Violation Bonus: The Court Ruling Jacob Wideman Was Waiting For (Update)

committed to building a more just, verdant, and peaceful world.

More information at Macfound.org.

WBUR Podcasts, Boston.

This call will be recorded and subject to monitoring at any time.

Thank you for using IC Solutions.

You may begin speaking now.

Hey, Beth.

Hey, there.

So, I have a decision.

Hi, folks. It's Beth.

Remember how I dropped in here in August

to tell you the judge had held a hearing

in Jake's case and we'd be back

when he issued his ruling?

Under advisement ruling,

on October 4th, 2023,

this matter came before the court

for argument on Weidman's second complaint

for special action relief.

At the conclusion of the hearing...

Well, here we are.

I was in Dallas reporting on a different story

in October when the phone rang.

It was Josh Hamilton, Jake's attorney.

He sounded like someone had died.

I didn't have a tape recorder on me in the car that day,

but I called him back later.

I opened it up and the first thing

that jumped off the page to me

was that I thought it was very short.

It was only about two pages long.

And so, as I quickly read through it,

I just, you know, I was shocked, I guess.

There's a lot to say about the ruling itself.

And we'll get to that.

But the upshot is this.

The judge ruled against Jake.

He'll stay in prison.

Definitely for at least another year.

Possibly for the rest of his life.

I was really...

surprised is not the word for it.

I was shocked. I really was.

I...

Of all possible outcomes,

I didn't think

that one was very realistic.

I'm going to skip a thorough recap here,

because the backstory is long and complicated.

And if you're listening to this update,

you probably already know it.

If you haven't listened to Violation,

or our last update,

please go back and listen to those first,

or this update won't make much sense.

But, long story short, Jake was waiting

on a Maricopa Superior Court judge

to rule on his second special action,

which, because you can't technically

appeal a parole board's decision,

is a sort of sideways way to argue

before a judge that the board's actions

were unfair.

This time around, he was arguing

that his second parole revocation hearing,

which was ordered by a different judge

in 2019, had been just as unfair

as his first.

And actually, the whole process

raised red flags.

Jake and his lawyers used that phrase,

red flags.

The evidence shows, and I'm quoting here,

that the Arizona Corrections Department

was actively searching

for a reason to violate Weidman,

that means to revoke his parole,

and suggests it may have even

deliberately orchestrated the violation.

The oral arguments for that

second special action were held in August,

and that's when we brought you

our last update.

Remember we told you that, broadly,

the judge had three options?

The first was to release Jake altogether.

Jake and his lawyers knew this was a long shot,

but they made the argument anyway.

They said that when it comes to Jake's case,

the parole board has acted in a way

that's, quote, arbitrary and capricious

and vindictive,

and that because they can't be trusted

to be fair, the judge should take

the decision making out of their hands

and just reinstate Jake's parole

and release him.

The judge's second option was to order

a second do-over of Jake's

parole revocation hearing, with or

without some additional guidance or guardrails.

This is the outcome Jake thought

he had a real chance of getting.

I thought the worst case scenario

was that he would just

simply send it back to

the board with,

you know, no instructions or anything like that

and give the board carte blanche

again to essentially

do what they wanted to do.

But I didn't

spend a lot of time even conceiving

of the idea

that he would shoot us down

completely.

But that's exactly what happened.

The judge's third option,

the worst case scenario

as far as Jake was concerned,

the one he says he didn't even spend much time

thinking about because he didn't even

think it was possible for the judge to find

he'd been treated fairly under the law.

Judge Mark Brain

chose that third option.

He said that Weidman

failed to demonstrate a basis

for relief.

The entire decision, header and all,

was two and a half pages.

Just as a point of comparison,

the first judge's ruling on Jake's

last special action was 16 pages.

The brevity of

this opinion was a little bit

like an emphatic period

at the end of a sentence.

Reading this made me feel as though

the court was signaling, enough is enough.

Daniel Medwed

is a professor of criminal law

at Northeastern Law School.

He has no connection to this case,

but I asked him to read the judge's ruling

and some of the related documents.

Jake's legal arguments to Judge Brain

were 87 pages.

The board's reply was 101 pages

with appendices.

Plus, the parties went back and forth

in additional dozens of pages

about whether the transcript of the revocation hearing

was reliable and accurate,

all of which is to say there were a lot

of complex legal arguments to consider.

There was an element of exasperation

in the tone of this

that I found a little bit disturbing

because, of course,

I think Mr. Wideman's claim

is an eminently credible

one to make, which is

Arizona, tell me why

I'm being recommitted.

How possibly could my behavior

here, my failure to set up this

appointment, how

could you go from that indiscretion

to a finding of lapsing

into criminal conduct?

Show me the chain

of inferences that led you there.

And that strikes me as a very reasonable request.

And if the board

and the court had actually shown

that chain of inferences

more clearly and more transparently,

I think I would have accepted

this opinion more than I did.

But Judge Brain agreed with the board

that the reasons they had provided

to support the idea that Jake was

returning to criminal ways

were good enough.

In fact, at the hearing in August,

it was almost as if he invited the board's

lawyer, her name is Kelly

Gillian Gibson, to explain why

they were good enough.

It would be improper for me to attempt

to explain why a decision

maker's decision was correct.

I don't even think you need to argue

it's correct. I think you need to argue it's

plausible. What you can

say is plausible is that

the delay of time, how often

Mr. Wideman delayed getting done

what the probation, or excuse me,

the parole officer asked him to do,

suggests that he was avoiding

complying and trying

to manipulate the system.

And in his ruling, he wrote,

quote, the court is not authorized

to substitute its judgment for

the board's judgment, but instead

merely to determine whether the board

acted within its discretion.

Here, there was evidence

that Wideman's parole officer had

prodded Wideman to begin counseling with

Dr. McCain for some time, and he

had failed to do so.

Dr. McCain is that therapist who Jake was

supposed to make an appointment with.

And so, Jake and his attorneys

are back to square one.

Except for the nine months he was

out on home arrest, Jake has now

been behind bars for 37

years, and he has very few

avenues out.

He could appeal Judge Brain's decision

to the Arizona Court of Appeals

and then to the Arizona Supreme Court.

If they deny him,

he could move over to federal court

and start a chain of appeals there.

All of this could take years.

Like any

prisoner who was convicted in the 1980s,

before Arizona abolished

parole, he also has the option

of having a parole board hearing each year

and asking for release,

just like he did for years.

But legally speaking,

said his lawyer, Josh Hamilton,

doing that would mean he accepts

the way things have gone down so far

and gives up his chance to appeal it.

At a certain point,

does Jake just, you know,

throw up his hands and just start going before

the board every year?

Do I put myself back in front of this parole board

and explain to them why I'm an appropriate

candidate for release on parole?

Putting my faith in the same board

that twice previously

kept me in custody

where I didn't deserve to be

and wouldn't give me a fair hearing

that adhered to the law.

But do I trust

that I can have a fair hearing on the merits

as to re-release on parole?

Or do I

continue to advance my very real,

very

well-established

legal arguments as to my initial

detention in the first place?

That's a decision that only he can make.

And so far, he's made the decision

to continue with his appeals.

So, Jake's lawyers

are working on crafting the next appeal

and Jake is trying to figure out

a way forward. He says

he's still doing all the things he did

for years to stay positive and productive.

He's working as a peer

mentor. He's reading. He's

nurturing his relationship with his family

and his wife, Marta, who he married while

he was in prison and who has been a source

of constant support.

But he's angry.

I, you know, remember you

expressing anger when they brought you back

and that being wielded as a weapon

against you in front of the parole board.

Are you worried about saying

that you're angry?

If it's inappropriate for me to be upset and angry

in this

circumstance, then

I don't know what circumstance it would

be appropriate for me to be angry in.

Or, on the other hand, that I'm a

sociopath who doesn't feel anything.

You know?

Jake's dad, the writer

John Edgar Wideman, has

no qualms about being angry

either. During my conversation

with him last winter, he was trying to make

sense of how the situation had come to this

after everything Jake had done

to win his freedom.

Of course, Jake had no idea

that

the possibility

of five years incarceration,

six years, endless, really,

a lifetime of incarceration

was at stake

in terms of how he

responded to this

allegation that he had missed

an appointment.

I can't know what the parents of Eric

Kane, the boy Jake killed

in 1986, are feeling

right now. They haven't wanted

to speak to me for this project and

also asked me, through their attorney,

not to contact other people in their lives

who might be able to speak to their perspectives.

I know they spent

years advocating to the parole board

to keep Jake behind bars forever.

And then once he was out, encouraging

corrections officials to arrest him

and bring him back in.

So I imagine this ruling comes as a relief

to them, but a bittersweet one

because it won't bring Eric back.

Nothing will.

What are you feeling?

After going on this journey with us,

through Jake's childhood, Eric's

terrible murder, through seven

appearances before the parole board,

two special actions, three decades in

prison, do you think something went

wrong in Jake's case? Or did everything

go exactly right?

Was justice served?

We'd like to hear from you.

If you have questions you'd like to

ask me, or Jake, or

his attorneys, or a victim's rights

advocate, or a legal expert,

please call and leave your question

in a voicemail at

347-391-

3431.

That's 347-391-

3431.

We're

working on one final episode

as we watch this case unfold.

We'll hear from Jake,

from his wife Marta.

We'll be talking to state corrections officials

working for Arizona's new Democratic

governor. The governor came in

promising reforms, but so far

the state's posture towards Jake's case,

at least in court, has not changed.

One thing that has changed is

that the new administration is willing to talk

to us, and we'll bring you their perspectives.

We'll answer as many

of your questions as we can, and, of

course, we'll continue to dig into the big

questions that have animated us all

along. Is there anything

Jake can do to deserve to be free

again? Is there anything he

could say to convince the board,

the courts, the people who loved

Eric Cain, that he has served

his time and is ready for another

chance? Let us know

what you think, and we'll see you soon

for one last episode of

Violation.

The world right now feels so

unpredictable, right?

The idea of feeling reliably

safe and sound seems almost

out of reach, except when

it comes to home security.

Because there's SimpliSafe.

SimpliSafe's monitoring agents

are standing by 24-7 to

protect your home and your loved ones

in it. With exclusive live

guard protection, SimpliSafe agents

can act within five seconds

of receiving your alarm, and can even

see and speak to intruders

inside your home, warning them

the police are on their way.

You might say SimpliSafe is in the

peace-of-mind, breathe-easy

business. And, oh man,

do we need more of that?

Protect your home this summer with

20% off any new SimpliSafe

system when you sign up for FastProtect

monitoring. Just visit

SimpliSafe.com

slash beyond. That's

SimpliSafe.com slash

beyond. There's no safe

like SimpliSafe.

It's Madeline

Barron from In the Dark.

I've spent the past four years

investigating a crime.

When you're driving down this road, I like to plan on

killing somebody.

A four-year investigation,

hundreds of interviews,

thousands of documents,

all in an effort to see what the U.S.

military has kept from the public

for years. Did you

think that a war crime had been committed?

I don't have any opinion on

that. Season 3 of In the Dark

is available now,

wherever you get your podcasts.

I'm Meghna Chakrabarty,

host of On Point. At a time

when the world is more complex than ever,

On Point's daily deep-dive conversation

takes the time to make the world

more intelligible. From the

state of democracy to how artificial intelligence

is transforming the way we live and work

to the wonders of the natural world.

One topic each day.

One rich and nuanced exploration.

That's On Point from WBUR.

Be sure to follow us right here

in your podcast feed.