Customer Reviews

White Lies: Rape, Murder & Justice Texas Style

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As a citizen of Conroe and someone who lived throuh the events, I find this book an amazing and horrifying story of justice gone wrong. Small town justice at its worst in Texas.

I live in Montgomery County Texas and unfortunately this book is as accurate as it is frightening. The book does a wonderful job of exposing the racism which exists just below the surface in Conroe and throughout Texas.

Recommended for anyone who wants to be shocked and disgusted at what can happen in Small Town USA today.

White Lies by Nick Davies should be required reading for all Texas high school students. This is a well chronicled story of Clarence Brandley, a school janitor in Conroe, Texas. When a high school cheerleader is brutally assaulted and murdered during a Saturday practice at school, the local police are called to the scene. They quickly identify the perpetrator of the heinous crime: Clarence Brandley. The only evidence to support their conclusion? Brandley is the only black custodian. Tried and convicted of capital murder, Brandley receives the death penalty and languishes on death row for years. Is there justice in Texas? If you're white and wealthy. No white person has ever been executed in Texas for killing a black. Former Texas Governor George Bush proudly claims that no innocent person was ever executed on his "shift". Little would he know. Proponents of the death penalty need to read this chilling account. Perhaps something would have been learned from history, instead of being forced to repeat previous mistakes - or injustice. Napoleon Beasley, a black man who as a teenager killed the father of a federal court judge, was convicted by a racist jury and sentenced to death. Recently he received a stay of execution. When will this insanity end? Incidentally, the book is very difficult to find - especially in Texas!

This exceptionally well-documented account of an innocent man being railroaded and consequently convicted and sentenced to die by not only law enforcement officials, but prosecutors and judges as well underscores the most compelling argument for the abolition of the death penalty. Human beings, notwithstanding being on the "right" side of the law,can not only make honest mistakes, but can also abuse their power to commit the most horrific of crimes......to knowingly arrest, convict, imprison, and execute an innocent person.

I read this book about 10 years ago. It is one of the best books I have ever read. It is horrifying, and unbelievable, but you will not put it down. Nick has a brilliant writing style. Hope the publishers reprint it -I lent mine to someone and have been looking for another for years.

Generally, I'll read a book for a second time only if I feel it has something extra to offer that draws me back to it. Recently re-read "White Lies" after some twenty years, Nick Davies' disturbing true story of gross racial injustice in a small East Texas town, Conroe, where an innocent victim Clarence Brandley, a black high school janitor, was set up and convicted by a web of white lies and sentenced to death for murder for no reason other than he was black. Repeat! Simply because he was black, full stop. And because of the colour of his skin, and for no other reason, in the eyes of the law and the legal establishment of Conroe, Montgomery County, Brandley was presumed guilty from the outset and elected to be the murderer, never mind there was no evidence against him. Right from the outset too, law enforcement officer Wesley Styles, Texas Ranger, (complete with gleaming white stetson and sparkling silver star) had kept a blind focus on convicting Brandley for the murder, operating on the basis that he had already gotten his man and ignoring any leads that could prove otherwise. So black Brandley was elected to be the murderer, simple as that, job done, problem solved, even before an investigation had been properly conducted and evidence gathered against him. Once Brandley had been elected to take the blame, the Conroe courthouse set out full steam ahead to convict him regardless of any facts or evidence at odds with their predetermined conclusion.

"White Lies" dramatically exposes the grim, chilling truth obscured by the maze of corruption (legal establishment and law enforcement conspiracy and witness intimidation) underlying this gross, ugly perversion of justice in the town of Conroe, Montgomery County in 1981 (yes, in the 1980's would you believe!) - a perversion of justice that was the legal equivalent of Ku-Klux-Klan lynch-mob justice of an earlier time, almost resulting in what would have been a legal lynching fully endorsed by the town of Conroe, Montgomery County, Texas. At the dark heart of the project to convict Brandley was the Conroe courthouse itself, with a roll call (among others) of District Attorney in collusion with a succession of judges - racist liars all, with a blind focus set on convicting their elected victim Brandley and sending an innocent man to his death. Texas injustice, Conroe courthouse style, ensured that Brandley's fate was sealed and the verdict in the trial a foregone conclusion.

And the town of Conroe stood by twiddling it's thumbs and watched it happen! Conroe was, in effect, convicted of racism. There was no campaign from the local press or from leading citizens of the town to clean up the court - on the contrary, the press relished Brandley's conviction. Corrupt public officials who had run the trial and watched Brandley being railroaded were returned to office as a matter of course at the next elections. Ultimately, Brandley's outrageous conviction was an act of the people of Conroe. The white people of Conroe knew their ringleaders in the courthouse were up to no good and did nothing about it. With an appalling track-record of public murder of black people in its recent history, the reputation of Conroe and its courthouse was left in ruins. Highly recommended dramatic account of a monstrous miscarriage of justice in the town of Conroe, Montgomery County, Texas.

does anyone remember the name of the movie that was based on this story?

While I certainly will not dispute the fact that racism does exist in this country and has influenced (very prejudicially) the results of many cases where a black man was accused of raping and killing a young white woman, I can't help but feel that Nick Davies has slanted some of the facts in this case. Let me briefly go over some of them for you:

On Saturday, August 23, 1980, Cheryl Ferguson, a girl's volleyball team member, came to Conroe High School in Conroe, Texas at around 9 a.m. to participate in a tournament. Upon arrival, Cheryl left the gym area where the other girls had begun to warm up for their matches to go to the bathroom. Less than three hours later, her nude body was found under a piece of wood in the upper part of the school auditorium by janitors Henry Peace and Clarence Brandley.

When all of the janitors (Sam Martinez, Gary Acreman, John Sessum and Henry Peace) were questioned, each of them (even Brandley) told the same story, albeit in slightly different details: Clarence Brandley directed the other janitors to set up chairs in the school cafeteria. The janitors finished their jobs. While waiting for Brandley to tell them what to do next, three of them (Martinez, Sessum, and Acreman) saw Cheryl Ferguson go into the restroom. After she went into the restroom, Brandley came up behind with several rolls of toilet paper. Upon being told that a girl was in the bathroom, Brandley told the three men and Peace to go across the street to the vocational building. They waited for 45 minutes for Brandley to reappear. Finally he did and told them they could go home for the day. Later on, Brandley and Peace were informed by several girls that Cheryl Ferguson was missing. Peace and Brandley found the auditorium door unlocked and began searching the balcony. Brandley asked Peace three times to search the balcony area before Cheryl Ferguson's body was found.

Nowhere in any of these statements did any of the janitors point the finger at each other. In addition, Brandley's whereabouts were unaccounted for during a 45-minute period at about the same time as that of the victim's disappearance. Also, according to the other custodians, Brandley was the only school employee in or around the main building who had keys to the auditorium, storerooms, and other doors in the building at the time of the offense. Finally, none of the janitors ever reported seeing James Dexter Robinson anywhere near the premises, though they would each "remember" that he was there seven years later.

This evidence clearly showed that Clarence Brandley had the sole and exclusive opportunity to commit the capital murder of Cheryl Ferguson. However, exclusive opportunity is sometimes not enough to be able to obtain a conviction (see Lizzie Borden case) in a trial. The fact that there were several pubic hairs that did not belong to either the victim or Brandley as well as several drops of blood that did not belong to either of them doesn't necessarily mean that Brandley was completely innocent, but, rather, raises the possibility that he might have had some assistance in this crime.

I will admit that the destruction of over 50% of the trial exhibits in the Brandley case just after his conviction and the State's adamant refusal to perform DNA tests Martinez, Sessum and Acreman was very surprising, though I do not believe that it rises all the way to the level of racial prejudice. Please recall, if you will, that, according to the U.S. Supreme Court's decision in Arizona v. Youngblood, 488 U.S. 51 (1988): "The police do not have a constitutional duty to perform any particular tests...A defendant must show that the destruction was the product of bad faith on the part of the State." I also will admit that the "walk through" conducted by Texas Ranger Wesley Styles might not have been the best idea because there is always the possibility that memories could be manipulated. However, a comparison with the statements Sessum, Martinez, and Acreman gave before and after the walk through show only a few discrepancies of minor importance. Finally, their recantations seven years after the fact plus the emergence of James Dexter Robinson around the same time must be viewed with extreme skepticism since none of the janitors ever reported seeing Robinson in the building that day and none of the other volleyball players, including Cheryl Bradshaw, reported seeing him in the gymnasium until a broadcast of the case was aired in 1986.

Even though I believe that Brandley might have been innocent, I feel that there was enough credible evidence for him to be convicted. I also believe that, while some of the things that occurred in his case were certainly regrettable, they did not rise to the level of racial prejudice. I do, however, recommend this book for anyone who wants to learn a lot about racial prejudices in the South. It is my distinct hope that the reader will pursue the truth for him/herself by reading other sources that offer different perspectives.