave them the time that they deserve.

Narrator: Less than 2 months later, on April first, 1986 lead prosecutor Jerry Goren announced his resignation from the US Attorney's office. He moved back to where his family lived in California and never tried a case again.

All of the defendants would lose their appeals in the years that followed.

At this point, Goren, the detectives, and everyone else involved in putting these young men away probably thought the 8th and H case was a thing of the past and something they’d never have to worry about again. It would take a couple of decades, but the case would eventually come back to haunt them.

Part 3: Life in Prison

All of the defendants were bracing themselves to serve a prison sentence that was longer than they’d been alive. That’s a hard pill to swallow, especially if you’re behind bars for something you didn’t do.

Sadly, Kelvin Smith and Steve Webb have since passed away, so they aren’t here to share their stories. The remaining six men that recieved life sentences talked extensively about what their time in prison was like.

Chris Turner told me the first few years of his sentence were the hardest.

Chris Turner: My life in prison was hell for the first few years. And we were the most hated prisoners I believe in the history of DC at this time. The marshals allow people to spit on some of the defendants in this particular case. We were placed under special handling conditions where we were placed in shackles, belly chains, and the black box to restrict our movement, to allow us to be assaulted and without being able to fight back. We were sent in places to endanger us, to hopefully get us killed so that this story would never come to light. We were supposed to have been killed off or murdered or went away. We should have went away quietly, but the problem is I would not stop writing. I would not stop proclaiming my innocence. I would not stop fighting.

Narrator: Russell Overton explained the early years of his sentence as a terrifying time:

Russell Overton: I feared for my life because of the case that I was on. I feared for my life. And I growed up to be a man in prison.

Narrator: Timothy Catlett also had a tough time adjusting to prison life.

Timothy Catlett: My life in jail. Oh, it was a lot rougher rough when you first started out. I've never been in or on a compound or in a institution with none of the other boys. You know, they was in other places with each other's. I was the only one that was never in a place with the rest of them. So basically, I was by myself, you know, and you had to hear, “you shouldn't be on this compound. They should have killed you”. You had to toughen up, you know, just basically become a man overnight.

Narrator: Levy Rouse decided he had to take on a tough-man persona just to survive.

Levy Rouse: You just had to change. You know, I became more prison-alized than civilized, you know. I kept telling my mind that I ain't going for nothing. If this what they want, this what they gonna get. I used to walk around prison, I used to carry my knife. I wouldn't let anybody hurt me. I just was like, Whatever comes my way, I'm going be ready for.

Narrator: Life in prison is never easy, but as the decades passed, the men of the 8th and H case found ways to cope. For Timothy Catlett, brief moments of joy came from basketball:

Timothy Catlett: That was my escape. Because whenever I stepped foot on the basketball court, it seemed like everything else just, you know, it's like you in a tunnel vision. You know, it just locks everything out.

Narrator: Levy Rouse tried to distract himself through work and church.

Levy Rouse: I was a motivating speaker for the youth. I went to school. I went to church. I recieved my minister license in prison. I took every class that I can take. It was like, I had to do something. You know, I will work in a morning and take a second shift at night so I stay away from all the violence that was going on in the prison. I was like in my mind saying that they never gonna let us go. You know, so I'm gonna make the best of where I'm at. And I just kept working, working, working, working.

Narrator: Russell Overton became a ceramic artist in prison. I’ve seen some of his work, and it’s beautiful.

Russell Overton: I got with another dude out of Saint Louis. I went up there just looking around and he showed me, you know, this is easy. This here, when you start this here, this will kill all your time. So I got into it, I signed up. I just stayed up there and just do ceramics. And I became damn good at it. Vases, animals, plate sets, whatever they had I made it. Patrice Gaines, I gave her a nice vase. And she called back and said, “yeah, people like your work. It’s pretty, it’s real pretty”.

Narrator: The level of trauma these men endured is immeasurable. They witnessed horrific things first-hand. The following stories are definitely hard to hear, but I think it’s important to understand the extreme level of trauma these men were needlessly exposed to for decades.

Here’s Charles Turner again:

Charles Turner: I actually saw one guy butchering a guy. I heard later that this guy was an informant. He informed on some guys. I woke up out of my bed one morning and I hear this noise and I look out my room and a guy was like, right outside on the tier and he stabbed his guy like, I mean, like, tons of times. Like, tons. I mean, many, many, many. I can't count the times. And then you had the police was telling him, “please stop, stop, please stop. He's down. He's out”. So the guy stops, he drops the knife, he waits like 5 seconds. He do like a five second count. And he pull out another knife and he started hitting this guy again. And you hear the guy, you hear the knife hitting the ground, and this guy's bleeding his blood all over the place.

Narrator: Levy Rouse recounted:

Levy Rouse: I done seen people get killed. I done seen guys get raped. I done seen guys commit suicide. It's like you're in a whole different world. You know, you got people in prison that got 30 years, 40 years, and they don't care. They never going home.

Narrator: Part 4: The State of American Prisons

About two million people are currently behind bars in the United States. When it comes to incarceration rates, the US reigns supreme. And it’s not even close. Americans represent only about 4% of the world’s population, but 16% of the world’s total incarcerated population.

On top of that, the incarceration rate for Americans of different races is vast. I spoke with former New America Fellow and current University of Chicago professor Reuben Jonathan Miller about this. Reuben has written extensively about this subject, including in his book Halfway Home: Race, Punishment, and the Afterlife of Mass Incarceration.

Reuben Jonathan Miller: By the time you get to 1972, when mass incarceration begins, and really when you get well into the 1990s, you see this incredible and exaggerated racial disparity where Black people are five times more likely to be incarcerated than their white counterparts. They’re twice as likely to be arrested. They do longer sentences when arrested, even when you control for the same crime, even when you controlled for criminal activity. In other words, Black people are not only more likely to be arrested than white people in this country. Not only do they do longer sentences, 10% longer in the state facilities, 20% longer in federal facilities. But these trends hold, even when you control for the criminal history of the person that you've arrested, or the kind of crime they've committed, and for the number of times they've been arrested before.

Narrator: Some of the basic necessities, like healthy food, are not available to prisoners. Former New America Fellow and investigative reporter Melissa Segura explained:

Melissa Segura: We know that a lot of the prisons are not serving nutritionally adequate food. We all know what it's like to maybe skip lunch and feel terrible by the end of the afternoon because we've done so. And what happens when we do that over and over again? And so a lot of families, what they do is they try to supplement the nutrition by putting things into what are called commissary accounts or like little personal bank accounts. And there are commissary stores within a lot of the prisons where they sell things like honey buns or other sort of chips or vending machine quality food. And that is what sort of supplementing the diets of lots of people. So we all know, you know, the nutritional outcomes if we ate like that on the outside. But yet we're subjecting an entire class of people to these kind of nutritional outcomes.

Narrator: Josie Duffy Rice is an American writer and political commentator. She’s the former president of The Appeal, a news outlet that centers stories about the criminal justice system. She’s also a former New America Fellow. When I asked her about any existing efforts to improve living conditions in prisons, this is what she told me:

Josie Duffy Rice: I mean, there are places where they've addressed overcrowding, which is good. It's good to not have six people in a six by nine cell. You see efforts to shut down some jails like Rikers, like L.A., like what's happening in my city, in Atlanta. But those efforts are, first of all, rarely successful. Second of all, don't actually address the harm that people endure while being incarcerated. You see isolated reforms like programs like the Bard College program in new york or restorative justice work. You can exist in some prisons and places like Massachusetts or, you know, there are efforts in certain prisons in certain places. But overall, we have done almost nothing about prison conditions. We have instated almost no oversight.

Narrator: The state of living conditions in prisons and jails in the US is bleak, but it doesn’t have to be this way. Here’s Reuben Jonathan Miller again, explaining why strategic investment in prisons could improve the situation.

Reuben Jonathan Miller: One way to improve prison conditions is to shine a light on what the living conditions are like inside American jails and prisons. That's part one. The second is to invest in people, is to remember that there are people inside and people have needs. They need access to medical care. They need access to good and nutritious food. They need access to the kinds of things that would help them develop themselves as people; access to books, access to to the law library at reasonable amounts of time, to libraries, access to work. The ability to to make money and provide for themselves. And so by investing in in not just services but in in the basic human needs of people who are on the inside. These things would absolutely improve the conditions on the inside.

Narrator: Part 5: Prison Brain

Living in prison takes an immense toll on an individual’s mental health. Several of the men from the 8th and H Case told me about the elements of PTSD they still deal with. I spoke with Christine Montross, who’s worked as a psychiatrist in multiple prisons and jails.

Christine Montross: People are profoundly psychologically damaged by being incarcerated in our country. Even people who are who enter into the prison system psychologically well are almost always damaged to some degree.

Narrator: I asked Dr. Montross how she thought we could make better mental health care outcomes possible in American prisons.

Christine Montross: You know, I think when we've seen these really dramatic funding cuts over the last years and decades in jails and prisons, it's incredibly short-sighted given the fact that almost everyone we send to prison is released from prison. When we say, you know, I can't even afford to send my kid to college. Why do I want to pay for the education of people who are in prison? I can't even get healthcare myself. Why do I want to pay for health care as a taxpayer for those who are in prison? What we're doing is we're really undermining the safety of our own communities because we are adding to the inhumanity of this environment. We're saying that people who are in these environments don't even deserve really basic human rights, so that then when they come back into our communities, they're less well suited to be good neighbors, taxpaying citizens, get jobs, contribute to our communities. So there's that one piece, which is just we need to provide better mental health care in general. That's funding, that's staffing, that's adequate pharmacology. And so and we need to respect people's rights. So we need to not interview them for our own psychological topics through their cell walls in front of places where everyone can overhear. W e need to afford privacy to people. So there are a number of ways that that's the case. But I think the other question is, apart from providing services, how do we prevent those environments from being so damaging in the first place?

Narrator: Luckily for us, there are several countries we can look to as models that have managed to create a system of punishment while also more effectively rehabilitating offenders. For her book, Waiting for an Echo, Christine went to Norway to study their prison system. What she observed was strikingly different from the US.

Christine Montross: And the premise there is really that depriving someone of their liberty is adequate punishment. That just by saying you don't get to live with your family, you don't get to live in the same house as your children, you don't get to leave your house and decide when you're leaving and when you're coming back. You have to live here in this place. That alone is seen as adequate punishment there. So the environment itself within the walls of the prison is a much more humane environment. You have a room with a door, the door locks so you can have some privacy. You're expected to go do your own grocery shopping and do your own cooking. All of that is provided for you. So you're learning how to function in a way that most adults are expected to function. You're expected to go to class and to work. Those things are provided so that the deficits that may have led to you being in prison in the first place, maybe you're out of work, maybe you had inadequate education, maybe you were substance addicted. Treatment is provided for that. Those deficits are really addressed within the prison. And therefore, the term of incarceration is seen as a constructive term to address those deficits so that then people can reenter into society as healthier, stronger, more contributing members of society who are less apt to return to prison.

Narrator: Altogether, the men of the 8th and H case spent more than 255 years behind bars. The inhumane conditions tore them down physically and mentally.

But by 2010, there were two reasons for the accused men to have hope.

First, Chris Turner was the first to be paroled on September 9th, 2010. Almost a decade would pass before anyone else was eligible parole, but his release signified a light at the end of the tunnel for the others.

Secondly, the work of a dogged reporter was about to revive the case in a major way.

Patrice Gaines: I sent the article to the Innocence Project in the Washington, D.C. area. And they did get back with me saying that they had voted to take on the project.

Narrator: That’s next time on The Alley: DC’s 8th & H Case

Maika Moulite: This podcast is dedicated in memory of Catherine Fuller. Our host is Shannon Lynch. Our executive producers are Jason Stewart and Shannon Lynch. This was recorded at New America studios and Creative Underground. The cover art is by Samantha Webster. Editorial and media support from Jodi Nardie, Molly Martin, and Joe Wilkes. Audio editing and mixing by Shannon Lynch. Social media directed by me, Maika Moulite. Script editing and fact checking by Thomas Dybdahl and Charla Freeland. A very special thank you to Patrice Gaines for keeping this story alive for decades and for supporting this project throughout production. Please subscribe to this podcast wherever you listen and be sure to follow New America on all platforms.