Freed Man Holds No Bitterness

Dwayne McKinney, the Ontario man wrongly convicted of murder in Orange County nearly two decades ago, said Saturday that he harbors no bitterness and had even come to quietly accept his fate of life in prison without the possibility of parole.

“I suffered a lot of losses, but I also gained a lot,” said McKinney, who was a 21-year-old gang member when he was convicted. “The lifestyle that I led put myself in a vulnerable position. . . . I could be free and still be lost.”

On Friday, Orange County Dist. Atty. Tony J. Rackauckas, who prosecuted McKinney in 1982, asked a judge to order his release after an investigation uncovered new evidence that another man may have committed the crime.

McKinney, now 39 and a born-again Christian, was freed Friday from Lancaster State Prison. He is staying at a home run by the Center Circle Network, a Christian nonprofit shelter in Lancaster for released inmates.

It was only two years ago that McKinney said he found God in the darkness of his jail cell, in part because of frequent counseling from Byron Pederson, the director of Center Circle.

“I always believed in God, but I had not submitted myself to God,” McKinney said. “I could no longer do it by myself. For 17 years I had done it by myself.”

Throughout the day, a stoical McKinney, thin and bearded, greeted a stream of well-wishers and reporters at the remote desert ranch in the Mojave Desert.

“I just want to run around this place,” McKinney said, looking out toward the patches of sand and brush. “It is very unreal. I know it. I see it, but it is hard to believe it. . . . I always believed my deliverance would come. I just didn’t know when it would come.”

McKinney, born in Lubbock, Texas, was living in Ontario when he was arrested. His family moved to Los Angeles when he was 3 and when he was 13, his mother died. For two years he moved from state to state to live with various relatives until 1975, when he moved to the South-Central Los Angeles home of his sister.

McKinney has always maintained his innocence in the 1980 robbery of an Orange Burger King restaurant and the slaying of its manager, Walter Bell, 19. During the trial, four restaurant workers identified McKinney as the robber.

Efforts to win his release began two years ago when Charles Hill, a prison inmate, wrote the Orange County public defender’s office saying he was present when the robbery was planned and knew the identity of the real killer.

After a lengthy inquiry by the office’s investigators, McKinney’s public defender filed a motion last September seeking a new trial. The motion argued that new evidence pointed to another man, Raymond Herman Jackett III, who is serving time for drug possession.

Rackauckas on Friday came short of declaring McKinney’s innocence, but said his office’s own investigation found substantial evidence pointing to Jackett. The case will remain open, but there are no plans yet to file charges against Jackett, Rackauckas said.

McKinney was convicted not on the basis of any physical evidence linking him to the robbery-slaying, but mostly on the word of the four eyewitnesses who identified him as the killer. Two of them have since said they have come to doubt their testimony, according to court documents. During the penalty phase, the jury deadlocked 7-5 against the death penalty, and McKinney was sentenced to life without the possibility of parole.

Dressed in khaki pants and a simple ribbed shirt, McKinney said he had no immediate plans. He said there was still a lot get used to after being incarcerated for 18 years.

“I am just overwhelmed,” he said. “I need to let it set in.”

After leaving prison Friday, he enjoyed a barbecue meal in a local restaurant and then went shopping at a Wal-Mart store. He shed his prison clothes in the store’s dressing room.

“He was like a kid with Christmas piled 100 times over,” said Center Circle Director Pederson.

Recounting the whirlwind events of the last 24 hours, McKinney said he received a call from his attorney Friday afternoon saying that he was a free man. After receiving the news he went back to work in the prison counselor’s office, where he had a job as a clerk.

“If I didn’t do it, nobody else would,” he said.

Those close to McKinney said they were impressed by his humility.

“This is what you live for,” said an elated John Depko, a veteran 24-year investigator in the Orange County public defender’s office who worked on McKinney’s bid for freedom. “An innocent man deserving of your work.”

On Saturday, Depko and McKinney exchanged a tearful hug. It was the first time Depko had seen McKinney out of prison. “This man came within five votes of being executed,” Depko said.

Later, Depko described his first encounter with McKinney.

“I expected bitterness. All I got from this guy was peace and gentleness,” Depko said. “That to me is just unbelievable. That is not a man capable of murder.”