My attorneys told me we didn’t need to call any witnesses. Those intelligent white jury members understand what happened.
I’m no killer, and I was and never will be a rapist. I never physically hurt anyone who was innocent in my life. When I refused a plea deal to help them convict the ones they felt were responsible, I became the Kunta – that would never be their Toby. So they did what they needed to ‘teach me a lesson’.
A few days before my trial began, I sat in the courtroom before the Assistant D.A., Lyn McClellan, and my state-appointed trial attorney, Wayne Hill. Lyn McClellan was good at sending people to death row and was friends with my attorney – I’ve heard rumor McClellan was the godfather of my attorney’s son. I guess if it’s true, that makes them practically family. It wouldn’t surprise me – that’s Harris County, Texas. On that day McClellan turned to me and said, “If it was up to me, I wouldn’t prosecute this case. It’s clear what happened here. But it’s not up to me. My boss wants this case to go through. I may even lose.” McClellan’s boss was the legendary Johnny Holmes.
I was arrogantly naïve, thinking the truth would set me free – justice.
There were subliminal messages being sent before the trial even started. Referring to the famous O.J. Simpson case, the judge assured jurors that was, “not going to happen here. This is the real world. It is not California.” He compared the job of a juror to, “being a pallbearer at a funeral.” “And when a child acts out we must discipline that child. We may not like it, but we have to do it.” My trial hadn’t even started, and he was telling the jury I was already guilty. There was no need to over think it.
The finality came during Dodson’s testimony though. The moment he told the jury I ‘confessed to him’ that I sexually assaulted Mary – women on the jury began to cry and look at me with vengeance. I had to turn away from one woman’s glare after she took off her glasses and wiped her eyes. My character was castrated for an act that never happened.
Before the trial when they questioned me, trying to get me to take a deal – they told me they had DNA. So, why didn’t they use it? If they had it, they didn’t use it because it wasn’t mine. They said I sexually assaulted her – but there was no DNA presented at my trial. Why?
I had two defense lawyers. One was hired a month before the trial began and knew nothing about the strategy or defense in my case. The people representing me had a letter written by the ‘key’ witness – Dodson – and his initial interrogation video. They had in their possession evidence to dispute the key witness’s testimony, but they never presented it. They allegedly ‘misplaced’ that evidence during my trial. They miraculously found it after I was found guilty. Dodson said I confessed to him – the letter he wrote said he didn’t know shit. The jury never saw it.
I didn’t kill Mary. They had someone testify about me finding my sunglasses after Mary disappeared. They presented the glasses testimony like a smoking gun. If the glasses were near the body – I had to be the killer. What the jury never heard was that the glasses were found nearly five miles away from the body. I’d dropped them in the grass two days before I ever met Mary and nowhere near where she was found. My attorneys didn’t tell the jury that either. Nor were they told how many miles I would have had to have driven that night in a car with a flat tire in order to do what they said I did. They just listened to the prosecution paint their picture.
So, why did I testify? I was damned if I did and damned if I didn’t, but after having the media portray me as a drug dealing rapist and murderer, just short of a serial killer, I was tormented so much that I knew if I ever had the chance to set things straight, I would. If I was going out on lies– I wanted the record to show my mother I didn’t lie.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR. Charles “Chucky” Mamou is living on Death Row in Texas. He is out of appeals and has always maintained his innocence.
He can be contacted at:
Charles Mamou #999333
Polunsky Unit 12-CD-53
3872 South FM 350
Livingston, TX 77351
