Tommy
By 
This is a guest post by Matt Guthrie.
In recent weeks I have been talking in Cheryl’s Week in Review posts and some others about Tommy, who walked out of prison on May 1 after 37 years behind bars. My thanks to Dr. Farley and the LGM brain trust for this opportunity to tell his long, sad story more fully.
One day in the summer of 1988, two men who had been hitch-hiking near Barstow were arrested for the killing of a man in a park in Las Vegas the previous day. They were tried separately, and both were convicted. One of the jurors in the trial of the man who actually did the killing was the woman who many years later became my girlfriend. She voted to convict, but then was one of the leaders in the jury room arguing for a sentence of life with the possibility of parole, rather than LWOP or a capital sentence (these were the days when juries decided sentences). Twenty-five years pass, and she flies to Carson City for his parole hearing to tell the parole board “I was on the jury and we voted the way we did so as to give him another chance. Please honor our wishes”. And they did. And he has stayed out of trouble for the decade-plus since his release.
A few years after those events, we began to wonder about the fate of the other man – the one who had been there, but hadn’t actively participated in the killing. What we found was, alas, a microcosm of the randomness, the vicissitudes, and the fundamental unfairness of the American system of punishment.
Tommy had been sentenced to death by his jury, after a trial that lasted less than three days. Think about that for a moment – sentenced to death after a trial that lasted less than three days. After he had spent several years on death row this was changed to LWOP because the original judge had refused to delay the penalty phase of the trial even though family members who were traveling from the east coast to testify on his behalf were delayed and not present. Because it seemed so fundamentally unfair and wrong that he languished in prison while his co-defendant had been free for a decade we (and by “we” I mean “90% my girlfriend with me providing moral support and occasional assistance”) went to work. We discovered that there was an attorney who had had success in getting LWOP sentences commuted not by re-litigating the cases but by making arguments based upon lack of danger to the community and probability of re-integration, and we retained him (I’ll stick in a word here in memory of Pope Francis – while I’m an atheist philosopher, she is very much influenced in this by her Catholic faith).
Tommy’s commutation hearing was right before Christmas. His attorney presented a letter of recommendation from the prison itself that he said was the best he had ever seen and argued to the Nevada Pardons Board that there would be no risk to the community from paroling him and that the discrepancy in punishment between him and the other defendant offered another reason for clemency. The Pardons Board, including the Governor, who was present, then voted 9-0 to commute his sentence to include the possibility of parole (let’s note that this was only possible because he had maintained a spotless disciplinary record over the many long years with no hope). It then took until now to get the parole granted and to get Maryland (where he grew up and still has family) to agree to accept him, but he finally walked out of the doors of the prison on the morning of May 1 and we were waiting for him.
Tommy’s 69, and an old 69 (prison is hard on a body). He’s been behind bars for 36 years. Ronald Reagan was president back then, the internet was a decade away from being a thing, the Walkman was the hot new tech device, and if you think the inflation since 2020 was an eye-opener… well. Tommy likes the Ravens (we’ve had a couple of conversations about the NFL) and doesn’t like Trump (figures that the guy in prison for decades sees right through him). He also has the taste to say “what the hell is that?” when seeing his first cybertruck.
When we flew back to Maryland we discovered that he’d never been in an airport before. He’s now got a bank account and for the first time ever a debit card. He’s had an eye exam for the first time in many years and will be getting new glasses this week. He’s sharing a little house just outside his home town with his nephew, and is getting great joy out of cleaning the yard, setting up a bird feeder, and planting some tomatos and squash. His first meeting with his PO went well.
Tommy, of course, came out of prison with virtually nothing. Since I first talked about him here, people have been incredibly generous in donating to the GoFundMe. Can you imagine what it must feel like to be in his shoes and be told “here is some money to help you from people you’ll never meet but who want you to succeed”. “Tell them I won’t let them down” he’s said more than once.
So here is the GoFundMe: https://gofund.me/41d24587 . Please share with any family, friends, colleagues you have that might be willing to donate. Any gift, of any size, is welcome and appreciated. Thanks again to our hosts for letting me share this story.