Johnny Lee Gates

October 2009

Hello, here’s an update about what’s going on recently. I went to court last year. My motion was turned down. I came back to hell hole. I had to take up daily life.
This prison is turning crazier every day. Gangs growing. A lot of fights, stabbings and more stealing. The guys are so young, hard headed, and difficult to talk to. They won’t listen. I stay to myself more and more.
The 20th of November I will be 54 years old and still in prison. I do give thanks to God for allowing me to see this day and for keeping me safe. Yet, being locked up all these years hasn’t been easy. Being lonely isn’t a good feeling at all. There are passing days, weeks without mail. There’s no one to feel close to.

A few weeks ago I accidently discovered that I’ve illegally been in prison for 33 years. This goes back to the first day of my arrest. The police officer had given an affidavit to a judge in order to get the judge to issue an arrest warrant for my arrest. This is illegal, because he swore that he knew to the best of his knowledge that I had committed these crimes. How did he know? Was he there? Who told him? Where did he get this information? He never gave the judge any answer to those questions. So, that makes the warrant for my arrest illegal, my trial illegal, conviction illegal, sentence to death illegal, being held in prison now illegal.
I hope that my lawyers will take up my case again and fight for my freedom and to clear my name because my fourth amendment rights had been violated totally.
Just imagine, state of Georgia tried to execute me, set dates for me to be executed, only because of my illegal arrest.
My life is taken away from me all these years by police, judges, D.A’s. All above the law. No one will go to prison, no one will say “I’m sorry”. They don’t give a damn at all. It’s just a game to them. Political game and I’m just a pawn in the games they play. The prison is just a business to make money out of inmates, out of their families, friends, who ever. They don’t care, except for the money.
Life, what’s life really about? Nothing seems real anymore. Everything is artificial, a delusion. This is a fucked up world and life. So I just got to be real. Have to keep staying strong. Survive the best I can. What else is there?

August 2008

Here, in the belly of the beast it is hot. Sweating day and night. Right now the prison is cutting back on everything. Less food, cutting back on soap and toothpaste from once a week to once every two weeks, one razor a week, one roll of toiletries a week, deodorant once a month. A prison soap doesn’t last 3 days. It’s a small bar, small tooth paste as well.
Now there are 2 men at a cell here, 8 men sleeping in the TV-room. The Georgia-prisons are over crowded. They don’t release anybody. Just pack them all in. It’s a business now, making money of inmates, charge inmates $ 5.00 each time for medical and dentist. Disciplinarians $ 4.00, also store prices raised.
A phone call is high as hell. When you first come to prison they take $ 1.00 each month.
So cutting back on everything, yet they say that they have no money. Accept cookouts for the officers, new ice boxes for them, etc.
This prison is close security; less movements, less things to do. They want to destroy your spiritually and mentally. They do succeed in it with a lot of guys; some turn gay, some lose mind, some care about nothing anymore. Lose faith, even in themselves. I’m still that wild lion which they can’t tame. A black warrior who’s awake each morning, ready for the battle again.
Pen pals help so much; they take you outside these walls, give you something to look forward to. Someone to talk to, share laughs with.
Life is still true hell in prison, where no one should ever want to come. Easy to get here into the belly of the beast but truly hell trying to get out. This is hell on earth, the more when you are innocent!

June 2008

In June 2008, I sent notice of appeal and my case appeal sit in the Georgia Supreme Court, it is still pending. I hope they will accept to hear my case (# S08H1599).

April 2008

Since I’m off death row, i haven’t stopped fighting for my freedom. Lawyers told me that all doors are closed for me. Yet, I’ve never been willing to accept that. Talking with other inmates, read law books for hours at a time. Got frustrated and mad at times. Often, when I thought I went forward, I got knocked backward or a U-turn. It seemed like it that the lawyers were right that all doors are closed to me. Still, didn’t want to give up.
January 2008. Another guy and myself came up with a total different way of looking at my case. All these years it has been handling about criminal law. The lawyers who worked on my case are criminal lawyers as well. They don’t meddle with civil action. I found cases and laws which deal with civil action. Also those which dealt with indictments. After looking at my own indictment, I found out that it is a void indictment. There’s no essential element in it, while they need it in order for the indictment to stand. No lawyer has ever challenged my indictment in court.

In January 2008 I filed a motion to arrest of void judgment with an affidavit. The court accepted my motion and set a hearing date for March 13, 2008 to the challenge. I was over excited that I was given a hearing.

By coincidence my pen pal from Holland and her husband were coming from abroad to USA for a vacation in that period and visit me at the same time. I was very pleased about that too. I was thrilled that I could finally meet them and that they were even able to join the hearing together with my sister and two other friends (since 27 and 30 years), to support me. The two visiting days were really great and wonderful. I enjoyed it so much. I didn’t had a visit since more over than 2 years. It felt so good to get my mind out of prison for couple of hours these days.

Unfortunately my March 13th hearing didn’t take place, because the D.A. didn’t gave the prison notice to have me transferred to court. Everyone was very disappointed and so was I. The judge set a new court date for April 30th, 2008. My friends were not there this time. I was alone again, like I was 32,5 years ago. However, I do believe that I did well. The judge denied all of my motion though. That wasn’t a surprise, because a superior court cannot rule on matters of law. Only the state supreme court and federal courts can rule on matters of law.

December 2007

I no longer wait for my lawyers. I've now decided to fight myself and try to get back in court.

The best years of my life

The best years of my life
has been taken from me
I can’t go where I want
because I am not free

My future seems dark and grey
my past has been that too
All those years in prison
for something I didn’t do

I see the sun raise every day
watch seasons passing by
See leaves grow on the trees
hear birds sing in the sky

My love for life is still there
God gives me strength to cope
I stay positive where I can
and I’ll never give up hope

So, I can’t help but wonder
will there ever be a time
That the man who really did it
speaks up and commits his crime?

written by a friend

Evidence of the rehearsal of a videotaped confession as support for a

diminished capacity defence in USA death-penalty
trial.

By Ronald R. Butters, Duke University, Durham NC, USA

Although sentenced to death in 1977, Johnny Lee Gates remained on death row until 2003, when a new trial attempted to determine if he was too severely mentally retarded to be legally executable. The later trial could not consider Gates’s guilt or innocence, but a forensic psychologist was prepared to testify that evidence of confession-rehearsal bore vitally on Gates’s putative mental retardation. (Weeks after the crime, police had taken Gates to the scene and obtained a videotaped confession wherein he walked through his purported role while giving incriminating answers to a policeman’s questions.) Linguistically, I determined, four types of pragmatic and discourse evidence supported the psychologist’s testimony:
- Gates was often asked questions that presupposed information that had not yet been established in the interview.
- Gates gave many responses that went well beyond what the questions called for.
- Questions were always “safe” questions; Gates could easily have been coached to give his answers; obvious informational questions were never asked, however, if the answers would have been contradictory or difficult for one to answer who had not committed the crime.
- Some answers were exculpatory, in which case the questioner recycled the questions until he received an incriminating answer.

http://www.flrchina.com/en/information/conference/001/005.htm

My Case...

Mrs Katharina Gertrud Wright, a young army wife, was robbed, raped, and murdered, in November 1976. She was a German woman, married to an American army man. On January 29, 1977, I was arrested for a different crime, on two counts of armed robbery. During the interview for this other crime that was conducted by another man, my name was mentioned as having been together with him at that time and having committed that crime. It was then, that the hell of Johnny Lee Gates began.

The police read statements from this man stating that I had told of this crime and that I had committed it. I was subsequently threatened by the police, calling me “boy” and “nigger”, and telling me what they planned to do, etc. They showed photographs of the apartment and of the victim’s body, as well one of a white male. A school photo of the first person who was charged with this crime, but was let go, as I found out years later. They told me what I had done and when I had done it and they would neither let me see a lawyer nor let make a phone call. Over and over again, I was told of everything that had happened in the apartment and how the crime was committed. Fearfully, I told them what they wanted to hear and signed a confession that was typed up. I was then taken to the victim’s apartment, showed around, and then told to act like I was an employee from the gas company while I was handed a can of oil. So, I did as I was told and touched the heater, where, of course, they later found my fingerprint. After I was taken back to the station I repeated what was told to me as it was recorded on video. The next day, they went back to the apartment, claiming they found one of my fingerprints there.

I was willing to give them blood and hair, but I didn’t see a lawyer until moments before my arrangement. I was given a court-appointed lawyer (a public defender) and I told him all that had happened; that I didn’t do the crime and what I had done that day of the crime. That I had picked up my girlfriend about 9 a.m. that day and that we had gone shopping in town. How, after that, we had gone to a motel room and had stayed there until about 8 p.m., making love. Then we had gone back to her house, from where I left about 1 a.m. in the morning. The crime had happened between 11 a.m. and 12 noon. The lawyer didn’t do any investigation and conducted no interview at all.

I never saw a lawyer again, until close to the time the case went to court. He told me that my ex-girlfriend didn’t remember that day and that no one in my family, nor any of my friends were willing to come and testify for me (which was a lie). He convinced me to plead guilty to two counts of armed robbery for a twelve year sentence and manslaughter for a twenty year sentence. I had wanted to fight each case, but instead I listened to him. The rape, robbery and murder of Mrs. Wright, I wanted to fight and I told the lawyer about the treatment I had received. That I had asked for a lawyer, but that my request was not granted. That I had given blood and hair, that I had told of the apartment, how I had touched the heater, and that the heater had been turned on in the apartment. He didn’t do anything and said nothing at all.

On the day of trial the jury was picked. My lawyer didn’t ask for my trial to be moved to another town, nor did he reject the all white jury that was picked to hear my case. By law I should have had a jury with members that were representative of the make-up of the town. The D.A. witnessed against me and my lawyer really didn’t question the witnesses thoroughly at all. My lawyer had copies of the documents the D.A. had filed, but he didn’t use them or tell me about them. If he had used them and had really done his job, I would not be here now. Besides an all white jury the judge, the court appointed lawyer, and deputies were all white, too. My lawyer gave me no defence at all. He never questioned the stated witnesses, the evidence, nor did he call witnesses in my defence. He never pointed out to the jury that someone else had been charged with the crime but had been let go. Never pointed out at all that I was innocent. I was sentenced to death.

The day of the crime: A witness, a white female who lived downstairs from the victim (the stairs are the only way up and down, saw a white man running down the stairs from the apartment. She gave the police a detailed description of the white male. Another white male who lived upstairs, also gave a detailed account of a black man who had knocked on his door. This black man was in his late twenties, about 5’11” - 6’, about 170 lbs, with facial hair. I was only 21 years old at the time, 5’5”, 120 – 125 lbs, no facial hair. This man picked a few black guys from the photos in the police mug book that he thought may be the perpetrator, but he never picked my photo. The next day the mortuary called the police because a white male was acting strangely around the victim's body and fondling her. The guy ran out but the police gave chase and after catching him, took him in. In the car he told the police that he had shot her and then had had sex with her. That when he had shot her, she had fallen, and that blood had been under the bottom of the door. The police had missed the blood. The guy asked for mental help but when the police refused he had stopped co-operation. He told them, that they would never find the gun (they have not, even to this day). The guy’s family had gotten him a well-paid lawyer, who had gone to the D.A. and had convinced him that the guy couldn’t have committed the crime, because the guy couldn’t have an erection at all. So the D.A. dropped all charges against him.

My lawyer knew all of this, but never told the jury about it, or brought it up in trial, nor did he call the witnesses who had seen the white male. He didn’t ask the police why they couldn’t find my prints on the day of the crime – not until three months after the crime and the day after my arrest. He didn’t ask whether fingerprints could even stay down that long. My lawyer didn’t ask about my blood, which had been taken and had been tested against the semen and the other blood that had been found. As the crime lab found in conclusion, there was no match: The blood found in the apartment was B+ and my blood type is O-. They found no black male pubic hair, either. Considering how I was found guilty for this crime, my lawyer played a big role in helping me get convicted.

Years later, with new lawyers, the death sentence was fought in the courts. My innocence was never openly challenged in court or media. Mine has always been a backdoor case, from start ‘til finish, and I was treated like my ancestors would have been on the market. I had no voice for 30 years.

It was 2003, when finally my lawyers were forced to ask for the DNA evidence of the crime, for the trial to determine my mental retardation I was about to face. They found out that all evidence had been destroyed in 1979. Even the trial judge questioned: “Why?” He had never heard of evidence ever being destroyed in a capital crime case before, at least not before it went to the state supreme court. He went on to say that he did believe my due process constitutional right had been violated. Even then, my lawyers failed to use the evidence hearing to clearly point out my innocence of the crime. While the state crime witness was on the stand, they failed to ask about the fact that the semen against my blood type had not found to be a conclusive match, and failed to challenge the confession to the actually crime itself. Why did it take 27 years to find out about the evidence?

The mental retardation trial resulted in a mistrial. It was once again like the year 1977, being pressured to accept life without parole now, as I had been pressured to take 12 to 20 years back then. The same with the promise they made me in 1977 - that they will keep fighting.
Since 2003 and after getting the sentence and promises, I’ve heard nothing about my case. There's nothing that can be done, all legal doors are closed. I'm told to be happy and grateful for receiving life without parole. They even tell people not to do anything, because it would further hurt my case. They don't want me to do anything for myself.
Ronald Tabak is still very supportive, as far as the rest concerns, my case is over with and I’m left to die in the belly of the beast...

Life without parole is a death sentence in itself and the most cruel way to die. If I had known that they were not going to fight for me anymore, I would have gladly gone to the state deathbed. Better than to spend the rest of my life in prison, for a crime I have not committed. Courts turn down my appeals. What’s left to do now? There is no justice in this country at all…

I do hope my website is noticed - putting out in the world the story of what has happened to me. Shine some light on the institution in this country!

Johnny Lee Gates

October 2009

August 2008

June 2008

April 2008

December 2007

The best years of my life

Articles

Evidence of the rehearsal of a videotaped confession as support for a

Other linked articles

Robbie Williams, Feel

Contact

My Case...