25 Years of Freedom in Jeopardy

Prison escapee Timothy Lamar Walton knocked around for more than 25 years before Georgia authorities finally came calling.

Now Walton, who lives in Los Angeles, finds himself face-to-face with Georgia prison officials who want him to finish a seven-year sentence he started serving in the early 1970s.

Back then he was a young convict who had been incarcerated for robbing a movie theater of $11 while carrying a gun. His life changed when he and more than 20 other inmates broke out of prison during a disturbance.

“It was a riot,” the 49-year-old Walton said recently. “The code of the penitentiary says you don’t stay. You move. I ran out of the gate and kept running. I saw freedom.”

Walton fled Georgia, made his way along the East Coast for a while and then headed west, eventually winding up in Los Angeles. After a couple of years on the loose he turned himself in to California authorities in 1975. He went to jail temporarily, but never went back to Georgia because the California governor’s office sympathized and refused to turn him over.

Over the years he’s been charged with misdemeanor battery, driving under the influence of alcohol and reckless driving, but none of those led to extradition proceedings. Finally, in April, Walton was arrested as a fugitive after Los Angeles police stopped him as he was riding a bicycle one night and checked his background.

Georgia officials were notified. And they wanted him back.

Taya Hargrove, who coordinates extraditions for Georgia Gov. Roy E. Barnes, said the case was outstanding and had no statute of limitations. It is Georgia’s responsibility to follow through after officials are contacted about such cases, she said.

At a Los Angeles Superior Court hearing last week, Georgia officials surprised Walton and his lawyers by showing up with every intention of taking him away.

Judge Henry Barela agreed to give Walton’s lawyers a chance to challenge the extradition and ordered them to return to court Wednesday.

Walton and his supporters say he is a reformed man who should be left alone. His home is filled with Bibles, and he frequently mentions God in conversation.

He lives with his wife of nine years, Rosela. His daily routine consists of driving her to work, going home to tend to his lawn and plants, and picking her up later.

When reminded of his legal troubles, Walton talks a lot, and fast. He will nervously rattle off the details of his predicament.

Walton readily admits to being less than an angel. He has sold and used drugs. He describes himself as uneducated.

But he said these days he is a harmless husband and grandfather suffering from AIDS.

“I look at a gun and I run now. I lost three brothers and a whole lot of friends to violence,” said Walton, a slender, gray-haired man. “I haven’t committed one crime in California. I haven’t committed one felony and don’t intend to.”

Walton’s lawyer, Ludlow B. Creary, who heard about the case from a friend and decided to handle it pro bono, said his client’s legal troubles in California are minor. The fact that he has had no serious violent history in the state should be taken into account in dismissing the extradition warrant, Creary said.

The things that caused Walton to be arrested “could happen to any one of us,” Creary said. “It rises nowhere near the level of criminality of an armed robbery.”

On separate occasions in 1998 and 1999, Walton was arrested and faced extradition proceedings. Each time, charges were thrown out because Georgia officials refused to come get him.

Creary and Walton’s public defender, John Allen, agree that those dismissals gave Walton a level of comfort to believe his extradition problems were over.

Still, during a June court appearance, Allen encouraged Walton to seek help from sympathetic public officials such as those who helped him in the 1970s. Perhaps some political clout would influence one or both governors involved to drop the extradition proceedings, Allen said.

The lawyers and Walton say the matter should have been dropped in 1976 after then-Lt. Gov. Mervyn Dymally refused extradition.

“It’d be grossly wrong to say we’re not going to release him to be extradited when he was 21, three years after the offense,” said Allen, “but we’re going to extradite him when he’s 49, 28 years after this thing happened.” Dymally agreed, saying he would make the same decision if the opportunity presented itself again.

“It seems to me we should just put it behind us because the offense was so minor and treated in such a felonious manner,” Dymally said. “One has to really review the alleged crime to see if it fit the punishment that was meted out to the individual.”

Dymally agreed to help Walton by contacting Gov. Gray Davis’ office, but was told there is nothing the governor can do.

“I believe the only thing that might help this guy is the court of public appeal,” Dymally said.

It appears that Davis’ hands are tied, said Byron Tucker, spokesman for Davis, citing a Supreme Court ruling binding California to grant Georgia’s request.