After 6 1/2 Years, Jailhouse Lawyer’s Time Runs Out : Willie Wisely, Unprecedented as a Prisoner, to Get Life Term

Even detractors of Willie Ray Wisely, scheduled to be sentenced today to life without parole for the 1981 murder of his stepfather, admit he has become the consummate jailhouse lawyer.

He has commanded media attention with victories at both the federal and state levels on his legal motions. His battles have involved both his own case and conditions at the Orange County Jail.

His stay at the Orange County Jail has been unprecedented in many ways. He has been there 6 1/2 years, longer than any inmate in its history. Through his legal work he acquired his own, eight-man double cell, equipped with a computer, law books and a private telephone. He’s the only inmate ever known to sneak in a wedding by having his bride and a minister meet him in the attorney/bonds room at the jail.

Unprecedented Jail Stay

Few inmates have ever protested their innocence with such impudence.

“So if I’m so brilliant, what am I doing here, right?” he said in a recent telephone interview from jail, keeping a jump ahead of the questions.

The answer to that could be words--the volumes of words Wisely has written about jail conditions and his case, files enough to fill a trunk.

But none of Wisely’s words has had more impact on his case than those he allegedly spoke to his co-defendant, James M. Dunagan: “If some people don’t keep their mouths shut, they are going to have to pay the price.”

The police scenario is that the threat to Dunagan set off a chain of events that eventually led to Wisely’s arrest--and at a time when it looked like he was home free not only for his stepfather’s death but for an earlier antique store robbery.

Wisely, now 34, denies that he ever killed anyone.

“I don’t deny my past crimes,” Wisely said. “But I’m no Charles Manson. . . . I’m no Mafioso. I don’t go around kicking in people’s spleens like the guards do to poor small Mexicans here at the Orange County Jail. I’m in here for a murder that never even happened.”

Wisely’s wife, 25-year-old Gail Marie Harrington of Newport Beach, and her parents also proclaimed his innocence.

Harrington, a law student and American Civil Liberties Union clerk who met Wisely when she was assigned to handle prisoner rights cases in the jail, said she “fell madly in love with him. He made his feelings for me clear.”

Her father, Joseph Harrington, said he was “absolutely convinced a murder never took place.”

But Wisely’s prosecutor, Assistant Dist. Atty. Edgar A. Freeman, says Wisely overestimates his powers of persuasion with the public.

“Willie is a very beguiling, very charming individual,” Freeman said. “But he has no social conscience. That makes Willie extremely dangerous to society.”

The path that led to Wisely’s arrest began at San Quentin State Prison, where he spent two years, from 1979 to 1981, for forging checks. Wisely claims the crimes were necessary to feed his drug habit.

Before then, Wisely had a lengthy history of trouble. He was sent to the California Youth Authority as a teen-ager, primarily for delinquency. Later he served jail time for a handful of burglaries and robberies.

At San Quentin, Wisely met an inmate named Phil Thompson.

Wisely claims he tried to stay away from Thompson after prison, but Thompson kept hanging around. Thompson’s version to police is that the two of them planned in prison the crimes they would commit when they got out.

Just six weeks after Wisely’s release, he and Thompson robbed an antique-jewelry store in Temple City. Wisely claims it was all Thompson’s idea, that he didn’t even know they were robbing the place until he saw Thompson waving the gun.

Two weeks later, on March 9, 1981, 61-year-old Robert Bray, Wisely’s stepfather, was working on his semi-trailer truck parked on a Huntington Beach street when the cab collapsed on him.

James Dunagan says he was with Wisely when Wisely sneaked up on his stepfather and quietly flipped the lever which collapsed the cab. Two weeks later, Dunagan has said in court, Wisely waved a gun in his face and threatened him if he told anyone.

Wisely scared him enough that Dunagan called the police. Not about the murder, but about the Wisely-Thompson robbery.

Search Warrant Issued

The police placed Wisely under surveillance. Eventually, they issued a search warrant for the house where he was staying in Huntington Beach. There they discovered some of the goods stolen in Temple City.

Wisely, thinking Thompson had turned him in after a blowup between them, fingered Thompson as his partner. That led police to arrest Thompson in San Francisco, where they found more of the jewelry store haul.

Thompson, angry that Wisely had named him, told the police about Wisely and Dunagan killing Wisely’s stepfather. This was news to law enforcement. Bray’s death had never been considered anything but a freak accident.

According to prosecutor Freeman, the Huntington Beach police got another break in the case. Robert Kish, who was in a cell area with Wisely in the Los Angeles County Jail, told officials that Wisely was bragging about killing his stepfather and getting away with it. Dunagan turned state’s evidence in exchange for a four-year prison sentence.

The heart of Freeman’s case against Wisely was statements to police by Dunagan, Kish and Thompson. Wisely served as his own lawyer. Jurors not only found him guilty of first-degree murder, they gave him a death verdict.

New Penalty Trial

But state Supreme Court rulings on jury instructions forced a new penalty trial. Wisely’s long stay at the jail has been the result of prosecutors’ attempts to get that death verdict reinstated. While Wisely helped his appellate lawyers fight the prosecutors on that front, he kept busy writing to state officials and various courts.

The prosecutors failed to prevent the new penalty trial, and Freeman finally decided on his own to stop pursuing the death penalty against Wisely.

“Wisely’s life of crime really didn’t include any violence,” Freeman said. “On reflection, it seemed to me he just didn’t meet the standards for a death sentence. It is enough to put Willie away for the rest of his life.”

Wisely’s opinion about Freeman is not so charitable.

“The fact he is a prosecutor and I’m in jail is a joke,” Wisely said.

Wisely and Freeman do agree, for different reasons, that Wisely made a mistake trying to run his own case.

Wisely claims his first big mistake started with Kish at the Los Angeles County Jail.

Wisely’s version is that Kish was supposed to tell authorities Wisely had implicated himself in Bray’s death. Wisely then would be transferred to the Orange County Jail on the Bray murder. Then, Kish was supposed to deny the story.

“Kish was supposed to fall apart at the preliminary hearing, and then I would be free,” Wisely said.

Wisely thought the case would be dropped. And without that hanging over him, he would be eligible to be released on $25,000 bail in the Los Angeles County case.

But Kish double-crossed him, he said.

At the preliminary hearing, Wisely said, Kish “goes ahead with the thing as if it were all true.”

Wisely says his error was in picking Kish instead of someone else. Others say Wisely’s error was thinking anyone could believe that story.

One of Wisely’s former lawyers relates: “I told Willie nobody in the world would believe he implicated himself in a murder just to move from the L.A. jail to the Orange County Jail. But he was so convinced it was going to work.”

Wisely also admits he made a tactical error at his trial.

“I should never have gone to trial without having enough time to properly prepare an investigation. I naively believed if you were innocent, it didn’t matter that much.”

Freeman observed, “A good lawyer would never have let Willie testify. He got caught up in so many lies he could never get himself untangled.”

Frightened at Home

It was Wisely who put much of his criminal past before the jury. But Wisely claims it would be unfair for anyone to judge him a murderer just because he has been a criminal.

Wisely also blames much of his trouble on the man he is accused of killing, Robert Bray.

His parents divorced when Wisely was young, and his mother married Bray. Wisely claims his stepfather often berated or beat him and never showed him any affection.

“I was so scared at home, I wouldn’t even get up in the middle of the night to go to the bathroom for fear the trouble it might cause,” Wisely said.

The troubled home life, he said, led him to drugs.

“Getting high was my answer how to deal with it all,” he said.

The drugs led to a series of robberies and burglaries, and finally the forgeries.

Wisely says his life has been “like a race car, going the wrong way on the track. No matter how fast you drive it, you’re still going the wrong way.”

Wisely has impressed courthouse officials with his legal abilities in recent months. But in all his latest rounds he has been the loser. Superior Court Judge Kathleen O’Leary refused his request to postpone a hearing on his motion for a new trial. Judge Manuel Ramirez, who heard the new trial motion, turned him down.

Wisely claims he will ask the court today to postpone his sentencing. But he does not expect to win. Wisely claims his case will never get a fair hearing until it gets to appellate court.

Prosecutor Freeman says Wisely is once again overestimating his ability to sway an appellate court.

Freeman says Wisely is a murderer. But that doesn’t mean Freeman isn’t impressed with the inmate’s legal battles over jail conditions.

“Willie’s talent has always been his ability to find weaknesses in the system,” Freeman said. “It isn’t at all surprising to me that Willie may have had some success in bringing out some improvements at the jail.”