Forever hold your peace

The unjust case of Clinton Young

Last year, I published two articles touching on the matter of Robert Roberson III, who is on death row in Texas for the sexual assault and murder of his two-year-old daughter. His counsel appealed last year to the Supreme Court of the United States in a writ of certiori founding on a lack of due process in Mr Roberson’s conviction. The Court declined to consider his case. Here are the two previous articles:

My interest was piqued a little upon hearing of a similar case of injustice, also in the state of Texas in the US, involving a man by the name of Clinton Young. Mr Young is probably, at one and the same time, the unluckiest and the luckiest inmate to ever set foot in a Texas prison.

His misfortune stems from his having been fingered by three co-defendants for the murder of one Doyle Douglas on 21 November 2001 and by one of those three—by the name of David Page—for the murder of one Samuel Petrey, a short time afterwards.

Moreover, the sole evidence to convict Young in both cases was the testimony of his co-defendant(s); no forensic evidence was led. Now, there are other factors that are unlucky for Young, but which turn out to be lucky in a way. For instance, the prosecution team had on its side someone who was working as a paid clerk for the very judge judging Young’s case (I assume both murders were tried together). It’s an egregious conflict of interests and it ironically resulted in Young’s release from prison, even if it had nothing to do with the strength of the evidence against him. As is commonly the case in even such serious trials as Young’s, the legal assistance provided by the defendant’s court-appointed lawyer comes on a scale of poor (at best) to pitiful (at worst), and Young’s case was argued pretty much on the basis of a plea in mitigation, rather than an outright denial of the allegations. Interestingly, that was the same complaint levelled against the lawyer in the trial of Robert Roberson III.

Young’s good fortune was as hair’s breadth as it can get: over in Rotterdam, in the Netherlands, a young law student was working for part of her course on aspects of human rights law and saw by chance that it is possible to enter into correspondence with prisoners who are sentenced to death. Young was convicted of the double murder of Petrey and Douglas in 2003, and in 2011 he struck up this pen-friendship with Renate Bouwmeester, who would subsequently introduce him to Dutch film-maker, Jessica Villerius. Thus, on the other side of the world, interest was sparked in Young’s case through the slimmest of coincidences.

Villerius has made three documentaries about the case of Clinton Young, which are available on YouTube:

What I find striking about the Clinton Young case is that, twenty years after he was convicted, the fact that a prosecutor had worked for the judge suddenly emerged out of the blue. That fact alone was enough to set aside the conviction, albeit not the charges. So, in 2022, Clinton Young was given an ankle bracelet and released from prison pending his re-trial (and given the task of figuring out an iPhone for the first time in his life), even though it was the actual testimony against him that had seen him incarcerated in the first place: nobody even knew anything about the conflict of interests, and it isn’t clear how the conflict came to light (the party in question had just started working for the judge at the time, and had just ceased working for him before the revelation was made).

For all I’ve watched over two hours of video on the case of Clinton Young, I’m still not clear on what the crimes were about. To be sure, Clinton Young is a criminal. He was a gang member and he was unlawfully in possession of a handgun. This is his mugshot:

He is 18 here. Now he’s gone 41. The story goes that, when Douglas was murdered, he and four other acquaintances were out in a car in the environs of Midland, Texas, to purchase spliffs—marijuana cigars. They arrived at a given property, Page stepped out, circled the house and returned to the car, at which point the driver—Douglas— was shot twice in the head. Page says it was Young shooting from the front passenger seat; Young says it was Page as he was getting into the left-hand rear seat (it was a two-door car, so the driver had to lean forward to give the passenger access). The body was bundled into the trunk of the car, and the four remaining men drove to a creek, where the victim, still living, was unloaded and finished off with a shot to the back of the head. Another co-defendant—Mark Ray—says it was Young who did that, but later admits he administered the third gunshot to Douglas himself. That’s all we have, but why exactly Douglas was killed at all is beyond explanation; and, if it was done for reasons exclusive to the killer, one wonders why one would do it in front of three other witnesses, even if they’re of the same criminal bent as you are.¹

The second murder follows from Page and Young popping into a convenience store in (the now deceased) Douglas’s car. Young enters the shop to buy some things. When he emerges, he sees that Page has switched and is sitting in an unknown pick-up truck, with another guy (Samuel Petrey) whom Young doesn’t recognise. Page signals reassuringly and Young gets into his own (Douglas’s) car and follows the pick-up out of the forecourt. At some point, Douglas’s car is dumped, and the three continue in the pick-up to a remote oilwell, where Petrey is murdered, allegedly, says Page, “Because he knew my name.”²

Again, that’s it, and together these seem the slimmest of reasons to want to murder somebody, but no further explanation is forthcoming. We can either satisfy ourselves that, on Young’s account of the events, he certainly is not guilty of the murders, or, on Page’s account, that he certainly is guilty (Page is interviewed by Jessica Villerius in prison—he got 30 years for his part in the affair and for turning state’s evidence).

Strangely, what tends most to exculpate Young is not the conflict of interests in the prosecution team but DNA and gunpowder residue on a pair of gloves that was initially left lying at the scene of the Douglas murder, at the creek. Having been retrieved by the police, the gloves were first sent to ballistics for the gunpowder test, which was fortuitous. The test proved positive, and if the tests had been done the other way around, the DNA testing of the inside of the glove would have rendered it destroyed for gunpowder testing. Only one type of DNA was discovered inside the glove: that of David Page. No evidence from the glove was led at Young’s trial. In fact, if the police had not returned to retrieve the glove from the scene, there would have been no glove to test. More fortunate misfortune for Mr Young.

After speaking to a gun expert about the impossibility of Young having shot at least the first two shots at Douglas, and engaging counsel to investigate the facts of the case further (she may well have unearthed more than the film-maker was telling), and discovery of a plea bargain between Page and the district attorney, which was never disclosed to Young’s own counsel, the Dutch team manages, at last, to secure the tentative freedom of Clinton Young, which is predicated on none of the above, but on this extraordinary conflict of interests aspect.

All of this leaves me somewhat gasping. Rightly, the film-maker focuses on why it is that Young is on death row, and casts doubt on the judicial reasoning that has put him there. Criminal reputation is so persuasive in our law-abiding minds that prosecutors know they cannot lead proof of an accused’s criminal record as proof of the new crime alleged against them: evidence of old crimes is not evidence of new crimes, but it can be indicative of a certain attitude towards criminality. At the time of the two murders—the film mentions this—Clinton was on parole from a juvenile institution. That means that his possession of a handgun, if no one else’s, was contrary to law. He was a gang member, dealing in drugs. Despite his youthful good looks, then and now, Clinton Young was no angel. But not being an angel is no excuse to execute someone for just being a no-gooder, so that what I gasp at here is the levity with which it was decided that the state of Texas would take the life of Clinton Young.

More than that, the re-trial is still pending and, in the meantime, Young has been re-arrested (on the same or, more probably, other charges) but in Harrison county (over on the east side of Texas) whereas his current conviction was in Midland, in west Texas. That smacks of a game of cat and mouse, and that could mean precisely that: that they want to create anxiety in Young, or, if they don’t already know, they want to probe him for details of exactly what was going on on the two occasions when a man got killed. The most I can say is that it sounds unusual. The precise nature of the Harrison indictment is unknown to me.

What certainly doesn’t help Young’s case when he is arrested the first time around (in 2001) is the dramatic footage of him being stopped on a freeway and, more than that, the fact that he puts up no evidence whatsoever to contradict the three witnesses (who are co-defendants) testifying against him. This stems from his gang membership and, whilst that may be frowned upon, it doesn’t mean he committed this later offence. Although the reasons may be shrouded in illegality, gangs hold to a mantra that says, “Never snitch to the police.” Young vehemently maintained his silence in questioning and at trial, and that clearly counts against him, for at no point is the veracity of the testimony against him cast into any doubt, and that in turn raises an interesting question: should it? Should Young’s silence at trial be construed as an admission of the testimony against him?

Miranda rights (so called after the 1966 case of Miranda v. Arizona, or the right to remain silent, to have an attorney, etc.) advise a suspect or accused that effectively they do not need to raise a finger in their own defence. That is not quite right, since, in later amendments to the warning as given upon arrest, any matter on which a defendant wishes to found in his defence must be raised when he is questioned on it. Effectively, what Miranda does is avoids an accused saying, “I did it,” but still allows them to say, “I didn’t do it.” But remaining silent when it is put to the accused that he did something he will later controvert in court is a thornier matter, and can be taken as an admission. That might well be problematic given Young’s insistent silence.

One of the films accompanies Young when he is released from prison, and picked up by his mother and sister, who are of course overjoyed. When Jessica Villerius speaks to him afterwards, he tells her that he’s anxious now that he is awaiting his re-trial, that this small taste of freedom (and it is small—he cannot go more than 150 feet from his designated residence) is overshadowed by a sense that it could all be over very quickly. He jumps when he hears emergency vehicle sirens: they could only be wailing to come and fetch him, of course (he laughs his reaction off—but nervously). He frets about whether his ankle bracelet is transmitting properly because it has no light to indicate it’s working, except when it’s charging from the mains. You and I might brush that off and assume that we would not be to blame for any malfunction in the bracelet. But we are optimists, aren’t we? Clinton knows better: that if it malfunctions, it will not be the bracelet maintenance man who comes in a sprightly painted van to check it’s working, it will be a patrol car to bundle him off to the prison, saying, “We’ll work out what or who is to blame for that afterwards.” So, the second thing that I gasp at is that the system has successfully turned Clinton Young into an eternal pessimist, and now, provided of course he’s not guilty after his second trial, after spending over half his life in prison, the premise is that, without re-offending, he will some day reintegrate into society, an act that in and of itself requires the ex-con to summon all the optimism that he can muster.

Renate Bouwmeester comments at one point that, after being released from prison, he is in fact more imprisoned than he ever was: free physically, but mentally challenged to view all the opportunies that life offers, without being able to touch a single one of them.

As I say, and so far as I can tell, Young’s retrial is still pending. You can contribute to his legal costs at clintonyoungfoundation.com if you wish; he is very lucky to have these Dutch women rooting for him and setting up funds for his defence—not every death row convict has that kind of support, for sure; but not every death row convict is innocent, of course. Perhaps there’s a truth in that: that those who least deserve the shit they’re in are most likely to receive a deus ex machina as their redemption.

I have a feeling that the Texas state criminal system still wants more pounds of flesh from Clinton Young, and that, knowing that, he regarded this short sojourn in a faceless apartment in Midland as a small but welcome respite from what might yet be his ultimate fate: to be lethally injected for the murders of two men. At least, his pessimism would probably not allow him to put any better slant on it. He later secured employment in Mississippi, where he was subsequently arrested on the indictment from Harrison county. He’s back out on bond right now.

It seems hard that a state that has such a draconian punishment at its disposal as execution can be found wanting in the means it deploys to ascertain the grounds on which it is put to use. In fighting for justice for Clinton Young, the disinterested parties in the Netherlands are, ironically, not in fact fighting for justice for Texas. Their actions may meet with success for Young, but Texas will continue, oblivious to the failings and failures that sometimes mark its legal system out as cavalier.

Whether in Texas or anywhere, Clinton Young is a hard test for any legal system and for the observers of any legal system. If Clinton Young had never gone through the injustices that have beleaguered him for two decades and more, how closely would these fine Dutch ladies be hugging him? The whole story that underlies Young’s current position is rightly irrelevant to their sense of justice for how he has been wronged. His pre-history, as a gang member, does not affect that; their indifference to it is to the credit of Jessica Villerius and her cohorts; but do they know why Samuel Petrey and Doyle Douglas were killed, even if it wasn’t at the hand of Clinton Young? And if they did, would it affect their indifference?

Young is adhering to a vow of silence about what was going down that night in November 2001. He has been dealt a large portion of injustice, but the one has nothing directly to do with the other. What is the price that a man guilty of silence should have to pay? Well, Thomas More might yet not have been the last to lose his life for holding his peace.

1. There is, however, an argument in logic—which is not exactly complete, but the logic we see thus far is itself far from complete—whereby, when a killer is accused by a co-accused (here, Young is accused by Page), Page does not need to offer up any explanation as to why the victim was murdered. His accusation stops at his narration of the fact that Young killed Douglas. He cannot be expected to know why Young did so. If Young is innocent, he also will be ignorant as to the reason for Douglas’s murder. This only makes any sense provided Young is unaware of the reason for Douglas’s death. If the ploy works, Page’s secret is safe. However, if the ploy is intended to exculpate both Page and Young, it will not work unless, of course, Young is prepared to do time in order to guard his and Page’s joint secret. The fact the ploy debouches into a death sentence is perhaps an unexpected turn of events. Let’s assume it’s not a joint ploy, then Young, as the patsy, would, arguably, be unaware of the complaint Page had against Douglas.

What makes this an interesting theory is that the testimony against Young was orchestrated, by means of a plea bargain and what appears to be withholding of evidence by the prosecution (who were themselves complicit with the bench). It is even possible that Young is in some way complicit—quite how, I cannot say: his silence over aspects of the case over a time span of 20 years and more may not speak volumes, but it says something.

2. If the reader doesn’t buy the explanation for why the five men had been out in Midland at that property to purchase spliffs, then this explanation is somewhat harder to swallow than even that is. We are not told why Young and Page were out and about at all. A visit to a convenience store is not out of the ordinary, however. The fact that Young alone enters the store to buy three items indicates a situation akin to, “Just wait here in the car, I’ll be back in a few minutes.” I.e. the two intended to continue their principal errand once the purchases were made.

It’s when Young emerges from the shop that the story takes this bizarre turn: Page is sitting in another car belonging to the man whom he intends (according to Young) shortly to kill. Whether the intention to kill existed at the time when Page got into the pick-up or developed in the course of the ensuing journey is not clear. From Young’s viewpoint, he says he did not know Petrey, so, if Young did kill Petrey, it must be assumed the reason for him doing so arose during the time after Douglas’s car was dumped and before they reached the oilwell. So, why was Petrey not killed when Douglas’s car was dumped? Why did the trio then continue in the pick-up to an oilwell for the murder to then be committed? Is it more likely that Page formulated the intention to kill Petrey back at the convenience store and waited until after Douglas’s car had been dumped, to then find another remote spot to do the deed, or that, upon entering Petrey’s pick-up after dumping Douglas’s car, Young in fact formulated that intention? On those facts alone, the more likely culprit does in fact seem to be Young. The reason for the killing may still be that Petrey knew Page’s name, for whatever significance that might have, but the fact of driving out to the oilwell says to me that Young was the culprit, because it was only on that stretch of the journey that Young was in close quarters with Petrey, and Page had ample opportunity to kill Petrey when they dumped Douglas’s car.

Moreover, why were the two guys out in Douglas’s car that day? If it had been their intention to spend the day looking for a spot to dump Douglas’s car, then it surely must have proved fortuitous that they secured a lift to get them back to town once they had done so (whether Petrey was aware of the fact or otherwise). Perhaps Page had pre-arranged the lift without Young’s knowledge. Perhaps it was pre-arranged by the two of them. Perhaps Petrey said something in the pick-up that either Page or Young or both of them didn’t like, and which secured his demise. Or perhaps the whole episode arose because Petrey recognised Douglas’s car in the parking lot and wanted to play that fact to his advantage. The second murder seems to be so done on the fly as to almost beg the question as to whether there was any premeditation in anyone’s mind at all and, if there was, at what point it arose and in whose mind.