Moreese Bickham

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Moreese Bickham, (or "Pops" Bickham), born June 6, 1917, is currently the oldest living American whose death penalty conviction was vacated or modified by the U.S. Supreme Court's decision in Furman v. Georgia. The 1972 Furman decision abolished the death penalty in certain circumstances.^[1]

Contents 1 Legal history 1.1 Trial and death sentence 1.2 Commutation to life sentence 1.3 Negotiations, sentence reduction and release 2 Present 3 References

[edit] Legal history

[edit] Trial and death sentence

Trial evidence indicated that late at night July 12, 1958, Bickham had had an argument with two sheriff's deputies in a bar called "Buck's Place" in Mandeville, Louisiana. At approximately 11 PM that evening, the deputies drove Bickham's girlfriend home and told Bickham, "we'll take care of you later." The deputies, Gus Gill, 68, and Jake Galloway, 74, were in street clothes, and it was widely believed they were associated with the Ku Klux Klan.

Later that night, the two men arrived at Bickham's home on Villerey Street in Mandeville. The deputies approached Bickham's front door, argued with him, and shot him in the stomach. They entered his house to kill him, and Bickham raised a shotgun and shot both of them. Bickham was arrested two days later in a Baton Rouge hospital room, and after a brief trial was convicted and sentenced to death.

For fourteen years, Bickham avoided execution, winning seven stays of execution. He lived on death row in the Angola State Penitentiary, in solitary confinement 23 hours per day.

[edit] Commutation to life sentence

In 1972, after the U.S. Supreme Court determined that death sentences applied in certain ways were unconstitutional, the State of Louisiana converted Bickham's sentence to life without parole. Bickham was at that time released into the general prison population, and throughout the 1970s and 1980s, he worked in a variety of capacities at Angola. He assisted in the visitors center, maintained a garden in the prison cemetery, learned leather-making, and he became ordained as a prison minister. In Louisiana, prisoners serving life without parole are never eligible for parole: they will die and be buried in a cemetery within the prison walls.

In 1989, National Public Radio producer David Isay interviewed Bickham in a feature-length documentary on lifers at Angola, entitled "Tossing Away the Keys".

[edit] Negotiations, sentence reduction and release

Five years later, in 1994, Isay asked a member of his not-for-profit board, New York corporate attorney Michael Alcamo to take on Bickham's case pro bono. Working with 35 year-old trial transcripts, Alcamo investigated the circumstances of the conviction, and presented evidence to Louisiana authorities that Bickham should have been charged with the lesser offense of manslaughter, which carried a maximum term of 25 years. As a secondary position, he sought a commutation of the sentence from life without parole to 75 years.

As part of the legal strategy, the attorney organized a national letter-writing campaign. Because strong local sentiment made a full pardon out of the question, Alcamo took the position that Bickham's sentence should be commuted, or reduced, to a specific term of 75 years. This would make it possible to seek a parole date or a specific release date based on certain 19th century state criminal codes.

In January 1995, after the attorney focused significant public attention on the case, Louisiana Governor Edwin Edwards granted the request for a sentence reduction to 75 years. The attorney requested an immediate parole hearing. Despite the passage of 37 years, the parole hearing drew massive news coverage and local protests. In April 1995, Bickham's release on parole was refused by the State Parole Board.

Nonetheless, Alcamo then negotiated with the prison warden, Burl Cain, to obtain Bickham's prison record. He argued that Bickham's prison record was sufficiently exemplary that under the Louisiana "good time" statute, Bickham would be eligible for a sentence reduction of one day for each day of good behavior. The prison warden, Burl Cain certified as to Bickham's good behavior during his 37 years of incarceration. Under the "good time statute", Bickham would theoretically be releasable as a free man after serving a term of 37.5 years. Once the prison record was certified by Angola State Penitentiary, Alcamo reasoned, the release would be non-discretionary.

The Louisiana Department of Corrections agreed with the analysis, and at 12:01 a.m. on January 10, 1996, Alcamo and journalist David Isay escorted Bickham from the prison, as a free man, not subject to parole. They drove through the night to Mississippi, where a minister and his family were waiting to host the group for the night. The next day, Bickham flew from Baton Rouge to Oakland, California to rejoin his family.

[edit] Present

Now in his 90s, Bickham resides in Oregon and is an active participant in the movement to abolish capital punishment in the United States. Isay is the MacArthur Award-winning creator of StoryCorps, a national enterprise to record oral histories. Alcamo is an investment banker in New York.

In 2001, Hon. Edwin Edwards, the Louisiana Governor who commuted Bickham's sentence, was convicted of racketeering and currently is serving a ten year prison sentence.

[edit] References