The
Cary Dale
Herrin Story
A “Justice” History of
Osage County, OK
By Kelly
Stone
Investigative Reporter
Osage County, OK - After having read such books as “Chasing Justice, My Story of Freeing Myself After Two Decades on Death Row for a Crime I Didn’t Commit” by Kerry Max Cook, “The Innocent Man” by John Grisham, “Dreams of Ada” by Robert Mayer, “Actual Innocence” by Barry Scheck/Peter Neufeld/Jim Dwyer and many others, it would seem that our nation has been overtaken by lying prosecutors, crooked, uncaring judges, and “dirty” law enforcement officials. Logic would tell us, generally, this is not true, but for the extremely large number of victims of such unscrupulous and unjudicious characters it would seem to them that everyone in a position of authority is a “bad guy” and there is no one to help. Once the “suspect” has been apprehended and has been forced through the criminal “justice” system, he or she is then subjected to a prison system that is overrun with staff who are offensive, abusive, egotistical, law-breakers, and unethical, to say the least, making the inmate wonder why he is behind bars, when those who are in authority over him are worse than he is. This is particularly true when the person who finds himself in this quagmire of legal misconducts is innocent of the crime for which he was convicted.
There are almost as many stories of innocence as there are of guilt these days. Here is yet another. One of many, yes, but equally as worthy of exposure as any of the others that have been written about, and those who have not yet found their way to the light.
This story begins in Osage County, Oklahoma with a double homicide. An alleged king-pin drug dealer in Osage County at that time and his wife were brutally murdered in their home in March of 1983. This man had the reputation of being a vicious, hot headed, gun-toting, paraplegic. He reportedly had dealings with members of the Mexican drug dealers who were operating in the county at that time, and his murder was a gang-land style affair. According to the Medical Examiner and an investigator’s reports, the two victims were killed by multiple gunshot wounds having come from three different weapons.
In 1984, one year after the murder, Cary Dale Herrin was arrested and charged with the murder of the couple in Osage County. There was no evidence linking him to the crime. The time of death of the victims was never established. On the Medical Examiner’s report there is a question mark where the date of the death should be. The deaths could have occurred on either March 8th or 9th 1983. The State’s theory is that the murders occurred on the 8th because that is the only day where Mr. Herrin’s time couldn’t totally be accounted for. The State’s own witnesses accounted for his time the whole day, except for 45 minutes. This time is even accounted for if you go by the first statement given by Jody Laird, Cary’s girlfriend at the time and the state’s chief witness. She gave five different statements over a 12-year period. The first one she gave was on May 27, 1983. This is the one where she accounted for Mr. Herrin’s time. Each time she testified, or gave another statement, her story would change to better fit the state’s theory. According to witnesses she has since retracted a lot of what she said and admitted that she changed her story because she was threatened by Mr. Mitchell, the undersheriff. He reportedly told her that Cary had been charged with murder (which he had not been at that point in time) and that if she did not cooperate and say what he wanted her to say, and testify for the prosecution, not only would she be charged with accessory to murder and spend the rest of her life in prison, but she would loose her baby. She was 19 years old and pregnant with her first child. She did as she was told.
Mr. Herrin was held in the Osage County jail from September 1984 to May of 1985 without so much as a preliminary hearing. During this time numerous attempts were made by Osage County law enforcement officials to allow him to attempt an escape; cell doors were left unlocked, he was left unattended in a Deputy Sheriff’s car with the keys in the ignition, a loaded gun was reported to have been placed in his cell, albeit loaded with the wrong bullets. A spontaneous opportunity presented itself for him to accomplish an escape with two other inmates on May 28, 1985. Fearing for his life because of the strange events that kept occurring in the jail he fled. A large manhunt ensued over the next six days in the woods of northern Osage County. Numerous law enforcement agencies were brought in to assist in the search, including the National Guard. There was heavy media coverage of the manhunt. The local paper had front page coverage of the event for over a week. In one of the issues they printed in large letters that Cary Herrin vowed not to be taken alive. This was a false statement and made solely for the purpose of justifying shooting Cary if he was spotted in the woods, since he was considered armed and dangerous. The two inmates who escaped with Mr. Herrin were captured a few days after their escape, but Cary remained free until 1988 when the FBI arrested him in Reno, Nevada. He was brought back to Oklahoma and stood trial for murder in the first degree.
The first trial was held in 1989 and the verdict was overturned by the Court of Criminal Appeals and a new trial was ordered. Trial number 2 began in February of 1995. At both trials the state sought the death penalty. Cary was represented by two OIDS (Oklahoma Indigent Defense System) attorneys from the Capital Litigation Division - one male, one female, who were severely handicapped in their efforts to defend him by several different factors. They were extremely ill prepared to present a viable defense, they received random phone calls threatening their lives, their motel room was reportedly ransacked by deputies during the trial and paper work disappeared, witnesses were being threatened by law enforcement officials, their OIDS investigator was presenting himself to witnesses as something other than an investigator, and therefore subject to criminal charges himself, so he could not testify for the defense due to impeachability. Because of this the lead attorney made a deal with the sheriff not to use him if they wouldn’t pursue the matter. The ballistics report proved the gun that Mr. Herrin owned, and which the prosecution claimed was the murder weapon, indeed wasn’t the murder weapon, but that report was never introduced into the trial by Cary’s defense attorneys. When he asked why they were not presenting this most vital information into the trial he was told, “We don’t want to confuse the jury.” This alone could have proven that Cary Herrin did not commit those murders.
The under-sheriff in Osage County at that time was Billy Mitchell. Mr. Mitchell allegedly had a longstanding hatred of Cary Herrin for a number of reasons. According to one witness, “Mr. Mitchell had quite a reputation among residents of the county for not only being a drug and arms dealer (some of which came from the sheriff’s office evidence locker), he was also known for having sordid encounters with under aged girls – some of whom mysteriously disappeared. Mr. Mitchell has reportedly been under investigation more than once for murder during his time as undersheriff. Mr. Herrin was familiar with a lot of the drug and arms deals made by Mr. Mitchell, as well as other incriminating events that occurred at Mr. Mitchell’s hands. In other words, he knew too much.”
Our witness continues, “Shortly after the bodies of the victims in the Herrin case were discovered, Mr. Mitchell took over the investigation of the crime when it became clear to him that things weren’t going as he wanted them to go. During and after the trial it became evident that Mr. Mitchell had gone quite beyond the scope of a legal investigation of the murder to frame Mr. Herrin.”
Following the 1995 trial (which ended with the same verdict and sentence as the 1989 trial) several boxes of documents that had been used by the defense attorneys during the trial fell into Mr. Herrin’s hands. Upon examination of these documents, statements were found of witnesses who were never called to testify in Mr. Herrin’s behalf that would have definitely placed doubt in the minds of the jury as to his guilt. Evidence of numerous injustices was discovered that were perpetrated by the District Attorney and by the defense attorneys. A “love” letter was found that had been written by one of the Defense Attorneys to the other during the second day of the trial. It said, “It is touching to know that you have moments of struggle & occasional thoughts of self-doubt during trial preparation just like I do. When I’m watching you in trial as I sit at counsel table attentively listening to testimony or as I am preparing to examine a witness, I am actually watching you - mostly trying to decide if I like you more in jeans or a suit. I think I like the jeans best but I love watching your moves in court. You are incredibly sexy out of court & in court. Now you have some insight as to why I’m stressing out – I am trying to decide about some very weighty issues. Happy Valentine’s Day!” Wow, What a defense team – is this a sure recipe for instant guilt regarding their client?
Again, this was written by one of Mr. Herrin’s defense attorneys while sitting at counsel table. This was a capital murder case and while defense counsel should have been fighting for Mr. Herrin’s life, this was what was on her mind.
Sheriff’s deputies threatened character witnesses who had been subpoenaed to testify for Mr. Herrin in the sentencing phase of the trial. Mr. Herrin’s family members received threatening phone calls and were told that they would be killed if they tried to testify on his behalf. Witnesses and defense attorneys were tailgated by deputies in patrol cars until they left the county each day after trial. These are only a few of the incidences that allegedly occurred during the course of a trial that made a mockery of justice in this case.
Some 20 years later, Mr. Herrin is still incarcerated after having spent thousands of dollars on attorneys who were only interested in the money they could make, and not at all in proving that an innocent man was going to spend the rest of his life in prison. He will tell you that he committed several crimes during his younger years and confessed to those crimes in court. He has served time behind bars for those crimes. The only charges keeping him in prison now are two counts of murder – crimes he insists he did not commit – crimes the evidence shows he did not commit.
Editor’s
Note: Anyone with information on this case is urged to contact Kelly
Stone at
541-474-7885.
