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A Call for Clemency
by Carrington Brown
My life would have been a lot simpler had I not met Dustin Turner almost five years ago. Dustin has been in prison for 18 years for a crime he did not commit -- a crime to which his SEAL swim partner has admitted. Unless Governor Bob McDonnell accepts a recently filed clemency petition, the Commonwealth will hold Dustin in prison for 82 years ...with no parole.
As a mother of five sons, I have never been involved in politics or the judicial system. But I was so confused and perturbed by the injustice I saw that I could not sleep at night. This was not how our justice system was supposed to work.
The more I studied the case, the more I became convinced that Dustin deserved his freedom. Dustin, who comes from a Midwestern family with strong values, was only a few weeks away from his dream of graduating as one of the youngest U.S. Navy SEALS in the country. On the night of June 19th, 18 years ago, when he and college student Jennifer Evans were sitting in a car in the lit parking lot of a bar, his SEAL swim buddy, a very drunk Billy Joe Brown, showed up at the car needing a ride home. Jennifer let him into the car in the seat behind her. After she smacked his hand away from her hair, he killed her in a drunken rage.
The media circus that surrounded the case in Virginia Beach clouded the truth. The citizens of Virginia need to learn the facts of this case.
I feel so strongly that our justice system in Virginia has failed that I have gathered a group of citizens -- lawyers, business people, a rehab consultant, a grandmother, a PR person, and many others -- to gain clemency for Dustin from Gov. McDonnell. All legal avenues have been exhausted, so clemency is his only hope to spend the second half of his life free.
Clemency was created for cases where the law failed. Dustin and his swim buddy were tried separately and convicted with different versions of the same crime from the prosecutor. In Virginia, if someone is killed during the course of a crime, all participants can be charged with murder. According to the Commonwealth, Dustin and Brown abducted Jennifer with an intent to defile, so Dustin was as guilty of murder as the man who actually killed her. But there was no abduction. The prosecutor and appellate court judges invented the theory contrary to all evidence. As as a SEAL who was indoctrinated to protect his swim buddy at all costs and as an impulsive teenage male, a panicked Dustin helped hide Jennifer's body -- a misdemeanor calling for 12 months in prison, not 18 years. He later led police to the body and told them the truth after his superiors told him he could protect his swim buddy no longer.
Dustin never meant for harm to come to Jennifer. The pair had left a bar with many witnesses and was waiting in his car for her friends to pick her up when the bar closed. Why would a highly trained Navy SEAL give out his phone number, show his driver's license and then abduct a woman in front of hundreds of bar patrons, many of whom knew him, in a lit parking lot with police support? Why would a highly trained SEAL with a bright future plan/premeditate a crime like this?
In 2002 Brown confessed to Evans' murder and said that Dustin played no part in it. In 2008, a district court judge determined that Brown was credible and that Turner's conviction should be vacated. In 2009 that finding was upheld by a divided three-judge panel of the Virginia State Court of Appeals. The Attorney General's office petitioned the full Court of Appeals to review the case, which it did, upholding the conviction. In 2011 the Supreme Court of Virginia affirmed the Court of Appeals.
Why did the Supreme Court of Virginia and the Virginia Court of Appeals accept the ridiculous and unbelievable abduction story? Are the courts afraid to admit a mistake? Are they protecting the former prosecutor of the case, who sits on the appeals court with seven other former prosecutors who reversed the writ of innocence?
Only one theory of the murder can be right, so which one will the Governor believe? I want him to believe the theory that there was no abduction. It's the only one that makes sense.
This could have been one of my sons or one of any of your sons. Why is the Commonwealth trying to cloud and confuse the facts of the case? We as citizens deserve answers. Why are we as taxpayers, paying to keep a innocent man in prison?
I am asking the citizens of Virginia to go to our web site www.freedusty.org, learn about the case and then watch the documentary film clip above. (The full film will be shown at Richmond's Criterion theater on June 13th.)
Dustin, a model prisoner who has continued to educate himself , could be a productive member of society intent on making the world a better place, atoning for failing to go the police immediately after the crime. Join our group to educate our governor so he can grant Dusty clemency so he can return to the family, friends and opportunities that await him in Indiana. It is the right and moral thing for our state to do.
Carrington Brown is a painter, landscape designer, wife and mother who lives in Goochland County.
