Wife of Convicted Killer Says Suit Settlement Vindicates Her

Gail Harrington-Wisely, the wife of convicted murderer Willie Ray Wisely, says she feels “completely vindicated” by the $70,000 paid to her by the county last week to settle her lawsuit stemming from her 1987 arrest on charges of smuggling drugs into the jail.

Harrington-Wisely said she was informed by her Santa Ana law firm that a check had been received from the county, following informal negotiations. She said she expects to receive about $45,000 after legal fees are deducted.

“A significant portion of that money will be used to get Willie Wisely out of prison,” said Harrington-Wisely, who was a law student at the time of the arrest. “He’s an innocent who’s been in prison for almost 11 years.”

Harrington-Wisely, 28, was arrested in August, 1987, on suspicion of smuggling drugs to an inmate during a legal consultation in the Orange County jail. A pen containing about three grams of marijuana and cocaine was taken from the inmate after he left a meeting with Harrington-Wisely, who was working as a law clerk.

The charges against Harrington-Wisely were dropped in 1988 after a sheriff’s deputy testified at a preliminary hearing that the inmate could have been given the drugs in a holding cell before Harrington-Wisely’s visit.

In December, 1987, Wisely was sentenced to life without parole for killing his stepfather, Robert Bray. Bray was crushed to death in 1981 while he was working under the cab of his tractor-trailer rig on a street in Huntington Beach, where he lived. Later in 1981 Wisely was convicted of the killing and sentenced to death, a penalty that was subsequently thrown out because of state Supreme Court rulings on jury instructions.

While being held in the Orange County jail, Wisely filed numerous lawsuits over conditions in the jail, including one in which he was awarded $5,050. Through court motions he obtained his own eight-man double cell, equipped with a computer and a private telephone that enabled him to work on his own case.

Earlier this year, the 4th District Court of Appeal upheld Wisely’s conviction. He is now serving his sentence at Corcoran State Prison in Northern California.

Harrington-Wisely said she expected her husband’s attorneys to file a petition this week to the appeal court, asking for a rehearing. If that is denied, she said, Wisely will appeal to the California Supreme Court.

Harrington-Wisely, who has moved to Lemoore, near the prison, said she visits her husband five days a week and continues to devote her time to freeing Wisely. “I work on that case every day,” she said.

Harrington-Wisely secretly married Wisely on Christmas Eve in 1987 after bringing a minister with her into the same meeting room where sheriff’s deputies said the drug smuggling took place. She met Wisely when she was a law student and was interviewed by him for a law clerk position the courts had granted him.