AUGUST 25, 2014 | 7

Story and Photo By Hannah Garcia

8 | LAW WEEK COLORADO

DENVER RESIDENT Wayne Thomas is a father and husband, a perpetual academic, a former DJ who dreamed of working in sports medicine.

He is also a convicted felon.Thomas, now 34, was charged with mul-

tiple crimes relating to an assault and robbery in 1997, when he was 17. He ended up plead-ing guilty to aggravated robbery during a last-minute deal and served a five-year sentence — four in Colorado’s Youth Offender System, a boot-camp-like program for teenagers who are tried as adults, and one year on parole.

By the time he was paroled in 2002, he had already completed a year toward a bachelor’s degree and had goals to work as an athletic trainer at the university level. In the 12 years since, he’s gotten married to his wife, Jaymee, witnessed the birth of his son, Wayne Jr., and completed a doctorate degree, a capstone to a years-long campaign to prove that he’s not the same kid who pistol-whipped a teenage boy half a lifetime ago.

Now, he’s seeking official gubernatorial clemency from the state. The main obstacle in his way is a political one: Gov. John Hicken-looper hasn’t granted a pardon since he took office in 2011.

Wild daysThe pardons process was fairly foreign to

18th district attorney George Brauchler, who said he had never submitted a request in Col-orado before. But Thomas’ case was radically different than the others that have crossed his desk.

“One of the things that struck me was how

introspective he was about himself,” Brauchler said, after he met with Thomas a few weeks ago before he submitted his request to the state’s executive branch. “I don’t know how to describe it, but I’ve never had a meeting quite like this.”

With a single mom and no curfew, Thom-as didn’t have much accountability at home when he was a teenager.

“I was just a wild little kid that thought I had all the answers,” Thomas said. “It was just me and my mom, and there wasn’t much dis-cipline. She was more like a friend.”

Thomas said he pretty much did whatever he wanted — smoking and drinking and a

little bit of marijuana dealing. But, he wasn’t unlike a lot of other high school students he knew. He called his crime “an isolated incident.”

Thomas also played football, perhaps the source for his love of sports medicine.

“I wasn’t committing crimes and running around hurting people all the time,” Thomas said. “I made some bad choices.”

In 1997, police raided one of his friend’s house. Although authorities found nothing incriminating, Thomas said he and his friends believed another teenager had informed au-thorities about possible drug activity at the house. Armed with a handgun and compelled

to retaliate, Thomas “pistol-whipped the young man about the head and face repeat-edly” and took his cell phone, according to John Hower, chief deputy assistant district attorney for Colorado’s 18th Judicial District, where Thomas was originally convicted. Thomas said he believed the victim “snitched on his friend.”

Hower, who handled Thomas’ pardon request, said the then-teenager was facing “essentially a life sentence” if convicted of all the charges, including second-degree assault, aggravated robbery and second-degree kid-napping. All counts are felonies and would have resulted in consecutive sentences for each, combining for a possible maximum of 86 years, Hower said.

“At the time when he was charged with these very serious offenses, knowing the dis-trict attorney who was handling his case and the nature of his disposition, he must have felt that Mr. Thomas had shown some promise.”

When asked if he thought it was unfair that he was tried as an adult, Thomas said he “did know right from wrong.”

“The only thing I didn’t like about the whole situation is that there isn’t really any re-course to claim my life back,” he said. “(It was a) very bad crime. I don’t want to minimize it by any means, but I was a kid.”

An uphill battleWhile serving his sentence in the

Youth Offender System, Thomas said he felt “out of place.” Some fellow inmates had parents on drugs or no parents at all. Some would ask him to read them letters

IN THE NEWS

GEORGE BRAUCHLER | LAW WEEK PHOTO TONY FLESOR

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because they were illiterate.“Some of these kids really had no chance,”

he said. Thomas finished his high school educa-

tion and was cleared to take his ACT while he was still imprisoned. He was accepted to college before he was paroled in 2002 and spent that year studying at the University of Southern Colorado, now Colorado State University-Pueblo, before transferring to the Metropolitan State University of Denver, per-forming odd jobs as a DJ or on the night shift at an area hotel, always working multiple jobs. He graduated in 2007 with a bachelor’s in hu-man performance and sport with an emphasis in athletic training.

“After school, it was kind of difficult to get a job, which was frustrating because you’re told when you’re in jail, you’ve got to reform, change your life, and I had all these obstacles in my way,” Thomas said. Finding a place to live was no piece of cake, either, he said.

After working construction for several months and searching for an athletic trainer slot, the recent graduate began to feel a bit weary.

“That was probably the worst job I ever had,” Thomas said, laughing. “It was miser-able. Those are the some of the only jobs you can get coming out of jail with a felony.”

Thomas said the job made him appreciate that he chose to pursue his education instead of “just tapping out on life.”

While job hunting, Thomas avoided tell-ing prospective employers about his convic-tion, and after several tentative offers, was turned away after a background check.

“My past tends to haunt me. Some people just aren’t understanding,” he said. By the end

of the summer, when he got a call from a lo-cal school district, the repetition had gotten to him.

“I told them, ‘before you even call me in

for this interview, here’s the situation.’ I was pretty frustrated at that point,” Thomas said.

“They said, ‘We don’t care, we’ve heard a lot of great things about you. Come on in.’”

While working as an athletic trainer for area schools, including a brief stint at

Jacksonville State University, he earned his master’s in kinesiology from Fresno Pacific University in 2010 and then his doctorate of health sciences from A.T. Still University on March 8, a day after the 12-year anniversary of his release from parole.

“I was thinking, ‘that date sounds so fa-miliar,’” Thomas said, discovering the parallel while looking through old files. “It was weird, to be honest. I was thinking, ‘wow, I have ac-complished a lot in 12 years.’ It really put it all into perspective when I realized just how long it’s been from my release to that graduation.”

Silent questionsThomas asked to keep the name of his

current employer, a local orthopedic group, private and said he avoids talking about his past with acquaintances. Stigmas can still chase men with doctoral degrees.

“I hate that I have to be ashamed of that, Thomas said. “I’ve got to be careful who I tell because it could affect my circumstances. It does bother me.”

He hears it in conversations with some colleagues and acquaintances who talk about criminals as if they are “the scum of the earth.”

“I’m not trying to say it’s OK to hurt peo-ple, but you just don’t know the circumstances. People can change their lives, but some people just don’t think that,” Thomas said. “So when you hear those conversations, just hanging out with new people, it just hurts. It bothers me because it’s like, ‘if you knew my past, you probably wouldn’t want to be my friend and

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WAYNE THOMAS | HANDOUT PHOTO

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My past tends to haunt me. Some people just aren’t understanding.”—Wayne Thomas

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you wouldn’t be talking to me right now.’”Thomas said he didn’t tell Jaymee about

his conviction when they first started dating out of nervousness, although she and her par-ents, including her father who is a former cop, accepted him unconditionally.

While working through the process of Thomas’ pardon request, Hower reached out to the former convict’s victim, who ended up incarcerated on a second-degree murder charge for killing his wife in front of his young daughter. Hower said the district attorney’s office located the victim in a Wyoming prison.

Although his victim said he forgave Thomas long ago, Thomas said he felt “sad” and “speechless” about the situation. Even though he’s proud of the “sweat equity” he’s put into his life, he still feels the pangs of self-doubt. Thomas said he had trouble socializing once he left jail because he felt inferior.

“I would always think, ‘they’re a regular person, and I’m an ex-con,” Thomas said. “I would be invited to networking events after college, and would go and not speak to anyone.”

He didn’t know things that are common knowledge, which led him to ruining the mo-tor in a car after he was released because he didn’t know that the oil needed to be changed. He pointed to Brooks Hatlen, a character in Shawshank Redemption, who couldn’t handle life outside of prison walls and hanged himself.

“That feeling is real. I can relate,” Thomas

said. “I think that’s part of why recidivism is so high because they don’t teach about the social aspects for when you get out.”

A reason for hopeThe letters submitted from employers as

part of Thomas’ clemency application were “all amazingly positive,” according to Hower.

“I told George that my feeling is that this is a rare case that deserved a pardon,” Hower said. “This kind of situation makes us proud of our position. We have an enormous amount of power over people’s lives and need to be careful how we use it.”

On Aug. 18, Brauchler’s office sent in the

letter to Jack Finlaw, chief legal counsel for Hickenlooper. Finlaw said he couldn’t com-ment on pending pardon applications and declined to discuss the pardons process as a whole.

Brauchler said that the pardon applica-tions he typically sees are usually not the kind that inspire a lot of hope for the applicant.The process is made for former convicts like Thomas, he said.

“Doing this one way or another for 20 years, I’ve never come across this,” Brauchler said.

Hickenlooper hasn’t granted any pardons since he was elected. Former Gov. Bill Ritter,

pardoned 42 convicts during his four-year term, while his predecessor Bill Owens par-doned only 13 during his eight years as the state’s executive.

Hickenlooper did reauthorize the Ex-ecutive Clemency Advisory Board in 2012 by executive order, but the group has met since then. Members of the board are to include the executive directors of Colorado’s Department of Public Safety and Department of Cor-rections. They are supposed meet every six months, according to the executive order.

Kathy Green, a spokeswoman for the governor’s office, said there are ongoing re-cruitment efforts to fill the board with new members.

“The board will meet again when that process is concluded, likely later this year,” Green said.

Green did not address whether the board is reviewing clemency before it meets again. Although the governor, who is facing re-election this year, is seemingly relying on an advisory board for clemency decisions, the Colorado Constitution grants him that power exclusively in Article IV, Section 7.

Hickenlooper is far from alone in his reluctance to grant clemency, however. Al-though six states grant pardoning power to an independent body, it largely remains a guber-natorial privilege, one heavily influenced by politics. Wisconsin governor Scott Walker, a Republican, has said publicly that he will not grant any pardons. Democratic Massachu-setts governor Deval Patrick, has also declined

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of the Year Award for his representation of Brett Williams against the Colorado Department of Public Safety and CSP.

After a “stellar” 12-year career as a trooper with the state patrol during which he rose to the rank of captain, and after a two-month absence to pursue helicop-ter training, Williams was wrongfully rejected for a reinstatement position with the Colorado State Patrol in June 2010, according to the former officer’s lawyers.

He appealed to the State Personnel Board, which held a hearing in April 2012 after two continuances necessitated by respondent’s discovery abuses, and ad-ministrative law judge Mary McClatchey issued her initial decision on July 16, 2012.

In her decision, McClatchey conclud-ed that the state patrol’s decision to reject Williams’ application for reinstatement was arbitrary and capricious, finding that the CSP tolerated an anti-gay male envi-ronment and noting that Williams was the victim of sexual orientation discrimi-nation the judge awarded back pay, front pay in lieu of reinstatement and attorney’s fees and costs.

After a subsequent hearing on dam-ages, McClatchey awarded Williams back pay in the amount of $172,742 and front pay in the amount of $595,526, for a total of $768,268. The judge also awarded at-torney’s fees and costs in the amount of approximately $195,000.

The case is now on appeal to the Colo-rado Court of Appeals.

The Colorado Plaintiff Employment Lawyers Association in Colorado’s larg-est professional organization comprised exclusively of lawyers who represent individual employees in cases involving

New counsel at CUUniversity of Colorado Boulder

Chancellor Philip DiStefano announced the appointment of Charles Sweet as vice chancellor and managing senior associate university counsel for the CU-Boulder campus. The appointment is effective Sept. 1.

Sweet has served as vice president and university counsel for the CU System from 1994 to 2007. Before that, from 1988 to 1994, he served as associate university counsel and the designated counsel for the CU-Boulder campus. Most recently, he served as executive director of strategic planning and initiatives at the University of Colorado, Colorado Springs from 2010 to 2014. From 2008 through 2009, Sweet was a partner in the Denver office of the law firm of Holme Roberts & Owen.

Prior to his experience in Colorado, Sweet served as general counsel for Old Dominion University in Virginia.

The managing senior associate univer-sity counsel holds a senior position in the Office of University Counsel.

In this position, Sweet will be

to disperse any executive forgiveness. New York’s Democratic Gov. Andrew

Cuomo only recently granted three pardons at the end of last year since he took office in 2011.

The trend extends nationally, with Barack Obama accruing a miserly reputation in-

volving clemency. The current president has granted 52 pardons and 10 commutations during his tenure out of roughly 16,000 ap-plications, according to the Department of Justice.

President George W. Bush granted 189 pardons and 11 commutations, while Clinton issued 396 pardons and 61 commutations. George H.W. Bush granted 74 petitions for pardon and 3 commutations during his four-year term.

Phil Cherner, who runs his own crimi-nal law firm in Denver, said he’s had three clients go through Colorado’s clemency pro-cess “with some success,” but that he’s seen a general decrease in pardons in the state from governor to governor.

“Crime is such a hot potato politically,”

Cherner said. “It’s not the third rail it once was, but it’s still a tough issue. The penal sys-tem is more geared toward rehab than, say, 15 years ago, but we still have a long way to go. It’s difficult to assess in a vacuum, but increased granting of pardons might be a good install-ment in that trend.”

When asked why he wanted to be official-ly pardoned despite all of his success, Thomas said “it’s just a personal thing for me.”

“If I could get that executive forgiveness from the state, it would just give me more peace of mind,” Thomas said. “Attorneys have even asked me, ‘why do you want this.’ I just want to feel better about myself and the situation.”

“If I could get it, and tell other people about it that are in the same situation and try-ing to change their lives, maybe it gives them hope,” Thomas said.

Thomas pointed to a childhood friend who was released from a federal penitentiary three years ago.

“He’s been in prison his whole life. He started his bachelor’s degree last year and said that I inspired him,” Thomas said. “I just think

— Hannah Garcia, HGarcia@CircuitMedia.com

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If I could get it, and tell other people about it that are in the same situation and trying to change their lives, maybe it gives them hope.”

— Wayne Thomas

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