When prosecution bit more than it could chew

By Peter Kimani

"You are to die by lethal injection. If that fails we’ll electrocute you. If the power goes out, we’ll hang you. And if the rope breaks we’ll take you out back and shoot you."

The judge’s words still ring in Greg Wilhoit’s mind. The year was 1986, and the ironworker’s life was fast spinning out of control. Only a year earlier, Wilhoit had become a widower after his wife was found murdered, and was trying his best to raise his two young daughters, then aged four years and 14 months.

Now, the police came calling with startling suggestion. Since he had been separated from his wife three weeks before she was murdered, the police theory was that he must have something to do with the heinous act. Police were keen to know if Wilhoit had any alibi. "I had moved to a new flat at that time, had no roommate and so had no alibi," he told The Standard On Saturday recently.

Police were particularly keen to talk to him because a bite on his wife’s breast appeared to match Wilhoit’s teeth. "Every time you hear the word capital before the charge, you should know you are facing a death sentence," Wilhot chuckles. He quickly sought the help of a top lawyer in his hometown of Oklahoma, who was known to his family, for representation.

What Wilhoit and his family did know, until it was too late, was that the lawyer had suffered alcohol-induced brain damage and could not have meaningfully represented him.

"The lawyer kept saying he could get me a good deal in plea bargain, but I kept saying I was innocent. He then asked to write questions that he should ask me in court (during cross-examination)," Wilhoit recalls.

Everything that could go wrong did go wrong. When the case was to be heard, Wilhot’s lawyer appeared in court drunk, and vomited in the judge’s chambers – without providing any defence.

That’s when the presiding judge delivered the chilling words that the State would ensure he was killed by any means necessary.

Thence started life on the death row. "Time stood still," he says of the circumstances in death row, in which nothing appears to happen, save for waiting for death. But Wilhoit says he got terrified after his friend was killed in a jail fight. He appealed against the conviction, and was assigned an attorney named Mark Barrett from the Oklahoma Indigent Defence System, a State agency that represents those who qualify but cannot access counsel.

Over the next four years, Barrett would seek America’s top forensic odontologists to review the bite mark – the singular piece of evidence that had been used to convict Wilhoit – although his wife’s throat had been slit and she had been sexually assaulted.

The experts confirmed what Wilhoit already knew: He did not inflict the bite on his wife, nor had anything to do with her death.

He was released on bail pending a new trial, which finally cleared him of any wrong-doing after the district attorney withdrew all charges against him.

The eight-year ordeal did not mean just a lost decade for Wilhoit; it also came with the stigma associated with incarceration, and health complications. He says he has had symptoms of post-traumatic stress disorder and has been dependent on welfare support because the $200,000 compensation endorsed for exonerated inmates is yet to be processed.

But he says his greatest regret is not being able to raise his two daughters. The first-born was already a teenager by the time he was released, while the 14-month toddler had grown into a nine-year old girl. Time had just slipped by, after seeming to stand still in the five years he spent on death row.