Leonard said in a 2004 affidavit that he told the girls what would happen if they tried to protect McCain.
“I told Tina that she was going to testify in the case,” Leonard said. “I told her that if she did lie under oath and I found out about it, she could find herself at the same table that McCain was seated at.”
Though Rita never testified in court, the combined testimony of Hood and Tina Wright was enough for Judge Wilson. She gave McCain the maximum sentence for his original charge of aggravated assault with a deadly weapon: 20 years in prison.
Eight months later, Tina called McCain’s parents, Norma and Bruce McCain, and apologized again for her testimony.
She also wrote a letter to McCain.
“I can’t apologize enough for what I’ve done,” she wrote. “I carry the guilt with me every day. … I don’t know what I would have done without you. You practically supported me, you fed and clothed me and gave me money. Whenever I needed you, you were there for me. I guess you don’t really know what you have until it’s gone.”
*****
McCain had bad luck with his attorneys.
A different lawyer represented him at nearly every step toward his incarceration — and a few more after he was already behind bars.
After McCain’s probation was revoked, his family didn’t waste any time hiring yet another lawyer. Ward Casey had a reputation for overturning wrongful convictions. McCain’s parents paid him a $30,000 fee with the expectation that Casey was their next best shot for proving McCain’s innocence.
It didn’t work out that way. Just when McCain believed things couldn’t get any worse, a letter to his lawyer resulted in prison time added to his sentence.
By the fall of 1999, McCain had been in prison for about six months. He felt he had been wronged by Judge Sharen Wilson, prosecutors Leticia Martinez and Ben Leonard, White Settlement police, and by his own attorneys. He was angry, and he wrote a 13-page letter to Casey expressing frustration and disappointment in his legal representation. But there was one paragraph that set off alarm bells for Casey.
“People give me information here they just like me I guess,” McCain wrote. “I’ve found out where you live, I know every time Lettie Martinez crosses the street, I know when Sharen Wilson takes her daughter to my old sensai’s dojo on Cherry Lane for her karate lesson. I don’t even ask, people just come up and give me information. They like to tell me things. Anyway this is probably boring you so I’ll just say a couple more things then I’ll shut up.”
McCain concluded the letter by asking Casey to keep his confidence.
“Remember sir,” McCain wrote, “this information is under Client-Attorney privilege so I wouldn’t like any of it repeated.”
Casey told McCain that not only did he feel threatened by this letter but also that he was also ethically obligated to turn it over to the district attorney’s office. Attorneys are allowed to divulge client confidences if a potential threat is issued.
By the end of the same year that McCain was convicted of assault and had his probation revoked, prosecutors charged him with retaliation against Judge Wilson and prosecutors Martinez and Leonard.
McCain was more than a little surprised at how Casey interpreted his letter.
“I’ve been sitting here in a jail cell with a heart condition so I’m not really in much of a position to harm anyone,” he wrote. “Did I ever threaten to do anything to you?”
More recently, McCain said that he “just viewed the letter as a guy in prison talking to his lawyer.”
But once again, McCain found himself facing few options. After Casey withdrew from his case, McCain hired another attorney, who advised him to plead guilty to the retaliation charges.
So McCain pled again, and Judge Wilson added another two years to his sentence.
And then, even when McCain seemed to have a lawyer ready to zealously represent him, something went wrong. Again.
In March 2001, Lawrence “Larry” Brown sketched out a new legal strategy for overturning McCain’s conviction. In a letter to McCain’s mother, he said he was ready to defend her son with a “full-court press of the state” and “very aggressive motion filing.”
Less than three months later, Brown told Norma McCain she should find another lawyer, according to a June 2001 affidavit from Norma.
His reason, according to the affidavit, was fear of retribution from the legal community, including Judge Wilson.
Wilson, now Tarrant County’s district attorney, could not be reached for comment.
Brown, according to court records, then refunded Norma most of the money she had paid him. The refund was $6,750 — some of the money she needed to pay for a new attorney. Of Brown’s initial $1,500 fee, which covered his consultation, investigation, and jail visit with McCain, the lawyer kept only half as a “gesture of good faith,” he wrote in a final memo to Norma.
Brown did not return phone calls for this story.
Over the decade-and-a-half he has now spent in prison, McCain used the prison law library to learn as much as he could and represent himself. He has written dozens of legal documents by hand and mailed them to appeals courts that have slapped down every motion for a new trial, writ of habeas corpus, or request for DNA testing.
He’s tried all of those legal routes to exoneration, some of them multiple times, and clearing his name seems a more remote possibility than ever before.
•••••
Ever since McCain pled guilty to that first assault, prosecutors have avoided any discussion of the evidence.
Their arguments have always been entirely procedural: You signed away your rights, so you no longer have the right to fight your conviction.
Which is technically true.
But even after she revoked McCain’s probation, Wilson seemed to question the lack of evidence in his case.
Though the judge denied his request for a new trial at that July 1999 hearing, she also questioned prosecutors’ arguments during an exchange with Assistant District Attorney Steven Conder.
WILSON: So it is your contention then that legally, as far as their standing to urge motion in arrested judgment, they’re just out of luck?
CONDER: Yes, your honor.
WILSON: And that’s why you all didn’t present contrary evidence? Because the state of record, as it appears right now, is not good for the State.
Ultimately she still sided with the state. McCain, who never had a trial to begin with, was never granted a new one.
And now, the professional musician whose family once marveled at how effortlessly he could play any instrument — who could make a guitar “walk and talk,” according to his younger sister, Regina Ouzts — is on the far end of a story that may not have a happy ending.
His medical conditions have significantly worsened in the last few years.
He can no longer stand for any length of time. He’s able to walk only for 75 to 100 yards at a time. If he needs to leave his room and go somewhere in the building, he must be pushed in a wheelchair.
The Parkinson’s disease has gotten much worse in the last six months.
“There are times of the day I shake so violently I have to hold on to something to keep from falling out of bed,” McCain said.
It takes McCain “every ounce of energy” he has to walk the 20 yards from his cell to the shower. His vision is nearly gone. Though he has a contact lens for one eye, the dated prescription gives him only about 10 to 15 feet of vision — enough to prevent walking into a wall. He’s allergic to numerous medications, which makes treatment difficult.
Despite his poor health and the recommendations from prison doctors who say that he needs outside treatment and should be released on medically supervised parole, the Texas parole board ruled that releasing McCain would be a threat to public safety.
With the odds stacked so heavily against McCain, Ouzts isn’t sure how much longer she can hold onto the McCain family home. She’s been maintaining the house since their mother died six years ago. She knows Greg still wants to move back into that house when he’s released, but at 62 years old, she’s unsure how long she can afford to take care of it.
“His dream was that some day he would get out and come back home,” Ouzts said. “I don’t know if it will really happen. If there’s a story out there, maybe some people will actually listen. … This is one of our last hopes.”
[box_info]This story drew on hundreds of pages of documents from the court record and many interviews to tell the story of Greg McCain’s conviction 17 years ago. Many key figures, including a couple of attorneys, investigators, and even the victim, have died. Attorneys for McCain refused to comment, did not return phone calls, or have since died. The family of Jennifer Wright either did not return phone calls or could not be reached for comment.[/box_info]
