Inmate Web sites have the look of innocence
Pages claim injustice, ask for money
May 23, 2004, By ALLAN TURNER - Houston Chronicle
With its catchy slogan and colorful graphics, its warm testimonials from friends and co-workers, its happy family snapshots and stiffly posed military portrait, Steve Peace's Web site could be the work of a politician yearning for public office.
It's not.
Peace, 43, a one-time oil worker, is a convicted killer serving 45 years for the murder of security guard Dimas Garcia, who was shot 14 times at a North Houston auto dealership. The site was posted by Houston commercial photographer Pam Francis, who expected it would bolster her friend's bid for a new trial.
State District Judge Brock Thomas dashed that hope last week, denying Peace's request after a two-hour hearing. But
www.freestevepeace.com and its assertion "Unjustly accused. Unjustly convicted." live on -- a dramatic example of how new technology can provide an international soap box for would-be criminal justice reformers.
Hundreds of Web pages, many featuring men on Texas' death row, crowd cyberspace with claims of innocence. The Canadian Coalition Against the Death Penalty alone has provided free Internet sites to more than 500 condemned prisoners. Even more use the Canadian pages to solicit pen pals.
Postings have formidable power
"Anybody who champions inmates' rights can see the benefit of the Internet," said Houston prison activist Ray Hill. "It provides the opportunity to access millions beyond our field of vision. We're not going to encounter these people in line at the supermarket, but they're real and they have opinions."
Death row inmates and their supporters, Hill said, "live in a constant state of desperation because no one wants to hear them."
"Come up with a catchy design, a logo, and there's a chance you can interest people in reading about your case," he said. "The Internet was a natural."
The persuasive power of such Internet postings can be formidable, suggested University of Houston communications professor Garth Jowett.
"It has created the ability to communicate on a highly intimate level," he said. "It gives people the impression that a message has been specifically tailored to them."
If accepted uncritically, Jowett warned, such messages can "become incredible weapons, dangerous loose cannons" exploited by propagandists.
Sites can devastate crime victim families
Andy Kahan, the mayor's victims' rights advocate, believes that is precisely what happens as inmate advocates proselytize via computer.
"They use the Internet to promote their causes, usually with distortions," Kahan said. "There's little by way of checks and balances. You never see a correction or a disclaimer telling you to feel free to check out the facts. It's made to seem that this is what happened. This is the truth."
Kahan also said that the Web sites can be emotionally devastating for crime victim's families.
"They feel like they've been gutted all over again by the system," he said.
Hill, a former inmate who hosts KPFT-FM's weekly prison radio program, said the first prisoner-related Web sites, posted by European anti-death penalty activists, appeared about a decade ago and began appearing with greater frequency about seven years ago.
In Houston, death penalty opponent Ward Larkin, a computer industry worker, began offering inmates free Web sites in 1995 after visiting death row.
"It was my choice to post their information," he said, "and I did so only after I had researched their cases thoroughly. ... I didn't anticipate changing anyone's mind, I just wanted to allow them to inform themselves."
Although he occasionally posted material for inmates he thought guilty, he nonetheless reserved veto power over the stuff that got online, he said. Inmates whose sites insulted their victims' families were rejected, as was one inmate's planned Internet campaign to establish a monarchy.
"I told him that I essentially support democracy," Larkin explained.
Potshots at Bush and state of Texas
The Canadian anti-death penalty coalition posted its first site, on behalf of a Pennsylvania death row inmate, in 1998.
"The way we see it," said spokeswoman Tracy Lamouri, "is that we're shining a light on a dark section of society that people don't normally get to see."
Lamouri's site, which primarily features condemned inmates from Africa, the Caribbean and the United States, mixes prisoner profiles with politics. It takes potshots at President Bush and labels Texas, which leads the nation in executions, as being "Like A Whole Other Country."
Lamouri said her group has investigated -- and vouched for -- the claims of only a few inmates posted on its site. The other sites contain unverified prisoner postings, she said.
Among Texas killers with high profiles on the Canadian pages are Craig Ogan, a self-proclaimed genius and occasional Drug Enforcement Administration informer who was executed in 2002 for killing a Houston police officer, and Calvin Burdine, whose conviction for killing his Houston housemate was overturned in 2001 because his lawyer slept through portions of his trial.
Burdine, who spent 18 years on death row, remains in prison after he pleaded guilty to murder and two other crimes in a plea deal but ultimately could be paroled.
Other featured Texans include Carl Brooks, condemned for kidnapping, robbing and murdering a San Antonio man, who claimed he "maybe killed some insects, birds, snakes, fish, roaches and rats, but no human," and John Alba, a Collin County man who repeatedly shot his wife, who is described on his Web page as "a good and kind man."
Some of the Web sites solicit donations and accept credit card contributions.
Texas inmates do not have access to the Internet, said prison system spokeswoman Michelle Lyons, and all Web sites, many of which contain letters from inmates, are posted by sympathizers on the outside.
Giorgio Nobili, a 66-year-old death penalty opponent in Milan, Italy, said via e-mail that he posted his site for twice-convicted Houston killer Eugene Broxton after he corresponded with the inmate and became convinced "he is not culpable of the crime he was accused (of)."
Broxton, 49, was condemned for the 1991 murder of a 20-year-old woman in a Channelview motel. The victim's husband was shot in the head but survived.
In three years, about 8,000 people have visited the site. Some, at Nobili's prompting, have sent the inmate money.
Nobili said that through writing Broxton he "discovered a great, generous, intelligent, good man full of interests and (able) to speak with me about everything."
Francis, Peace met when she had flat tire
Francis said she met Peace while scouting photo jobs in downtown Houston. Driving in the 3600 block of Travis Street, Francis encountered an elderly motorist driving erratically. When the woman stopped at Holy Rosary Catholic Church, Francis, Peace -- who was working with a street crew nearby -- and several other people approached her to find out what was wrong.
The woman had driven from Richmond with a flat tire.
"Steve had his crew change the tire," Francis said. "Then he watched her car and wrote her a note warning her not to drive back to Richmond on the spare. ... He gave me his card, and later I called him to check on the old woman. We had lunch and he told me his story."
Peace, then under indictment in Garcia's murder, told her that he was innocent and that his high-powered attorney had assured him of a "slam-dunk" acquittal.
Despite that assurance, Peace was convicted of the crime in March. Francis then went into action, posting the Web site to build support for a new trial. To finance the effort, she held marathon pet photography sessions each weekend in May.
Last week, Peace's new lawyer, Chris Flood, argued that inadequate counsel in the first trial and improper questioning by a prosecutor justified a new trial. He contended that the prosecutor cleverly circumvented a rule banning hearsay testimony to get a Texas Ranger to imply Peace had confessed the crime to his family.
After Assistant District Attorney Denise Nassar's point-by-point rebuttal, in which she insisted the trial had been fair and the rules observed, the judge immediately denied Flood's motion for a new trial.
Garcia's family, who remained in Mexico City when he came to work in Houston in 1986, could not be reached for comment.
Francis said Peace's supporters now will try to raise money for an appeal.
"Injustice just drives me crazy," she said. "After that joke of a trial, I had to do something. If it weren't for me, there would have been no help. He came from a poor family. He was the hero of the family. He was the one who took care of everybody. Now the hero is in jail."
