Foreman first entered
the case when Ray was falling out with his then lawyer, Arthur Hanes.
The main cause of their conflict was author William Bradford Huie who
had contacted Hanes before he first visited with Ray in London,
saying that he wanted exclusive rights to Ray's story. The three had
quickly entered into an agreement in which Huie would give Hanes and
Ray a percentage of the gross receipts from his writings and Ray's
share would go to Hanes to pay for his defense. Huie never actually
met with Ray because he was not allowed to visit him in jail. Instead
he would ask him questions via Hanes. But when information Hanes gave
to Huie appeared in articles he wrote for Look magazine, Ray
became upset. “My anger at Huie”, Ray later wrote, “focused on
his revealing the defense too soon.” (Ray, Who Killed Martin
Luther King?, p. 117)
Things came to a head
when Ray came to believe that Huie was also behind Hanes' insistence
that he should not take the stand to testify in his own defense;
something Ray was determined to do. Huie, quite clearly, did not want
Ray to testify because his story would then become public domain and
Huie's exclusive rights would become worthless. In an effort to keep
him off the stand, Huie sent Ray's brother Jerry a first-class plane
ticket to visit with him in Hartselle, Alabama. According to Jerry,
Huie wasted no time in offering him $13,000 up front “if I could
get Jimmy to guarantee that he would not take the witness stand on
his own behalf...Huie went on to say that the $13,000.00 was just for
'starters,' that there would be 'plenty more' if I could convince
Jimmy not to take the witness stand...I countered that possibly the
Haneses might not go for that. Immediately, Huie's ego overtook him,
and he puffed up like a spoiled kid. 'I'm the one controlling the
money here!' he stormed. 'You let me worry about the Haneses; they'll
do whatever I tell them to do!'”
Disturbed by his meeting with Huie, Jerry went to visit with Ray in
prison and informed him that “Huie's controlling the case, not the
Haneses.” (Ray & Tamara Carter, A Memoir of
Injustice, p. 78-79) He
suggested that his brother get a new lawyer. “I saw this famous
Texas lawyer, Percy Foreman, on a TV talk show,” Jerry said. “He
looked to me like he knew his business.” (Who Killed
Martin Luther King?, p. 118)
Ray
agreed that it was time to look for new representation but he wanted
a lawyer based in Tennessee. Nonetheless, Jerry went ahead and
contacted Foreman on his own. Foreman said he was interested in
taking the case but wanted a letter from Ray requesting that he visit
him in jail. Ray refused to write the letter and and said he would go
to trial with Hanes. Jerry again contacted Foreman who asked Jerry
and his other brother John to meet him at Memphis International
airport and to bring with them copies of the contracts between Huie,
Hanes and Ray. Contracts in hand, one day before Ray's trial was to
begin, Foreman made his way to the Shelby County Jail. As Ray later
testified, once there, Foreman told him that “the only thing Mr.
Hanes and Mr. Huie was interested in was money...and if I stuck with
them I would be barbecued.” (Mark Lane and Dick Gregory, Murder
in Memphis, p. 193) He told
Ray that, if hired, he could break the contracts with Hanes and Huie
and would ensure that no more stories were written until after the
trial. He also boasted about his impressive record of losing only one
client to the electric chair in over 1500 death-penalty cases.
Suitably impressed by Foreman's spiel, Ray agreed to fire Hanes and
retain Foreman.
Within
a few days, having had the trial postponed, Foreman had set up
residence at the historic Peabody hotel in downtown Memphis where,
according to Jerry Ray, he did little more than drink Scotch and talk
about himself. As Jerry describes it, “You couldn't get a word in
edgewise with Foreman, because he manipulated the entire conversation
by loudly revealing his accomplishments...He would knock back a
healthy slug of scotch and prance around the room like a rooster. He
really enjoyed rehashing the Candace Mossler murder trial in which he
had defended Candy Mossler. He said, 'Everybody knew that Candy and
her stud nephew cold-bloodedly murdered Jaques Mossler for his
money...By the time I was through with the jury, they wanted to raise
Jaques Mossler and kill him all over again! And I can do the same
damn thing with your brother's case. Hell, boy, they don't have any
solid evidence on your brother...This is the easiest murder case I've
ever defended...I don't even have to prepare. All I've gotta do is
sit here in the Peabody, call up room service, sip on good scotch,
and give some interviews to the press until trial.'” (A
Memoir of Injustice, p. 82-83)
Foreman's
disinterest in preparing a defense was also noted by Arthur Hanes,
who said that he offered him all of his files without fee but
Foreman didn't want them. “We showed him what we had, advised him
he was welcome to everything he could see...We tried to outline the
case for him, tell him what we knew. He didn't seem to be too
interested. We offered him everything we had. He took nothing with
him.” Hanes' son, Arthur, Jr., who assisted in Ray's defense,
concurred: “He wasn't interested in the case. He wanted to drink
some scotch, eat some dinner, and talk about his famous cases. He
also told us about how he made speeches all over the country.”
(Murder in Memphis, p.
200) By his own admission, Foreman never even asked Ray if he was
guilty or whether or not there had been a conspiracy. In fact he told
reporters after the guilty plea hearing, “I don't give a damn if
there was a conspiracy.” (Harold Weisberg, Frame-Up,
p. 85)
Foreman,
of course, would never admit that he had conducted no investigation
on Ray's behalf nor that he had never really intended to try the
case. He claimed to have devoted 80 to 90% of his time to Ray's case
and stated under oath during a civil action that he had employed “six
or eight” students from Memphis State University as investigators.
And yet he could not provide the name of a single one of these
students. Nor could he remember when he hired them, how much they
were paid, or how many hours they spent investigating. (HSCA MLK Vol.
5 p. 152-163) The HSCA apparently tracked down one of these students,
a man named Thomas Emerson Smith, who “told the committee that
neither he nor any of the other students who were chosen to work with
Foreman ever conducted a single interview. In fact, according to
Smith, the group was never asked by Foreman to carry out any type of
investigation whatsoever.” (HSCA MLK Vol. 13, p. 228) Little
wonder, then, that Foreman “couldn't recall” the details.
Although
he claimed to have personally interviewed many witnesses, the HSCA
noted that “Numerous witnesses were never contacted by Foreman or
any of his representatives.” (ibid.) Among those whom Foreman
admitted he had never bothered interviewing was the State's
star-witness, Charles Stephens—the one and only witness whom the
State claimed could identify Ray as fleeing the scene. The HSCA also
reported that “Foreman has refused to give the numbers or
identities of all the witnesses that he claimed to have interviewed.”
(ibid.) Which is not surprising really since he was clearly lying
through his teeth. He was never able to provide any files from
his investigation, to the HSCA or anyone else, for the obvious reason
that he never conducted one. He never even attempted to obtain the
FBI ballistics report that concluded the death slug could not be
matched to Ray's rifle. Among the many lies Foreman told to cover his
own ass was that he had spent up to 75 hours questioning Ray. As the
HSCA found out, this was demonstratively false. The Shelby County
jail logs “indicated that Foreman visited with Ray approximately 20
hours from the time he entered the case in November 1968 to the March
10, 1969, guilty plea. According to the logs, Foreman spent an
inordinately small amount of time with his client for a case of such
magnitude.” (HSCA Report, p. 320)
The
only thing Foreman showed any real interest in once he entered the
case was making sure he received his $150,000 fee. Upon replacing
Hanes, one of the first things he did was get Ray to sign his
Ford Mustang and the alleged murder weapon over to him. Soon after,
he contacted William Bradford Huie and, on November 27, 1968, the
pair met for lunch. Huie wrote of the meeting: “Mr. Foreman liked
my three-way contract with Ray. All he wanted was for Mr. Hanes to
get out so he could have what Mr. Hanes had had. 'I like the idea of
owning sixty per cent of one of your books,' he said, 'while you own
only forty per cent. So you get Hanes out and let me in, then,
goddamit, get to work and write us a good book and make us a good
movie and make us some money.'” (Huie, He Slew the
Dreamer, p. 208) Once he had
gotten Hanes out of the way, and had Ray's share of the royalties
signed over to himself, Foreman went about thinking up other ways in
which he could line his own pocket.
On
one occasion, he tried to get Ray to agree to an interview with
establishment author George McMillan for which McMillan would be
willing to pay at least $5000. Ray declined. On another, without
Ray's knowledge, he went before the Judge presiding over the
case and asked for permission to have a photographer from Life
magazine take pictures of Ray in his jail cell. “In exchange for
exclusive rights to publish the photographs”, Ray recalled, “Life
would contribute $5000 to my defense fund, better known as Percy
Foreman's pocket.” (Who Killed Martin Luther King? p. 124)
After Judge Preston Battle turned him down, Foreman showed up at
Ray's cell with copies of the infamous photographs of three tramps
who were arrested in Dealey Plaza on the day of President Kennedy's
assassination. As part of another attempt to cut a deal with Life
magazine, he wanted Ray to identify one of the tramps as
“Raoul”, the man Ray said set him up.
On
February 13, 1969, Foreman abruptly arrived at Ray's cell with a
letter for him to sign. As Ray recalled, Foreman told him that “he
needed 'evidence' that he had advised me to let him negotiate a
guilty plea on my behalf.” (Who Killed Martin Luther King?,
p. 127) Ray signed the letter in acknowledgement of receipt but told
Foreman that he didn't intend to plead guilty. What Ray did not know
was that Foreman had already been discussing the possibility of a
guilty plea with the prosecution for several weeks and he was
determined to make it happen. In the letter he had Ray sign, Foreman
wrote that in his opinion there was “little more than a ninety-nine
percent chance of your receiving a death penalty verdict if your case
goes to trial. Furthermore, there is a hundred percent chance of a
guilty verdict.” He told Ray that the media had already convicted
him, pointing to specific articles in Life, Reader's
Digest, and the Memphis Commercial Appeal, and
suggested that “the court clerk would manipulate the juror pool so
I'd be up against a panel of angry blacks intent on revenge and
chamber-of-commerce types who only wanted to lock me up and get back
to business.” (ibid.) Nonetheless, Ray stood his ground and
insisted on going to trial.
Foreman
then travelled to St. Louis and attempted to convince members of
Ray's family to help him persuade Ray to plead guilty. Jerry recalled
that Foreman was “crying and putting on a show...He told us that if
Jimmy demanded a trial and took the witness stand, he would surely
fry in the hot seat.” (A Memoir of Injustice, p. 83) The
family did not agree but that did not stop Foreman from telling Ray
that they did. He worked on Ray relentlessly, insisting, “They're
gonna fry your ass”. But Ray still would not give in. He then
resorted to what Ray called “terror tactics”. The FBI, he
said, had been looking into the criminal history of the family. He
said they were going to send Ray's father back to Iowa prison for a
40-year-old parole violation and they were going to arrest his
brother Jerry as a co-conspirator in the King slaying. Finally,
Foreman told him that if he forced the case to trial, “he couldn't
swear he'd do his utmost to defend me.” ( Who Killed Martin
Luther King?, p. 131)
Worried
that Foreman would purposely throw the case and doom him to the
electric chair, Ray wanted to change lawyers again. However, Judge
Preston Battle would not allow any further continuances and said that
if Ray dismissed Foreman he would have to go to trial with the public
defender, Hugh Stanton. Stanton had joined the defense against Ray's
wishes on December 18, 1968, and, when Foreman had missed a court
appearance due to pneumonia, Judge Battle had promoted Stanton to
co-counsel. The most remarkable aspect of his appointment to the
defense is that Stanton was already the attorney for the State's star
witness, Charlie Stephens. Apparently Judge Battle was unconcerned
about the obvious conflict of interest. In any case, Ray did not
trust Stanton (with good reason, it turns out, since Stanton was in
the prosecutor's office within hours of his appointment offering to
plead his new client) and believed he had little choice but to stick
with Foreman.
Ray
was weakening so Foreman pressed his advantage. He convinced Ray that
once the plea hearing was over, he could hire another lawyer who
could easily get the case re-opened and Ray could have the trial he
desired. He offered to give Ray's brother Jerry $500 to hire a
lawyer providing he agreed to plead guilty. He even put this writing
in a March 9, 1969, letter that stipulated the $500 advance was
“contingent upon the plea of guilty and sentence going through on
March 10, 1969, without any unseemly conduct on your part in court.”
Finally, feeling he had little choice, Ray relented, agreed to plead
guilty, and accepted a 99-year sentence.
There
is one important factor that the reader needs to bear in mind here
and that is that, thanks to the deeply unsettling conditions of his
incarceration, Ray was in a severely weakened mental state when he
finally gave in to Foreman's persistent and aggressive campaign. For
eight months he was kept in a maximum security cell with steel
plates over the windows and blinding lights on him 24-hours-a-day. He
was not allowed outside to get fresh air, and cameras and microphones
picked up his every move. Two guards were always present in his cell
with him and he was not even allowed to use the toilet without
supervision. Jerry Ray noted that “It was an obvious attempt by the
System to break down Jimmy emotionally, physically and mentally, in
hopes of rendering him incapable of making sound decisions.” (A
Memoir of Injustice, p. 76) Which, in the end, is exactly what
happened. In 1979, the HSCA satisfied itself based on the testimony
of Dr. McCarthy DeMere—a plastic surgeon and reserve deputy sheriff
who was assigned to look after Ray following his extradition—that
“The facilities Ray occupied were comparable to a good motel suite
and compared favourably to a first-grade suite in an ordinary
hospital”. (HSCA Report, p. 322) Which would almost be funny if it
wasn't so disgusting. The committee did not take testimony from Ray's
London solicitor, Michael Eugene, who visited with him in early 1969
and was taken aback by the deterioration in Ray's condition; saying
that he looked sick, weak, and nervous. (Mark Lane & Dick
Gregory, Murder in Memphis, p. 190) Which, Ray said, is
exactly how he felt.
Should
the reader doubt that his jail conditions had a significant effect on
Ray's mental health, and played an integral part in his decision to
plead guilty, they need understand only one thing: Shortly after his
extradition, the State offered Ray, through the Haneses, a
life-sentence in exchange for a guilty plea. A life sentence in
Tennessee in 1968 was only 13 years. And, as Hanes Jr. testified in
1999, the plea bargain they were offered at that point “allowed for
parole in ten years.” (The 13th Juror, p. 208) Ray turned
the offer down and insisted on going to trial. If Ray were in his
right mind in March of 1969, would he, having already turned down a
sentence of 13 years with possibility of parole after 10, have
accepted a 99-year sentence with no possibility of parole? Of course
not. The hellish conditions of his jail cell quite clearly
deteriorated his physical and mental well-being to the point that he
was unable to think clearly or resist the pressure put on him by his
own lawyer, the “great” Percy Foreman.
Even
so, on the day of his hearing, Ray made sure to get something
important on record. When Judge Battle asked “Are you pleading
guilty of murder in the first degree in this case because you killed
Dr. Martin Luther King under such circumstances that it would make
you legally guilty of murder in the first degree under the law as
explained to you by your lawyers?” Ray equivocated, “Yes, legally
guilty, uh-huh.” [my emphasis] Then, shortly after Foreman had
told the jury “Took me a month to convince myself of the fact which
the Attorney General of the United States and J. Edgar
Hoover...anounced last July; that is, just what Gen. Canale has told
you, that there was not a conspiracy”, Ray interrupted the
proceedings:
Mr.
RAY: Your honor, I would like to say something too, if I may.
THE
COURT: All right.
Mr.
RAY: I don't want to change anything I have said. I don't want to add
anything onto it either. The only thing I have to say is, I don't
exactly accept the theories of Mr. Clark. In other words, I am not
bound to accept these theories of Mr. Clark.
Mr.
FOREMAN: Who is Mr. Clark?
Mr.
RAY: Ramsey Clark.
Mr.
FOREMAN: Oh.
Mr.
Ray: And Mr. Hoover.
Mr.
FOREMAN: Mr. Who?
Mr.
RAY: J. Edgar Hoover. The only thing, I say I am not -- I agree to
all these stipulations. I am not trying to change anything. I just
want to add something onto it.
THE
COURT: You don't agree with whose theories?
Mr.
RAY: I meant Mr. Canale, Mr. Foreman, Mr. Ramsay Clark. I mean on the
conspiracy thing I don't want to add something onto it which I
haven't agreed to in the past.
In
other words, despite the intense and disorienting pressure he was
under, Ray still found the strength and presence of mind to only
agree to being “legally” not actually guilty, and to insist that
there had been a conspiracy.
Three
days after the hearing, he wrote a letter to Judge Battle stating,
“I wish to inform the Honorable Court that famous Houston attorney
Percy Fourflusher is no longer representing me in any capacity...I
intend to file for a post conviction hearing in the very near
future...” A few days later, Ray wrote Judge Battle again: “I
would respectfully request this court to treat this letter as a legal
notice of an intent to ask for a reversal of the 99-year sentence
petitioner received in this aforementioned court.” On March 31,
1969, Judge Battle died of a heart attack. He was found slumped
across his desk with Ray's letter under his head. Under Tennessee law
at the time, if a Judge died whilst considering an application for a
new trial, the application was automatically granted. Battle was
considering two such applications at the time he died. One was
granted. Ray's was not.
James
Earl Ray would spend the rest of his life trying and failing to get
the trial Percy Foreman and the State of Tennessee denied him.
