1) 18 USC-1951 / Conspiracy to commit extortion, racketeering, and threats.
2) 18 USC-1951:2 / Affect commerce and movement of commodities by committing robbery by the use of threats.
3) 18 USC-924 (c) / Firearms- use of firearm during commission of a felony.
4) 18 USC-844 (h) (1) :2 / Use of fire during a robbery and murder.
5) 18 USC-844 (i) :2 / Use of explosives to destroy by means of fire, business and residence.
6) 18 USC-1512 (a) (1) (c) :2 / Murder first degree, to prevent communication to law enforcement official
7) 18 USC-371 / Conspiracy to obstruct justice.
In 1995, myself along with my four co-defendants were tried and convicted on all counts with the exception of Mary Kathleen Bruce, who is the mother of my co-defendants. She was convicted of a lesser charge. Four of the five people received a life sentence. No defendant took the stand during my trial. My case was tried in Jackson, Tennessee with U.S. District Judge James D. Todd of the Western District of Tennessee. My Docket number is 93-10052.
I write this letter with the hope of finding some much needed legal assistance in my case. I will be the first to admit I am limited in my education. Reading and comprehension of the law is beyond me. For this reason I am asking for your help.
I am innocent of the charges for which I am serving time for. After saying this I would also like to state that I speak only for myself in this case, not for any of my co-defendants. I feel strongly that if I could just convince you to look into my case that you will be convinced that I am telling the truth when I say I am an innocent man.
My case is very long and complex, anything that could go wrong did go wrong in this case. I was arrested, November 1st, 1993, with no money for legal representation. The courts appointed Mr. Clayton F. Mayo out of Jackson, Tennessee to represent me. Mr. Mayo did the best he could with his limited funding. It took almost two years for us to get the courts to approve investigation funds and by this time few people were willing to speak to defense investigators. With so little money (only $2,500.00) there was little the investigators were willing to do. I think my investigator put in about 12 hours of work and this money was used up.
The lead Tennessee Bureau of Investigation (TBI) agent Alvin Daniels who took all the original statements in this case, including all defense statements and collected all the evidence, died of cancer just two months before the trial started. Many of the original statements taken by Mr. Daniels changed by the time this case went to trial. The local sheriff at the time also died of natural causes before the trial. I had a co-defendant Charles Gary Bruce who escaped in 1994. His trial was severed until he was recaptured in 1996. Most of the evidence in this case was built around Charles G. Bruce and even though he was not present during our trial, his name was repeatedly mentioned. We had two jail house informants in this case and a man by the name of John Norrell tried to cash-in the reward money, but in the end he was only given $4,000 for the expense of relocating.
The victims are Danny Vine and his fiance Della Thornton. This case revolves around the Freshwater Mussel Shell Industry. From these mussels, cultured pearls and many other items are produced. These mussels are brought into the United States and for the most part are shipped to Japan, which makes it a business of commerce. Danny Vine was a buyer of mussel shells. Mussel shell buying was a cash business that required the buyer to have cash on hand at all times. Mr. Vine was buying these mussels in the state of Tennessee, but the owner of the company Mississippi Valley Shell Company lives in Iowa. Danny Vine's business was located at his house on Kennon Rd. If one was selling these mussels to Mr. Vine, you would literally park right in his front yard to do business.
Wednesday January 16th, 1991, Danny Vine and Della Thorton lost their lives because of this business. Between 9:00 pm and 10:30 pm on this night a neighbor of Mr. Vine, Carla Candella, 14 years of age at the time, hears two trucks moving down Kennon Rd. at a high rate of speed. She looks out her window just in time to see the two trucks passing by her house. Later after being shown a photo of Jerry Bruce's pick-up truck she identifies his truck as the truck leaving the crime scene. Not long after, Carla Candella and her sister Tina Elmore spotted a fire coming from Danny Vine's home and they placed a call to the fire department. This call came in at 11:08 pm. By the time the fire department got out to this rural area the house was engulfed, so they just let it burn itself out. The bodies of Danny Vine and Dela Thorton were found in the ashes two days later by family members. Danny Vine's truck was stolen from the residence, attached to this truck was a flat bed trailer, and according to government witnesses their was X-amount of mussel shells on the trailer the night of the crime. But when the truck was located just a few miles from the crime scene, there were no mussels on the flat bed trailer.
Over the course of the next few days Tennessee Bureau of Investigation agents tracked the sale right back to Gary, Jerry and Robert Bruce. The remains of Danny Vine and Della Thronton are pulled from the ashes and sent to the University of Knoxville, TN, where Forensic Anthropologist Mark Gregory Guilbean X-rayed the remains and recovered a copper jacket from a 38 caliber bullet. This bullet was matched to the bullets recovered from a tree used for target practice on the property of Charles Gary Bruce. But the gun was never found.
John Norrell came forward one year later after the crime and placed me in the driver seat of Danny Vine's stolen pick-up truck. John Norell and his brother Billy Norrell were also in the mussel harvesting business and in January of 1991 were selling their shells to Danny Vine. John Norrell testified in trial to the following: He and his brother Billy were on the their way home from the river, traveling down Eva road when they came upon Kennon Rd. and John Norrell spots Danny Vine's truck coming down Kennon Rd. moving very fast, so fast in fact that it stops short of slamming into the side of their truck. Billy Norrell is driving and John Norrell the passenger. They continue down Eva Rd, one year later John Norrell positively identifies me in a lineup as the driver of Danny Vine's truck. Mr. Norrell puts me driving the victims truck away from the crime scene right around 5:30 pm on January 16, 1991. His testimony at the trial was dusky dark, but the prosecutor put two other witnesses on the stand that said they were at the victims house well after dark on the 16th and the truck was parked in the yard.
Jerry Eugene Baker was a government witness who testified that he was at Danny Vine's residence right around dusky dark between 4:00 pm and 5:30 pm. The following is the redirect by Ms. Webber:
Q. - "And you left Danny Vine's house it was dark. Is that correct?"
A. - "You could kind of see. It wasn't---wasn't what you would call pitch dark. What I would call dusky dark. It's what you --- kind of between daylight and dark, right after the sunset or --"
Q. - "Alright, and when you left Danny Vine's house, was his truck there that night?"
A. - " Yes, Ma'am."
Q. - "Was the trailer attached?"
A. - "Yes, Ma'am. Mr. Baker was selling mussel shells to Mr. vine on this day."
Billy Robertson was also a government witness who testified he sold his day's harvest to Mr. Vine that evening. Mr. Robertson arrived a short time after Mr. Baker left.
Q. - "What time do you think you left Danny's house?"
A. - "7-7:30 pm"
Q. - "Was it dark?"
A. - "Yeah."
Mr. Robertson also said the truck and trailer were parked in Danny's front yard. Mr. Robertson said it was so dark that they had to grade his mussel shells under a beam of a spotlight that he had in his truck.
There were three witnesses who lived on Kennon Rd., Carla Candella, Tina Elmore and Mildred Kennon., all would say they heard trucks leave at a high rate of speed some time around 9:00 pm.
Billy Norrell was driving the truck the day the identification was made, but did not testify for the government. He was not willing to say anything the government wanted him to say. I tried to get an attorney to locate Billy Norrell, but was told he could not be found. When Gary Bruce was re-apprehended in 1996 his investigators found Billy Norrell who testified at his trial. My attorney asked Billy Norrell if he received any compensation for his testimony and he replied that he did receive money for traveling, motel and food expenses. During Charles Gary Bruce's trial it came out that John Norrell did receive $4,000 for his testimony against me. The government claimed the money was for relocation fees after John Norrell claimed to feel threatened.
John Norrell's optometrist David Caraco took the stand for the defense and stated the following:
"Mr. Norrell has a refractive error that is consistent with hyperoptic astigmatism, which causes him the inability to see clearly. His acuity or vision measures around 20/70 or 20/80 without glasses. But with glasses he is able to see 20/25 in his right eye and 20/40 in his left eye which has a degree of amblyopia, which in general terms is a lazy eye."
Shelia McGahan, her husband Todd McGahan and his half brother Randy Farlow were on their way to a wedding around 9 pm when they approached the intersection on Court Square in Camden, Tennessee when a blue and white pick-up truck pulled up to the left hand side of their vehicle. The McGahans reported to TBI agent Alvin Daniels they could identify two of the three occupants in the truck, one being me sitting in the middle of the truck and Robert Bruce was by the passenger window. But during trial this statement changed somewhat and I was placed over by the passenger window. Agent Daniels simply made a mistake when he took their statements back in 1991. There is no stop light at this intersection and at 9pm on a Wednesday night you may not have to stop at all. At this intersection you may have only seconds under poor lighting to identify someone.
I was not in this truck. I never saw or came in contact with Jerry Bruce, Charles Gary Bruce or Robert Bruce on January 16, 1991 and they stated this in their original statements and grand jury testimony. They stated they had no contact with me the day of this crime. Sheila McGahan, Todd McGahan, Randy Farlow and John Norrell are the only witnesses the government could produce to put me with my co-defendants on the day of the crime. All these witnesses made their identification from moving vehicles.
Jimmy Sanders a jailhouse informant who cut his time from 120 months to 60 months by testifying against me was my cellmate for about 13 days who read my legal work and newspaper clippings when I went out to the recreation yard. He said that I told him that I was at the crime scene and was standing right there when the victims were shot in the head.
Anyone familiar with the justice system know that using jailhouse informants is common practice. Even though they know there is a chance that there is no truth in what they testify to. When I was arrested I was sent to a CCA pre-trial detention center in Mason, TN. My stay there was very short. Jimmy Sanders was placed in my cell while I was being housed in the pre-trial holdover unit. I was soon moved to Federal Correctional Institution FCI Memphis. I was there for only a few days when a man by the name of Wylie Bouchillon told me he just left CCA Mason and Jimmy Sanders was in the process of getting a 5.k.1 in my case. Mr. Bouchillon was a defense witness.
Direct questioning from my attorney Clayton F. Mayo:
Q. - "What did Jimmy Sanders say Specifically about his testimony or his 5.k.1 that he was going to get off the Bruce Brothers case?"
A. - "He said that he had received ten years and that they were going to knock his sentence almost in half for his testimony against the Bruces. He said that Tim Holladay originally came up with the idea from when Red --well we called him Red, Mr. Riales. He was there before they would go in his drawer. Like before we'd go out to recreation, and Red didn't have a lock on his locker. And he would go in the locker and read paperwork, and they would go in his drawer and get his legal paperwork. And then of course people talk about their case to a certain extent, you know. Why they're there, you know. what they are charged with."
CCA Mason was my first pre-trial stop. I was green to the system, had never been in prison before and never thought another inmate would make up a story to get his time reduced.
At the time of the crime I was in a relationship with a lady named Lisa Taylor. We had two kids, one was from Ms. Taylor's previous marriage, a boy five years old and she had just given birth to our daughter who was only three months old. Ms. Taylor testified at trial that I was home the night of the crime. She went to bed around 9 pm and to the best of her knowledge I didn't leave the house that night.
Becky Medlin, a neighbor who also testified to my whereabouts that night, said she was at my house with me from 8:00-8:30pm to 10 pm. Assistant U.S. Attorney Steve Parker accused Becky Medlin of lying to the court and jury, by trying to provide me with a false alibi. Mr. Parker asked her why she had waited until the day the of the trial to come forward, but in fact this was a decision I made just days after my arrest. Becky Medlin tried to talk to me into letting her go down to the prosecutor's office and tell them that she was at my house on the 16th, but I advised her not to because I knew what would happen, Mr. Parker would have convinced her that it would be in her best interest to stay out of the case, and I was right, because it took only a few minutes with Mr.Parker in a room full of government agents, and she was ready to go home and not testify at all. Mr. Parker told her he was going to charge her with perjury, put her in jail, and take her kids away for her. My attorney Clayton F. Mayo had to promise to represent her for free if the government charged her with perjury.
The government had no witnesses that said I entered into a conspiracy to rob and murder Danny Vine and Della Thorton. Nor did they produce a witness to say I benefited or profited in any way from this crime. I have mentioned in this letter what the government used to tie me into this case, there is nothing more. Bottom line, I made assistant U. S. Attorney Steve Parker mad when I refused to speak to him about this case. I never severed myself from my co-defendants which only made matters worse for me. Because the government knew that I was in a position to get the information they needed to help them, yet I chose not to, the government came up with the witnesses against me over the course of the investigation.
There is no DNA evidence. Most of the evidence was circumstantial. My court appointed attorney Clayton F. Mayo filed and argued my direct appeal that was shot down. After my direct appeal Mr. Mayo extricated himself from the case. A jailhouse lawyer filed a 2255, given a choice I would not have had a jailhouse lawyer file this motion, but but it was either go with the jailhouse lawyer or risk being time-barred.
Asking for help is not an easy thing for me to do. I have always been a very independent person, but this is something I can't do for myself and there is no way I can put my life in the hands of another jailhouse lawyer. I understand given the fact I did not take the stand that my side of the story would have no merit in a court of law at this time, but I would still very much like to correspond with anyone willing to help me in this case or just listen to my side of the story. I will always be truthful when answering questions about the case. Every year I see on the news or read in the paper where a person was lucky enough to get his case reversed and regain his freedom after doing ex-amount of years for a crime he did not commit. Someday I hope to be so lucky. Any help in this matter will be greatly appreciated.
Sincerely,
William D. Riales
