Jerry Frye 
There's so much to this case that I don't know how to lay it all out for you. But this story is a good example of how dirty and corrupted this legal system is here in California and how you only have rights when you can pay for them I'm going to give you a brief run down on what's happened to me !
I was living up in the foothills in Amador County with a girlfriend named Jennifer Ann Warsing we were growing marijuana and everything was going pretty good until May 14, 1985.
The Brandts lived in a cabin about a quarter of a mile down the hill from our camp.
We had been up there for about six weeks and had become good friends with the Brandts.
Well I had a partner in this weed growing venture his name is Rick Evans he was supposed to come up to the camp on the weekends and bring supplies and help care for our crop. He turned out to be a sorry partner.
Anyway on May 14, 1985 I was walking back to the camp from the Brandt's cabin when I ran into this guy named Ron Wilson he was a cousin or something to Rick Evans my partner and he wanted to know if I would help him grow his plants on a percentage basis, I said sure, I was planned to start a new life with the money I was going to get from my share.
Wilson and I spent most of the day talking about this venture and went and picked up 4 crates of plants he had a drip system and went back to the camp. Jaws (That's Jennifer), she came back to the camp around 5:00 she had been down to town with Jannie Brandt, Wilson stayed around for about 30 more minutes then left, said he would be back the next day, he asked me if there was anything from town I needed, I told him a box of shot-gun shells because I only had one shell left. A green one !
Jaws said Jannie asked if we could come down later to visit with them so it was about 8:30 when we went down there and thats when we found the Brandts dead. I just stood there in the inter doorway looking at them, Jaws put something in my hand, it was the keys to Jannie's car, at that time all I could think about was getting away from there. I was afraid and panicked and Jaws saying we have to get out of here. So, we took the Brandts car and got out of there.
I know that was the wrong thing to do but the situation looked like a cold setup and it was. That night and the next day I asked Jaws if we should turn around and go back and tell the police what happened and take whatever we had coming for taking the Brandts car and leaving the scene and maybe we'd be able to put them on the right track. But we were afraid it was already too late for that, Jaws was acting like she was on vacation, she never had any feelings about the mess we were in or the Brandts, I never have understood that.
We ended up in a small town in S.D., I went to work for a logging company and Jaws got a job in a restaurant down the street from the local police station, the reason I'm saying that is because Jaws said I was holding her hostage.
I worked six days a week from daylight until dark and she was serving the police lunch and dinner at the restaurant ? ?
Well, on July 5, 1985 we got in a big fight and someone called the police, when they got there Jaws answered the door and she had a bloody nose from where I backhanded her so I got arrested, thats when I decided this was enough of this and I told them I was probably wanted for questioning in a murder case in CA, and my real name. I told them I was tired of pretending and I just wanted to get this mess straightened out. Well, there was a warrant out for us so we were arrested and being held for CA.
At the time I thought I would
end up doing some time for taking the Brandts car and growing weed.
This is when things really
got crazy, when the Dicks from CA got there they spent some time with Jaws
and the next thing I knew Jaws was supposed to be an eyewitness and wasn't
being charged with anything and had made some kind of immunity deal with
them to say she seen me kill the Brandts.
I didn't believe it at first,
then the police set up a visit for us and I asked her if it was true, she
couldn't look me in the eye, I asked her why ? She never had any answer
for me.
So here I am being charged
with the Brandts murders, and I know nothing about the law or my rights.
I get a public defender named
Roger Chastine and the first thing he starts talking about is making a deal,
copping a plea. So I fired him after about five minutes of that, then
I get another public defender named Larry Dixon. I have to have some
respect for him, he tried, he wasn't qualified to handle a capital case and
told the two local judges he couldn't take on my case on his own.
The county judge refused to appoint any qualified co-counsel and refused to let him withdraw from my case, this went on for over a year, I was being denied a fast and speedy trial and a qualified attorney to help me, these are two rights that everyone in this country are supposed to have, not one or the other, Both !
Anyway, all this time I'm sitting in jail and nothings being done in my behalf. The prosecutor and the local dicks are corrupting the witnesses and losing or destroying the evidence. At this point the county was trying to force Larry Dixon to try my case, they really didn't want me to have a good qualified attorney, that was clear, so with Mr. Dixons help I wrote a letter to the CA Supreme Court and they fired both the local judges from my case, and another judge came in and completely dismissed my case. I thought that was it, but in this country they've got the system set up to where they can refile the same charges on you again and then act like the first round never happened.
They also say that ignorance
is no excuse but when the attorneys that are supposed to be helping you
take advantage of their clients because they know nothing about the law or
all their rights and then the Courts blame the defendants instead of the
sorry attorneys that never did the jobs right to start with.
Well, I had this doctor
names Jamse Peal appointed to me almost from the start of this mess and
he hooked me up with this attorney named Richard Hawk, he was supposed to
be the man, one you could count on to help you, thats what Dr. Peal was telling
me.
Mr. Hawk came to visit me in jail almost every day, he left hundreds of dollars in my account, promised and guaranteed me he could and would get me acquitted of this B.S case against me. If I would not except anyone but him, this was allright before my case was dismissed and the local judge kept trying to appoint the attorneys he wanted me to have and absolutely refused to appoint Hawk. Hawk was telling me that the county didn't want me to have him as an attorney because they knew he would get me off and wouldn't let them get away with any crap. So Hawk said he had a friend named Judd Iverson and he would ask to be appointed to my case, and then appoint him as co-counsel. Well their little trick worked. Now I've got Judd Iverson and Richard Hawk as my attorneys. I never had any reason not to trust and believe Dr. Peal concerning Hawk, so I thought everything would be OK ! I never found out about Hawk's background til after I was sitting here on the Row. During my trial Hawk got his license suspended by the California Supreme Court and was fined a hundred thousand dollars for some kind of fraud thing, he told me some B.S story about it, he still came to court every day but now he was sitting behind the prosecutor and hanging around with the DA's investigator, Mr Blake.
When I asked him why he was stabbing me in the back like this in front of the jury he said he was sitting over there in hopes of picking up on something and was hanging out with Mr Blake because Blake was showing him how to fly fish ! B.S.
After a week of this the prosecutor and the judge, Mr William T. Lowe wrote a letter to the CA Supreme Court and got Hawk's license reinstated until my case was over and I was sent to Death Row.
I also found out later on that Hawk never even filed a motion to suppress the evidence so the prosecutor was able to use any and everything they wanted. Mr Hawk was, is one of the worst dirtiest attorneys in the State of CA, his record is three inches thick, he made $ 68,000 off my case and never personally received a penny of it, it was all taken for that $100,000 fine he had. After I was convicted of everything with ONLY Jaws testimony, which the physical evidence clearly shows it could not have happened that way in any of her stories, I told them I didn't want to play their game anymore and it didn't matter what they did from then on out because I wasn't guilty of killing anyone and I wasn't about to beg that jury for my life for something I never did in the first place. So then Hawk jumped up and said I must be incompetent because I wouldn't accept the guilty verdict and play along anymore. That was just a delay tactic on Hawk's part so he could drag it all out and make more money off of my case.
Well, I was found to be competent and ended up getting the death penalty.
After I got here on Death Row I found out these guys were having to wait up to five years to get an attorney appointed to handle their appeals. Thats really terrible, especially for the guys that were wrongfully convicted and needed someone to help them. And most of the attorneys being appointed to these cases were ex prosecutors and their investigators were ex cops.
I was desperate for someone to help me and about a month after I was here Judd Iverson came to visit me and told me he had a friend that was one of the best appellant attorneys in the country and wanted to help me. So he came to visit me, his name is David Lane, he's from Denver, Co.
He fed me a line of crap about how good he was and how he could help me get out of here. I told him I wanted my appeal handled as soon as possible and he said he would get right on it if I accepted him as my attorney so I did.
After a couple years went by I asked him whats the hold up. He said he's still trying to get all my transcripts , he'd say I've got a letter to the County requesting the missing transcripts or I'll call them right now, or they sent me some more transcripts but they're still not all there. Well, this went on for 5 years, he was telling me there was nothing else he could do about it.
I talked to some guys here about all this missing transcript stuff and they told me that my attorney was lying and showed me in the law books where it clearly states that if there's any problem with the record its up to the defendant to request a hearing to solve any issues concerning the record.
Mr Lane had been lying to me all those years, when I confronted him with this he tried to play it off but then he did request a hearing, that didn't help much between his delays and the Counties it was 7 1/2 years before my opening brief was filed with some of the transcripts still missing ! Then it was dragged around for almost 2 1/2 more years before the CA Supreme Court denied my appeal.
Mr. Lane is an habitual liar and I pray that he rots in hell right next to Richard Hawk.
I did fire Lane's sorry ass, and my case has been appointed to this new Federal Defenders office where there's no ex prosecutors or ex cops supposed to be working there, I can only hope that these new attorneys and investigators can help me after so much time has went by.
My co-counsel from my state appeal is still with me and has been since 1991, her name is Marianne Wesson, she's a law professor at the Colorado State University in Boulder, Colorado.
She can verify everything I've said in this letter and lots more, she's the only legal person I've met throughout this nightmare so far that I can have any trust in. She's also a friend. She wrote a book for me its called, Render Up The Body. You should read it if you get the chance.
Take care.
11 - 7 -99 Jerry Frye
PS. Ron Wilson was the number one suspect and was arrested but he put it off on me ! Also, there was up to 50,000 dollars, 21 veils of gold, 800 silver dollars, coats, cameras, missing from the Brandts cabin. I never had any of these things. They found 5 red shell casings on the floor of the cabin. I only had 1 green shotgun shell.
Like I said before the evidence from the crime scene doesn't even come close to matching Jaw's lying testimony. If it doesn't fit, you must aquit, was left out at my trial, but, I'm not OJ Simpson and I never had millions to buy a dream team, so I have No rights as far as the system is concerned.
Thats the way it is in this country, use the ignorant and the poor to feed their money machine.
Why would Jaws need immunity if there was never any charges filed against her ?
Dr John Thorton a Professor of Criminology at Berkeley Univ. here in Ca. said there's No Way this could of happened with any of Jaws stories. She was flat out lying, and the DA and the cops knew it ! He also said he's never seen such a sorry job done on processing a crime scene.
They contaminated, and destroyed or lost a lot of the physical evidence from the crime scene, which also robbed me of most of my physical witness !
There was Not One piece of evidence to say I killed anyone - only Jaws' lying testimony.
It has been hard putting
up with all this crap all these years. I'm just trying to survive the
wait.
There is a truck load of things I haven't mentioned.
The main thing is that I never had a fair trial or anything,
thanks to the local idiots in Amador
County CA, and this sorry state system.
And I never will after all this.
