Criminal - Either/Or

Episode Date: March 18, 2016

In 1983, three men were prepared to plead guilty to the violent sexual assault of Elizabeth Daniel in Anderson, South Carolina. Defense attorneys did not want their clients to go before a jury, so they arranged a plea deal. This left the sentencing in the hands of Judge C. Victor Pyle who gave the assailants a very controversial choice: undergo castration or serve 30 years in jail. Say hello on Twitter, Facebook and Instagram. Sign up for our occasional newsletter, The Accomplice. Follow the show and review us on Apple Podcasts: iTunes.com/CriminalShow. We also make This is Love and Phoebe Reads a Mystery. Artwork by Julienne Alexander. Check out our online shop.  Episode transcripts are posted on our website. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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involving homicide detectives, ghost hunters, and even psychic mediums, and leads him to a dark secret about his own family. Check out Ghost Story, a series essential pick, completely ad-free on Apple Podcasts. This episode contains a description of a very violent sexual assault and is not appropriate for everyone.

Please use discretion. I'm Carl Anderson, Deputy Chief, Anderson County Sheriff's Office. I'm over at the Criminal Investigation Bureau. Carl Anderson began his career with the Anderson County Sheriff's Office in Anderson, South Carolina, 46 years ago. He was the county's first African-American officer. We met with him in his office at the Sheriff's Department, in a building that's named after him, and sits on a road that's also named after him, Carl Anderson Way. What do you think, after doing this for as long as you've been doing it,

what's made you a good detective? Well, number one, I'm not a big talker. I'm a listener, observer. I observe everything, you know, and I listen. And not patting myself on the back, but I think I'm pretty good at what I do. I love it, and you have to love it. I'd rather work a good homicide than eat when I was hungry. Really? No doubt about it. No doubt. We went to Anderson to talk to him about a sexual assault that took place in a Days Inn motel in 1983. This is a disturbing story, so much

so that the people involved remember it remarkably well, more than 30 years later. Carl Anderson was asleep at home when he got the phone call just after 2 a.m. He got dressed and drove to the motel where he found 23-year-old Elizabeth Daniel. It's amazing, just a miracle that she survived because the injuries are horrible. She'd been raped by three men. She knew one of them, Roscoe Brown, very well. They'd had a child together, although Brown was married to someone else. When she went to the motel that night, she thought she was meeting only him. And he wanted to break it off, and I think maybe she was asking for child support. So he, basically he did, I think he did this to discredit her,

show that she was a person that would just go out with anybody. And he didn't intend for it to go that far, but everybody got drunk, and then the other boys, they just went berserk. Can you, in what you want to, can you talk a little bit about what they did to her? Well, they are, of course, they had sex with her. Then they had a half a gallon of whiskey, and I can't remember what kind it was, but they had a half a gallon bottle. And after they finished raping her, then they stuck the bottle in her vagina.

And just, I mean, she was, the blood in the room was just, when I walked in, it was just bloody, blood all over the place. But she, they left, and she managed to get enough strength to make it to the lobby of the hotel and sat in a chair there. And it was just soaked, soaked with blood. She almost bled to death. Elizabeth Daniel lost four pints of blood and was burned all over her body with cigarette lighters. Newspapers described it as a six-hour act of unbelievable brutality. She was in the hospital for five days.

Anderson is a small town. The 1980 census put the population just under 28,000 people. It's actually gone down since then. And it didn't take long for detectives to locate the three suspects, Roscoe Brown, Mark Vaughn, and Michael Braxton, all in their 20s. Two of the men, Brown and Vaughn, were still in town and very easy to find. Michael Braxton had gone to Florida. Braxton went to Sarasota, Florida, and we found out that's where he was going. We alerted the authorities there,

and actually they had him in custody, and he still had on the bloody clothes when he was arrested. And I went to Sarasota, picked him up, and extradited him back to South Carolina. You were driving him? I drove. I was driving. He slept all the way back. Slept all the way. The entire trip.

Well, I was contacted by Michael Braxton's mother. This is Theo Mitchell, a former South Carolina state representative and a longtime attorney. He's still practicing today at age 77. She was a very pleasant lady, a very nice lady, a very concerned lady, a mother. Her child was in trouble and she sought to get assistance for her child. And I certainly gave second thought as to whether I was going to represent him. But there's no question about the fact that, number one, it was stupid. And as such, the way it was done, there's no excuse. There was no excuse. There still isn't today for the attack on

this young lady who almost bled to death, literally almost bled to death. Theo Mitchell did agree to represent Michael Braxton. The other two defendants had their own attorneys. All three men were deemed mentally competent and agreed to plead guilty. By all accounts, it should have been a straightforward ending to a very gruesome crime. Carl Anderson said it should have been a self-player, like a self-playing piano. But that's not what happened. I'm Phoebe Judge. This is criminal. There was no way, shape, form, or fashion that there had been a trial by a jury. There was a plea negotiated.

Why do you say there's no way that this could be a jury? Was it just so clear-cut? I think it was very clear-cut. They were participants. They were co-conspirators. Hand of one, the hands of all under South Carolina's doctrine. And we had searched all of them. There was no defense. There was no defense. You had to throw yourself on the court, Mercy, I think a jury would have been much more harsh than Judge C. Victor Powell, Jr.

So we had worked with the solicitor in negotiating what we thought would be a fair disposition of the case. All right. My name is George Duckworth. I was the 10th Circuit solicitor back when this case happened. I was the solicitor from 1981 to 2001. The solicitor, most folks don't know what that is. That's like the district attorney in South Carolina. He worked with Theo Mitchell and the other defense attorneys on the terms of the plea.

All three of them ended up pleading guilty. And the judge that took the guilty plea asked for a pre-sentence report, and then Judge Pyle was a separate judge who actually did the sentencing. And it was, I mean, nobody really expected that sentence. I mean, we weren't prepared for that sentence. Here's what happened. First, Judge Pyle told the court it was the worst rape case he'd ever seen. And then he gave the men a choice.

They could serve 30 years in prison, that was the maximum at the time, or spend no time in prison and undergo surgical castration. There was just dead silence in the courtroom for a moment when he handed that down, and I think a lot of people looked at each other wondering if they'd heard it right. But then, after a short time of silence, and there was a lot of talking going back and forth then, people really surprised at the sentence. Were you surprised? I was not totally surprised, because I had talked with the judge earlier, and he'd read the pre-sentence report, and I didn't know the judge that well.

It was the first time we'd had him, and I asked him if he'd decided on a sentence yet for the people. And he mentioned then that he thought about castration, but I didn't say anything else. I didn't know what to think of it. I thought he was kind of kidding at that time, but when I heard it in the courtroom, I knew he was not kidding. Have you ever been in a courtroom where you've had such an odd choice, anything odder than that? No, I don't think so, no. But Theo Mitchell was probably the first one to say something. He jumped up and objected to the sentence and said it was unconstitutional,

and he probably remembers better than I do about that. We all were shocked. Theo Mitchell. Castration, all 30 years to that extent. We looked at him and said, Your Honor? Had you ever heard anything like that before? No, it was the first one I'd ever heard. It was a shocker.

And I said, my God. He said, that's my sentence. He said, better take them away. Do you remember what Braxton said to you after the word castration was used, what his initial reaction was? He looked at me. I was a little short, and he looked at me.

He said, castration. And I said, yeah, that's what he said. That's when I said, Judge, if I'm not misguided, Judge, I can't do that. Braxton questioned me. I questioned the judge. The judge said, that's my sentence. And he banged the gavel. Once they banged that gavel, that's it.

Shut up and get out. Or they'll that gavel, that's it. Shut up and get out. Or they'll take you away. That's right. We'll be right back. Support for Criminal comes from Apple Podcasts. We'll be right back. It's a seven-part series that follows journalist Tristan Redman as he tries to get to the bottom of a ghostly presence in his childhood home. His investigation takes him on a journey involving homicide detectives, ghost hunters, and even psychic mediums, and leads him to a dark secret about his own family. Check out Ghost Story, a series essential pick, completely ad-free on Apple Podcasts. We are joined by Kylie Robeson, the senior AI reporter for The Verge, to give you a primer on how to integrate AI into your life. So tune into AI Basics, How and When to Use AI, a special series from Pivot sponsored by AWS, wherever you get your podcasts. So in 1983, I would have been in the ninth grade.

This is Nancy Jo Thomason. Her father, Glenn Thomason, represented defendant Mark Vaughn. Her father has since passed away, and Nancy Jo has taken over his law practice in Anderson. But I knew something had happened when he was on the six o'clock news that night and came home, you know, let's turn on the news, dad's on the news. And then the phone started ringing. And the vision that I have, the visual, every time I think about this, is the phone on the wall in the kitchen, getting up frequently to answer the phone. And it was ABC News, NBC News, CBS News, the New York Times. And I thought that something you know, something had happened

and my dad had become a superstar of sorts. I mean, I just remember being amazed at this media attention because it had never happened before. And so I did quickly come to understand what was going on in the case, talked to my dad about it, what's going on, why is this, you know, what does castration mean? You know, what does castration mean, you know, what does that even mean? Nancy Jo's father, along with Theo Mitchell and the other defense attorneys, immediately began an appeals process. Her father told the New York Times, what Judge Pyle is advocating here is physical mutilation of the men. No court can stand for that. And so the next step in the process was waiting for the South Carolina Supreme Court to hear the case. Initially, there was some confusion

about what surgical castration entailed. Some said it would make it impossible for the men to ever have sex again, and praised the judge for handing down a biblical sort of punishment, an eye-for-an-eye situation. But the surgery does not necessarily prevent a person from having sex. It diminishes sex drive due to a significant reduction in testosterone. It also prevents a man from getting a woman pregnant. Defendant Roscoe Brown told reporters, it comes down to 30 years in jail or the rest of your life without children. The criticism was widespread. The president of the National Organization for Women called the sentence barbaric and said, quote, it reinforces the notion

that rape is a sexual act and not an act of violence. Others were concerned that the castration option just wasn't enough. It let the men off the hook and back out into the world. We made several attempts to talk with Judge Pyle for this story, but he declined. I don't think he likes to talk about the case very much. But I remember a lot of the controversy of the time, a lot of the things that I was reading in the newspaper articles that were being written about it, the magazine articles that were being written about it, the things I saw on TV, was that there was this argument an issue of sex or was this rape an issue of violence? And if you took away the urge for the sexual desire in a man,

would you take away the urge for the violence? And was there a way that you could prevent someone from potentially being harmful to somebody else in the future without having to just lock them up and throw away the key. So those were the, I remember those being the issues or the ideas that were being thrown around at the time. I can't attribute any of those to Judge Pyle. But knowing the type of judge that he is,

and I've had court in front of him many times, I have to say that I feel certain that it was well thought out, that it was well intentioned. He is not the type of man, lawyer, judge, just to try to make a name for himself or showboat or any of those sorts of things. I truly believe that he had some reason to think that he was doing something innovative, but in a just way. This was a sentiment expressed by everyone we talked to, that Judge Pyle was a fair, good, and thoughtful judge. Here's solicitor George Duckworth. He's an excellent judge. I mean, I had him many times after that, and he was always very

good to work with, always did a good job on his sentencing and everything, and took his job very seriously. I think it was just such a horrible crime, and I don't think he expected them to take that option. But he just thought that was a good way of expressing how serious he thought the crime was. I think he was trying to send a message that these types of crimes will not be tolerated. He sent a darn good message. And I think the message was heard by a lot of people. I don't know if I have a right to answer this question because I'm a woman, but it seems to me that maybe the idea of castration over 30 years in prison,

I mean, why wouldn't they take castration as an option? 30 years is such a long time. It's a long time, but one thing about it is when you deal with the manhood, well, let's put it this way, when you deal with a man's manhood, sometimes pride is something that you will adhere to more than looking at time. As time went on, all three men eventually tried to drop their appeals and elect for castration. Roscoe Brown actually submitted what's called a writ of mandamus, essentially asking the court to immediately authorize his castration. But by then, it was too late. The case was already before the state Supreme Court,

and they found Judge Pyle's sentence to be cruel and unusual punishment. This is the South Carolina Supreme Court decision. It was in 1985. Castration is a form of mutilation and is prohibited by Article 1, Section 15. Accordingly, we remand all three cases to the lower court for resentencing in accordance with this opinion. Brown's petition for writ of mandamus is denied. Today, some states do have castration on the books, but it's so-called chemical castration. In 1996, California became the first state to approve it.

At least eight other states have versions of chemical castration in their laws as conditions of parole. Individuals receive monthly injections of the same hormone women take for birth control, Depo-Provera, to lower their testosterone levels. That process is reversed when the injections stop. Roscoe Brown, Mark Vaughn, and Michael Braxton began their 30-year prison sentences. But because of South Carolina's old parole guidelines, they were let out early, very early,

against solicitor George Duckworth. I mean, back then, you could get a 30-year sentence and you were eligible for parole in a third of that time, and then you got credit for good time and that sort of thing. And as time has gone on, we now have the 85% rule where you have to do 85% of the sentence, and then we have life without parole, too. So you can get a much more severe sentence now than you could back then.

Did that frustrate you ever? I wonder, as the Jehovah's Solicitor Prosecutor, you know, District Attorney, seeing that there were these crimes going on that really had punishments that weren't strong enough. Oh, yeah. Yeah, I saw that a lot. I had a real interesting thing happen to me one time. I was in a restaurant eating, and a fellow came up to me who I had tried and gotten a life sentence on, and he introduced himself to me, and I said, I was thinking you got a life sentence. He said, I did, but I've already done my sentence, and I'm out. He'd done about eight years on a burglary that he'd gotten a life sentence on, and he was out. Fortunately, he was a very nice fellow when he got out.

According to Anderson's local newspaper, the Independent Mail, two of the assailants, Roscoe Brown and Mark Vaughn, quote, went on to lead lawful lives. But the third, Michael Braxton, had been permitted to finish his parole in Tennessee. And just two years after they let him out, he was convicted of raping another woman. For the last 20 years, he's been serving his sentence for that crime in Tennessee. So kind of the way that this all came back to the surface is about two or three months ago, I got a phone call from one of the reporters from the local Anderson Independent newspaper. And he says, Nancy Jo, do you remember that case your dad had about 30 years ago about that castration case?

And I said, of course I do. I was all over that. And he started asking me questions. I said, why on earth do you care about this case now? What on earth could possibly be happening with this case now? And he said, well, one of the guys that was convicted is coming back into court. He's coming back to court for something. And he's got a bond hearing. And I said, what are you talking about? And he said, I'm not real sure yet, but there's a bond hearing on Monday. So I went to the courthouse on Monday to try to figure out what was happening. And 20 years ago, South Carolina, Triple P, probation, pardon, and parole,

gets noticed that he's been, that their parolee has been arrested in another state. So they issue a parole violation warrant for him. So there's been this warrant for his arrest for violating his parole for 20 years, sitting in a drawer somewhere, waiting to be executed. So he finishes his sentence in Tennessee. He's getting ready to be released in Tennessee. They have a hold on him that says he now needs to go to South Carolina. So he gets brought to South Carolina, they bring him to Anderson County Jail, and now he has to answer for violating his parole, which obviously committing another crime at all, but certainly committing another rape, is a violation of the parole that he had here. On January 20th of this year, the parole board voted unanimously to revoke the original parole Braxton was given after the rape of Elizabeth Daniel in 1983.

Elizabeth Daniel passed away in 2010. He's starting the second half of his sentence now, more than 30 years after the original sentence. If he had done the entire time, he'd be out of prison by now. So that's, to me, the interesting piece of the case is that here we are 30 years later with him starting over, finishing the sentence that he was given way back when. It's not unusual at all that his parole was revoked. But even 20 years after the fact? Yeah, even 20 years after the fact. George Duckworth.

This guy has shown that he cannot live in society, that if he gets out, he's going to do it again. I mean, he's already done it twice. You'd think he would have learned his lesson after the first time. Michael Braxton is now incarcerated at Kershaw Correctional Institution in Kershaw, South Carolina. His scheduled release is May 10, 2021. We sent him a letter, but haven't heard back. Just a few weeks ago, an Alabama state representative, Steve Hurst, proposed a bill that would require surgical castration for sex offenders who'd committed offenses against children under the age of 12. They'd also have to pay for the surgery themselves. Thank you. You can see it at thisiscriminal.com. We're on Facebook and Twitter, at Criminal Show. Criminal is recorded in the studios of North Carolina Public Radio, WUNC.

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