Monday, May 28, 2007

New Appeal for Clemency to Culver

After Brian Street's sentencing this past week, here is a new letter (with a few names removed) sent to Gov. Culver, encouraging him to grant executive clemency to Tracey:

May 25, 2007

Dear Governor Culver,

Greetings from Mt. Pleasant.

I'm writing to you -- for the second time -- to encourage you to grant clemency to Tracey Dyess. Her abusive stepfather, Brian Street, has now been sentenced to 30 years for sexually exploiting her, so there are no outstanding court cases complicating action on the clemency application she submitted last fall.

Yesterday, I attended the sentencing as a supporter and friend of Tracey. She was present, and her victim's impact statement was read. Several things struck me as having a bearing on clemency.

First, Judge Pratt made clear that a significant factor in his choice of the maximum sentence was the court's determination that Brian Street was indeed in a position of authority and trust over Tracey, as her stepfather. That seems to me clear. And it also seems to undercut the decision of the state to have prosecuted Tracey as an adult, even though she was seventeen at the time of the fire. The circumstances that led her to start the fire are inextricably bound to her having been a minor. She was being abused by the head of her household, who systematically isolated her by, among other things, withholding her from school and moving the family often. It was the very fact that she was a minor that put her into a desperate corner. The more the actual situation comes to light, the more it seems to me to have been hasty and inappropriate to charge her as an adult. Perhaps there is some way that decision could be de facto revisited in your decision on clemency.

Secondly, yesterday I witnessed for the first time Brian Street's attempts to manipulate and control both Tracey and the court itself. Even in shackles at his sentencing, he shouted out complaints when others were talking and berated Tracey as a "liar" who didn't "tell the truth" that they were supposedly "in love." It was sickening to watch her have to go through that, given everything else she's had to go through.

I suspect that if Street's trial had been before Tracey's, it would have cast her own situation in a whole different light. It would not have been about her "alleging" abuse. It would have been about abuse proven in court (as Street's has now been) and an abuser whose vicious, demeaning, and controlling behavior all could see. Because Street's daily sexual abuse of Tracey and her siblings is the context of the fire Tracey set in Griswold, it seems to me that her counsel did her a grave disservice by not pushing for Tracey's case to be postponed until Street's case had been completed. I suspect that -- if they had the full situation now proven in court before them and if they watched Street testify -- a jury would likely find the fire to have been an act rooted in self defense.

Shortly before serving as Tracey's counsel, her court-appointed defense counsel had represented Dixie Duty on the charge of murder for killing her abusive husband. The jury convicted her despite the overwhelming evidence of vicious abuse. Gov. Vilsack granted her a partial clemency in December, but at the time Tracey's case was before the court, her attorney seems still to have been stunned by that conviction and therefore advised Tracey to plead guilty, as an adult, to the charges that were only slightly reduced. He told her that juries in that area were likely to convict people who killed (or tried to kill) their domestic abusers. As a teenager who had known only a prison of abuse and then a jail cell, she was totally dependent on the advice of counsel.

Third, at the sentencing, a victim's advocate in the U.S. Attorney's office read Tracey's victim's impact statement aloud in court. One of the questions was if Tracey had received counseling as a result of the abuse. Tracey's answer was "no."

This is true and deeply disturbing to me. The reason she has received no significant counseling is that the state correctional system has provided none and has specifically barred her from discussing her experiences of abuse with visitors, even those who in other contexts do counsel abuse victims. The only two people on her authorized visitation list are myself -- a pastor in Mt. Pleasant, with some experience counseling abuse victims -- and Father Val Peter -- director of Girls and Boys Town of Nebraska, who specializes in working with abused teenagers.

The spokesperson for the correctional system -- in phone conversations and letters -- has specifically said to me and to Father Peter that Tracey is not allowed to discuss with either of us her experiences of abuse when we visit her. Directives to that effect have been issued. Initially, he had even ordered that she not be allowed to talk with either of us at all -- which, since we were the only people on her visitation list, meant she could have no visitors. The official reason is so that correctional system counselors can do the counseling, but that counseling has yet to begin and I'm convinced it is unlikely to.

Tracey's "counselor" of record told me directly in a meeting last December that they didn't want Tracey discussing her abuse because they were afraid it would make Tracey upset and thus a more difficult inmate to manage. This despite no evidence that Tracey is ever difficult to manage -- except as a public relations issue.

In my experience with abuse victims, giving them opportunities to talk with compassionate people about what has happened to them is essential to healing. Tracey went directly from her home -- a prison of daily sexual abuse -- to incarceration by the state, with not a single day of freedom in between, and has received no significant counseling as a victim of abuse that's been proven in court and that was so horrific that the perpetrator received a 30-year sentence. To me, this is an outrage.

If she is released, I will do everything possible to ensure that she gets the long-term counseling she surely needs.

As a side note, even though Tracey and I have completely complied with the prison system's ban on conversations with Tracey about her being abused, they require Tracey to visit with visitors only in the presence of a prison guard. Most other inmates are allowed to sit at tables throughout the visiting room, with guards present in the room but not listening in. The constant presence for Tracey of a guard listening means that she can't speak freely to visitors even regarding things like how the prison is treating her and how she's getting along with people there. This seems to be about the prison system treating her primarily as a public relations problem, with the result that they isolate her from the outside as much as possible in ways disturbingly similar to the techniques of her controlling stepfather.

I realize that the prison system is not equipped to have a sympathetic inmate like Tracey. It isn't the correctional system's fault that she was prosecuted for murder as an adult for trying to put an end to daily sexual abuse when she was 17. And it isn't the correctional system's fault that her court appointed attorney advised her to plead guilty to slightly reduced charges instead of defending her vigorously in court. But the correctional system is a bad place for her. Apparently because they're uncomfortable that she gets sympathetic press stories, they treat her worse even than other inmates.

In my previous letter in January, I shared some of my impressions of Tracey as a person, so I won't repeat those now. I will add what's new in the past four months, though.

On the positive side, Tracey -- despite having been kept out of school by her mother and stepfather -- has now completed her GED. She's a smart and hard working young woman who should be in college now.

On the negative side, my observation is that Tracey is increasingly stressed emotionally from the tumultuous nature of prison life. We had all been hopeful that Governor Vilsack might grant her clemency before he left office, but he chose to leave action on her application to you. Tracey allowed herself to look ahead hopefully to ways she might, upon release, draw upon her horrific experiences to serve other abuse victims. My guess is that the realization that she may well be looking at being imprisoned for her full sentence has depleted her.

Also, she's a sensitive, wounded kid surrounded by some rough and scary people, and she seems much more on her guard and worried than when I first met her last fall. Probably related to that constant anxiety, she's lost a lot of weight, even though she was a slender person to begin with.

She's still a friendly, soft-spoken, sharp-minded, and compassionate person, of course. I was struck that, even in her victim's impact statement, she chose to talk about one day being able to forgive Brian Street and already being able to forgive him for most everything except for what he was doing to the younger kids in the home. She's a compassionate person. In fact, I think it's her compassion which stopped her from just running away or killing herself. That would have meant leaving the younger kids alone in Street's hands. My impression from conversations with her is that that fear was a big part of why she dealt with the overwhelming horror by setting the fire.

I'd also renew my encouragement of you to visit with Tracey yourself! At the moment, she's imprisoned in Mitchellville, right near Des Moines, so access would be easy. I have no doubt that you'll find her sympathetic and willing to talk with you about all aspects of her situation. She'll answer honestly any questions you have for her, I'm sure.

Already in your governorship, I've been impressed that you're a person willing to stick your neck out and do what's right for those who have less power -- advocating such things as discrimination protection for gay and lesbian people and enhanced organizing rights for labor unions.

No one can prevent the abuse that's already happened or bring back Tracey's siblings who died in the fire. The one thing that can be done to bring some justice to the situation is to treat the surviving victim decently. As our governor and as her governor, please do so.

Thank you so much for your time and attention.

Sincerely,

John Zimmerman
pastor of Pleasant View Mennonite Church

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