"Some Doubt Has Been Raised

By Anastasia Toufexis

The sentence was life, but the verdict is not final

It happens every day. A verdict of guilty is immediately followed by outcries from upset relatives and friends charging that there has been a terrible miscarriage of justice. Prosecutors scarcely even pay attention. So it is almost unheard of for them to back off and admit that justice may not have been served. But last week in Texas, the Dallas County district attorney joined the defense to support setting aside the armed-robbery conviction and life sentence of Lenell Geter, 26. Said D.A. Henry Wade: "I believe some doubt has been raised in the minds of many people concerning the fairness of Geter's trial, as well as his guilt."

Some doubt indeed. The story of how Geter's claim of injustice came to be heard is no dry matter of lawyers marshaling cool arguments for an appeals court. It has been a slam-bang battle waged by friends and lawyers to build public pressure. Says one of his attorneys, George Hairston: "According to an ancient proverb, 'You can get more with a gun and a smile than you can with just a smile.' We've smiled, played by the rules and got nowhere. The media is our gun."

The case began in August 1982, when Geter was arrested by police investigating a rash of armed robberies in the Dallas suburbs and nearby Greenville, a community of 22,000, whose main street until 16 years ago boasted a sign reading THE BLACKEST LAND--THE WHITEST PEOPLE. Geter was an unlikely suspect. An engineering graduate of South Carolina State College, he had arrived in Greenville earlier in the year, one of six young blacks recruited by E-Systems, a large military and electronics contractor. A softspoken, nonsmoking teetotaler, he earned an annual salary of $24,000 and had a reputation among colleagues for intelligence and industry.

Nevertheless, after getting an anonymous tip, police circulated his photo among witnesses to robberies in the area. When one singled out his picture, saying, "I think it might have been him," police picked Geter up and grilled him about more than a dozen unsolved holdups. The next day police arrested Geter's roommate and fellow black engineer Anthony Williams in connection with a $31 robbery of a 7-Eleven store in Garland.

Geter went on trial for the $615 stickup of a Kentucky Fried Chicken outlet. Five prosecution witnesses identified him, but gave contradictory answers to questions about the robber's height and weight. For the defense, nine of Geter's colleagues testified that he had been at work at the time of the holdup. No physical evidence, like fingerprints or a gun, was presented. Still, in October 1982 the all-white jury found him guilty. At the sentencing hearing, Investigating Detective James Fortenberry testified that he had spoken with the sheriff of Bamberg County, where Geter grew up. The South Carolina sheriff, said Fortenberry, had told him Geter was "a bad character." The prosecution also suggested he was a suspect in other robberies. The jury's sentence: life imprisonment.

Geter's fellow engineers at E-Systems were shocked by the verdict and sentence and convinced that Geter was a victim of racism. A dozen of them, mostly whites, organized a defense committee and raised more than $11,000 in the young engineer's support. "This is not a tightly knit organization," declared Engineer Wendell Crom, "just a bunch of people who know the man is not guilty." The N.A.A.C.P., alerted by a South Carolina State College dean, was also outraged and dispatched Lawyer Hairston to aid in the defense. He and court-appointed Attorney Edwin Sigel scored a small success in November 1982 at a hearing for a new trial when the South Carolina sheriff appeared to say that Fortenberry had misinterpreted his remarks. Geter had no record in South Carolina, he said, "and I wouldn't know him if he were to walk in my door." But the judge refused to reopen the case.

So Hairston turned to the court of public opinion. He began by enlisting a new "old-boy network" of black journalists. As a result, a black reporter on the Dallas Times Herald went to the city editor, who assigned the story to Susan Milstein, then on the paper's courthouse beat. At first she was leery: "People call all the time saying, 'My brother is in jail and it's a case of mistaken identity.' " But she quickly became intrigued: "I could not understand why all of these middle-aged white engineers were so upset. They were visibly shaken. Here was a young engineer making $24,000 a year. Now why would a guy like this hold up a fried-chicken restaurant?" Her story was the first to publicize that the tip leading police to consider Geter had come from a woman who had merely seen a black man park his car, nowhere near any robbery site, and taken down his license number.

Milstein's front-page article led to a rush of other print and TV stories. Coverage by the New York Times, PEOPLE, the Phil Donahue show, ABC and the Cable News Network soon followed. The snowballing scrutiny got a further push last month when Geter's roommate Williams, who had no previous criminal record, was acquitted of the charge against him. But it was a 60 Minutes broadcast in early December that was "the tipping factor," says Hairston, who had written to one of the show's producers. In addition to reviewing the facts, CBS reporters aired evidence from two new alibi witnesses for Geter. The young engineer had a bit of luck. Explains Sigel: "The show came on immediately after the Dallas Cowboys game against Seattle. Dallas won, so people kept watching." The segment, seen by 40 million people, drew the largest number of letters in 60 Minutes' history.

In Dallas, many viewers responded by complaining directly to District Attorney Wade--even, as Wade says, "my own son-in-law." No less important, Texas Governor Mark White got on the phone. Wade contends that the show presented a "distorted" picture and that he was not bending to pressure. But last week he bowed to the extralegal public verdict.

Last Wednesday, after 16 months behind bars, a jubilant Geter was set free to applause from a crowd of supporters. Later he celebrated at a Christmas party attended by lawyers, investigators and fellow engineers. His ordeal may not be over, though. He is out on a $10,000 bond put up by E-Systems coworkers. For the charges to be completely dropped, he must pass a lie-detector test. "If he fails the test," says D.A. Wade, "he will have a new trial." And two top prosecutors in Wade's office have been assigned to the case. But Geter is too relieved to worry yet about losing again in court. Said he: "This is my emancipation proclamation from the judicial system of Texas."

--By Anastasia Toufexis. Reported by Thomas McCarroll/New York and Mark Seal/Dallas

With reporting by THOMAS McCARROLL, Mark Seal This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so viewer discretion is required.