Wisely’s Wife Freed of Drug Counts : Gail Harrington Case Is Dismissed

Charges were dismissed Thursday against Gail Harrington--wife of convicted killer Willie Ray Wisely--who had been accused of passing drugs to an inmate in the attorney/bonds room at Orange County Jail.

Deputy Dist. Atty. James J. Mulgrew asked the court to dismiss the charges after a sheriff’s deputy testified at Harrington’s preliminary hearing Thursday that the inmate could have been given the drugs in a holding cell before Harrington’s visit.

Harrington, 26, who secretly wed Wisely a year ago on Christmas Eve in that same attorney/bonds room, said later that “I believe the only reason I was arrested was to discredit Willie. I am relieved, but I am bitter and angry, too. They should never have filed a case against me.”

Wisely, 35, was sentenced last month, after a five-year court battle for a new trial, to life in prison without parole for the 1981 murder of his stepfather, Robert Bray of Huntington Beach.

Wisely had been the leading jailhouse lawyer among the inmates arguing for better jail conditions, and claiming in numerous court motions that he was harassed because of his outspoken views. He is now at California State Prison at Folsom.

Harrington, who works as a law clerk, was arrested on Aug. 10, 1987, after she conducted a brief meeting with inmate Lance Warner. Warner was found with a fountain pen containing cocaine and marijuana when he was routinely searched after that visit. Prosecutors said at the time that Harrington may have intended the drugs for Wisely.

Warner was found with about three grams of cocaine and about three grams of marijuana. Charges are still pending against him in connection with those drugs.

Harrington was charged with two felony counts of possession for sale and two felony counts of smuggling drugs into the jail.

But the prosecution’s case collapsed Thursday when Deputy Stan Balszak testified before Central Municipal Court Judge Jacquelyn D. Thomason that he could not rule out other possible sources for the fountain pen besides Harrington.

Mulgrew scoffed at any suggestion that Harrington’s arrest was related to any vendetta against her husband.

“I filed the charges because I believed from the information I had been given that there was no way the inmate could have gotten that pen except during his visit with Gail Harrington,” Mulgrew said. “I didn’t find out there were other possibilities until the hearing.”

Mulgrew added that he believes that the sheriff’s deputies have been honest about the events surrounding Harrington’s arrest.

“If they were out to nail somebody, they wouldn’t have come into court making such honest statements which ended up benefiting her,” Mulgrew said.

Shortly after Balzak’s testimony, Mulgrew asked Judge Thomason not to bind Harrington over for trial on the charges.

“We simply could not put on a case that we could prove beyond a reasonable doubt,” Mulgrew said.

Harrington’s attorney, G. David Haigh of Santa Ana, defended Mulgrew as “an honorable prosecutor.”

But Haigh added that “a first-year law student could have won this case for the defense today.”

Prosecutors had been told that Warner was searched immediately before entering the visiting room, and immediately afterwards and that there were no other possibilities for his getting the pen. While no one can say Warner was in a holding cell after the first search and before the Harrington visit, officials can’t say he wasn’t either.

None of the deputies involved ever said they actually saw Harrington give a pen to Warner.

Secondhand Report

The problem, Haigh said he believes, is that Balszak, the deputy who observed Warner during the visit, did not write his own report but instead reported his observations to superiors, who then wrote a report secondhand.

Harrington, a senior at Western State University College of Law, denied Thursday that she had given Warner the drugs.

“I don’t know how he got them; I don’t care,” she said.

Warner has made no statements to police about how he got the drugs.

Three days before her arrest, Harrington had filed a federal lawsuit against county officials claiming that they were harassing her over her numerous visits to jail inmates.

She was a legal clerk for several defense attorneys at the time. She met Wisely when he interviewed her to be his legal assistant at the time he was representing himself on his murder case. They were married when Wisely managed to get a minister into the attorney/bonds room with them on the pretense he was a potential witness.

Injunction Still Exists

After her arrest, Harrington was under a court injunction not to visit any inmates except Wisely in the attorney/bonds room at the jail. While that injunction still exists, Harrington said she does not think now that the county can legally keep her from seeing inmates for business reasons.

Harrington said Thursday that she plans to complete law school in the spring and take the bar exam in July.

“I am determined now more than ever to become a lawyer,” she said. “I think too often people are arrested for the wrong reasons.”

A bonus for Harrington with the dismissal of the charges Thursday was the right to see Wisely at Folsom. Prison rules prohibited her from visiting while charges were pending against her.