From: bhart@cyberramp.net (Michael Parks)
Subject: First Reports, DMN, 7-6-97
Date: 8 Jul 1997 11:14:42 GMT
First Reports, The Dallas Morning News, 07/06/97
Copyright 1997, The Dallas Morning News


A life term of defiance 
Actor's father alleges setup as he seeks retrial in '79 death of federal judge 
By Howard Swindle / The Dallas Morning News 

 " How do I feel about him? Well, I love him. . . . There's probably a 
lot of people who should be behind bars. I don't necessarily think he's 
one of them." Woody Harrelson, talking about his father during an 
interview with Primetime Live, May 26, 1994

FORENCE, Colo. - A speaker amplified Charles Harrelson's voice from the other 
side of the thick Plexiglas visiting booth, and as he spoke, his eyes 
fell on the Bureau of Prisons official monitoring his conversation.
   "If they could find some way to lock up my mind," the twice-convicted hit man said, "they'd 
have me.  They really would.
   "But I simply ignore all this. I don't have any friends. I don't want any 
friends.  And, of course, here you don't have any opportunity. . . .  You're 
locked in a cage by yourself and you can't even have a conversation."
   Sentenced to two life terms for the assassination 18 years ago of U.S. 
District Judge John H. Wood Jr. of San Antonio, Mr. Harrelson has been  de-
liberately silent since his convictions.  His appeals denied by the U.S. 
Supreme Court, he recently filed his last-ditch legal effort to dodge 
a lifetime of maximum-security confinement.
   That confinement currently is in a prison that inmates term "the baddest of the bad."
   The U.S. Administrative Maximum Penitentiary at Florence is one of the few traces of man in 
the desolate skip zone between Colorado Springs and the Sangre de Cristo Mountains.  This is the 
"Alcatraz of the Rockies," a hope-diminisher of high-tech penology reserved for 350 or so of the 
country's riskiest convicts.
   The subterranean corridors at the bottom of the metal stairway are polished and lighted so 
brightly that eyes squint against the glare.  The prefab concrete cells are medicinally clean; 
there are TVs in the cells, the food is good, and the prisoners don't work.
   What makes Supermax the most dreaded institution in the federal inventory isn't physical, but 
psychological: By design, there is virtually no human contact.
   After headlines Mr. Harrelson would have preferred to avoid - an aborted escape from the U.S. 
penitentiary in Atlanta on July 4, 1995 - he landed in Supermax.  When he agreed to talk to The 
Dallas Morning News, it was a rare public glimpse into the man who, President Jimmy Carter said, 
committed an "assault on our very system of justice."
   The isolated regime has neither bowed Mr. Harrelson - "They'd move me if they knew how much 
easier the time is here" - nor has it made him change the story he told in a courtroom in 1983 - 
"I'm innocent."
   "The object was to get somebody. Harrelson will do wonderfully," he said of himself in third 
person, "because he's such a rotten bastard, which I've never tried to deny that.
   "[But] whenever there was even a hint that their information might be erroneous, they just 
brushed it aside.  And when the evidence wasn't there to support a conviction, they manufactured 
it."
   Defiant, cynically witty, even serene in the midst of stark isolation, Mr. Harrelson, now 58, 
appeared to enjoy his visit with a reporter last August.  He talked candidly about the symbolism 
of his aborted escape attempt on Independence Day two years ago ("I thought that was rather a 
nice touch") and philosophically about the "frailties and foibles" of the human condition 
("We're in deep doo-doo, as George Bush would say").
   If there were a consistent thread during the two hours, it was the conspiracy he claims 
between his former defense attorney and prosecutors, a plot aided and abetted, he said, by 
"saturation bombing by the news media."
   The atmosphere at the time was frenetic, to be sure.  U.S. Rep. Henry B. Gonzalez branded the 
judge's murder "the crime of the century."  Griffin Bell, then the attorney general, referred to 
the ambush as "a dark time" in U.S. history and promised to "leave no stone unturned" in the 
FBI's search for the killer.
   There was no federal death penalty then, and Mr. Harrelson's sentences were stacked, meaning 
he has to finish one before he can begin another: one life term for killing Judge Wood, a second 
life term for conspiring to kill the judge and a five-year sentence for obstructing justice.
   "They gave me everything they could under the circumstances.  Because someone had to fall for 
the judge.  They spent $11.4 million of taxpayers' hard-earned cash to put me here," he said, 
still looking the smooth, sandy-haired Texas rogue whose picture appeared on front pages long 
before son Woody won fame as a barkeep on Cheers.
   "Someone had to authorize what happened.  And what happened was, the entire system fell 
apart, broke down and was raped.
   "I'm not looking for sympathy.  It happened to a criminal.  If it happened to a criminal, it 
could happen to you.  It could happen to anybody in this goddamned country."
   If he didn't kill Judge Wood, Mr. Harrelson was asked, who did? "I don't know who killed the 
judge," he said. "Quite frankly, I could care less who killed the judge. . . .
   "I don't have to present any evidence to prove anything, but I promise you this.  You will 
get one hell of a jolt if you try to start delving into this case.  It is just plagued with 
inconsistencies and outright lies, manufactured evidence."
   Mr. Harrelson, previously convicted for a 1968 contract murder in South Texas, said he was 
too broke to afford an attorney for his final appeal. "I'm destitute.  I'm totally impecunious. 
 I have nothing, so I have no way of pursuing it . . . ," Mr. Harrelson said last August of his 
potential legal reprieve.  "I don't feel competent to handle matters of law, although I've spent 
more time in courtrooms than most lawyers."
   On April 23, however, in the San Antonio federal courthouse named in honor of Judge Wood, a 
team that includes high-profile attorney Alan Dershowitz filed motions to vacate the sentences 
against Mr. Harrelson.  It is his last shot at winning a new trial.  David Michael, a San 
Francisco defense lawyer who heads the team, declined to discuss Mr. Harrelson or how the 
lawyers were being paid.
   A month earlier, in a prime-time interview on the night he would contend for the best-actor 
Oscar, Woody Harrelson spoke sparingly and cryptically of his father.
   "I'm not saying my father is a saint, but I think he's innocent of that, yeah," said the 
quixotic star who played a psychopath in Natural Born Killers and who last year withheld a 
portion of his income tax to protest "the way this government does business."
   "Are you trying to have the case opened up? . . . " Barbara Walters asked.  "Trying to set 
him free?"
   "Well, let's just put it this way," Woody Harrelson said.  "I haven't given up hope."
   A publicist for the younger Mr. Harrelson said the actor would not be available to discuss 
his father or the appeal with The News.
   Charles Voyed Harrelson was a documented hustler, womanizer and contract murderer on May 29, 
1979, when U.S. District Judge John H. Wood Jr. walked outside his San Antonio condominium about 
8:30 a.m. and was shot a single time through his back with a high-velocity rifle.
   Almost four years later, after what was then the most extensive FBI investigation in history, 
a jury was convinced that Mr. Harrelson, a high-stakes card player and federal parolee who 
shuttled between Houston and Dallas, had accepted $250,000 to pull the trigger.
   The government's argument was that Jamiel "Jimmy" Chagra, the volatile middle son of a 
flamboyant Lebanese family in El Paso, had ordered the hit on the judge in whose court he faced 
a potential life sentence for drug smuggling.
   Jimmy Chagra's brothers were bookends, both lawyers with propensities for cocaine and 
notorious clienteles.  The elder, Lee, was murdered in his law offices during a robbery shortly 
before Christmas 1978.  At the time of his death, the bad blood between him and and Judge Wood 
was well-documented in the federal Western District of Texas.
   Judge Wood presided in its western reaches, known there as "Maximum John," for the severity 
of his sentences, particularly against drug defendants.
   Joseph, the youngest Chagra, would serve six years in federal prison for encouraging brother 
Jimmy's conspiracy to kill Judge Wood.  His law license revoked, Joe Chagra worked as a 
paralegal in El Paso after his parole.  He died in December at age 50 when his Land Cruiser 
overturned on Interstate 10 near El Paso.
   Jimmy Chagra, the kingpin who allegedly paid Mr. Harrelson for the hit, was acquitted in the 
judge's assassination; however, he has spent the last 16 years in the penitentiary serving a 
life sentence for his conviction on drug charges.
   In April, when Mr. Harrelson's defense lawyers filed motions to throw out his sentences, they 
claimed that Mr. Harrelson had been deprived of a fair trial because:
* Federal prosecutors didn't disclose evidence that would have shown "that specific persons 
other than Harrelson murdered Judge Wood;"
* One of Mr. Harrelson's own trial attorneys "was himself a suspect in a conspiracy to murder 
Judge Wood;" and
* Mr. Harrelson's lead trial and appellate attorney, Thomas G. Sharpe Jr., allowed damaging, 
inadmissible evidence into the record, including the fact that Mr. Harrelson had an affair with 
his stepdaughter, that he had previously been convicted of a contract killing and supposedly 
viewed people as no more than "watermelons with hair."
   Mr. Sharpe, a Brownsville criminal defense lawyer who once worked with legendary Houston 
lawyer Percy Foreman, said in court papers that he told Mr. Harrelson's defense team "of the 
falsity and meritless nature" of their allegations before they were ever filed.  Mr. Sharpe not 
only denied the claims, he asked that a federal judge issue sanctions against the lawyers for 
making them.
   Mr. Sharpe said his appointment by the federal court to defend Mr. Harrelson in the Wood case 
was at great personal expense to himself and his law practice.
   Specifically, Mr. Sharpe said in his legal responses to Mr. Harrelson's claims that he was 
the only counsel representing Mr. Harrelson during trial and that the attorney alleged to have 
been a suspect in the conspiracy to kill the judge "did nothing at trial, or on appeal" to 
represent Mr. Harrelson.
   "The . . . allegations were false," Mr. Sharpe said in his motion, "and not provable at 
trial."
   The conspiracy claim about the second lawyer, who still practices in San Antonio, is rooted 
in an FBI report dated in June 1980, a copy of which Mr. Harrelson's attorneys attached as an 
exhibit to his appeal.  The report details an interview with Robert Riojas, a San Antonio drug 
dealer who was, at the time, a suspect in the killing of another inmate in the Bexar County 
Jail.
   Mr. Riojas previously had tried to make a deal to provide details on the Wood assassination 
in return for immunity, a deal apparently approved by former U.S. Attorney Jamie Boyd but 
declined by federal officials in Washington.
   Both Mr. Harrelson's prior convictions and the sexual relationship with his stepdaughter - 
the courier of the payoff money from Las Vegas to Corpus Christi - were admissible, Mr. Sharpe 
said.
   The allegations of ineffective counsel, the board-certified criminal defense attorney told 
The News, were particularly uncharitable, considering he defended Mr. Harrelson on 
murder-for-hire cases in the past, "all to his [Mr. Harrelson's] liking."
   Mr. Sharpe defended Mr. Harrelson in two 1968 contract killings - of a well-to-do gambler 
named Alan Berg in Angleton and a grain dealer named Sam Degelia Jr. in Edinburg.  The key 
witness against Mr. Harrelson in both cases was a former lover.  In both cases, prosecutors had 
tried to put Mr. Harrelson in the electric chair.
   Mr. Harrelson was acquitted in the Berg case.  The jury in the Degelia case hung up; when the 
case was tried a second time, Mr. Sharpe got Mr. Harrelson a 15-year sentence.
   "He would have died sometime in '76 if we lost the first case," Mr. Sharpe said.  "He would 
have died sometime in '77 if we had lost the second one."
   Mr. Harrelson's appeal in the Wood assassination was filed barely under the deadline of new 
federal legislation designed to rein in the lengthy habeas corpus process.
   U.S. District Judge Fred Biery noted in his order this month that the appeal was made after 
"more than a decade" and followed the death of Joe Chagra, a key witness against Mr. Harrelson.
   The judge gave prosecutors until the first week of July to respond to Mr. Harrelson's 
assertions.  He also noted that Mr. Harrelson "is not the first person convicted of a federal 
criminal offense, nor likely will he be the last, to file a . . . motion in which he purports to 
identify persons other than himself as the party or parties 'really' responsible for the crime 
for which he was convicted."
   The aborted escape two years ago in Atlanta that landed him in Supermax, Mr. Harrelson said 
grinning, "says a lot about my faith in the legal process.  "It was a shot."
   In actuality, he said, the Fourth of July escape plot was Plan B.  What he and his two 
partners would have preferred was a violent storm with a lot of thunder.
   "We knew we'd make some noise," he said.  "In '94, it rained every day in July. . . . '95 was 
the driest.  We needed a thunderstorm to occur during a certain time frame to cover the noise.  
Actually, our vision, too.  We had to leave directly under a gun tower. . . . "
   Not only did the thunder not roll, one of his partners in the plan had been written up for a 
rules infraction and was about to be locked down in solitary.
   About 9:45 p.m. on July Fourth, "just past good and dark," Mr. Harrelson said, he and two 
other inmates broke a window in a housing unit where they had hidden with lower-security 
prisoners and crept to the fence.
   "The reason for selecting that time was because there were fireworks displays all over the 
city, and the prison is virtually in downtown Atlanta," he said.  "We assumed the guards would 
be watching the fireworks displays.  They were.
   "We knew if we couldn't get through that fence and over the wall within 90 seconds or so, 
we'd probably blow it.  We didn't.  The ladder hung up in the fence.
   "We were about halfway up the wall with the ladder when the guy started shooting, and you 
can't have them commit suicide for you.  So I didn't make it.  Close only counts in horseshoes 
and hand grenades. . . .
   "According to the warden, another 15, 20 seconds, we'd have been gone.  I agree with that. 
But it may as well have been an eternity."
   Had he gotten over the wall, Mr. Harrelson said, he would have gone to Europe.
   Where he would have done what for money?
   Mr. Harrelson smiled and flexed his fingers in front of him.  "I have a money tree," he said.
   "I was the best card mechanic on the planet.  I can do things with a deck of cards that is 
amazing.  It amazes me, and I'm doing it. . . .
   "It's totally illegal, you know, but it's how I make my living.  It's how I drive a Lincoln. 
 So while I'd like to be an executive at some insurance company . . .that just wasn't in the 
cards for me.  The cards for me were just that - cards.
   "The only difference between robbing you with a pistol and with cards is that if I used a 
pistol, you'd go make a report with the police and then I'd be in prison for armed robbery," he 
said.
   "The thing with cards is, I'd rob you just as surely and just as certainly.  But instead of 
going to the police, you'd go and get some more money, and then I'd take that, too."
   Like most of the 349 inmates at Supermax, Mr. Harrelson worked his way here "through 
progressive acts of violence or extremely disruptive behavior while incarcerated," according to 
the Bureau of Prisons.
   Demographics make these few acres outside Florence perhaps the baddest per-capita residency 
in America: Nine of 10 inmates committed violence on street or in prison, 58 committed at least 
one murder while in prison and 42 escaped or tried to escape.  Notorious bank robber Robert 
Brame is here.  So is Yu Kikumura, a Japanese Red Army terrorist caught in New Jersey with a 
carload of explosives.  Mafia boss John Gotti didn't make the grade.
   Mr. Harrelson, according to bureau spokesman Louis Winn, is in the initial stage of a 
three-year program designed to make him releasable back to the general prison population.
   Because of Mr. Harrelson's status, the only daily human contact he has is with the guard who 
brings his meals.  In a three-week period, he also gets 10 hours of "outside recreation" which, 
Mr. Harrelson explained, actually is a misnomer.  The only way you can see "outside," he said, 
is by looking straight up; the recreation area is enclosed by concrete walls with cyclone 
fencing across the top.
   "The situation here simply demands that you find some way to occupy every hour of the day 
when you're awake," Mr. Harrelson said.  "If you don't do that, you're in a world of trouble."
   He said he spends most of his time reading and writing.  He particularly enjoys working logic 
and chess problems and crossword puzzles.  He also said he was able to "sit in the quiet for 
hours on end" contemplating "subject matter that few people think about."
   "The average Joe has to pay a mortgage, he has to worry about his children, his family," Mr. 
Harrelson said.  "By the time he gets home in the evening, he falls in bed and doesn't have the 
time to even consider he's being used. . . .
   "You finally get to a point you're my age and maybe you can finally retire and give some 
thought to some things that may have escaped you because you didn't have time.
   "I have all the time in the world."
   Mr. Harrelson talked to The News before his appeal was filed, and he was not optimistic about 
ever being free.  The alleged conspiracy, he said, has "destroyed my life."
   "If they let me walk out of here tomorrow," he said, "I would certainly accept that.  But 
there's no way I can get back that 16 years."
   Nor did Mr. Harrelson put any faith in the Bureau of Prisons' policy that inmates generally 
spend only three years at Supermax before they're recycled back into general prison population.
   "I probably won't ever leave here," he said.  "I'll probably die right in this facility, 
which is fine.
   "When this species began about 100,000 years ago, thereabouts, there probably have been 90 
billion people," he said.  "Not one of those bastards has failed to die with the exception of 
Jesus."

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