As Man Waits in Prison, Sibling Admits to Crime

About the robbery, this much is certain: In the spring of 1997, a man driving a mustard yellow Subaru pulled up to a house on the east side of Fort Worth. The driver eased out of the car, strolled into an open garage and stole a leaf blower and lawn edger.

The homeowner, Sandee White, ran outside and screamed at the thief to stop. “Get back or I’ll shoot you,” he shouted back, gesturing with what appeared to be a gun in his pocket. White scribbled down his license plate number as he sped away.

The event marked the beginning of a long, unhappy trail for a two-time felon named James Byrd, who was sentenced to 30 years in prison for the aggravated robbery. The case fractured Byrd’s family, who insisted that his brother Donnie Johnson stole the lawn gear to support a crack cocaine habit. Now Johnson has confessed. And yet White remains convinced that the jury rightly convicted Byrd.

The Texas Board of Pardons and Paroles is now considering Byrd’s petition for clemency--which is backed by the district attorney’s office that prosecuted him but not by the victim of the crime.

“It’s an ambiguous situation,” acknowledged Alan Levy, chief of the criminal division at the Tarrant County district attorney’s office here. “The law doesn’t provide for ambiguity, and that’s the problem.”

History of Drug Use

Donnie Johnson steals for drug money. That’s just a fact, said his mother, Olivia Byrd, 73. “When Donnie got to have that drug, he got to have it,” she said of Johnson’s long-standing pattern of theft, drug use and prison. “It don’t matter if he hurts his own family.”

In March 1997, Johnson was fresh out of drug rehabilitation and broke. He asked his younger brother James to sign for a car loan. Byrd hesitated, then agreed. “Donnie had a drug problem, but people can change,” said Byrd, who knew about second chances.

Byrd already had served two jail sentences, for possession of cocaine and for theft. When he got out of prison in 1995, he found a $13-an-hour job rebuilding automobile drive shafts. He bought a small house and moved in with his fiancee and two children. “I grew up,” he said.

Maybe Donnie will make it this time, Byrd thought as the car salesman slid the loan papers across the desk.

The man driving the Subaru hatchback robbed White a few months later. Fort Worth police traced the car to Byrd, whose stomach lurched when he saw the police at his front door. “I told them, ‘Y’all must have me mistaken for my brother Donnie. I signed for the car, but it belongs to him.’ They said, ‘Yeah, right,’ and handcuffed me and took me to jail.”

The family begged Johnson to confess. “Your life ain’t going to get no better till you tell the truth,” scolded his sister Ammy Sewell. “James is your brother. Do right by him.” Johnson wavered. No one in the family thought a jury would convict Byrd. Though their stories sometimes conflicted, a dozen alibi witnesses, including his supervisor at work, put him elsewhere at the time of the robbery.

Gamble Didn’t Pay Off

Johnson would later say, “I gambled on my brother winning his trial.” He testified that on the day of the robbery, he had lent the car to a friend, who must have taken the lawn equipment. Prosecutors later told jurors that the friend was in jail when White was robbed.

What’s more, White insisted that it was Byrd who rummaged through her garage as if it were a hardware store. “I’m not an 80-year-old woman with cataracts who couldn’t see who it was. It was broad daylight and I could clearly see his face,” the 48-year-old said recently.

“When you are sitting on that witness stand and someone’s life is in your hands, you want to be absolutely sure that you know what you’re talking about,” she said. “I am positively 100% sure that James Byrd threatened my life and stole from me.”

The jury believed White and, because it was Byrd’s third felony conviction, sent him to jail for 30 years as a habitual criminal. “I had a steady job, a house, and money in the bank,” said Byrd, 38. “Why would I steal a Weed Eater?”

After that, the 45-year-old Johnson knew no peace. The family pressured him for a year before he signed a confession in January 1999. “I committed the robbery for which my brother James was convicted,” it read. “I am a drug addict and this particular theft was one of many that I have committed in order to get money to supply my drug habit.”

But the Texas Court of Appeals denied without comment a motion to consider the confession.

‘I Am Innocent’

Five years passed as Byrd cleared prison cafeteria tables by day and studied law books at night. He wrote to dozens of people for help, carefully noting their names on a square of gray cardboard that came to represent his ticket out of prison. “I am innocent,” Byrd wrote to lawyer Johnnie L. Cochran Jr. and TV talk show host Montel Williams, among others.

Other inmates rolled their eyes. “They said, ‘Everybody’s innocent in jail.’ Then they laughed. No one believed me,” Byrd said.

Last fall, Cathy Helenhouse, a second-year law student, was assigned to look into Byrd’s case as part of a class at the University of Houston. She reviewed Byrd’s file and found herself drawn to long letters from his family. “They were just begging for help,” she said. “All these questions were coming to my mind and you wonder, did this really happen?”

After she told a Fort Worth television reporter about Byrd, a local defense attorney took up the case. In June, after polygraph examiner Eric Holden concluded that Byrd and Johnson were telling the truth, Tarrant County Dist. Atty. Tim Curry wrote to the state Board of Pardons and Paroles.

“From our own experience, and from his reputation in the law enforcement community, we can be confident that Mr. Holden’s conclusions are reliable,” Curry wrote. “At this point, we are no longer certain of Mr. Byrd’s guilt. Given the unique facts of the case, including the complete absence of physical or scientific evidence, the polygraph results have created a doubt that he is actually guilty of this crime.”

Similar letters followed from State District Judge Sharen Wilson, who presided over Byrd’s trial, and Tarrant County Sheriff Dee Anderson.

Victim, Police Opposed

White also has written the board--to fight Byrd’s release. “When I first found out what was happening, I thought, ‘Oh my God, he has an identical brother and I made the wrong identification.’ But they do not even look alike. The right man is in prison,” she said. White fears that Byrd will be released despite her efforts to keep him in jail. She has sold her house and is moving, she said.

The chief of the Fort Worth Police Department also opposes Byrd’s release. “What’s interesting to us is that the case to release him is based on a polygraph examination, which is not admissible at trial,” police spokesman Lt. Jesse Hernandez said. “We have decisive eyewitness testimony and a thorough investigation. This is what the jury considered, and they found him guilty.”

“I’ve never seen a case like this before,” said Levy, the Fort Worth prosecutor. “I’d be very hesitant if not for the interlocking polygraphs. I’ll be surprised if it meets muster at the parole commission, but it might.”

It’s unknown when the parole board might take up the case.

But at the Gurney prison unit southeast of Dallas, Byrd already is planning a new life. He’ll finally get married and find a new job. He thinks about Johnson, who cried and apologized to Byrd during an emotional televised meeting, their first in five years.

Not long afterward, police in nearby Mansfield arrested Johnson in a separate burglary and on suspicion of drug possession.

“Donnie’s in the house [jail] again,” his mother said.

“It never ends.”