Free, free at last
Stephanie
Salter, Insight Staff Writer
Sunday, September 29, 2002
URL: http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/chronicle/archive/2002/09/29/IN83399.DTL
More than nine years have passed since Greg Wilhoit was freed from death row in the state prison in McAlester, Okla. But the five-plus years Wilhoit spent in Cellblock F -- believing he would die for a murder he didn't commit -- can materialize out of nowhere and clothesline him.
"I'm sorry," he said through choked tears during a telephone interview last week. "I'm getting emotional. I could tell this story 1,000 times and still not be able not to cry."
Wilhoit, 48, had been talking about his appellate public defender, Mark Garrett, who convinced an Oklahoma judge in 1993 that Wilhoit had not only been railroaded by the original trial's prosecution but had been sabotaged by his original defense attorney.
"Mark Barrett and his staff worked 24 hours a day, seven days a week for four years to get me a new trial," said Wilhoit. "This guy saved my life. He gets whatever he wants from me."
What Barrett wants these days is for Wilhoit to tell his story. Now part of the national Innocence Project, Barrett knows his former client's nightmare is compelling evidence against capital punishment.
Wilhoit was an ironworker in Tulsa in 1985 when his newly estranged wife, Kathy, was found dead in the subsidized housing project apartment she shared with the couple's two baby daughters. Kathy Wilhoit had been raped and strangled, and her throat was slashed.
Wilhoit had no corroborated alibi. Two years later, it took a jury less than three hours to find him guilty of first degree murder with special circumstances and to recommend execution.
Not a fingerprint or hair of Wilhoit's had been found at the crime scene, but a bite mark on his wife's breast became the prosecution's smoking gun. Two dentists, identified as forensic experts, testified that bite marks are as exact as fingerprints and that the mark on Kathy Wilhoit matched perfectly her husband's teeth.
"It turned out that neither of those guys was a bite mark expert -- one had only been out of dental school about six months -- but if I'd have been on that jury, I wouldn't have hesitated one minute," said Wilhoit. "The prosecution said these guys were experts, and my lawyer didn't mount any defense at all."
As Barrett told ABC's "20/20": "His lawyer was the town drunk."
On a Friday the 13th in 1987, Wilhoit joined about 120 other prisoners on Oklahoma's death row.
"At the sentencing," Wilhoit said, "the judge told me I was to die by lethal injection. Then he said, 'But if that fails, we'll kill you by electrocution. If the power goes out, we'll hang you. If the rope breaks, we'll take you out back and shoot you.' "
It took until Spring 1993, but thanks to Barrett, Wilhoit was granted a new trial. Eleven real experts from all over the globe said the marks on Kathy Wilhoit couldn't possibly be Greg's. Mid-trial, the judge granted a motion for a directed verdict of innocence.
Since his release, Wilhoit has lived in Sacramento on Social Security disability (for post-traumatic stress disorder) and worked at odd jobs like painting and moving. He sees his daughters, now 18 and 17, when he can save a bit of money or when a paid speaking gig gets him near Tulsa.
"I'm what you call a card-carrying poor person," he said.
For the past three years, the Oklahoma Legislature has voted overwhelmingly to compensate Wilhoit $200,000 for what its judicial system robbed him of forever. The governor refuses to sign the bill. .
Wilhoit and fellow Oklahoman Bud Welch will speak at Dominican University's Angelico Hall in San Rafael at 7:30 p.m. Oct. 9. Welch's daughter, Julie, was killed in the 1995 bombing of the federal building in Oklahoma City.
E-mail Stephanie Salter at ssalter@sfchronicle.com.
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