Willis enjoying new freedoms
Ex-death row inmate says he will never forget the lessons of prison
By DALE LEZON
Copyright 2004 Houston Chronicle

For years, Ernest Willis wasn't allowed to open a door for himself or walk to a refrigerator. He was fed breakfast every day at 3 a.m., lunch at 9 a.m. and dinner between 3

When he and fellow death-row inmates were moved from the Ellis Unit in Huntsville to a new supermax prison near Livingston, he spent 23 hours a day behind a steel door and was allowed one hour alone in a recreation yard. Once, he came within two days of execution.

"It was like living in hell, really," Willis, 59, said Thursday, a day after his release for a crime that he didn't commit.

During a news conference in downtown Houston, Willis held hands with his wife, talked about eating barbecue and vowed to be gone as soon as possible and never set foot in Texas again. He had been on death row more than 17 years.

"It's great to be free," he said.

Willis is the state's eighth condemned inmate freed since capital punishment resumed in 1974, according to the Death Penalty Information Center.

An oil-field worker, Willis was sentenced to death for setting a 1986 fire that killed Elizabeth Grace Belue, 24, and Gail Joe Allison, 25, in Iraan, about 230 miles west of San Antonio. With the help of New York attorneys working for no fee, he appealed, and in August, U.S. District Judge Royal Furgeson found that scientific evidence of arson was faulty and ordered the state to either retry Willis or set him free.

The Texas attorney general's office declined to appeal Furgeson's decision to the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, and Pecos County District Attorney Ori White said Tuesday that he didn't think Willis was involved, even if a crime was committed. He asked to have the capital murder charge dismissed, and Willis walked free Wednesday into the arms of the woman he met six years ago and married by proxy.

"It's the first time we even touched," Verilyn Willis said Thursday. "It's been good."

Willis said he wants to get on with his life, but prison taught him lessons he'll never forget.

Arriving on death row at 41, Willis was angry and scared. He believed Texas prisons were violent, dangerous places where he'd have to fight with inmates every day just to remain alive. On Thursday, he told a much different story.

Inmates help each other cope with hopelessness and depression, he said. Older, more mature inmates take new arrivals under their wing and teach them the ropes. Inmates helped him obtain coffee and other items at the prison commissary before he had the ability to keep them on his own.

"I had heard all these wild stories and read about the Texas prisons and how rough they were, and I went in there prepared to fight every day if I had to, you know, to survive," he said. "It's not like that."

At one time, though, Willis became so depressed that he turned to food, he said. Six-foot-3 and a trim 185 pounds when he arrived on death row, he ballooned to 300 pounds. As the appeals ground on, and as four or five execution dates were set and passed, he stopped playing basketball and handball.

"I got to where I didn't go out and recreate and play ball," he said. "I'd sit in there and eat, you know. I would have spells of depression. A lot of people eat when they get depressed. "

Willis, who is back down to 240 pounds, regained his faith when he met his wife. They were introduced about six years ago by her brother, Ricky McGinn, who was awaiting execution for the rape-slaying of his 12-year-old stepdaughter. McGinn was executed in 2000, the same year the Willises were wed by proxy.

Willis said he had befriended McGinn when he arrived on death row and that McGinn encouraged him and his sister to write letters to each and meet.

He and he wife want to buy land and settle down, but not in Texas. The state is full of good people, but its criminal-justice system is faulty. He's proof of that, he said.

dale.lezon@chron.com


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Man released from death row

17 years later, he's free to live

04:08 PM CDT on Wednesday, October 6, 2004
By DAVE MICHAELS / The Dallas Morning News

Seventeen years after he arrived on death row, former condemned prisoner Ernest Willis walked out of prison a free man Wednesday, a day after charges against him were dismissed for a crime that may never have occurred.

Willis, 59, bounded down the front steps of the Huntsville Unit of the Texas Department of Criminal Justice and into the arms of his wife, Verilyn, on their fourth wedding anniversary. It was the first time they touched.

"I don't really even know what to say," Willis said. "I know it's been too long coming. I'm just lost for words."

Willis never believed he could be convicted of a crime he didn't commit. When he was, he held 17 years to the hope of leaving Texas' death row a free man.

His optimism finally won through Tuesday, when a judge agreed to dismiss the murder case against him. He's the eighth inmate to walk away from death row since executions were reinstituted in 1976. Among those people, his stay is the longest.

"He started out disbelieving that he could be convicted of something he didn't do. He gets convicted, and on top of that, was sentenced to death," said Rob Owen of Austin, one of his attorneys.

Mr. Willis, 59, was sent to death row for a murder-by-arson charge based entirely on circumstantial evidence. The last four years brought a spasm of decisions that teased him with exoneration and then denied it.

"We felt sure for a while he would get out, but we just didn't know when," said Verilyn Willis, who married Mr. Willis while he was in prison.

Mr. Willis was sent to death row for a June 1986 fire that killed Gail Jo Allison and Elizabeth "Betsy" Belue in the West Texas town of Iraan. He was tried for the death of Ms. Belue. The women's families could not be located Tuesday.

Investigators made a series of assumptions to conclude the fire was intentionally set, then tied Mr. Willis to it without providing a motive. Mr. Willis had been staying in the house as a guest.

During his trial, Mr. Willis often appeared remote and indifferent. District Attorney J.W. Johnson played it up, calling him an "animal" who "merely stared and watched everybody very impassively, very coldheartedly."

It was later revealed that the state had given Mr. Willis anti-psychotic medication that gave him that appearance and rendered him unable to assist in his defense.

After Mr. Willis' conviction, the district attorney effused that the death sentence was Pecos County's first since the days when suspects were hanged.

Mr. Willis' own counsel was ineffective, a judge later ruled. The attorney later surrendered his law license after being sentenced to 10 years' probation on a cocaine charge.

"Despite all of that, Ernie has always been patient and at peace with himself," Mr. Owen said. "You really have to have a lot of faith in the system to sort out its mistakes in time."

Ori White, who succeeded Mr. Johnson as district attorney, played a large role in that correction.

After a federal judge ruled in July that Mr. Willis should receive a new trial or be freed, Mr. White hired his own arson experts.

They found that the original investigators wrongly concluded that an accelerant was used, Mr. White said. The original investigators thought they saw the outline of a flammable liquid on the floor, where the fire's intensity had left behind a ring.

Fire experts now know that especially hot fires can produce such "pour patterns."

Mr. White's analysis concluded that no accelerants were used in the fire. The house's owner later pointed to faulty electrical outlets that might have started the fire.

"With the level of knowledge at that point in time, it was reasonable to conclude that it looked like there was an arson fire," Mr. White said.

Still, Mr. White came to the conclusion that Mr. Willis, who had no prison record before his arrest in the case, is innocent. He had no motive for setting the fire – he was staying in the house for free – and his own cousin was in the house at the time of the fire.

When investigators first told him that he was a suspect in the case, he offered to take a bus from a neighboring state to Texas to defend himself, Mr. White said.

"That does not sound like someone who is a ruthless, cold-blooded lawbreaker," Mr. White said.

Ms. Willis, whose brother was executed in 2000, said her husband always maintained he was asleep when the fire started. At the time, he had recently undergone back surgery and was taking medication.

She said the couple is still deciding where to move once Mr. Willis is released. They will not settle in Texas, she said.

"I don't think reality will hit him or me until he walks out of there," Ms. Willis said. "And then, I think we will both fall apart."

The Associated Press contributed to this report.

E-mail dmichaels@dallasnews.com