“Show no pity: life for life, eye for eye, tooth for tooth, hand for hand, foot for foot.” Deuteronomy 19:21 (NIV)
Anyone who planned to go up to the Colorado high country on Sunday, October 9, 2005 for a last glimpse of the aspens’ fall colors was disappointed. A cold front had moved in, stripping most of the leaves off the trees, bringing first rain and then snow. Early Tuesday it had snowed for over a day, leaving about eight inches on the ground in Aurora, an eastern suburb of Denver.
A steady wind was blowing there under a half moon when Terrill Williams, 30, arrived that Tuesday evening at his home, about 15 minutes’ drive from my home, after a night out. He lived in an area of homes and office buildings built in the ‘60s and ‘70s near Buckley AFB that mostly have gone to seed. Many of the homes have weeds instead of grass around them and burglar bars on the doors and windows. The most noticeable features nearby are the Super K Mart two blocks north of his house and the large trailer park across Colfax Avenue, the old U.S. Route 40, from the K-Mart.
Williams may have had in mind the need to get some sleep so he could get up in the morning and go to his successful produce business. He may have been thinking about his fifth child on the way. On the other hand, since he had been having himself a good time, he may not have had much specific on his mind at all. We’ll never know. He was clearheaded enough, though, that when he saw burglars in his home he knew he was in trouble.
He may even have recognized one of them. A few weeks earlier he had been in a liquor store parking lot when a 19 year old named Derek Lanctot drove in, cut him off and gave him the finger. Williams was no patsy. He’d been a football player, a defensive back at Wayne State and then semi-pro, with the Colorado Wolverines. Words would have been exchanged, and Williams hit Lanctot. Ever since then, Lanctot seems to have had it in for him.
When Williams walked in and saw himself outnumbered and outgunned, he did what any sensible person would in that situation: he turned around and ran. Lanctot did what a coward might: he shot Williams twice in the back. A strong man pumped up on adrenaline, cocaine and ecstasy, Williams ran about four blocks to the trailer park before he had a heart attack, fell in the snow and died. He was found four hours later.
Williams may not have been a plaster saint, but by the account of his family he was a good man, hard working, caring and full of life. He certainly did not deserve to come to his end face down in the snow, bleeding and alone. Whatever else he was doing that night, if Derek Lanctot had not shot him he would in all likelihood be among his family today, enlivening their lives with his unique energy, about which they speak movingly. The person who killed him deserves the most severe punishment.
But what does someone who had little or nothing to do with this tragedy deserve?
Michael Evans is certainly no saint, either. Twenty years old at the time, he apparently was part of the same criminal cohort as Lanctot. There was testimony that he helped hatch the plan to burglarize Williams' home. He later told police that if he had been able to get a gun, he would have been there that night, too. But he says he couldn’t, and he wasn’t. There is nothing to disprove his claim that he wasn’t there. The other young man who was there that night has since been killed in the course of another robbery, so to the cops’ frustration, I suppose, he’s beyond the reach of justice. But Evans is close at hand. Now Lanctot has been sentenced to 25 years in prison, with the possibility of getting out sooner than that. Evans has been sentenced to life without the possibility of parole. Lanctot is white; Evans is black.
Did Lanctot earn a deal for himself by agreeing to testify against Evans? Police and prosecutors often think in terms of “putting bad guys away” and “getting garbage off the streets for good.” Those are good things to do if they are in accordance with the rule of law, meting out justice rationally and equitably. If it is just a matter of the authorities deciding that someone needs to be taken out of circulation and then concocting a justification for doing so, that’s little more than lawlessness.
Is that what happened here? Did the Aurora police and the Arapahoe County prosecutors decide on their own the public would be safer with Michael Evans out of the way and then come up with a way to get that done? And did race play a factor in making them believe that the black man who didn’t shoot anyone was more likely to remain forever a threat to Coloradans than the white man who did shoot someone? It certainly looks like that may have been the case.
It doesn’t make cowboy justice right if it is papered over with a dubious law, either. Evans was convicted of felony murder. Under this law, if one of several specified felonies results in the death of a victim, everyone involved in the felony is fully responsible for the death, regardless of the level of that person’s actual involvement with the death.
The statute of felony murder has come under increasing attack recently, and with good reason. It may have ancient roots in medieval English common law, but around here lately it seems to be a favorite weapon of prosecutors eager to pander to panicked citizens. Since the 1993 Summer of Violence prosecutors have been able to direct-file, charging juveniles as adults without first having to go through a hearing to determine if it is appropriate. Then they can turn to the felony murder law to send young people to a life spent entirely behind bars.
Defenders of the law tout its ability to deter crime, but it’s being used against kids. When they get into trouble they usually lack the legal knowledge, the intellectual and emotional maturity, and in some cases the sobriety to allow them to think about how what they’re doing could result in a life sentence. With all that missing, the deterrent effect is pretty much nil.
The most famous example by far in Colorado, and I think in most of the United States, of the application of the felony murder statute is that of Lisl Auman.. A minor burglary she initiated in 1997 ended, for her, after a wild chase when she was handcuffed and put in the back seat of a police car. Unfortunately for Auman a friend who had helped her in the burglary kept running, killed a policeman, and then killed himself. That left her alone to take the heat for the death of a cop. She was charged with felony murder, convicted and, like Michael Evans, sentenced to life in prison without parole.
Fortunately for her, though, a white girl makes a more appealing poster child than a black man, and a bevy of celebrities lined up in her corner, including Morris Dees, Johnny Depp and most of all Hunter S. Thompson. Even the thoroughly apolitical Warren Zevon got in the act because of his friendship with Thompson. After several years of being a cause célèbre her conviction was overturned on a minute technicality and she was released from prison.
Michael Evans doesn’t have anyone rich or famous in his corner. He does have an attorney who cares. I have spoken to Lisa Moses and I could tell that she honestly believes her client was denied justice. She is appealing his conviction, but she has a long, lonely and very much uphill fight ahead of her.
The Bible verse I quoted at the beginning of this post is actually found three times in the Pentateuch, in almost precisely the same wording–an indication of the importance attached to it in ancient Israel. It’s often cited today as an example of the brutality at the heart of the Judeo-Christian-Muslim tradition but that’s a misunderstanding of the verse arising out of a failure to understand it in its historical context.
In a time when the prevailing notion of justice was sort of, “You slap me, and I’ll kill you,” and “You kill my cousin, and we’ll wipe out your village--men, women and children,” the idea of an equivalency between damage and punishment was a revolutionary advance. Along with the ideas of holding a hearing before a council of the community and forbidding perjury it held out the promise of retributive equity. Wrongs could be redressed without escalation into mutually destructive vendettas. Social cohesion and stability were promoted and there was a chance for everyone to flourish.
In time prophetic voices would begin to point beyond this minimal standard, toward the power of repentance and forgiveness to bring healing without the need for punishment. Finally Jesus announced the advent of a new era when love would rule.
Sometimes I have to admit, though, that that new era seems, in the words of a song, “a long time coming.” It probably seems that way to Michael Evans, too, if he thinks about it. He might even say that lately we seem to be slipping backward. That Mosaic code concept of and eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth must sound very good to him now.
Edit: While this might be a violation of the laws of blogging, I'm going to edit this post, although only to add some attribution and links to more information.
The basic source of my information for this post was Brandon Johansson's article about a month ago in Aurora's local newspaper, the Aurora Sentinel. Another source of information about this case was this article in the Rocky Mountain News. This is a good article on felony murder in the Denver Post. The Wkikpedia article about felony murder was also helpful.