Man, Jailed at 16 as Killer, Seeks Freedom : Despite court ruling that he was improperly convicted, Louisianian faces life in prison.

Behind the gray, forbidding walls of the Louisiana State Penitentiary here, Gary Tyler’s 16-year-old dream lies undiminished: to be freed of a murder he says he never committed, a murder that put him on Death Row despite what many legal experts believe was a deeply flawed criminal investigation and trial.

In a racially tinged case that has sharply divided public opinion, Tyler’s fate depends on Gov. Buddy Roemer, a conservative Republican facing a bruising reelection fight this fall.

Jonathan Turley, an assistant professor of law at George Washington University in Washington, calls the Tyler case “a sort of microcosm of all of the problems we’re seeing across the country in criminal law today.”

“It’s tragic in the sense that this story brings out the worst in our prison crisis, our system of jurisprudence, and even our political system,” Turley said. “Across the board, everyone in this story comes out looking bad.”

BACKGROUND: In 1974, in the small petrochemical-producing town of Destrehan, La., Tyler was a student at the recently integrated Destrehan High School. He was bused in from a predominantly black neighborhood and says he faced daily taunts from white students.

One late December afternoon, the racial tensions seemed so explosive that the high school was closed several hours early. A mob of angry white students gathered near the school’s parking lot, pelting the bus Tyler rode with stones.

Suddenly, a shot rang out, and 13-year-old Timothy Weber, a white student, fell dead. Minutes later, police officers entered the bus and arrested Tyler. A gun was found on the seat next to him. At his subsequent trial, four black teen-agers testified against him, and one, Natalie Blanks, said she saw Tyler point the gun through the window of the bus at the white crowd outside.

An all-white jury convicted Tyler of first-degree murder, making him, at 16, the youngest person on Death Row in the United States.

Tyler was just months away from Louisiana’s electric chair when the case against him began to crumble. First, Blanks recanted her testimony, saying it had been coerced. Then, the three other witnesses, who had described Tyler’s propensity for violence, also recanted, saying deputies in Destrehan had scared them into giving their testimony.

In 1976, the U.S. Supreme Court struck down Louisiana’s mandatory death penalty, leaving Tyler with a sentence of life in prison at hard labor. Four years later, the U.S. 5th Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that Tyler had been convicted “on the basis of an unconstitutional charge” and had a fundamental right to a new trial.

But the new trial never occurred. In a strange legal twist, state courts concluded that Tyler had already exhausted all avenues of appeal and would not be granted another trial.

Yet doubts about the conviction have continued to grow. For instance, defense investigators learned that the gun found on the bus had earlier been stolen from a police firing range, raising suspicions that it had been “planted” as evidence against Tyler. The gun has since disappeared from the property room of the parish clerk’s office.

OUTLOOK: Law professor Turley, who has represented prisoners at the Angola penitentiary, said that, because Tyler has few legal options left, his only hope for freedom lies with the political system. “But, let’s face it, Roemer is not in the position to be wasting political capital, and he views Gary Tyler as wasted capital,” Turley said. “ . . . In fact, politically, Roemer has everything to gain by keeping Tyler in jail forever.”

However, Kay Kirkpatrick, a legal counsel to Roemer, said the governor has always approached the Tyler case from strictly a legal perspective: “I don’t know that politics has ever entered into one of his decisions. He’s a strong conservative who believes that, especially in cases involving murder, all of the evidence has to be carefully studied before any decision can be made.”

Tyler, for his part, waits. He is a member of the prison’s drama club, has received a high school equivalency degree at Angola and has studied graphic arts. Last year, a Los Angeles printer wrote to Tyler telling him that he would always have a job waiting for him in California as a platemaker.

Said Tyler: “It’s terrifying to think that I could be in this place for the rest of my life. But, if that does happen, I want people to know that I fought until my last moment trying to get out. When you’re innocent, you have no right to give up.”