Banishing Fear: A Conversation with Laura Caldwell

by Jamie Freveletti

Last night I had the privilege of attending a show called "Woman To Woman" that featured The Outfit's own Laura Caldwell and hosted by Jen Weigel and Mary Long, two former WLS radio announcers. The show also featured Jennifer Connor, the head of her own company that sells mustard, and Shea Vaughn a fitness and lifestyle expert.

The topics ranged from fitness to health to happiness. At one point all three women were asked what advice would they give it they could go back twenty years. Ms. Vaughn said she would advise others to "be more present in the moment." She cautioned that life passes and the moments won't come back. Good advice for those of us who are always looking for the next hill to climb and aren't paying attention to the here and now. Ms. Connor suggested that you need to follow the signs in your life that will lead you down the right path, and her story of signs involving mustard and the biblical mustard seed story was funny and really inspiring. And Laura said she'd banish fear.

For those who aren't aware, Laura was instrumental in freeing a young man wrongfully held in Chicago's prison system for six years without a trial. Her latest non fiction book: Long Way Home: A young man lost in the system and the two women who found him tells the story of the trial. Laura and her girlfriend, criminal defense attorney Catharine O'Daniel, worked together to defend the man. He'd signed a confession after being tortured, and as Ms. O'Daniel said "99% of signed confession cases end up in a guilty verdict."

Last night Laura made it clear that as she sat at the table waiting for the verdict to come back the import of what she was doing hit her. The man's life would be forever altered and as she said, "if he was convicted and sent to death row I would have carried that enormous burden for the rest of my life."

After the show Laura and I went to have a drink with the other attendees. Now, let me tell you there are no better late night companions than those on The Outfit. We always have a blast and with Laura I also always learn something while having fun. We talked about life, love, men, women, children and our careers and hopes and dreams. Laura is involved with the "Life After Innocence Project" and will be taking it to the next level in order to assist even more individuals who are falsely imprisoned, freed and suddenly find themselves out in the world.

To think that this woman has any fear at all is a stretch for me to imagine. She took on an enormous responsibility that, as a civil litigator, she need have never faced, and she worked to save that individual. I told her exactly what I thought (and which a couple of glasses of wine gave me the courage to say) that she seems to be powerful and frankly unstoppable. I have no doubt that her goal to take the Innocence Project to the next level will succeed just as I have no doubt that she will continue to banish fear. Laura was one of the first writers in the community that I met when I was starting out and I'm infinitely glad to count her as a friend. She's a rocket shooting upward and I'm grateful to be able to watch the blast off from the viewer's seats. I can't wait to see what she does next.

A Pioneer in Prisoners' Rights, Yes, Right Here in Chicago

You already know Supreme Court Justice John Paul Stevens is retiring after 35 years on the bench. But what you might not know is that Stevens, a Hyde Park native, started his career as a lawyer in Chicago.

Today, just for The Outfit, former long time Chicago Tribune columnist Bill Barnhart details one of Stevens' early cases, which, for a moment, put Chicago and Illinois (the state with perhaps the worst track record for ignoring prisoner appeals) in the forefront of the struggle for prisoners' rights and wrongful convictions.

Bill's biography, JOHN PAUL STEVENS, AN INDEPENDENT LIFE, hits bookshelves May 20. Called "a splendid biography" and "Terrific," Bill's book describes a rare specimen: a man of independent thought and action — free from political party agendas, moneyed interests and ideological straitjackets. (Would that his successor be as well). It's also a fascinating read.



by Bill Barnhart


The double-bill at the Windsor Theater on North Clark Street in Chicago was “Big City,” starring Spencer Tracy and Luise Rainer, and “Music for Madame,” with Joan Fontaine and Nino Martini. Under a brilliantly lighted movie palace canopy, the pre-Christmas ticket buyers from Chicago’s Gold Coast included a nervous gunman.

The young man faced the cashier in the ticket booth and demanded, “give me your money.” Jean Riley, a 23-year-old substitute cashier “noted for her beauty,” according to a newspaper account, laughed at what she thought was a joke. The man pushed his gun inside the booth, fired and grabbed $56. Riley died soon after in Henrotin Hospital.

A few months later, in early 1938, Arthur La Frana, a 24-year old married man who lived not far from the theater, was convicted by a jury and sentenced to life in prison for the killing. He had confessed to police shortly after the crime but had withdrawn his confession, saying it resulted from police torture.

Seventeen years later, La Frana walked out of prison a free man. A corporate lawyer named John Paul Stevens, working pro bono with one of his former law professors at Northwestern University, established La Frana’s claim of police abuse, based largely on an unpublished newspaper photo showing La Frana’s battered face a few hours his arrest. La Frana, who had been active in his post-conviction appeals, sent Stevens a Christmas card just before his release.

The La Frana case made a lasting impression on Stevens, as he joined the federal appeals court in 1970 and the Supreme Court of the United States in 1975. In the late 1930s, Illinois had one of the worst reputations in the nation for ignoring legal appeals by convicted individuals. Only a stern rebuke of Illinois’s justice system by the Supreme Court of the United States, based in part on the La Frana case, brought change.

Richard Nixon, who won the presidency in November 1968 thanks in part to his law-and-order campaign theme, knew almost nothing about Stevens when the new president filed a vacancy on the federal appeals court in Chicago. Stevens had never met Nixon or his attorney general, John Mitchell, before the appointment. Still, rumors swirled that Nixon named Stevens under an agreement whereby Stevens would vote to uphold the convictions of anti-war protestors and their lawyers, the infamous Chicago Seven, who had been convicted a year earlier of crossing state lines to cause a riot.

No such deal existed. Moreover, Stevens asked his fellow Seventh Circuit judges not to be on the three-judge panel that considered the Chicago Seven appeal. Stevens went on to disappoint Nixon in other ways, expressing his deep regard for the basic rights of criminal defendants and prisoners.

For example, in a 1973, opinion Stevens ruled that prisoners should have “minimum requirements for due process” before they could be denied so-called good time credits reducing their sentences or be subjected to extraordinary discipline.
“Liberty protected by the due process clause [of the Constitution] may -- indeed must to some extent -- coexist with legal custody pursuant to conviction,” he wrote. “The deprivation of liberty following an adjudication of guilt is partial, not total. A residuum of constitutionally protected rights remains.”

Oddly, his views on prisoner rights caused Stevens problems when his nomination by President Gerald Ford for the Supreme Court was under review by activist liberals. By 1975, women’s rights stood higher on the agenda of liberal law groups than prisoner rights. Citing several Stevens opinions that annoyed the women’s movement of that period -- including his disagreement with a United Airlines attendant who was fired just for getting married -- scholars law suggested that Stevens interpreted statutes and the Constitution more narrowly in women’s rights cases than in prisoner rights cases.

Today, women’s rights advocates consider Stevens one of their best friends on the federal bench.



The "official" launch of the Stevens book is 6 p.m., Thursday, May 20, at the Original Billy Goat Tavern, 430 N. Michigan Avenue (lower level). Everyone is invited! Find out more about Bill and the book at his website.