AMIR FATIR RESPONDS TO
NEWS-JOURNAL SLANDER
In an article published on June 7, 2008 in the Wilmington, DE
News-Journal, writer Esteban Parra wrote about “the gun used by Sterling X. Hobbs, who now goes by the name Amir Fatir and is serving life in
prison.”
The piece focused on State informant Robert Golson, who conned
his way to a commutation and got the State of Delaware to illegally revoke Amir’s pardon by telling the authorities that Amir was the
gunman.
Until Golson got free, Amir refused to say anything about Golson’s role in the murder.
Here is Amir’s letter to Esteban Parra.
Please express your opinion about this defamation of character
by emailing the News-Journal at jsweeney@delawareonline.com
Esteban Parra
News-Journal
950 W. Basin Road
New Castle, DE 19720
Re: “Second Chance” article of June 7, 2008
Dear Mr. Parra
Since the series of articles meticulously researched and written by you
and Lee Williams on the healthcare system in the prison, I’ve been an admirer of your work. Since the tragic death of a reporter in Arizona
in 19761, investigative reporting has become a lost or at least a dying
art. Most reporters seem all too content to dish out various press releases from officials and even Pentagon spin doctors and pass that off
as news.
Investigative reporters are as necessary to a true democracy as are the
three branches of government and without a free and independent press the three governmental branches are incapable of saving themselves from
corruption.
Seeing you in the tradition of effective investigative reporters
like Seymour Hersh, Bob Woodward and Jack Anderson, I was surprised to see your Saturday article repeat things pronounced by Robert Golson
about me as if they were immutable and unquestionable laws of nature.
As a true professional reporter, I would have expected you to verify
facts and even to challenge presumptions and to match anyone’s statements with these facts.
For the record, the trial could never establish who shot Philip
Whiteman. Check out the Hooks v. State case on direct appeal to verify that.2
Also, look at the closing summation given by Chief Deputy Attorney General Charles Brandt in the trial transcripts. I am
paraphrasing and using a memory of an event of over 30 years, but Brandt said something like “We don’t know who actually shot Philip
Whiteman. It might have been Hobbs. It might have been Payne. It might have been Golson. We don’t know. But it doesn’t matter
because under Delaware law and accomplice liability, they are all equally guilty.”
What, then, occurred to give such certainty now that I am the person who
shot Philip Whiteman? The fact that I am convicted as an accomplice is not my opinion, it’s a fact. It is also a fact that Golson stated,
under oath, that Gregory Payne was the shooter, not me. So was Golson lying then or is he lying now? A fair and balanced piece of reporting
is required to ask such a question.
The raw data of the crime is reflected in the original police reports
and interviews. When Golson was arrested and interviewed by the Chester Police Department, he stated that Gregory Payne was the shooter.
Gregory Payne originally stated that Golson was the shooter. I did not even become a possible shooter until the other defendants consulted and
– under a strategy conceived by Wilbur Johnson Shabazz – put the gun in my hand because I was on the run and supposedly believed to have fled
the country. So my dear “friends” could, in good conscience, put the focus on me and thus avoid the death penalty.3
It was only when we got to trial that I got the documents and learned of
the strategy. To placate me and stop me from “spilling the beans” they all let me decide how the peremptory challenges would be used because,
when I learned what they’d done, I was close to telling all I knew right there in open court. Judge Balick once remarked that he noticed that
for some reason I had almost full control over how each defendant’s peremptory challenges were used. But he didn’t know why the other
defendants had let me have that “power.” It was to keep me from blowing the lid off their entire strategy.
The only eyewitness, Brian Scanlan, was unwavering in his conviction
that the shooter was Robert Golson… that is until the day of his testimony Detective Corrigan forced him to change his identification
from Golson to me. Ask Scanlan if that is true…he may decide to speak truthfully and may even resent the arm-twisting the State did on him to
change his identification. 4
The question that arises is this: If Golson never entered the store, if
he was outside as the “lookout man,” then how was he able to determine who shot Phillip Whiteman? Is he possessed of Kryptonian X-ray vision?
Does his supersight permit him to see around objects and corners?
While Bobby is not very advanced in formal education, he is cunning and
shrewd beyond the norm. He also has an engaging personality and a lively sense of humor that makes you want to believe him and makes you
like him and which helps him to smoothly slide into the role of victim. Hell, I still like the guy and he has stabbed me in the back so many
times I feel like a harpooned whale.
I got a recommendation for a sentence commutation from the Board of
Pardons in 1991. Prior to going up for my pardon hearing Golson pleaded with me to say it was Payne and not him who’d fired the weapon. Golson
had been represented by William Killen who’d never gotten a single person’s life sentence commuted. After the hearing was over, and the
board had voted 4 to 0 in my favor. Killen slipped Dale Wolf a note and Lt. Gov. Wolf called me back as I was in a daze and stumbling away from
the podium. Mr. Wolf asked, “Tell me this…where was Robert Golson during the crime.”
Here was my moment of truth. Here was the time for me to really choose
sides. Not the side of black versus white. That wasn’t my issue and Golson is just playing to people’s prejudices when he tries to paint the
crime in racial terms. No, it was time for me to go 100% with that had become a kind of mantra or affirmation for me at the time: “The truth
will set you free.”
But I blew it! Instead of telling the truth, I made one last effort to
stay “true to the game” and I said, “No, Golson was outside with me. He never entered the store.”
I could actually feel the high spirit depart the premises. At that
moment I knew that something would go wrong, that something would interfere with my commutation. I didn’t know what would go wrong, but
now that I’d lied to protect someone, whatever power for good I’d generated with my mantra would evaporate.
The truth is that Bobby definitely did go inside the store. So did
Gregory. And that is why they kept pointing fingers at each other. When I told the board Golson stayed outside with me, I’d created the
ridiculous situation of there being two lookout men. That’s a lot of
looking out!
Killen had gambled that my “street cred” would override my desire to be
forthright with the board and his gamble paid off. Maybe I wasn’t ready for the streets because, when it counted, I cared more about how my
peers would view me than how the board might react if they learned I’d lied to them in the end.
I didn’t know that Golson and Killen had previously told the board that
I’d been the shooter. Golson swore to me then and even after he went to the board again that he told them it was Payne who was the shooter. “I
gave the gun to the dead man,” he declared over and over.5 So, in
saying that Golson was outside, I pretty much put myself inside the
store since few people would think that there were two lookout men.
Ultimately, Bobby played his Dad – an honorable man, a good man, who is
a world class saxophonist – to persuade his Dad to essentially bribe Judge Balick into supporting Bobby’s release. And Judge Balick not only
supported that release, he put serious pressure upon the Pardon Board members and others to effectuate Bobby’s release.
6
Benny Golson didn’t bribe Judge Balick with money. He bribed him with
music. Judge Balick is a serious jazz aficionado. Benny Golson got Balick rare jazz recordings, personal closeness and introductions to
jazz legends such as Miles Davis and, reportedly, even got Judge Balick to see Miles do his last Monteray Jazz Festival when Miles blew his
classic recordings.
Balick even visited the prison along with Benny Golson as Golson played
for the inmates and staff in the prison gym.
To serious jazz lovers, certain jazz musicians – like Miles, Theolonius
Monk, Coltrane and Ornette Colman – are virtual gods! And Benny Golson gave Balick access to giants like those… at least those who were living. Benny Golson became Balick’s friend and confidante. In a sense Balick
was powerless to resist when Golson asked him to help get his son released.
But even with Balick’s strong support – bringing in even the former
prosecutors into the cause – Bobby’s pardon request had to be able to stand by virtue of some type of positive behaviour on Bobby’s part.
Bobby handled that part of it. Nearly all – if not all – of the
documents he provided the pardon board of his program participation are forgeries! Now that is something an investigative reporter can
investigate.
His G.E.D. is a forgery. His teacher even told me as much. See if
there is a record in the state of Golson having achieved a G.E.D. And if he did, ask him some very simple math questions such as fractions,
decimals and percents. Ask him some rudimentary science questions. If he went through the various group therapy programs he provided
“documentation” for, ask him to explain the basic fundamentals of those groups and ask the prison to provide documentation that he completed
them.
This brings everything full circle. I have the Hobson’s Choice of
telling the truth and thereby disqualifying myself from a commutation or converting to the party line and thereby availing myself of the system’s
tender mercies. Ruth Ann Minner once told me that if I want to get a commutation I have to agree with the State and say I was the shooter.
The Board will only give consideration to people who “accept responsibility,” i.e., who say they did everything anyone says they
might have done. So if I ever hope to be free I have to convince myself to live in the World According to Bobby Golson.
1 I did time with the guy who planted the bomb when I transferred to Arizona Prison during 1996 – 2004… he was supposed to give me the
details of his crime before he left prison so I could write about it, but never did.
2 There are two Hooks cases, one is about severance at trial and the
other is about our direct appeal.
3 I got arrested on December 5, 1975, six months after the crime, and
got rushed into trial around January 11, 1976. Wilbur Johnson fed the strategy to his lawyer, who – owing to the “unholy alliance” between
prosecutors and defense attorneys Beau Biden touched upon – gleefully ran to the prosecution with his novel theory of the crime. That theory
then became the theory and suddenly the question wasn’t whether Golson or Payne had shot the poor man, it was now the “inside scoop” that it
was that fellow who was on the run, Hobbs. Johnson got a letter to Payne via the court and transportation guards and Gregory got on board
and now they all sang in harmony… like the Temptations.
4 As we were coming out of the courtroom for lunch, shackled, Corrigan
had Scanlan with him and nearly shouted “No, not Golson. It’s Hobbs! Hobbs! That’s the shooter.” Later that day Scanlan obeyed Corrigan and
pointed me out as the shooter after having repeatedly identified Golson before.
5 Gregory Payne was shot to death during the 1980’s and “the dead man”
was Bobby’s way of referring to Gregory. “Give the gun to the dead man” became the agreed upon approach for all of the co-defendants.
Not wanting to be out of step with what, I’d been told, was the universally accepted theory, I went along with it to…and didn’t require
a whole lot of convincing for, in my mind, there was at least a 50% chance that Gregory was the shooter.
6 See Balick’s angry letter to the pardon board after Bobby was denied
the first time.