“NOW I QUESTION EVERYTHING”

                                                       OR

                     ALICE IN WONDERLAND MEETS KAFKA

beverly monroe / b. 1938/convicted of murder/sentence: 22 yrs/served: 7 yrs.

her live-apart companion of 17 years is found dead of a gunshot wound. the county sheriff, medical examiner and at least six people, including relatives of the deceased, say that the death was a suicide. the scene was not closed off, almost no evidence except photos of the scene are preserved and people are allowed in the house – all indicating a lack of belief in murder. she had a store receipt and canceled check and a witness saying she was twenty five miles away at the time of the death. yet a state police officer says, “she was the only person who ever believed or said anything about suicide.” he contends her memory of the evening must be in error, that a program she had watched on t.v. had not been on that night, which it had, and that she fell asleep at her companions home and was present at his death. monroe has a masters degree in organic chemistry and is very detail oriented. (organic chemistry is where most people who want to be doctors drop out –eds.) at an interview at the police station he immediately, “grabs my hands…he is just bombarding me…he’s got to help me. he’s right in my face.” “it never occurred to me to say that something was wrong with (officer) riley.” the meetings are at first described as “completing the suicide report” and “just a formality”. the state officer, two secretaries, and a polygraph examiner claim that, during a four hour “interview”, she agreed to the officer’s scenario of the evening, yet there was nothing on the seventeen minutes of tape recording. a full month later he requests an interview with her not at the station but at a secluded park.  he then without preamble gets into her car and when people walk by he tells her to roll up the windows, even though the temperature is in the nineties. he tells her forensics shows that the death was murder and “everyone knows you did it” and begins to write out a “hypothetical” scenario of the evening as before. he insistently implies that she is either “going to sign the paper or I’ll arrest you.”

he also says:

• “ I’ve been a state police agent twenty two years and never lost a case.”
• “I’ve got a box of files on you. I can twist these things any way I want to.”
• “I can make you out to be the black widow spider of all time.”

when she refuses to sign the paper

• “his face turned totally red… he said that all he had to do was pick up the phone and it would be in all the papers. I would lose my job… I would not be able to speak to my family, (he) would drag my family through the mud.”

as she says, “so I signed it.” 

he does not arrest her, even though this is an alleged murder. she is charged with murder. at the trial the prosecutor brings forward a jail inmate who claimed that monroe tried to buy a gun from her. it is illegal to not share evidence between lawyers for the prosecution and defense before a trial. the trial transcript shows that the judge cautioned the prosecutor to “stop coaching the witness.” at the trial the prosecutor uses the words, “shot” and “killed” and “murdered” approximately every thirty seconds. the hands of the deceased had been tested for the residue of powder that would exist if he had fired the gun and came back positive, yet some of this evidence was withheld at the trial. the prosecutor claimed that the deceased had no reason to kill himself, even though several people said that he had been, “acting oddly”, that he had expressed “strong disappointment with himself as a father”, that he was the subject of a fifty million dollar lawsuit, and that his x-wife said he was talking psychological medication for intense mood swings. the prosecution presents a view of women in general, which monroe describes as “literally biblical”, as overly emotional and liable to extremes and dependant on a man for their identity, and that therefore monroe was crazy with jealousy of another woman.

she is convicted, then appeals the conviction.

the appeals process disallows any new evidence, even though it is determined that the witness has a previous history of testifying in exchange for a reduction in sentence, which did in fact happen in this instance, and that the police had withheld evidence.

the supreme court of virginia finds nothing wrong and uphold the conviction.

her daughter quits her job to investigate the case full time as her attorney. the warden of the jail tells her she cannot have family visits with her daughter separate from visits as an attorney.
“of course no one outside knew this was going on.” she goes to court over this and wins. “the next day the warden
smiles at me and says, ‘you know, there was never really any problem.’”  “the women there couldn’t believe I had all my teeth, because they were so used to having their teeth pulled. I saw women there with abscessed teeth, in pain. they wouldn’t get [to the dentist] for weeks.” when her conviction is overturned “there was one thing that really bothered me.” the prison had the other women “up all night waxing the floors” in case reporters or others might come in.

in march, 2002 the u.s. federal district court found that the prosecution had “concealed evidence”, described the forensic evidence as “unclear and contradictory” and the state police as “deceitful and manipulative” and found the case against her “tenuous at best” and cited her “un-refuted alibi.”

now aged sixty five, for two years afterward she and her family “lived with dread” in case of re-prosecution.
she had

• lost her home
• even with pro bono lawyers had spent hundreds of thousands of dollars
• wasn’t allowed to travel
• moved thirteen times in order not to be burden on her friends and relatives
• found it difficult to get a job at even a third of her previous salary.
• and “they had destroyed my relationship with [my companions] daughter, his family.” , “I had lost a brother while I was in [prison]”, “my mother died five months after I was released.”
• her daughter's whole life was disrupted  for years and sent off track, including the loss of her job, by the effort to aid her mother.

in june, 2003 prosecutors dropped all charges.
she said, “ if it had been a medical problem… or a car accident… there would have been accountability… but there wasn’t even access to records.”

                                      “its been going on since the beginning of time.”

                        greatly compressed from chapter VII, pages 203 – 246.
                        from
                       “surviving justice: america’s wrongfully convicted and exonerated”
                        lolla vollen and dave eggers  (in the reading list)
                        the stories of thirteen people as told by themselves and the “innocence
                        project” attorneys that freed them.
                        quotes are used to denote both verbatim and recalled words.
                        officer riley denied doing EVERYTHING that monroe alleges.