White released after 18 years

WILBER -- Joseph White won a historic legal case Wednesday when DNA tests wiped out his life sentence for the 1985 murder of a Beatrice widow.

But he hid whatever emotions he felt in the moments after a judge granted him a new trial. The 45-year-old White didn’t hug his attorney, shed tears of relief or flash a smile.

Minutes after becoming the first Nebraska inmate to have a conviction overturned by DNA evidence, he simply walked out of the Saline County Courthouse in Wilber. He didn’t even appear upset he was still in handcuffs and leg shackles.

“It’s been a long, hard road and I’m glad it’s over,” he said, shuffling down the courthouse steps with a sheriff’s deputy at his side.

On Wednesday, District  Judge Vicky Johnson ordered White released on his own recognizance. The prosecution has six months to decide whether to retry him for the rape and murder of 68-year-old Helen Wilson.

White, who had been in prison since 1990, won’t wait around while the prosecution makes up its mind.

“I’m going to go home and start trying to rebuild my life,” he  said, explaining that he has family in Cullman, Ala., and that he will voluntarily come back if ordered to do so.

By late Wednesday afternoon, White had been discharged from prison.

Norfolk attorney Doug Stratton, who represented White, said the chances of the state charging his client a second time are “slim and none and slim is leaving town.”

Judge Johnson made a second ruling Wednesday that will likely benefit Thomas Winslow, one of White’s co-defendants in the case. The judge ordered Winslow, who is currently serving a 50-year prison term, to be resentenced. His attorney, Jerry Soucie of Lincoln, will ask the judge on Friday to sentence him to time served.  Winslow also has been in prison since 1990.

The judge’s rulings followed a hearing about the extensive DNA testing of blood, semen and hair found in Wilson’s downtown Beatrice apartment. The results pointed to a single male perpetrator and they excluded White and Winslow as that perpetrator.

Nebraska Assistant Attorney General Corey O’Brien said in court Wednesday that the test results don’t mean White and Winslow are innocent. They may have still been present while Wilson was raped and suffocated.

But at the same time, an absence of their DNA in the apartment casts serious doubts on the eyewitness testimony that helped convict the men.

“Would it have affected my decision as a juror?” O’Brien asked. “I would be lying to this court if I said it wouldn’t have.”

The DNA results, obtained last summer and late last week, also mean an unknown rapist has potentially gotten away with murder for 23 years. Now it will be up to authorities to try to catch a killer using a cold trail.

Gage County Attorney Randall Ritnour said Wednesday the Beatrice Police Department, the Gage County Sheriff’s Office and the Nebraska State Patrol have already reopened the investigation.

“It’s pretty much all hands on deck,” he said.

The victim did what she could to help indirectly identify her assailant. Wilson’s struggles must have injured the man and he left behind blood droplets that provided his complete DNA profile.

One modern resource investigators have is a federal database of DNA linked to known violent criminals. The county attorney declined to say whether the DNA obtained from Wilson’s apartment has been compared to the database.

About 15 members of Wilson’s family attended Wednesday’s hearing. Several declined comment as they left the courthouse.

Prosecutors, however, said the recent developments put the Wilson family back on an emotional roller-coaster they thought they got off of 19 years ago with the convictions of White and Winslow.

“I can’t tell you how my heart breaks for the family in this case,” O’Brien said.

The DNA tests weren’t available in 1989 when authorities arrested six people in connection with Wilson’s murder. To avoid potential death penalties, four of the defendants quickly agreed to testify against White in exchange for prison terms.

As a group of hard-partying drug users, the co-defendants said they broke into Wilson’s apartment to rob her either late on Feb. 5 or early on Feb. 6, 1985.

The jury heard brutal details about how White and Winslow took turns raping the woman while Ada JoAnn Taylor placed a pillow over Wilson’s face.

Three who testified -- James Dean, Debra Shelden and Kathy Gonzales -- each received 10 years in prison and all were released in about four years. Taylor, who also testified for the prosecution, was sentenced to 10 to 40 years in prison and she remains in minimum security today.

A jury convicted White of first-degree murder and sentenced him to life in prison. In Nebraska, a life sentence for first-degree murder means an inmate cannot be paroled.

Winslow, who maintained he didn’t remember being in Wilson’s apartment, pleaded no contest to aiding and abetting second-degree murder and he was sentenced to 50 years in prison.

Winslow’s attorney, Soucie, who works with the Nebraska Commission on Public Advocacy, said the co-defendants lied on the stand. He faulted the prosecution for cutting “sweetheart deals” with them in order to convict the one defendant who refused to accept a plea bargain.

When Winslow saw White get convicted, he accepted his own plea deal, Soucie said.

Beatrice attorney Dick Smith, who prosecuted the case, said Wednesday he would have to read the judge’s ruling before he could react to it.

“I guess I would be once again saddened for the family (of Helen Wilson),” he said. “That would be the only comment I would have at this point.”

White never stopped trying to convince lawyers of his innocence. His persistence paid off in 2005 when he retained Stratton to look into the case.

Stratton, who ended up working on the case pro bono, said he initially didn’t want to believe White. But when he learned that the Beatrice Police Department had preserved numerous bodily fluid samples from the crime scene, he knew DNA could be used to support or destroy White’s story.

A state law that took effect in 2001 allows people convicted of serious crimes to seek DNA testing if it could potentially exonerate them. Judge Johnson denied the first motions by White and Winslow to get the tests, but the Nebraska Supreme Court later reversed her ruling.

The first batch of DNA testing done at the University of Nebraska Medical Center last summer excluded both men. A second batch, involving an additional 43 samples, also excluded them.

In addition, DNA found in the apartment did not match the other male co-defendant, nor did it match any of the women co-defendants.

As of now, the prosecution appears to lack any physical evidence linking any of the six people to the crime scene.

What’s more, their original witnesses are falling apart.

In an interview with the Journal Star in August, JoAnn Taylor said she lied on the stand to save her own life. Stratton said Wednesday he and Soucie contacted several of the remaining co-defendants, who also said they perjured themselves.