1.  Where were you born and raised:
     I was born in Redding, California, which is in the far northern portion of the state.  I was raised in Cottonwood, which is a very small town about 20 miles south of Redding in the county of Shasta.

 2.  Will you share with us what it was like for you growing up?  (Did you have a pet, a favorite game, hiding place or favorite toy?  Were you raised by both parents, a single parent or a relative?)
            My life until the age of 6 or 7 years was normal if not better than most.  We lived in a nice home and had nice things, but that all changed when my mother and father divorced.  Before the divorce, I had a horse, which was given to me by my Aunt “Boots,” and a dog named “Sarge,” which was a trained police dog.  Sarge was a German Shepherd, which was also a gift from my Aunt Boots (one of my father’s sisters).  A man named Callahan shot Sarge when I was 7 years old.  He said Sarge was chasing his sheep, but that was a lie.  I was no more that 10 meters from Sarge when Callahan shot him.

             My life after my parents divorced was traumatic, to say the least.  My brother Rick was only two years old at the time.  My father moved away and within a couple of months sold the home we were living in, so my mother had to find us another place to live.  My father basically abandoned us.  For the next eight years we lived in a multitude of places in our hometown and during that time I mostly raised my younger brother, because my mother spent most of her time in the town’s taverns.  It’s difficult to speak about all of this because even though my mother wasn’t by any sense of the term a “good mother,” I still loved her.  She died on October 31^st, 2004, just 9 days after her 57^th birthday.  She died of lung cancer and the many complications of 4 decades of alcoholism.  Her alcoholism exacerbated after my wrongful conviction and death sentence.

             I have been on my own since the age of 15.  I moved to Texas in 1981 and worked for my father for a few months and learned the construction trade.  Working for and being around my father was worse than all the hell I endured after my parents divorced and believe me I endured unadulterated hell.  I was tormented physically and mentally for most of my childhood.  I say working for and being around my father was worse than the other abuses, because he was “my father.”  I respected him, but I learned that even though he was the hardest working man I have ever known, he is also the most peculiar and most vain man I have ever known.  I lived with him, but had to pay rent for about 3 months and then I had to start lying about my age so I could get an apartment and utilities.  When I was 16, I had to change my birth certificate and get identification that stated my age as 18.  When I think about this now, it’s amazing I was able to convince anyone that I was 18.  I say that because when I was 30, I was often mistaken for being 18 or 19 and now I am 40 and everyone thinks I am in my 20’s.

             I lived and worked in Midland, Texas for about a year and I received a phone call from my mother, who somehow ended up in Alaska.  She introduced me (by phone) to a man by the name of Jim Hodges, who owned a large construction company in Alaska that built homes and commercial buildings out of logs.  He offered me a job, but I wasn’t really interested in moving to Alaska and giving up the little bit of stability I had in my life since being on my own.  However, because my mother had told him how much I love fishing, he was able to entice me to change my mind.  At first after hearing how good the fishing and hunting was up there, I was still reluctant, but then he told me my starting pay would be 23.00 an hour and time and a half for everything over 40 hours per week.  If that wasn’t enough, he further informed me that I could work 16 or 18 hours per day, because in the summer time it stays daylight 24 hours a day.  Then he told me all my expenses, housing, clothing, vehicles and airfare would be paid.  Needless to say, a couple of weeks later I was on my way to Alaska!  I worked in a small town on the Kenai Peninsula, called Soldotna.  It is a beautiful little town on the Kenai River.  I spent that summer building a restaurant out of logs.  After the job was completed and winter came, I moved to Anchorage, rented an apartment and eventually met a Hawaiian girl and moved to the Kailua Kona, which is a little town on the big island of Hawaii.  The girl’s name was Kahealani Christiani Bonoki and she was descendant of Hawaiian royalty.  Obviously I moved from one extreme to the opposite, from nearly Arctic conditions to tropical.  I stayed in Hawaii for a number of months and then went back to California and eventually I ended up back in Texas.

 3.  Do you have a favorite childhood memory?  If so, what is it?             My favorite childhood memory would have to be the normalcy of our weekends at Lake Shasta when my parents were still together.  I can recall them like they were yesterday.  My father always worked out of town, but on weekends he would come home and he’d always take us out on his boat on beautiful Lake Shasta.  More than anything, the “normalcy” of it all is what I really appreciate when I reflect on it.

 4.  Did you like school?  If so, share with us your favorite memory from your school years.
             I really liked the first few years of school, but after that it was embarrassing, because my teachers and fellow students knew about my family problems.

 5.  What person or event impacted you most as a child?
             The 1978 rape and murder of my childhood girlfriend, Annette Selix, had the most impact on my life.  Annette was my best friend and she never judged me like so many others.  She never made fun of my family circumstances or me.  She even took food from her home to feed my brother and I when we didn’t have food.  Not a day goes by that I don’t think about her and wonder what she would be like now.  I know the world would be a better place with her in it.  She was brutally raped and murdered by a mutual family friend named Darrell Rich, who was convicted of her murder and three others and was sentenced to death.  He was executed in California on March 15^th, 2000.  That’s not the only time murder has touched the life of my family.  In 1990, my aunt (my father’s twin sister), Donna Rae Toney Branson, was also raped and murdered.  The man that murdered her is on California Death Row.

 6.  What hobbies or activities did you participate in while growing up, e.g. scouting, sports, etc?
             My hobby has always been fishing.  I love trout, salmon and steelhead fishing and also salt-water fishing.  As a child I would rarely be seen without a fishing pole.  I fished in every stream, river, creek, lake and pond in the area.  As an adult my brother and I would often fish in bass tournaments.  One of my fondest memories of my mother was when I was about 8 years old and my brother was just 3.  She kept me out of school and took us to this place called Reading Island in my hometown.  We had a lot of fun catching a lot of fish that day, but more than anything it was an unusual happy time.  I can still see my little brother with a fishing line tied to a stick catching fish.  Every time he’d catch one, his mouth would be hanging open and his eyes would be as big as silver dollars.

 7.  What was your first job?  Please describe your duties/responsibilities and whether or not you liked the job.
             My first paid job was when I was about 11 or 12 years old.  I worked driving tractors plowing fields for the planting of alfalfa and I worked feeding and otherwise tending to cattle.  Where I grew up the area is made up mostly of ranches, so there was always some kind of work for me to do, but when I was 13 I had a good summer job working on a commercial salmon trawler boat.  The boat belonged to a family friend.  We fished out of the small northern California town of Crescent City.  My job was steering the boat on a compass heading while the owner tended to the lines.  I was paid ten percent of the total catch.  On most days I made about 75.00, which was very good money for a boy of 13.

 8.  As a child of teenage years, what did you want to do when you grew up?  Why?
             When I was working on the ranches all I could ever imagine being was a cowboy or a rancher, but then when I worked on the fishing boat I wanted to be a commercial fisherman.  I wanted to be a cowboy or a rancher, because I would rather be outdoors working with livestock, but with fishing I could be outdoors on a boat doing what I like most…fishing!  Fishing wasn’t just something I enjoyed.  It was a way to get food.  As long as my brother and I had a fishing pole, we could catch something to eat.  I know that seems strange in 2006, but when, where and in the circumstances we grew up under, that’s the way it was.  Fishing was safety and food.  It was safety because as long as we were away from home, we were safe.

 9.  Do you have a favorite book or movie?  Please elaborate.
             This is a good question.  I have many favorite books, but the one that stands out most in my mind is one that I read as a child called, “Where the Red Fern Grows.”  It’s about a boy and his hunting dogs.  My second childhood favorite would be Ernest Hemingway’s, “The Old Man and the Sea.”  My favorite nonfiction would be David Hume’s, “Of Personal Identity,” which is an excerpt of a treatise on human nature.  I also like Alexis de Tocqueville’s, “Democracy in America,” which I read in both the original French and then English.  My French is very poor, but I know much is lost in translation.  My favorite modern fiction books are Dan Brown’s, “Angels and Demons” and “The Da Vinci Code.”

             My favorite films would be “A River Runs Through It,” “The Bridges of Madison County,” and “Tombstone” with Jeff Bridges as Wyatt Earp and Val Kilmer as Doc Holiday.

 10.  Where was the most beautiful or special place that you can remember having visited?  Please describe it.
             This is another good question considering the fact that I have visited a lot of incredibly beautiful and exotic places.  However, I’d have to say the most beautiful and special places have all been near my home area in the mountains of northern California.  I love the mountains, streams and giant redwood trees.  Many people don’t realize this, but with the exception of Alaska, the tallest mountains in this country are in northern California.  My favorite places would have to be the Jedidiah Smith National Forest or the Smith River, which runs through the giant redwood trees.  The Smith River is exceptional for steelhead fishing.  My second favorite place would be “Broke Off Meadows,” which is a beautiful meadow with bubbling brooks full of trout near the Lassen Volcano.

             In both of these places the fishing is great, the sights are nothing short of amazing and you can see all kinds of wildlife from deer, elk, bears and all kinds of small animals.

 11.  What is the funniest thing that ever happened to you?
             Now this is a difficult question.  I can’t remember anything really funny ever happening to me.

 12.  What job or occupation did you have prior to your incarceration?  Were you employed at the time of your arrest?             My occupation was construction.  I was a self-employed construction business owner.  I did both commercial and residential new construction and remodeling.  At one time I had a very lucrative business.  Yes, I was employed at the time of my arrest.

 13.  Were you involved with drugs or alcohol prior to your incarceration?  If so, please share the effects this had on your life.
             In 1995 my brother, who was living in Seattle, Washington at the time, called me and asked me for a job.  I agreed and my brother and his girlfriend came to Texas.  At the time, my brother was struggling with addiction to methamphetamines.  He did good for the first couple of months, but then he started using again.  After he started using, I tried it because I couldn’t really understand why anyone would need drugs or how it could possibly have such a grasp on a person’s life.  I’m not blaming anyone, but it didn’t take long after I was introduced to drugs to get addicted.  I preferred cocaine and in a matter of less than a year I went through many tens of thousands of dollars worth of cocaine.  It had a profound effect on every aspect of my life.  People who didn’t know me couldn’t tell I was using drugs, but those who knew me thought I was going to eventually kill myself by overdosing.  Everything I earned went to pay for cocaine and then I started selling my tools, vehicles, jewelry and anything else I had of value.

 As for alcohol, I liked to drink beer, but I was a social drinker.  I don’t believe I had a problem with alcohol even though I did get a ticket for driving while under the influence of alcohol.  I had just left a nightclub where I had about three beers.  I wasn’t drunk, but I smelled of alcohol, so I was arrested.

 14.  What do you miss most about the outside world and why?
             I miss my brother and my children.  I miss fishing with my brother and being outdoors.  I miss being able to touch, hold and talk to my children.  I’m sorry.  I can’t elaborate on this subject right now, because I become very emotional.

 15.  What is the one thing you regret most?
             I regret helping Charles Ferris get out of jail.  Had I not helped that man, I wouldn’t have been wrongfully accused and convicted of a crime I am completely innocent of and I wouldn’t have been here when my grandparents and mother died.

 16.  Do you have any strong spiritual or religious beliefs?  If so, do they influence how you view the future?
             I consider myself to be more spiritual than religious even though I am a Catholic Christian.  And yes, my beliefs do affect the way I view the future.  I know God knows the truth and He knows I am unequivocally innocent of the crime I have been convicted of and sentenced to death for.  I believe the wrongful conviction and death sentence may very well have saved my life.  (Please see my testimonial)

 17.  How important is it for you to have contact with your family, friends and/or the outside world?  Please elaborate.
             It is absolutely critical that I have contact with my remaining family, especially my children and brother as well as my friends.  If it wasn’t for them, I couldn’t endure another day of this nightmare.  However, I know my situation hurts them much more than it hurts me.  In fact what hurts me the most is seeing the pain and frustration they feel about my situation.  My execution won’t hurt me, but it may very well kill them.  Imagine knowing someone you love, a brother, a parent or even a friend is sentenced to death for a crime you know he/she is innocent of?  It breaks my heart to think about how much they hurt for me.  It has hurt my brother so bad that he needs to see a counselor.  Just yesterday I received two beautiful letters from my youngest daughter who will be 14 years old next month (February 2006).  She was wishing me a happy 40^th birthday, but she said, “I didn’t get anything I wanted for Christmas because all I wanted was for you to be proven innocent and home.”  Now her birthday is coming and I know what she wants more than anything, but I don’t know how to give it to her.  So, my answer is yes, I need my family and friends, but I believe they need me even more.  I’m sorry I can’t say more about this right now, because I can’t stop the tears.  My heart aches for them.

 18.  Do you remember your first thoughts when hearing the jury’s verdict of death as your sentence?  Will you share this experience with us, e.g. your thoughts, feelings, and reactions?
             I remember as if it was yesterday, but it wasn’t the verdict of death that hurt me.  It was the verdict of guilty that killed me.  I cried like a baby when the jury came to the conclusion that I was guilty, but I felt the death verdict was somewhat of a relief.  To this day I say, “I am against the death penalty for everyone other than myself.  If I can’t be exonerated and freed from this nightmare that has become my life, then I want to be executed so I can go before the judge that knows the truth.”  My situation is much different from any case you can imagine.  I study the law daily and read every death penalty opinion that is published and I have yet to find a case as bizarre as my own.  In 1999, I was wrongfully convicted of a bombing that happened in November of 1985.  I didn’t even hear about this crime until 1997 when another man told me about it.  I have never been to the scene of the crime and I am in no way whatsoever connected to the crime or the victims.  There is no evidence, not a scintilla that implicates me in this horrible crime.  I was convicted solely because of the inaccurate testimony of my ex-wife and probably because the jury seen me as an undesirable.  Now 10 of those same jurors believe they made a serious mistake, but the courts refuse to listen.  The State of Texas even admits there is no evidence, but they say “kill him anyway.”  So in regard to your questions, I will say this: “If they were to commute my sentence to life today, it would probably kill me because I know if they are to do that, my innocence is not likely to be proven because without a death sentence most people won’t care.”  I’m sorry, if my answer isn’t one you want to hear, but it’s the truth.

 19.  What is a typical day like for you on Death Row?
             One day is just like the previous.  I spend 23 hours in my cell alone with nothing but a radio, and whatever reading material I manage to get.  Breakfast, which is usually pancakes, is at about 3:30am.  Lunch is at about 10:00am and dinner is at about 3:30pm.  All the food is terrible with the exception of Thanksgiving and Christmas.  The highlight of my day is if or when I get a visit, but I don’t get very many.  It’s difficult for my son to visit me, because he works and goes to school full time up in Fort Worth, which is about 3 hours away.  My daughter Jessica also goes to school, which makes it difficult for her mother to bring her down to see me very often.  On top of that, there is the expense of traveling.  My brother lives in northern California, but he may be moving to Texas this year, so then I will be able to see him.  I haven’t seen him since 1996, but we write each other often.  Visits are what I look forward to most and mail call is second.  Other than that, my days are incredibly boring and monotonous.  I study law daily and do what I can to research the crime I have been wrongfully convicted of.  I also, do a lot of writing.  I write for a weekly Paris, France magazine, which has been a big help to me.  If it weren’t for the magazine and its owner, I would probably have been murdered by now.  I have recently begun writing for an Italian Internet magazine dedicated to human rights related issues.  I also do a lot of legal writing for other inmates and writing to garner support for other prisoners.  I can stay pretty busy writing, but I get bored easily writing about the same subjects.  To put it as my son or daughter Jessica would put it, “My life basically sucks right now.”  Because I’ve mentioned my 19-year-old son, Jeremy, and Jessica, I should mention that I have two other daughters.  Kimberlyn, who lives with her mother in Wisconsin, is 18.  I haven’t seen her or heard from her since my trial in 1999.  I’m literally heartbroken over the situation with her and her mother.  It was her mother’s inaccurate testimony that caused me to be wrongfully convicted.  I have another daughter, which I have never met.  Her name is Keisha and she lives in Pennsylvania with her mother.  I want to be part of their lives, but I don’t have much to give them right now.

 20.  Do you feel that capital punishment serves as a deterrent?  Yes/No.  Please elaborate on your answer.
             Absolutely no!!  Capital punishment doesn’t even serve a purpose.  As I stated before, I am against capital punishment for everyone other than myself.  If I can’t be exonerated and freed, then I welcome death so I can go before the only true judge that knows that I am innocent and who knows my heart.  I am against capital punishment for two reasons.  #1.  I know first hand just how fallible our so-called justice system is.  If I could be convicted of a crime I didn’t even hear about until more than a decade after it happened, despite the fact that I have never been to the crime scene and am in no way whatsoever connected to the crime or the victims, then anyone could be wrongfully convicted and sentenced to death.  #2.  I’m against capital punishment because of my religious beliefs.  We don’t have the right to decide which human beings have the right to live and who doesn’t.  For God’s sake, Jesus was executed!  It was wrong then and it’s wrong now.  Human beings are slow to learn.  I’ve been around human beings who have committed horrible murders and I have noticed that even in the worst of the worst you can see the humanity within the murderer.  When I see that humanity, I can’t see the murderer.  I don’t know if that makes sense to you, but it’s true.  The media is quick to label someone a “killer or a murderer” and while the labels may be correct in most instances they blur our view of the human beings that became murderers.  There is nothing that can justify murder and execution is nothing less than murder.  If anything, it is worse because they have years in most cases to contemplate and fight to justify the taking of human life in the so-called name of justice.  The answer to your question is, No.  I’ve never known anyone on Death Row who contemplated the consequences of their actions before the act.  I could go on forever on this subject.

 21.  If you could change one thing in the world today, what would it be and why?
             This is a very big hypothetical question.  It’s very difficult for me to answer, because there are so many things wrong in the world.  It’s difficult to imagine what one thing would have a positive affect on the most people.  It’s difficult to put oneself in the position of God, but I’d have to say I would change all human beings tendency towards violence.  If no human beings could be violent towards another, then there wouldn’t be wars.  Therefore there wouldn’t be so much hunger in the world.  Better yet, I would change the hearts of human beings, so that they can only have compassion for all fellow human beings and feel empathy for all.  I believe this would prevent most of the world’s problems, because we’d treat all others, as we want to be treated.  This is another question that I could go on and on in answering.  I’m not even sure that changing the hearts of people is within the scope of this incredibly hypothetical question.

 22.  If you could go back in time.  Where and to what date would you travel and why?
             I would go back to 1972, because everyone I have loved would still be alive and maybe I could change the events that caused my life to be the hell it became after 1972.  I know that’s a simple answer and probably not what you’re looking for, but that’s where I’d go.

 23.  What has been the most important and life-altering event you have experienced?
             I would have to say, the most life-altering event I have experienced was the day I forgave the man who murdered my childhood friend.  I had carried the burden of hate and desire for vengeance for 23 years and when I forgave him all of that was gone. 
 (Please see my testimonial)

 24.  What is the most important thing that you want visitors to know about you?
         I know most of the visitors believe it, but I am innocent of the terrible crime I have been convicted and sentenced to death for.  Don’t take me wrong, because I have been a criminal and have a bad record for thefts, credit card abuse, burglary and that sort of thing; however, I’ve never ever contemplated or much less committed murder.  I didn’t even contemplate the murder of the man who killed my girlfriend.  In all honesty, I wanted to make him wish he was dead, but I was wrong.  That’s a natural reaction to losing someone you love to murder, but I now know forgiveness is the only answer.  I’m not saying we have to reconcile, because we don’t but we must forgive because our failure to forgive only hurts us.  (Please see my writing: “Forgiveness or Reconciliation.)” I’ve got off track with this answer, but the most painful thing for me right now is being wrongfully called a murderer.  I have been on both sides of the debate and I know the pain of both sides.  I do everything I can to respect the opinion of the people on both sides of the capital punishment debate, but my fight is one against a miscarriage of justice.  I wish more people would look at my case/trial without looking at me with a prejudiced eye.  If they will do that, they will see that something is terribly wrong.  I am innocent.  I know, I know.  That’s what they all say.  All I can say is; I assure you if I were guilty I’d accept responsibility for my actions and I seriously doubt the State of Texas would get the pleasure of killing me.  The remorse alone would cause me to take my own life.  There is no greater punishment than true remorse.

 25.  If you have anything else that you would like to include as part of this interview, please share it with us now.
             What I’d like most is for my writings about my interactions with the loved ones of murder victims and about forgiveness and reconciliation, as well as my testimonial, be included in this interview.  I know some of my writings are controversial, but I believe if all of us would put ourselves in the shoes of the others for just a moment, we could begin a productive dialogue.  As I said before, I know what it’s like to be on both sides of the capital punishment debate.  I know that the only way to progress is to understand why each other has the feelings or opinions they have.  We shouldn’t have to see people that feel differently or hold different opinions as adversaries.