Born to Lose (45 page)

It was ruling on only one issue: Had Maryland's lower courts violated Hoss's right to a speedy trial? It was true that Judge Jim Getty had failed to rule on Hoss's request for such until 64 days beyond the 180-day period had elapsed. When Getty did rule, in March 1971, he refused the defense request to dismiss the charges against Hoss while maintaining Hoss's right to a speedy—but not, in this particular case, an “immediate”—trial. Noting that the prime purposes of the speedy trial rule are to guard against crippling delays affecting witnesses or other testimony and to dispose of pending charges in a timely way, so a defendant's rehabilitation is not hindered,
Getty concluded that they could hardly apply to Hoss, since the death sentence he was then under in Pennsylvania made rehabilitation moot. Getty added, “The delay, if any, has not resulted in oppressive incarceration, has not caused Mr. Hoss undue anxiety, nor impaired his ability to defend himself.” With this justification, Getty had ruled that the State of Maryland must arrange a trial on the matters of kidnapping and abduction “within a reasonable period of time.”

When Hoss's defense team appealed this ruling to the next level, the court of special appeals, speaking through Chief Judge Murphy, agreed with Getty's assessment but not before recognizing that Getty's ruling had indeed been made after the 180-day speedy trial period. Ticklish, too, was the fact that Maryland had initially lodged its charges against Hoss when he was serving ten to twenty years for rape. This made his sentence a “term of imprisonment,” governed by rehabilitative concerns. Still, Judge Murphy concluded that the later imposition of the Pennsylvania death sentence added a new dimension to the circumstances surrounding Hoss's demand for a speedy trial, importantly adding that the state's petition, which Getty ruled on, did show good cause. Noting that the actual postponement of the Hoss trial previously set for January 11, 1971, was tantamount to Getty's timely granting of the state's motion for a continuance, the court of special appeals upheld Getty's ruling, once again mandating trial for the Peugeots' disappearance.

At Hoss's desire, Robb and Fatkin appealed yet again, sending the issue to Maryland's highest arbiter, the court of appeals. By June 14, 1972, it was ready with its decision. Early in its eleven-page ruling, the high court, through Judge William J. McWilliams, ripped into both Getty and Murphy.

Regarding Getty's assertion that a continuance was indeed granted, and that any delay was inconsequential, the court of appeals disagreed, saying bluntly, “Judge Getty did not grant a continuance.” As to Judge Murphy's support of Getty, and Murphy's contention that Hoss's Pennsylvania death sentence made the purpose of the 180-day rule “manifestly inapplicable” to Hoss, the high court inclined to agree but still found Murphy's justification irrelevant, saying, “Hoss's death penalty was not final, and in today's world it is folly to suppose it ever would be”—somehow implying that judges should not consider what is actually current law but instead base their rulings on what
might
become new law.

As for the argument that petitions for a continuance are well within the discretion of the trial judge and will not be disturbed absent an abuse of that discretion, Judge McWilliams became severe: “To what we have said
about ‘good cause,' we say the State did not show a continuance of whatever duration was either necessary or reasonable. And while it might be argued that a person already in prison would be less likely than others to be affected by anxiety accompanying public accusation, there is reason to believe that an untried charge can have fully as depressive an effect upon a prisoner as upon a person at large. But for a speedy trial, rehabilitation is corroded. A man's anxiety and depression may leave him with little inclination toward self-improvement.”

It was not the high court's role to concern itself with the discomfiture of anyone other than the accused, Stanley Hoss, so the ruling left unmentioned Hoss's victims, Linda and Lori Mae, and the anxiety and depression of their family and friends, who needed the justice and closure that a trial might provide. Instead, McWilliams's closing words removed nearly all hope of justice for Hoss's victims: “We draw some comfort that our decision today is not likely to expedite Hoss's release from the bastilles of Pennsylvania. Indeed, if the identifiable remains of the kidnapped mother and child are ever discovered, a further indictment is possible. But even if Hoss were to be set free tomorrow, we could not do otherwise. The indictments must be dismissed with prejudice.”

Despite the monstrous nature of the kidnapping and murders of the Peugeots, Stanley Hoss walked away. And, kindly warned of his danger by Maryland's high court, why would he ever risk future prosecution by talking about their hidden bodies?

Several months after the decision, Judge Getty was in the garage of a waterfront hotel in Annapolis when, by chance, he met the chief judge of the court of appeals, Paul Hammond. Hammond explained that he'd been absent the day the Hoss case was heard, and another judge had filled in. Then he said to Getty, “I want you to know something. Had I been present that day, the result that came out would never have seen the light of day.” This meant a good deal coming from the chief judge, and Getty thanked Hammond for his words.

It was decades after this encounter that Judge Getty spoke further of the legalities of Hoss's case. “I wouldn't contend I didn't make any mistakes in my rulings with Hoss, but none, no material error, warranted the overturning done by the high court. It seems to me when I ruled not to dismiss charges and to proceed within a reasonable time but did not include a specific order for a continuance was, if deemed wrong at all, only harmless error. Because of my vehement disagreement with the final decision, I wrote a rather curt letter to the author of that decision.” Getty laughed when thinking of this all
these years later. “It was a real piece of temerity to chide a judge sitting on a higher court. I understand there was some discussion over this brashness of mine whether I should be summoned before the court, but cooler heads prevailed. Good, too, because I had no intention of backing down. My God, this was the most outrageous crime around here in the eighty-five summers I've been alive.” Sitting at his desk, piled with books, papers, and readings, Getty, a distinguished man of Lincolnesque proportions, lamented, “In my four decades as a judge, and add twelve to that as a state's attorney, this Hoss affair by the court of appeals is the worst decision in any matter I was ever involved with in my entire career.”

For citizens who believed Hoss should be tried for his crimes, there was hope. The Maryland high court decision pertained only to state charges. Hoss still faced federal indictments for the Peugeot kidnappings. It was now up to the feds to proceed with prosecution.

They never did.

The case also had another peculiar twist. When Maryland state attorney Don Mason had prepared for trial, the kidnapping charge against Hoss mentioned only Linda Peugeot; Lori Mae Peugeot's name was never placed on the indictment. So what was to stop Mason from now bringing charges against Hoss for Lori Mae? The statue of limitations hadn't run out. But nothing was done.

It is hard to imagine an atmosphere more stifling than that of an upper-tier prison cell in August. Stanley Hoss wore only underwear, his hard, muscled body covered with sweat. On his bunk lay two pieces of steel, each with a wide blade fully nine inches long and honed sharp enough to cut bone. Hoss tied thin rope around the handles, then practiced tying the other ends around his wrists. He had to get them just right; the three-time killer could ill-afford to have a weapon knocked from his hand.

A tier below, Frank Phelan made identical preparations, but this was to be Stanley's fight. Frank's role was merely to cover his friend's back. It was 4:00 A.M.

. . .

The previous evening, Gil Walters had sat in his third-floor office at an ancient, but still-beautiful cherry wood desk. He'd greeted the fifteen men he'd invited to this meeting, who sat before him in chairs posed for the occasion. Half those present were suspicious of Walters; the other half didn't trust him a whit.

It had been only weeks since August 1, 1972, when Walters had been named to replace Western Penitentiary's superintendent, Joseph Brierly. Walters, at age thirty-six, did not fit the mold of a tough prison administrator. He looked more like a high school math teacher and was viewed by the veterans as a college boy, a largely new commodity to the prison system. Further, he'd shot from counselor at Eastern State Prison to head of the Western Penitentiary in a mere four years—unheard of—which rankled not a few contenders who'd put in their time.

Already hailed by the press as the “New Image of Western Pen,” Walters had stated that his first objective was to humanize conditions for prisoners—a stance implying that inmates currently were treated other than humanely. With rehabilitation as his centerpiece, Walters sought to change Western Penitentiary's “troubled can” image and to give hope to those confined, but already Walters knew he faced a clash of philosophies: Custody vs. Treatment. Walters worried if he could succeed at both.

The group in the super's office represented old hands and new, corrections officers to high-level administrators. There was even one outsider, Monsignor Owen Rice, a firebrand “labor priest” who also sat on the county's prison board. As the staffers settled in, the first minutes were taken up with sports talk, how the Steelers were a flop of a team, had been for decades.

. . .

Meanwhile, as Hoss and Phelan lay waiting for morning, neither would go back to sleep. They'd wait, knives ready, until the guards “kicked the doors” to begin a new day. By 5:00 A.M., Stanley still lay on his bunk, staring at the ceiling he couldn't see in the darkness. The heavy blades rested on his stomach.

For Hoss to engage in a dangerous vendetta at this stage of his incarceration was lunacy. He'd escaped the death penalty for his first-degree conviction of Zanella's murder and had beaten the Peugeot kidnapping charge, a gallows case if ever there was one. Now was the time to lay low, let the appeal on his life sentence run its course. But a gauntlet had been thrown, not by some shitty midlevel malefactor like JoJo, but by Geno Spruill, black leader and kick-ass enforcer.

Events had begun building the day before, in the prison yard, when a white prisoner of small stature was cornered by a black booty bandit. Hoss intervened, threatening the predator and telling him to take it somewhere else. From nearby, Geno Spruill had watched this exchange, fed up with Hoss “stickin' hiz nose in anuthah bruhthuh's bizzniss.”

. . .

Walters had called his meeting to show himself as a reasonable administrator, to clear up possible misperceptions, and to gather ideas of what was right and what needed fixing at Western.

“What do you see going on, Al?” asked Walters. This was to Al Eroline, who'd first passed through the prison gate during the Great Depression, in Roosevelt's first term.

“Seems to me,” answered Eroline, “we're at the tail end of how the place was run in the thirties and forties. Custody, security was always foremost. Now that's not so. You can see how loose it is.”

“Before, sir,” said CO Jimmy Weaver, “each institution was like a little monarchy, with the warden as king. The state commissioner had minimal influence, didn't intervene much. Things worked. Actually, nowadays,” the corrections officer continued, “I blame the courts. We're given orders we don't understand or believe in. I mean, we're taking cutthroats out to the community to recite their damn poetry.”

Walters recognized Weaver's view concerning outside influence. As recently as the late sixties, the U.S. Supreme Court made decisions that changed forever how prisons would be run. For the first time, really, prisons were having to confront the issue of prisoner rights.

Walters looked to Monsignor Rice, a man of unresting intellect, sympathetic, compassionate—but no fool. “With criminals, it's fine to offer humane treatment,” said Rice, “even kindness, but they have to know you don't fear them. Once they smell fear, all your generosities mean nothing, and you'll get run over. The criminal is not like you and me. For the most part, they've stayed as children, impetuous, self-centered, with lamentable thought processes. Fulfilling their wants within prison may be charitable, some would argue, but in the end you can create a monster.”

“True,” said Walters, “but do the figures of assaults in here bear this out?”

“When I got here,” answered Gus Mastros, a twenty-year man, “the place just mesmerized me: beautiful lawns, lovely looking. Of course, there were incidents, prison being what it is. The '53 riot burned the place down. You could smell it a mile away. Captain Maroney came in with the state police on horseback. So, sure, you'll have problems, but it's a matter of frequency. These days fights, stabbings, rapes, even killings are far above anything I've seen.

“I can tell you with certainty that all were treated fairly and humanely, but troublemakers saw the rough side,” Mastros continued. “Those in isolation got bread and water. Some years back, an inmate was brought before the deputy warden [of] the time. He said, ‘Why did you speak so harshly toward my officers?' Then [he] got a Billy club from his desk and beat the man to the floor. This sounds brutish, I know, but even the inmate knew what was coming. Order was kept.”

. . .

While Hoss and Phelan lay awake, their plan set, Geno Spruill was sound asleep. He'd backpedaled the white devil Hoss, something no one had done before, and for such a coup his stock had risen. Many of his friends, anxious for the story, had come up to him, asking with smiles, “What did you say to Hoss? … What did he do then?” Spruill replied many times over in statesmanlike fashion, “If Hoss wants ta mouff off to white boys, well, let 'im, but he'z no more gonna intahfere in a black man's bizzniss. Right, bruhthuhs?” Respectful listeners nodded. Talking through a contraband toothpick stuck in his mouth, Spruill revealed the message he'd given to Hoss. “Then I sez to the man, ‘If you be so bad, git your shit togethuh. It'll be you an' me tomorrah mornin'. An' ya know, the coward didn't have the
balls to even look at me, jist turned away and walked off. Everyone saw this. Ha! He looked scared to me.”