A Family Forgives - part 2
Last week the family of Gerald Gase learned that his murderer, Roger Proctor, was sentenced to die and that they were invited to attend the execution. Every member of the family was opposed and set about trying to change this. Lawyers Jim McHugh and Joe Thornton found evidence that had been withheld from the defense.
From this new evidence and discussions with Proctor, on Death Row, they were able to reconstruct what happened the night that Gerald Gase was murdered.
Dierdre Owens, the daughter of Gase’s neighbor, returned to Meadville, Pennsylvania on October 16th with no money, no place to stay and her baby waiting back in Cincinnati. She was accompanied by her lover, Roger Proctor.
Dierdre’s plan was to get money from Gerald Gase, an old neighbor. When they first approached Gase, he was raking leaves, and they left and went to a bar. Later they went back to Gase’s house and, this time he let them in.
The plan, according to Proctor’s confession was that, at some point, Proctor would ‘’knock’’ Gase out, they would rob the house, and leave town. For a while the three of them watched television. Then Proctor went into the kitchen, got a drink of water, picked up a pair of sewing scissors from the table and tucked them into his belt. Dierdre shouted out, ‘’Now’’
‘’I stabbed him once and, ah, she got to hollering to me, hurry up and I just lost control of myself, ‘cause I was scared, and I stabbed him again.’’ Proctor later told the police.
Proctor reached into Gase’s back pocket and pulled out his wallet and gave it to Dierdre. He went to the bathroom to wash up and said he could hear her going through the drawers and closets in the room in search of money.
‘’I had never really hurt no one like that,’’ Proctor said, ‘’I came back and she was standing overtop of him.’’ Then they left.
John Dawson, at that time the district attorney in Crawford County, was called to the scene the next day. ‘’The poor guy was laying on his living room floor in a fetal position, stab wounds all over his face,’’ Dawson said,. After the coroner counted 57 stab wounds, Dawson knew he would seek the death penalty.
The police caught up with the pair in Cincinnati where they had gone in a rented car. Proctor confessed, detailing almost every move he and Owens made. Owens tried to tell police that Proctor acted on his own, but they did not believe her because of her previous record of robbing another old man.
Proctor was assigned a public defender, Bruce Barrett, who immediately worked to keep Proctor from getting the death penalty. As is customary, Barrett asked for any evidence the prosecution might have that would help his client’s case.
The prosecutor is required by law to hand over this information, but Dawson’s office sent back only some lab reports, the autopsy record, and stated: ‘’The Commonwealth possesses no evidence favorable to the accused. ’’
Proctor had confessed to the stabbing. He had even told detectives where to find the scissors he used. But he took the stand in his trial and swore he stabbed Gase only three or four times, in the chest and side, not the 57 times for which he was accused.
It only took three hours and eight minutes for the jury to find Proctor guilty of first degree murder. During the sentencing, Dawson referred jurors to the photos of Gase’s body.
‘’These photographs depict in graphic fashion the manner in which Mr. Gase was killed, the manner in which he suffered, the manner in which he died,’’ Dawson told the jury. They took one hour and 40 minutes to sentence Proctor to death.
Dierdre Owens got a separate trial and a life sentence.
McHugh found a collection of reports never passed along during discovery. The binder held leads to a potential second stabber. One witness, Angela Tate, a Pittsburg woman at whose house Proctor and Owen stayed after the murder, told detectives that Owens had told her she had killed a man. ‘’Roger didn’t know.’’ Given that Proctor had told police he thought Gase was still alive when he left the house, Tate’s testimony lent new credence to McHugh’s argument that someone else delivered the additional 53 stabs.
Within months, Proctor was back before the courts. U.S. District Judge Donald E. Ziegler took the rare step of ordering the state to reopen the presumably closed case of the Commonwealth vs. Proctor.
The Crawford County court ruled Proctor’s conviction would not likely be overturned with the new evidence, but that he should have been given the evidence that pointed to a possible second stabber.
It was not until January, 2003 that the federal court ruled to reverse the death sentence. The judge remanded the case back to the county level for the decision on retrial. When the county prosecutor contacted family, they again expressed their opposition to the death penalty and their support for resentencing to life in prison.
Finally on April 30th, 2003 Merre Phillips and Margaret Weber sat beside Roger Proctor as the judge listed all the grounds for appeal that were being waived, and Roger indicated that he understood. The prosecutor acknowledged that Roger was not the instigator of the crime.
Margaret Weber told the court that the family was united in their opposition to the death penalty, that executing Roger would accomplish nothing to lessen the pain of Gerald’s murder for family or friends. She said that the family’s experience of Roger is that he had accepted responsibility for his actions; that he had asked the family for forgiveness and we had expressed our forgiveness to him; that we know he will continue his reparation with life imprisonment and that we pray this will bring him peace.
Roger read a statement apologizing for and expressing deep sorrow for his actions and committed himself to help other prisoners understand the devastating effects of crime.
A quiet self-effacing man, Roger returned to prison where as a ‘’lifer’’ instead of a Death Row inmate, he will be freed of shackles and will no longer live in isolation.
Members of the family have had letters from Roger at Christmas and Easter and other times. They have sent him a Bible.
Margaret Weber states, ‘’It has been a grace for our family to be a part in some small way, of this good news.”
– Mary