NEW HELL HOLE NEWS
SEPTEMBER 25, 2009
New Hell Hole News #15 September 25th, 2009… My dad used to tell me that some days in life it doesn’t pay to get out of bed. Well, this day was certainly one of them. KILLER KELLER STRIKES AGAIN!! Read the headline in my mind. I often tell my attorneys that I feel like I’m living in a bad re-run of The Twilight Zone. I woke up at 7:00 am this morning from a nightmare that I was arguing for my life, in hell no less, in front of Killer Keller (she had horns and a tail! and a snake tongue!) and she just laughed at me, saying “We don’t give a damn if you’re innocent, you middling fool! We just want you to die! Die! Die! Mwah hah hah hah hah!!!” Leaving the court, a kid throws a newspaper at me with the above headline – it comes spinning like they used to do on the screen in the old black and white noir movies from the 40’s and 50’s: “Killer Keller Strikes Again! Die! Die! Die!” We’re still on this crazy lockdown. No sooner had I awakened drenched in sweat from this insane nightmare than the mail room clerk arrives with a Fed Ex package from my attorneys. I open it and read it, sure enough the CCA has denied my DNA testing appeal. A more insane opinion out of any court you will never read. Most of my lady friends out there know about my vivid dream life, especially my wife, whom, despite the boisterous protests of others I still love very much. I’m a fool, they say. Yeah, well, love is blind, I say. My wife stuck with me when others abandoned me over petty disagreements. Loyalty means a lot to me. I love my other friends, too. Some of them I’ve known not as long as others but one in particular I love just as much, if not more. One of my friends, who’s been with me all along, I love more than life itself. Another sort of estranged friend I have overseas, who has helped me a lot, I still dream of. There is not affection allowed in here, no human touch. I often tell these friends of mine about my dreams of them and one friend in Canada. I believe they think I’m just coming on to them but no, it’s two things: I really do love them, and the deprivation will drive you insane. So my mind has compensated by giving me an alternate reality in my dreams. I’ve purposely developed it. The backlash is, when I have bad dreams, they are equally vivid. It’s even worse when you wake up and find it’s reality. Killer Keller is not satisfied merely slamming the courthouse doors in the face of a demonstrably guilty Michael Richards – she only cheated him out of about 8 months of life – he would’ve ultimately been executed anyway. No, now she wants to kill a demonstrably innocent man and worse, the other 8 idiots on that court seem to support her – like some Dantesque parody. This is a published opinion. No #AP-75,812. Look it up and read it on the Texas state gov’t website here: http://www.cca.courts.state.tx.us/opinions/HTMLopinionInfo.asp?OpinionID=18770 or in the “legal documents” section on my website here: http://www.hankskinner.org Before I go into this, I want to address a couple other matters. It’s never been any credible evidence that convicted me in this case. It’s all lies, spin, twisted innuendo and the dark sides of people’s pathetic minds. As Don Henley sang, they love dirty laundry. Even when it’s fake, contrived, manufactured dirt. Keller makes much of my bloody clothes. This “court’s” reasoning amounts to no more than “he had blood on his clothes, he made it to a neighbor’s house for help, therefore he did it.” In case some of you cannot immediately recognize how crazy that is, let me help by explaining some 1
simple things to you. I wasn’t even wearing those clothes when most of the blood was deposited on them. I’d taken my pants off and folded over the top to keep ‘em from dumping stuff outta my pockets and laid ‘em on the furniture with the legs hanging off. The shirt I had when arrested was Randy’s, not mine, and he’d draped it over the back of a chair in the living room. Said room was rather small. Twila was killed on the living room floor less than 2 feet from where these clothes hung. For a better understanding, read my NHHN #13. I’d passed out on the couch after drinking too much and being poisoned by codeine. I’d also voluntarily ingested Xanax earlier that day but I did not intentionally or voluntarily take the codeine, to which I am highly intolerant. I was passed out when these murders were committed. Whatever happened and whoever did it, I don’t know. Scooter, on of the victims, although mortally wounded, was still left standing after it was all said and done. He sprinkled water in my face, eventually roused me, got me up and dressed and out of there. I’ve always had a working memory of most of what went on. Some parts I don’t much remember but I’ll get to that in a minute. The short of it is, Scooter got me up, I couldn’t stand and fell on the floor; throwing out my hands to catch myself, I cut my palm on a glass shard from the curved ceiling fan light globes that were shattered and upturned all over the floor. I jerked my hand back reflexively and fell forward the rest of the way, prone. I saw what was done to Twila, as I’d fell across her. Scooter passed the pickaxe handle under my chest and used it to haul me up. Once standing, he leaned the club against the couch and that’s where it was later found. The state’s weasel of an expert at trial said it didn’t have any fingerprints on it. He lied. Because they’re Scooter’s prints and those of a killer, not mine. We went thru the kitchen into the bedroom to see about Randy. I’m bleeding like a stuck hog. I’m holding my hand against myself to try to make it quit bleeding. Scooter leaned me against the dresser so he could check on Randy. Randy’s dead. I couldn’t stand, I fell on the floor. I tried to get up, holding onto the doorjamb – leaving my bloody print there. It’s the outer edge of my right palm that’s cut. I’m right-handed. My right hand is crippled from an earlier shop accident which nearly severed my thumb a few months before the murders. I can’t pull myself up. Scooter hauls me up and tells me “I can’t keep picking you up. We gotta get outta here. They’re coming back.” – He’d said that several times. That was the whole objective from the moment he got me up and helped me get dressed: “we gotta get outta here.” At that time, I didn’t understand that Scooter was mortally wounded. He wasn’t bleeding that much outside; his wounds were internal. We went out the back door together. I fell again in the alley. Scooter went off across the empty field and that was the last I saw him after I told him, “Just go. Go get help.” I passed out again. I woke up freezing cold. I had to move or die, I thought. So I started staggering, falling, crawling down the alley. I made it to Andrea’s but I’d meant to go to Howard Mitchell’s. I just couldn’t make it that far. The sheriff eventually came down there and arrested me. Now, try to understand this. I didn’t care that those clothes had blood on them when I put them on. I doubt I even noticed it. I wasn’t worried about getting Twila’s blood on me when I fell; I was worried about Twila being dead. I wasn’t worried about getting Scooter’s blood on me as I was holding onto him for dear life to get out of there. I was worried about our surviving and getting the hell out of there to some place safe so I could get help and figure out what the hell had happened and why. Once I got to Andrea’s I wasn’t in a hurry to get the police involved because I thought Scooter’s wounds were superficial and he’d went to another neighbor’s and gotten help. I saw Twila and Randy as dead. At the same time you know, your mind just cannot accept something so fantastical 2
so I thought it possible I was hallucinating. I wanted to get coherent and get Andrea to go down there with me, with her gun, so we both could see what was what. As I’ve said before, I couldn’t so much think these things as I just intuited and felt them. So it was, “Get better. Go see.” I had not done anything wrong, so I was not thinking at all about blood on my clothes. Later I did think that if we called in the law they’d blame it on me, but that was because I had an antagonistic relationship with the sheriff, who just two months before had assaulted me in a bar ditch while I was cuffed behind my back and stomped and kicked me with his cowboy boots while I was down, breaking four of my ribs and fracturing a fifth. So I’d expect to get blamed just because it was “me,” not because I’d done anything to deserve it. I never even thought of the blood at all. I think I’ve adequately addressed in NHHN #13 what happened at Andrea’s that night, so I’ll leave that. After my arrest, lead detective, Terry Young, had come back from setting up the scene to his liking and now wanted to interrogate me, sick and drunk as I was, to see if he could get me to go along with it. This was a sordid game of cat and mouse that went on for hours. I told him from word one that I wanted to call my lawyer, I had nothing to say. But he wasn’t having any. Under Miranda, once I request a lawyer all interrogation must cease. Young ignored that, violated my rights and continued questioning me illegally. Worse, he kept suggesting scenarios to me and attempting to get me to confirm them. I decided to at least appear to be receptive to whatever he said because I knew then they were somehow over there staging that crime scene, setting it up to try to make me look guilty. I knew I needed to learn all I could about what he’d done and what he intended to falsely allege but I had no idea how far they’d really went. By the way, all this with Young is in the record and the D.A., John Mann, testified that Young was not credible and had violated all my rights. Yet Killer Keller cites Young’s interview and relies on it! Now, let’s look at Killer Keller’s “opinion.” First they start out by saying, “We hold that, in the usual case, the interests of justice do not require testing when defense counsel has already declined to request testing as a matter of reasonable trial strategy.” The woman is a psychopath. Chapter 64 was created solely to protect innocent defendants from languishing behind bars or from being wrongly executed, where there is DNA evidence to provide probative results. That’s the “interest of justice” it’s designed to serve. It’s not designed to serve the “interest” she’s using it for here, to protect the ex-D.A. trial counsel from an ineffective assistance of counsel. Finding if the evidence is tested and provides exculpatory results. More importantly, Mr. ex-D.A. trial counsel’s strategy was not reasonable at all under the circumstances but Killer Keller conveniently failed to take any notice of these facts. Mr. ex-D.A. trial counsel was in debt to the I.R.S. for $96,000 so it was understood, the judge paid him $100 an hour in or out of court to total ultimately $86,000 and change. i.e. Of course this lawyer, Harold Comer, was not going to do anything to jeopardize his lucrative “position.” That money is the only thing that kept that man out of the federal penitentiary for tax evasion. That Judas sold me out for $86,000 so he could stay out of jail and continue paying for his cocaine and downer habits. Killer Keller conveniently fails to acknowledge any of this, eh. Yet it’s in the record she so frequently cites to in this “opinion” of hers. Of course let us not forget now, she’s – by her own words in the Dallas Morning News – “prosecution oriented,” i.e. biased and prejudiced in favor of the state. And, in no other “opinion” does it show more than in this one. Read on… Next, this decision says I have to pay for the strategies of trial counsel, even when that strategy is against the weight of the facts of the case known to him at the time. As Killer Keller also conveniently failed to note in her little “opinion,” I told trial counsel from day one that I was innocent of this crime and he acknowledged that at my federal evidentiary hearing in 2005. Even 3
more, I’ve been a writ writer all my life, I’d worked 7 1/2 years off and on (at that time) for one of the best criminal defense lawyers in the panhandle of Texas, James Marion “Rowdy” Bowers, so I knew a little. I wrote Comer, ex-D.A. trial counsel, and told him I wanted him to hire experts to test the evidence but he ignored me. So, what about what I, the defendant and client, wanted? Now, 15 years later Comer says he feared the tests would’ve only incriminated me. But how could he “reasonably” believe that? Sure I lived in the same house and of course innocent contamination is always a possibility. But as I’d told Comer, I never touched those knives, that jacket found beside Twila’s body, or her panties or her pubic area. We’d not made love since 4 days prior to the murders when I’d left to go to Amarillo to tend to some business, to make some money for Christmas and to pay off a bondsman. “Incrimination” is not the reason Comer gave me at the time, nor my writ counsel, Steven Losch, in 1997-98, for not testing the evidence. He said that, as an exD.A., he believed the current D.A. who prosecuted me, John Mann, “had a duty to test the evidence because D.A.’s have a duty to exclude the accused as well as to convict.” Any idiot in Texas knows it’s a rare D.A. who’ll exonerate anyone, unless he does it by accident while trying to get inculpatory/incriminating evidentiary test results and even then he’d deny it to the dying end. Texas is well known for its “Lie cheat or steal. No excuses, just results! Win at any cost!” prosecutorial theories and philosophies. What Comer was really saying with that statement was “I’ve cut a deal to be paid all this money, I’m flush, I’m not going to do anything but defer to Mr. Mann here; he can test it if he wants… hee-hee, wink, heh-heh”… It wasn’t until after John Mann unilaterally DNA tested some of the evidence in 2000 and falsely claimed inculpatory results that Comer first coined his “I didn’t test it because I feared it’d incriminate Skinner” idea. In fact, the first time he ever made that statement was in 2000. Or, when the state writ was filed. I am assuming here that you all are either reading along with me on this CCA opinion or, that you have read both it and my NHHN #13 before reading this and have both now before you. I’ll be the first to admit that due to all the state’s lies, false evidence, perjured testimony, other subterfuge and then the court’s mangling of the case on appeal and in these Chapter 64 proceedings, it’s a mess. But it’s still understandable, if you have a guide who knows what really went on. I do. Keller says at 5:48 am I had a BAC of 0.11 and 0.11 mg of codeine per liter of blood. That’s a lethal dose. We showed at the evidentiary hearing that I was pretty incapacitated. As I’ve said before, there is a vast difference between staggering, stumbling and crawling 3 1/2 blocks in fear for your life and expertly assassinating 3 people in a minute and a half using nothing but your bare hands (strangulation), a pickaxe handle (Twila was strangled and bludgeoned, they said), and two knives (Scooter and Randy were stabbed to death, they said). Killer Keller says that when the laws drove up they found me standing in a closet at Andrea’s. That’s a lie. The sheriff was deposed prior to the evidentiary hearing and he admits I fell backward in the closet and was stuck there, holding out my hands, that he and the D.A.’s investigator pulled me out and put me on a mattress. The distinction is important – I couldn’t stand up unassisted; ergo, I sure couldn’t have killed 3 people, eh. Another thing conveniently ignored is that when they stood me up the sheriff took me to the living room and began to interrogate me. The first question he asked me was, “Where is the other one at?” I asked him, “One what?” He said, “The one who did the killing, who cut you, where is he?” I just looked at him. He said, “Hank, Twila and Randy are dead, do you understand that?!” I just told him, “No, I don’t understand.” What I meant was I couldn’t believe such a thing had happened and I couldn’t understand why on earth someone would do that to them. Later the sheriff said only he told me they were dead and I said I did not understand. He wanted to conceal the fact that as 4
soon as they saw me they knew I hadn’t done it. I couldn’t even sit up straight. The retired FBI toxicologist, Dr. Lowry, testified that between 12:00 and 3:30 am I would’ve been in a stupor, with impaired consciousness, general apathy and inability to stand or walk – exactly the condition I was in! I believe the only things that allowed me to make it to Andrea’s were trauma – the cut on my palm hurt like hell, burned and bled profusely until it was sewed up at the hospital. Shock/fear – when Scooter got me up off the couch and I saw all that blood, I was scared. When I saw Twila I was mortified. Then when Scooter left me in the alley I was freezing cold – that woke me up. So I think a healthy shot of fear, trauma and adrenaline got me to Andrea’s – even at that I couldn’t make it two more blocks to Howard’s. I’m sure that’s where I wanted to go – there were men there who Twila and I knew; we needed the help of a crew. But when Andrea picked me up and took me in out of her yard where I’d fell, I was glad, I guess, just to be out of the cold and somewhere warm. Killer Keller says Andrea’s recantation of her trial testimony is not credible because my ex-wife and Gerry Douglas testified at the evidentiary hearing that Andrea talked to them soon as she gave her statement and the police released her. She was shaking and crying and reiterating to them what she’d put in her statement at the time. As my attorneys correctly pointed out in previous briefing on the issue – Andrea was shaking and crying because she’d barely escaped being arrested for murder or, as an accessory, and she’d been threatened into lying. Once she decided to lie, she had to be a good actress and keep it up. Andrea is police- and criminal law-savvy. She had enough sense to know that if she told people she lied, she’d likely be meeting them in court, and if she got impeached and blew Mann’s case, she’d face his wrath and retaliation, which would be formidable. And that was proven when Mann attacked her and again threatened her with prison at the 1998 grand jury hearing after she recanted. What’s more shocking about Killer Keller’s opinion is that she cites the D.A. Mann’s testing in 2000 as reason now why I should not be allowed testing and cites only the portions she alleges might prove inculpatory. That is an inquisitorial style of address. To my knowledge the holy inquisition ended in 1834. We now have an adversarial legal system – i.e. If the state tests evidence its using against you, you get to test what you want, to defend yourself with. Like I say, Killer Keller is nutzo! There is, again, a vast difference in “being present at the scene” and killing 3 people. I had every right to be there. It was my home. Killer Keller treats me as if I’d broke into the home. If you woke up in the middle of the night and your loved ones were dead or dying, would you touch them? Try to help them? See if they were still alive? We couldn’t use the phone to call for help – it was ripped out of the wall. Terry Young suggested it was done by the assailant and showed premeditation, but looking at it another way, it was obvious that when Scooter chased the killer out of the house one of their feet became tangled in the cord and they jerked it out while running for the door. Killer Keller says the mixed profile of Twila and I from the hair in her hand somehow proves guilt. That’s long since been disproved – it was innocent contamination or cross-contamination at the lab because all my markers were “faint” and subsequent mtDNA testing shows the hair does not match me. The blood flakes off the hair were tested independently and it’s only Twila’s blood, not mine. Killer Keller says that defense (trial) counsel could not have anticipated that Andrea Reed would recant her trial testimony. Ha. She’d already made a prior inconsistent statement that counsel failed to use to impeach her – that was another claim in my writ that Keller conveniently overlooked. Aside from that, counsel admitted he never even interviewed Andrea. She’s since 5
stated that if he had, and had offered her some protection from the D.A.’s threats, she’d have told him the truth then and there. Keller points to the testimony of other, unreliable, witnesses to try to discredit Andrea after the fact. While Andrea was on the stand the A.G. had ample opportunity to cross-examine her and did so. She was unrefuted/unimpeached on every point of her recantation. “The great deal of rebuttal evidence” Keller cites is meritless. Jessica can’t even remember her previous statement. That’s because she was with Andrea at the police station, they were both in the same room and she just parroted what lies Andrea told, and told her to say. She never testified at all. Now Killer Keller cites her as a credible rebuttal witness? That’s beyond absurd. Andrea, who remembers everything down to a detail, vs. Jessica, who says “oh I don’t remember what I said, but whatever’s in my statement, that’s what it is.” She’s more credible? She wouldn’t even appear and testify!! She refused!! Keller says law enforcement officers contradicted Andrea’s statement that they threatened her. Of course they’d deny committing illegal acts. But they had no comment on whether Andrea’s factual recantation was accurate because, of course, they don’t know. They weren’t there to see what Andrea did and said with respect to me. This is subterfuge Keller uses to bolster otherwise noncredible witnesses, to give the false impression they enjoy the support of “law enforcement officers.” Killer Keller says of my codeine allergy/intolerance that I “did not appear to have an allergic reaction to codeine in his system on the night of the offense.” That conveniently overlooks the fact that I ingested the codeine accidentally at about 9:30 pm and I did not see Andrea for the first time until after midnight and the worst of the reaction had subsided, leaving me sick, delirious and lethargic. There are varying levels of intolerance to codeine. What Keller refers to here is a single question the A.G. asked of Andrea: “Do you remember he had difficulty breathing or was his face swollen and puffy?” Andrea said, “no.” What the A.G. was referring to was the very worst sort of reaction in those who are totally intolerant, called anaphylactic shock, which if left untreated can often be fatal. My intolerance is not that severe but not far from it. I get very sick and nauseated, have extreme vertigo – cannot stand or sit up. Fall over. No balance. Colorblindness, delirium, fatigue, I vomit, muscle weakness and lethargy, inability to talk or think clearly, etc. I also experience asthma-like symptoms and difficulty breathing but it usually wears off within an hour and a half to two hours. With only the single above cited question, the A.G. in her briefs pronounced I wasn’t intolerant to codeine at all and now Keller picks it up and runs with it. Dr. Michael Chamales was impeached and successfully rebutted on every point in his lying testimony. I was never “caught stealing” any syringes. The sheriff had attacked me while cuffed behind my back, threw me down in a bar ditch and stomped my ribs in with his cowboy boots, breaking four (4) ribs and fracturing a fifth (5th). The sheriff told Chamales I was litigious and he couldn’t afford a suit. Chamales “overlooked” my ribs, invented the syringe stealing story and used that to eject me from the E.R. I was in custody at the time, in a belly belt, handcuffs and shackles – I could not have “stolen” anything; I had a deputy right beside me the whole time. I laid in jail for four (4) days in a fever and coughing blood. Fortunately for me, the hospital had a policy of having a radiologist review all E.R. physicians’ interpretations of x-rays. The radiologist diagnosed my broken ribs and caught Chamales’ “mistake.” I was taken back to the E.R. and treated, finally, Chamales was forced to acknowledge this and admit that I was not “drug seeking” at all; four (4) broken ribs and a fractured fifth (5th) certainly justifies some narcotic pain relief as they hurt like hell. 6
As to “drug seekers” self reporting allergies to get stronger drugs, no doctor in this nation would follow that practice. Besides which, the drugs I was given, Talwin-NX and Propoxyphene, are respectively almost 50% and 30%, weaker than an equi-analgesic dose of 60 mg codeine, not stronger. But all that is beside the point. The point is, the synthetic analgesics do not produce any cross-tolerance to codeine, I never took any codeine, I never had any prescribed, so I could not have been tolerant of it. The state argued that I must’ve had this great tolerance of codeine which would’ve enabled me to commit the murders – at trial. Once we proved that is simply untrue the state launched off into this alternate unrelated argument of “drug seekers.” I was in jail when given Toradol – the prescription in June ’93. I took one and 30 minutes later broke out in hives and went into convulsions. The jail logs show all this and that they had to call the doctor and get me some different medication. That’s how I learned I was intolerant of Toradol – which is also an opiate/codeine derivative! – and reported it in October ’93 when Chamales says I was “drug seeking” – the reaction was reported by the physician’s assistant and an R.N. and two deputy jailers, not me. Chamales is a liar and that is “amply supported by the record.” The testimony of Lori Brim to my codeine intolerance was unrebutted and unrefuted by the state in any form. It wasn’t a “suggestion made over the phone by a nurse,” it was by the doctor who diagnosed it, as the nurse related it to him. There was nothing ambiguous about it. Lori called the hospital and told them what was happening to me – the doctor was busy with another patient but the nurse described my symptoms and the doctor said “he’s just having a moderate allergic reaction to the codeine. Tell him to not take any more of it and if he doesn’t get better in an hour or two bring him in and we’ll take another look at him.” It wasn’t that it was not a serious issue; it was. But such reactions usually subside with time and I was a poor patient with no insurance so they weren’t interested in seeing me again pro bono unless they had to. Elwin “Scooter” Caler did not have muscular dystrophy or diabetes. All these maladies which were non-existent were absolutely disproven by the autopsy findings which stated unequivocally that Scooter was “physically normal.” He was not “slow,” he graduated high school on time with his class. These fake maladies were invented by Beverly Clark and D.A., John Mann, as a means to pitify Scooter and try to explain the absurd idea that I, 5’9”, 145 lbs, and unable to even stand unassisted, could’ve overpowered and killed Scooter Caler, 22 yrs old, 6’6” tall, 245 lbs of strapping young man and/or seamlessly switching weapons, killed everyone in the house in under a minute and a half. Mann turned Scooter and Randy into “poor little retarded boys” in order to paint a false picture for the jury which led to my wrongful conviction. In this “opinion” Killer Keller revives the lies in order to re-craft them for her own use. At 285 lbs, his heaviest, Scooter was borderline diabetic and took pills for it. But once I’d helped him diet down to 245 lbs he no longer was borderline. Although, we still monitored his blood sugar because sometimes he’d sneak sweets and get overloaded. Scooter was “slow” only in the manner that he was huge and, like anyone of his immense size (the top of my head didn’t even come up to his shoulder!) he appeared lumbering. Mentally, however, he was fine. Randy, 6’1”, 180 lbs, had a physical deformity called Trecher’s column, a deformity of the neck which prevented his bottom jaw from growing out. It gave him a very odd look, like he was retarded but he also graduated high school with his class. Here’s another place where Keller outright lies: She says “Dr. Lowry acknowledged that it was possible appellant took the codeine after the murders, possibly to soothe the pain in his injured hand.” While that somewhat describes the record of his testimony, it’s still an outright lie and fabrication. Upon cross examination by John Mann, he kept suggesting to Dr. Lowry “isn’t it possible he took it (the codeine) after the murders, maybe because his hand was hurt? Isn’t that at least possible?” He’d badgered Lowry several times about this. Exasperated, Dr. Lowry finally said something like, “Well, in the way of anything being possible, yes it is possible but…” (I think here Mann cut him off and either the judge had to intercede or my lawyers asked him to finish his 7
answer, whereupon he said) “Yes, in the guise of any thing’s possible, maybe, but it’s not indicated by the evidence in this case because alcohol alone would not have placed the defendant in a near comatose state as observed by Howard Mitchell at 10:30 pm – 10:45 pm. (Howard Mitchell was a state’s witness who testified that I was incapable of having committed the murders. He testified that he came to pick up Twila and I, to take us to his party, but I was “out cold and sort of comatose,” unable to be roused by any external stimuli. That he hollered at me and jerked on my arm until he pulled my torso completely up off the couch but got no response at all from me and that he believed there was no way in the world I could’ve recovered sufficiently in less than an hour and a half to kill three (3) people in a minute and a half, no way.) So when you take away all the artful misconstruing of the evidence and testimony K.K. employs, what’s left? Only the truth, that’s what. It will speak for itself if allowed to do so. I’ve already addressed in NHHN #13 how I got to Andrea’s house so I won’t belabor K.K.’s rendition of it on pg 18 of her “opinion” except to say, it took me over 45 minutes to get there. 3 and 1/2 blocks a normal person could walk in five minutes or less. Maybe that, better than anything, attests my degree of intoxication/sickness. A generally alleged “long history of alcohol and drug abuse does” not “suggest that [I] would be more drug tolerant than the average individual.” Tolerance to specific drugs are built up only by repeated ingestion of that specific drug or an analog or similar to it which would produce crosstolerance, which is not the case here. I take issue with the allegation that I was some “drug addict” anyway. I’ve never been arrested or caught with any drugs in my whole life. So, where does this “long history” come from? Speaking in terms of my whole lifetime, I had done some drugs, yeah, In the early 80’s I got strung on methamphetamine while working in the oilfield. I quit on my own. While I was a teenager I experimented with all sorts of drugs. Once I got out of prison in 1989 for car theft (I “stole” my own truck, if you can believe that) I was on super-intensive supervision parole and subjected to urinalysis once a week with “surprise” random tests at home and work. I successfully completed that parole in May of 1993, four and a half years of it. I’d done nothing but drank a cold beer or shot of whiskey once in a while or smoked a joint if I could – less than once a month. Couple times I did some acid. From May of ’93 until the time of the murders I’d had only some prescription medications for painkillers as I note herein and only then for the period of June through late August or early September 1993 because my right thumb was nearly severed off my hand in mid-June in a shop accident. It then became infected and later had outpatient surgery performed on it. Then in the fall, late September or October ’93, the sheriff had broken my ribs. So I had meds for that. That’s it. I have no problem describing myself as an alcoholic. But I wasn’t a constant drinker hiding bottles everywhere. I never had the shakes or D.T.’s. I was a “weekend warrior,” a binge drinker. I have impaired liver function. A doctor at TDCJ’s UTMB Galveston has diagnosed me in the past as having a “coarse liver.” After a binge it takes me a while to recover. On the same amount of alcohol I stay drunker, longer, than anyone else. Killer Keller cites what I can do min-wise while drunk. Yes well, I did that sitting in a chair because I couldn’t stand up or walk without falling. The victims in this case weren’t killed with (or by) anyone’s mind or thought processes. This conversation I had with the sheriff wasn’t in relation to any physical action on my part but simply my reading, with one eye closed, while sitting down and drunk as hell, a document he’d placed before me. How does performing that task even remotely relate to killing three (3) people in a minutes and a half? Like I say, K.K.’s “reasoning” 8
isn’t just overblown and far reaching, it’s slightly insane. This is a judge, on the state’s highest appeals court mind you, the presiding judge no less – which equates to the same position as senior judge on the state supreme court or chief justice on the U.S. supreme court, who says these things. Worse, she goes on to mischaracterize the so-called circumstantial evidence against me on pg 19 of her “opinion”: “DNA testing of the blood stains on the clothing showing a match with Twila and Elwin” (yes but as the state concluded at trial, the tested stains ere only direct contact transfers, meaning only that I came into contact with tow of the victims or, something they’d deposited blood on, at a time after they became bloody, not that I’d killed anyone. I didn’t!) “The serious cut in appellant’s right hand” (I’ve explained how my hand was cut. The crime scene photographs show the broken light globes and the upturned curved glass shards on the floor by Twila’s body. True, my explanation is not in the record. But what is in the record is the medical examiner’s testimony that it’s likely a defensive wound on my hand which raises evidence of self-defense, not evidence of murder.) “The mixed profile of appellant’s and Twila’s DNA” (GeneScreen’s own tests prove it was innocent or cross-contamination from the lab. My markers were all “faint,” suggesting innocent touch contamination – Twila and I had been in casual contact all afternoon and evening the day/night of the murders. Subsequent independent testing of the blood flakes off the hair prove it was only Twila’s own blood. Subsequent mtDNA testing of the hair show it came from an unknown male individual, not me – this is one of the many hairs “clutched” in the had of Twila, my girlfriend, which the then D.A., John Mann, says “She tore from the head of her assailant during the struggle for her life, which she ultimately lost.” So, Sharon Killer Keller, how is that incriminating to me?) “Appellant linked himself to the crime in a statement to police in which he said he thought Twila gave him a cut on his hand and they may have gotten into a fight, but he claimed not to remember plainly.” (“Linked” myself “to the crime”? You must be kidding me. I was there! I never denied that! I had every right in the universe to be there! The “statement” K.K. refers to was made to Terry Young and inadmissible for any purpose due to what I stated earlier – denial of counsel when repeatedly requested, violations of Miranda and my constitutional rights and coercion – all of which Terry Young has openly admitted at a pretrial hearing after I tricked him into it. I was standing in front of the jury room talking to the chief jailer whom I’d known for years, who asked me how the hearing was going. Terry Young was standing around the corner from that alcove, eavesdropping. We’d invoked “the rule” as to witnesses, meaning other potential witnesses could not be in the courtroom hearing the testimonies of their contemporaries lest they be tainted by it. Terry knew he’d violated my rights and that the other officers did not like him – there was a rivalry going on between him/the P.D. and the S.O. over “who would get credit for cracking the case and nailing Skinner” as the deputy put it. So I started telling the jailer about how the previous P.D. officer had give up Terry Young for violating all my rights, denying me access to counsel, coercion, suggesting various scenarios to me and trying to get me to confirm them, etc. Terry was then next witness to testify and he’d had the jailer and deputy questioning me so he could get the inside scoop.) When we went back into the courtroom I told Harold Comer to question Terry Young about these things. He says “I’m not going to cross-examine him about that! He won’t admit to it!” I said, “Oh yes he will, just ask him this, this and this,” etc. But Harold still wasn’t’ going to until I got really insistent and stomped his toes under the table. So he was like, “Ok, smartass I’ll show you!” As he started coming right out of lead detective Terry Young’s mouth – COMER: “Did he tell you he wanted to call a lawyer?” T. YOUNG: “Well I remember he wanted to call someone in some offices, sir. But the number was long distance and I couldn’t dial that from my office without authorization, sir.” Once Comer saw Young was going to give himself up, Comer grew confident and asked all the 9
questions. T. Young admitted to everything, especially the coercion and trying to plant memories in my head. Now, back to the morning after the murders. After Young started questioning me without a lawyer, I knew it wasn’t admissible. I knew that Young, Steve Chance, and Morse Burroughs had been over there setting up that scene to their liking. I’m still drunk and hung over, deathly sick from the codeine, and about to be accused of a capital murder I did not commit. I had some memory of Scooter getting me out of there and falling, etc. I thought about the club. I knew Twila was beat to death with it due to how she was when I saw her, so I figured Scooter had took it away from her killer in running him out of the house. That’s the one piece of evidence I could think of that the killer had to have touched. So I decided then and there to just try to go along with Young as much as I could without actually making a false confession, to try to get them to test evidence I felt would exonerate me. I knew I had not touched that club in weeks and the killer had, as had Scooter – well, his prints could be eliminated, as being a victim. Which would leave only the killer’s. These three detectives and patrolman are three of the most corrupt on that force. Remember, I worked for a criminal defense lawyer in that town for years, so I’d seen plenty examples of these officers “work” before. Four days after the murders I employed the same tactic with the sheriff, hoping to make use of the rivalry between the sheriff’s office (S.O.) and the Pampa police department (P.D.). Of course they could’ve easily tried to tamper with that evidence, too. But I banked on the fact that, if they already thought it was me/mine they’d just get it tested and see. All I’ve ever wanted was the truth to come out. I am not guilty of this crime, I did not commit it. I don’t make any excuses for what I did do; I don’t pretend my thinking makes excellent sense or even follows logic anyone can approve of or whatever. I’m telling you this only to be honest and, more importantly, to show you the difference between reality and the insanity Killer Keller would have you believe. My statements are not in the least any “confessions” and when Terry Young was confronted by the Houston Chronicle’s reporters he admitted “Skinner never confessed.” That story is attached to the NHHN #13. More importantly, Harold Comer knew all this prior to trial and did nothing. At the 2005 evidentiary hearing Comer admitted that I’d told him from day one that I was innocent and I demanded testing of the evidence. Yet he claimed that the reason he didn’t test the evidence was because of his knowledge of the Terry Young interview and although it was totally inadmissible because of detective Young’s onerous violations of all my rights, he still considered it when deciding to not test the evidence. You see, Harold Comer is a real dog turd. Not only did he sell me out, lay down on me and let John Mann convict me on false evidence, he’s still a D.A. at heart and when the A.G. came to him saying “what about this ineffective assistance of counsel (IAC) claim?” he again offered my life up on the sacrificial alter by claiming he relied on that interview he knew was a sham – to save his sorry hid and falsely make me appear guilty. The lawyer’s #1 duty is to his client – I waived the atty/client confidentiality clause with respect to privilege so Comer could testify, but that in no way released him from his ethical duty to put his client’s interests first. Harold Comer is a grade-A lying piece of shit. He intentionally, by lying, got the judge to admit a piece of inadmissible evidence that could be construed to make me appear guilty. And, looky here! That’s exactly what the federal magistrate and Killer Keller did with it! As to K.K.’s taking into account Andrea’s first lying statement because the federal magistrate found her recantation to be not credible and that I came into her house under my own power, etc., there’s a photo of the deputies holding me up in front of a camera on my website. I’m literally passed out on my feet and if they weren’t holding me up I’d been on the floor, laid out: www.hankskinner.org As to the “multiple stories” Killer Keller cites as “incriminating,” they are no such thing. Andrea testified I told her different stories about what might’ve happened – all involving other people, not me. But what she doesn’t tell is that she asked me to speculate on who might’ve killed Twila. So 10
we were just sitting there brainstorming (ha/ha) who could’ve done such a thing. However, drunk and sick as I was, laid across the table, I could barely speak so it came out more or less as gibberish – which is exactly what Andrea says in her recantation affidavit. K.K. says, “We conclude that appellant’s proffered evidence on the issue of incapacity does not call into question defense counsel’s strategy to forgo DNA testing.” Well, unfortunately, that’s only because neither she nor the other eight inquisitory prosecutors on that court ever bothered to look at the evidence or the record as a whole. Before I go on here, I’d like to again call your attention to the evidence of my innocence cited in NHHN #13. Also, I’d like to preface this with a short explanation about judicial review. In a situation like this the court has recognized, you must view the case in the context of the record in its entirety. You don’t get to surgically go in and pick out only what you want to use to condemn a man – that’s a premium showing of inherent bias and prejudice – or as Sharon Killer puts it so quaintly, being “prosecution oriented.” Well, what about al the evidence in the record that cannot be reconciled with her stupid view about my incapacitation? Let me cite just one example: Defense expert Dr. Joe Tarpley, PT/LVN, testified that he examined my crippled hand – over 14 months after the murders, and found that I had less than half the strength (then) in my right had as I did my left hand; the right hand being dominant I should’ve had 25% more strength in the right hand than the left, so that’s a 75% loss or more, total. And, 50 to 60% tissue/muscle mass lost out of that hand and there was damage to the ligaments, tendons and bones of the thumb in my right hand which caused very limited range of motion and utility. This evidence was all based on scientific test conducted by the experts and it was all totally unrefuted by the state at trial. That means that, under Texas criminal law practice and current case law precedent, it’s the law and fact of the case. Sharon Killer and her eight cohorts are bound by it. Period. This was after my hand had 14 months of additional healing time. At the time of the murders I could hardly use a hairbrush. Twila was strangled by hands so powerful they crushed the bones in her neck and left permanent finger shaped depressions/indentations in the flesh of her throat. Based on this evidence the medical examiner, a pathologist named Dr. Elizabeth Peacock, who did the autopsies on all three (3) victims, testified that Twila was strangled in the classic throttling sort of grip, thumbs overlaced with fingers curled around her neck. It is beyond axiomatic that I could not have committed this act nor could I have wielded that club against her nor the knives. Once again, I’m right-handed and it’s my right hand that was crippled. What’s even worse is Sharon Killer’s treatment of the DNA testing carried out in 2000 unilaterally by then D.A., John Mann. When that testing was falsely alleged to incriminate me, the CCA could not go along with it quickly enough. Now that it tentatively exonerates me, they “are not persuaded.” This method they use of “attack and distort” and selectively citing only those facts which support the position they want to take are prosecutorial tactics, not the reasoned judgment of a fair and impartial factfinder. Worse still, Keller acknowledges that the state withheld material evidence on discovery which they were ordered to turn over to the defense, then she goes on to actually chastise the defense expert and deride his opinions because he acknowledged that he was working from incomplete data, the underlying DNA testing’s electronic data was unreadable and the hard copy data was incomplete! Sharon Killer also overlooks the fact that William Watson also agreed at the very beginning of his testimony that he made a mistake in attributing to me the hair “clutched” in Twila’s hand. 11
But Keller goes on to credit the state’s expert, Watson, because “unlike [defense expert] Dr Shields, Watson had access to the samples themselves and, presumably, the complete data generated during testing.” So this is now an inquisitorial system in Texas. The state can test whatever it wants and hide both the evidence and the underlying data from the defense and not only get away with it but be complimented for it! She goes on to say “genomic testing on those very hairs revealed a mixed sample of appellant’s and Twila’s DNA, and it may well be that it was that mixture that contaminated the second hair, rendering a mitochondrial DNA test unreliable.” That is a bald faced lie. Watson testified that there was (and we have a photo of it and photocopies) a Ziplock baggie of many hairs labeled 11-D and when the mitochondrial testing was done, it was not done on “the same two hairs the genomic testing was done on.” They simply selected two more hairs out of the 11-D bag and did mitochondrial (mtDNA) testing on those hairs. Worse still, I think Madam Killer Keller wrote this insane opinion because I had written the special prosecutor in her unethical conduct trial by the Texas commission on judicial conduct, telling him of her statements about being “prosecution oriented” and inquiring as to why no one ever acknowledged that such a statement plainly and clearly admits to serious bias and prejudice in favor of the state and against any criminal defendant petitioner or appellant. That it’s constitutionally required as part of due process to be heard by a fair and impartial factfinder. I think probably the prosecutor, John McKetta, turned over to Keller’s attorney, Chip Babcock, my letter on discovery and Keller was thus aware of it and maybe read it, then in retaliation authored this “opinion” in my Ch 64 appeal on DNA testing. If this is so, Keller should’ve recused herself from my case. Only in Texas can something this insane happen. As always Hank 999143 Polunsky Unit H W Hank Skinner 3872 FM 350 South Livingston, TX 77351-8580 http://www.hankskinner.org h.w.skinner@gmail.com
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