A decade lost and a decade gained

Photo by Jennifer Simonson , Star Tribune

Sherman Townsend, center, talked with reporters after his release from the Hennepin County jail on Tuesday. At left is Michael Davis, one of Townsend's lawyers from the Innocence Project of Minnesota.

A St. Paul man was freed from a 20-year burglary sentence -- after serving nearly 10 years of it -- because another inmate confessed to the 1998 crime.

By Rochelle Olson, Star Tribune

Last update: October 02, 2007 – 9:48 PM

A St. Paul man who once held a spot on the Minneapolis Police Department's "Top 40" list of repeat offenders walked out of the Hennepin County jail a free man Tuesday after being released from the last half of a 20-year burglary sentence.

Sherman Townsend's first-degree burglary conviction will stand, but he was released from his sentence after the testimony of a key witness in his trial was called into question. He will avoid serving at least another four years of the sentence and six years on parole. 

He went free within an hour of Hennepin County District Judge Deborah Hedlund's ruling. "You are not a danger to the public. It is not incompatible with the welfare of society to have you out there. All right. Go," Hedlund told Townsend.

When he emerged from the jail with his Innocence Project lawyers into a rainy drizzle, Townsend was wiping away tears.

"I don't think they took my life away. I think I go from this day forward," he said.

He was convicted of first-degree burglary in 1998 based on the testimony of David Jones. 

Jones told police that a heavyset black man the size of former Dallas Cowboys running back Emmitt Smith had run into him near the burglary site at 2 a.m. In May of this year, Jones bumped into Townsend in the chow line at Moose Lake Correctional Facility and Jones confessed to the burglary.

Townsend notified the Innocence Project, a national legal clinic that attempts to exonerate wrongfully convicted people, setting in motion the events that led to his freedom Tuesday. 

Convicted by a 'habitual liar'

Prosecutors agreed to the release in large part because of two problems with Jones. For one, he had changed his testimony. But Hennepin County Attorney Mike Freeman also said that at the time of the trial, prosecutors didn't know about Jones' criminal convictions in Illinois. Those convictions would have been used by the defense lawyers at trial to impeach his testimony.

No one should be convicted on the testimony of a "habitual liar," Freeman said. "It's one of those interesting wrinkles. We're not dealing with a group of church choir members," Freeman said.

At the time of the trial, prosecutors offered Townsend a plea bargain of four years in prison -- so he has served more time than if he had taken the deal. But Townsend said he didn't regret it because he said he couldn't admit to a crime he didn't commit.

He said he wouldn't characterize his 10 years in prison as wasted time because he kept up his job skills and learned to play gospel on the piano.

Townsend, a printer by trade who will start looking for a job, had a criminal record dating to 1971, earning him the spot on the "Top 40" list, reserved for career criminals who specialized in property crimes and had at least three felony convictions.

Speaking to reporters after the release, Freeman held a map of Townsend's prior crimes and convictions in the years leading up to his sentence. He noted that the crimes all were in Dinkytown.

He was a model prisoner

Townsend's Innocence Project lawyers, Julie Jonas and Michael Davis, noted that Townsend was a model prisoner. Even though the court action didn't exonerate him, they insisted that he is innocent. "Our primary job was to show Sherman's innocence. Frankly, I think we have done that," Davis said.

With his sister Mary Collins by his side, Townsend said he wants to get to know his grandchildren and reconnect with his five children. Collins said Townsend can stay with her in St. Paul and the family is pulling together money to pay for her brother to take a trip to visit their mom in California.

The experience of being released from prison was overwhelming. Townsend said he barely knew how to spend the day, although he said he is eager for some extra crispy chicken from KFC. "I'm just going to walk for a bit, but get in before dark," Townsend said.

Rochelle Olson • 612-673-1747

Rochelle Olson •  raolson@startribune.com 

Death in “The Hallway to Hell”

By Marco Fernández Landoni , La Prensa de Minnesota 
 

Over 60 people have found death in a prison that way over the last five years, including Maria Iñamagua, an Ecuadorian immigrant who died in Ramsey County Prison, here in Minnesota, in April 2006, waiting to be deported to her beloved Ecuador. Three more people died in less than a month just a few weeks ago, raising new concerns. But, even while people are dying, most of those deaths remain uninvestigated and no one has been held responsible for them yet.

The rapid explosion of undocumented immigration over the past ten years has brought, as a natural consequence, a big amount of pressure over immigration control agencies. These agencies have been forced to pay state, county and local prisons systems to detain the ever growing number of undocumented immigrants awaiting trial and removal, every year.

These prisons, as the weaker link of the chain, are suffering serious problems to take care of the growing amount of inmates. Overpopulation of several sectors and insufficient medical attention are only two of the many problems these prisons face. Budgetary cuts and slow refunds from the federal government are bigger issues that they face every day in caring for these federal inmates.

The situation gets worst when the thin line that divides each of the agencies’ –involved in the process- responsibilities blurs and becomes no one’s land. Some of them claim that they just don’t have the resources to provide medical attention to ICE’s detainees and that ICE should be responsible for those expenses. ICE simply claims that since those people are under the prison responsibility, the prison is responsible for their health care. ICE doesn’t have the premises or the budget to deal with those situations and that is why it pays those prisons to take care of its detainees.

In the meantime, people are dying. Over sixty in the last five years, and the recent death of these three people, two of them undocumented workers and the other a legal resident, have set the stage for a new nickname for the immigration system, “The Hallway to Hell”.

Maria Iñamagua, April 13, 2006; St. Paul, MN

Maria Iñamagua’s death became the first ever from an immigration detainee in a facility in Minnesota. Maria died as a consequence of a massive stroke [due to an untreated brain parasite infection].

Maria, 28, and her mother, were detained in early spring 2006. They were both moved to Ramsey County Prison the very same night of their detention. A legal loophole made Maria’s case longer than expected, while her mother was removed to Ecuador a few weeks after her detention. On April 4th, after several weeks of complaining of a head ache –for which she only received Tylenol-, Maria collapsed in her cell. She was discovered by the guards, lying on the floor, unconscious, by 4:00PM. She was taken to the infirmary and later, around 11:30PM, almost 8 hours after she was found unconscious, she was taken to Regions Hospital. Her condition was critical at her arrival and vital signs were almost lost. She was taken immediately to the intensive care unit, where she was evaluated and put on a ventilator.

After a week of intensive screening and testing, doctors attending her case reach the conclusion that the brain damage was so massive that there was nothing else science can do for her. Her brain was ruled dead and they asked her husband for his consent to take her out of the ventilator. After a long day of meditation, he decided that turning off the ventilator is the best thing to do. She died on April 13th, a few minutes after the ventilator was turned off, at 1:30PM.

Victor Arellano, July 20th, 2007; San Pedro, CA

Victor Arellano, 23, born in Mexico, was also known as Victoria Arellano, after his sex change operation. She was detained in May 2007, after ICE agents found him under a removal order for reentering the country after being previously deported. She was taken to a detention center in San Pedro, California, awaiting deportation.

Her advanced stage of HIV –AIDS- made her completely dependent on her medication, which she needed in order to prevent infections and stay alive. During her almost three months of detention she ran out of her prescription and though she requested the prison several times to refill her prescription, her request was denied.

Finally, on July 20th, her prison mates begged the guards to take her to a hospital. She was vomiting blood and had very high fever. She was taken immediately to a medical facility in San Pedro, where she died a few hours after her arrival.

Rosa Isela Contreras Dominguez, August 1st, 2007; El Paso, TX

She was a legal resident in the country. Born in Mexico, she was taken to a detention center in El Paso, Texas, after serving eighteen months for federal charges on drug smuggling. Rosa, 38, was waiting to be removed to Mexico, when she began complaining from incessant pain in one leg. She was evaluated at the prison’s infirmary and it was determined that she was 7 weeks pregnant and she was suffering from high blood pressure due to the pregnancy.

The staff at the infirmary treated her as best they could with their scarce resources and poor equipment. Finally, on August 1st, she suffered a stroke from blood clot and vanished. She was taken to an emergency room near the detention center, in El Paso, but she died only a few minutes after her arrival.

Edimar Alves Araujo, August 7th, 2007; Woonsocket, RI

This Brazilian immigrant was detained on a traffic violation on the morning of August 7th, 2007. He was on his way to see his sister, Irene. Police officers checked his driver’s license and found out that he had a pending deportation order after he overstayed his visa and refused to leave after ordered by a judge.

He was taken to Woonsocket Police detention center, where he called his sister and updated her on his situation. She ran immediately to the detention center where she begged police officers to give him his medication –he suffered from a severe case of epilepsy and needed daily medication to control it-. Police officers denied her request several times and later, that same day, at 4:00PM, due to the stress of the detention, he suffered an epilepsy episode. Emergency personnel were dispatched to the detention center but there was nothing they could do after they arrived. He died a few minutes after the episode began.

People’s comments after these events

The Washington Post printed an article about these incidents on its August 15th edition. The article, written by Darryl Fears, received tons of negative comments on its web site. From a little under 50 comments on the article, 43 were absolutely negative. Some of them estate that these people were nothing but “criminals” and that they deserved what happened to them. Others say that they were “illegal aliens” and because they decided to break the law coming illegally to the country, they had no rights to any benefit and their tax money was better invested in border security than in healthcare for these “criminals”.

Milton J. Valencia wrote another article, published by The Boston Globe on August 9th, 2007, on the same events. His article received similar comments at a similar proportion than The Washington Post’s. Other articles published by smaller publications all over the country saw the same phenomenon.

Unfortunately, while the public opinion turns to the other side on these events, these deaths remain uninvestigated and no one will be held responsible for what happened. Our country is a country of laws and though these people broke the law entering the country illegally, we can not turn our eyes to the other side. We have a moral responsibility and we must ask for accountability, even for those dying in “The Hallway to Hell”. That’s the American way. 

Posted: Sat, 09/08/2007 - 23:57

A child is violated, and two lives are haunted
RUBÉN ROSARIO 

Article Last Updated: 02/09/2008 05:22:45 PM CST
 

Laura R. was 7 when a 50-year-old man who rented a room in the family's Arden Hills home sexually molested her. 

Soon afterward, Laura was diagnosed with genital warts. She carried the hurt and the guilt into her teenage years, cutting her body and leaving scars that are still visible. Now 30 and living in California, Laura occasionally attends group therapy sessions for survivors of childhood sexual abuse. She still gets angry when she thinks about her molester, though she stresses that "I don't drink at all from that poison pill every day.'' 

But in some ways, she is very much the shy and frightened girl who sat on her mother's lap, a blanket pulled over her head while awaiting a physical examination no child should ever have to undergo. 

"I don't know which was worse, can't tell you,'' Laura writes in a recent e-mail. "The sexual abuse, the reaction of my parents and family, the doctor visits ... being interrogated by countless adults, or getting the (genital) warts burned off my body." 

The divorced renter, who to this day adamantly denies he committed the 1985 crime, was convicted by a jury and served less than a year in the Ramsey County workhouse. 

So it came as quite a jolt when, on Dec. 22 - 22 years to the day since cops showed up at her Arden Hills home to investigate the allegations - Laura searched the Internet for the name of her convicted molester. 

Up came Gary George Vadnais, now 72, as December's "volunteer of the month" for the Friends 
of the Mississippi River, a nonprofit conservation agency in St. Paul. The accompanying profile described a man who has "taught countless children the art of chess." 

Laura tried to track down the Ramsey County sheriff's investigator and prosecutor in her case, only to learn both men are deceased. She called the St. Paul-based Jacob Wetterling Foundation, which seeks to prevent the exploitation of children. The foundation suggested she inform the volunteer agency that wrote the profile. And then she called me. 

Laura's inquiry, fairly or unfairly, has opened a Pandora's box bursting with vexing questions surrounding the thorny issue of child sexual abuse and child sex offenders. 

What are the lifetime effects of child sex abuse? Can offenders truly be rehabilitated and integrated successfully back into society, only to be haunted continuously by their pasts? 

Are background checks beneficial or harmful? Is there a perfect balance between ensuring public safety for our most vulnerable citizens - children - while also giving people with criminal records, including sex offenders, a real and fair shot at reintegration? 

What's certain is that encounters like these between victim and offender will become more common with the increased availability of online criminal records and sex-offender registries. Learning about a criminal past, or locating or learning something about a victim years later, can be just a mouse click away. 

More offenders may face similar scrutiny as more states ratchet up sentencing and registration laws such as the Adam Walsh Act. The federal legislation, passed in 2006, mandates more public disclosure about where sex offenders of all types live and work. Juvenile offenders as young as 14, as well as predatory offenders, could face lifetime registrations. One homeless sex offender in Georgia faces lifetime imprisonment because of the law's registration criteria. States that don't adopt the measures by 2009 could lose 10 percent of federal criminal-justice funding. 

However, the law has come under criticism from civil rights lawyers, legislators and even some child-advocacy groups in an increasing number of states. Some see it as a draconian ''one-size-fits-all'' approach that is ineffective and could be counter-productive. Minnesota may debate the pros and cons of the law, which includes a national registration database provision named after murder victim Dru Sjodin, in the coming legislative session. 

"There are numerous stories nationally of men losing jobs, being murdered, homes being burned etc., as a result of publicly available information and the bias of the public,'' said Steve Sawyer, whose St. Paul-based Project Pathfinder treats sex offenders and works with families and supporters to make their transition back into society a success. 

"Most offenders do not re-offend after correctional consequences and treatment, and those offenders go on to live productive lives without harm to others," Sawyer said. "So those men (and their families) deserve their privacy and the social support to 'do the right thing.' " 

Complex Issues / One central question needs airing: Is Laura's inquiry legitimate, even if it could be unfair and damaging to the man convicted of molesting her? 

Brook Schaub, a retired St. Paul sex crimes investigator, believes Laura's concerns are more than valid. 

"I would be concerned, and as a parent I would report it to law enforcement,'' said Schaub, who works as a member of an elite team of child-abduction sleuths for the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children. 

"Any cop investigating sex crimes against children can recall a case where a preferential sex offender may have been dormant criminally for years, only to reoffend again,'' Schaub noted. "Not all reoffend, but I tend to err on the safety of the child. It's better to have the information and not need it than to need the information and not have it." 

The Friends of the Mississippi River profile of Vadnais, which has been pulled from the group's Web site, says: "Over the past 26 years, Frenchie (Vadnais' nickname) has coached hundreds of youth at various St. Paul schools in the art of chess.'' 

One of those schools was the Talmud Torah School of St. Paul, where Vadnais taught chess to first- through sixth-graders in an after-school group setting for nearly three years until last fall. Neither entity knew of Vadnais' criminal past. 

"If I read that he was like a pizza-delivery person or something like that, I would not be so concerned,'' said Laura, who is married, is attending college and is an on-call plumbing inspector for a Southern California city. "But the fact that he has been around kids ... I feel a responsibility to let people know what happened to me, and I wondered whether these people knew about what he did to me.'' 

The answer is no. Neither the staff at the school or at the Friends of the Mississippi River knew of Vadnais' child-related criminal past. Like many budget- and staff-strapped private nonprofits, they do not conduct criminal-background checks on most volunteers. 

"We had no idea,'' said Whitney Clark, the conservation group's executive director. The disclosure, however, prompted a board review of volunteer procedures. Also, two online write-ups of Vadnais, as well as a picture of him posing with the 2-year-old son of another volunteer, were removed. 

Talmud Torah plans to begin running background checks on all volunteers who come into contact with children, whether in a group setting or not. 

Both entities stressed that they never received any complaints about Vadnais' conduct and that he never worked one-on-one with kids. 

Vadnais, who is also described in the profile as a published poet and Meals on Wheels volunteer, has not re-offended in Minnesota, according to a Pioneer Press review of available state criminal-history records. He also completed the terms of his 15 years' probation six years ago. 

Had background checks been conducted, Vadnais would be required by law as a volunteer to divulge his conviction. But state law does not prohibit him from coming into contact with children. All that remains is current-address compliance with Minnesota's sex-offender registration laws for another two years. There are nearly 20,000 registrants. 

"This is going to be devastating to me,'' said Vadnais, who lives in St. Paul, in a recent telephone interview. "I didn't do it (the child molestation), and she is trying to sink me all over again.'' 

Rubén Rosario can be reached at  rrosario@pioneerpress.com  or 651-228-5454.