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Helping Karl
The Santa Fe Reporter's Interview
with Karl's Mother
“He’s not positive or optimistic, nor is he afraid to die,” Arthur says of her son. “He’s an extraordinary person and he’s doing much better than I am.”
Arthur assumes much of the responsibility for her son’s crime. She says she was a neglectful mother, which resulted in Chamberlain being raped by a babysitter.
“I’m not saying he wasn’t a kind of a messed up person when he got on the row,” Arthur says. “He couldn’t have done rape, murder, if he hadn’t been messed up…But I’m telling you, the guy that is in prison now, he’s like a teddy bear. He is so clear and he is so loving.”
Appellate attorney Toby Wilkinson may also be culpable for Chamberlain’s execution date. Last year, the Austin American-Stateman published an investigative series accusing Wilkinson of submitting habeas corpus motions “ largely copied from letters by his death row clients, performing minimal editing and none of the required research.” That’s how Schulman and Jasuta heard about Chamberlain’s case.
Schulman also wants the courts to fund a new investigation into whether there were any factors that would have lessened the severity of Chamberlain’s sentence. Arthur says the rapes her son suffered as a child could earn him clemency, as could his attempts to reform during the five years between the crime and the arrest.
“They offered him life in prison without parole and he didn’t take it,” Arthur says. “He wouldn’t accept it because he thought in his mind that everybody would clearly say that in the last five years he had changed his life so much. And indeed he had.”
Texas courts rejected the motion to reopen Chamberlain’s habeas corpus case in November 2007. Schulman plans to file an additional writ in coming weeks if the district attorney moves to vacate the execution date.
“That they haven’t done it yet is troubling, but his date is still a month away,” Schulman says. “This is something that can be done in an hour.”By Dave Maass
The Santa Fe Reporter
Published: January 23, 2008
