Looking back I see where I stepped deeper into this trying to get myself out of it. It wasn't just my bad lawyer or the prosecutor, it was my attitude and my lack of knowledge about what I was facing. I had fell under the illusion that if you didn't do anything you didn't have anything to worry about. I mean, how can you hide evidence that is right in your face?
Leroy Head didn't just confess to the Gillis brothers and his mom, but he confessed to anyone who would listen. I had over 10 different affidavits from inmates stating Leroy confessed to them over a period of years. None of which made it in front of any court. They claimed that this evidence wasn't credible because they were inmates. Yet they themselves used inmates to convict me. Anthony Gillis was the worse of them all. At the time of him giving the statement against Leroy, this dude was giving a statement against his own brother for another murder. The police were actually going around looking for a gang of guys that were robbing the elderly in the neighborhood.Which happened to be the Gillis brothers, Leroy Head and a few others. So when Anthony Gillis was arrested for this, he gave his own brother up for a murder he had done and Leroy for the murder of Sanders Leach to help get out of the mess he was in. When Leroy decided to put his murder on me, it wasn't hard for them to convince Gillis to change what he had said at the start. He had five different cases pending himself. This was a man who was in prison when he testified against me and walked out of the county jail an hour later. Between Anthony Gillis and Leroy Head, 19 different statements were made. And that was their evidence as to who did this murder. They didn't have any except their twisted words. These two boys with all these different statements. And somehow the prosecutor found a way to convince a jury that these two were making these stories up initially out of fear of me hurting their families.
So where were my lawyers while all this was going? I had Mr. William Chapman as an attorney at this point. So, I didn't really have an attorney. This man allowed all this to happen and then came to visit me one day and told me that they were now putting this murder on me and that I was facing the death penalty. The trial was a mess. This man was so bad the judge turned his back on the court and went to sleep. It took the jury all of 20 minutes to find me guilty and a day to sentence me to death.The courtroom was filled with lawyers and judges who just shook their heads when the verdict came in. I was the talk of the courthouse over this farce.
Everything that could have went wrong did go wrong. Even I knew this wouldn't stand. Off to death town I went. The most horrible moment in all of this was when I stepped in that cell and that door closed behind me. All the life went out of me...And the drama got deeper....But that is for another time.
As always,thank you for listening...Peace, Arthur
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