Yvonne Wanrow, now known as
Yvonne
L. Swan (born
1943),
is a
Native
American woman of the
Confederated
Tribes of the Colville Reservation whose
1972 trial for the shooting death of a man who had
attempted to
molest her son.
Wanrow
became a cause célèbre of
the feminist and American Indian movements, and her
case reached the Washington Supreme Court
, where its outcome had far-reaching effects on the
manner in which juries interpret the behavior of a defendant, the
legality of recorded conversations, and considerations for victims
of sexual assault.
Early life
Wanrow was
born in Inchelium,
Washington
, a city on the Colville Indian
Reservation. In
1962, she graduated
from
Colville High School and
got married. She and her husband had a son and a daughter, but the
marriage ended in
divorce in
1966.
After her husband left her, she applied to
the Bureau of Indian
Affairs for a grant to study fashion
design in San Francisco
. She was one of the many American Indians
who were encouraged by the Bureau of Indian Affairs to leave their
reservations to seek success in
America's urban centers at that time. This was part of the Bureau's
assimilation process known as 'relocation'. The BIA did not allow
her to take her children with her, citing the high cost of child
care. After completing school, Wanrow had her children join her in
San Francisco. Within a month of their arrival, her three-year-old
daughter died of
encephalitis.
Following the tragedy, Wanrow reconciled with her ex-husband and
moved with him and their son to Portland, Oregon. They had another
daughter, but the attempt to reconcile didn't work out and she left
him permanently, taking their two children with her to Washington
state.
Wanrow settled in Spokane
, where the events leading to her rise to national
attention took place.
Background
Wanrow first moved in with her sister and family, and into a rented
home shortly thereafter. She survived by working odd jobs and
receiving
welfare. Her
children were cared for by a neighborhood woman named Shirley
Hooper, whose daughter had contracted a
sexually transmitted
infection some months prior. The child had been unwilling to
reveal the identity of her abuser until the night of the shooting.
Early in the month of August, Hooper heard a prowler trying to
break into her window, and someone tore the screen covering her
bedroom window only two days prior to the shooting.
August 11, 1972
On August 11, 1972, Wanrow's son complained to Hooper that while he
was at play in the neighborhood with Hooper's eldest daughter, a
man later identified as William Wesler lured them into his house
and locked the screen door behind them. The children saw a knife on
the counter nearby and fled. Wesler grabbed Wanrow's son and tried
to drag him back into the house, but he managed to break free and
run to safety. Shortly after the boy made Wesler's actions known,
Hooper called the police, who went to her home. The accused arrived
at the house, saying, "I didn't touch the kid, I didn't touch the
kid." At that point, Hooper's daughter identified him as the man
who had molested her the previous June. Wesler left the premises,
and the police told Hooper they couldn't arrest him "until Monday
morning" after she filed a formal complaint.
Hooper called Wanrow at her home and told her about the altercation
and her daughter's identification of the man who had raped her.
Wanrow had been home trying to contact someone to repair her car.
She pleaded with Hooper to bring all the children by taxi to her
home where they would be safe. Hooper said the police told her the
worse thing she could do was to leave her home and instead asked
Wanrow if she could borrow her gun for protection. Concerned about
her two children as well as Hooper and her three children, Wanrow
took a taxi to Hooper's home. The landlord of the property informed
the two mothers that Wesler had attempted to molest another young
boy who had previously lived at the same residence, and that he had
been committed to the Eastern State Hospital for the
mentally ill. Hooper and the landlord said
the police suggested that they "conk him over the head" with a
baseball bat should he try to return and another advised them to
"wait until he gets in the house".
Late at night after the landlord left, Wanrow and Hooper became
frightened, although they had the pistol with them. They invited
Wanrow's sister and brother-in-law to the house, who arrived with
three of their children. The four adults did not sleep in order to
better guard against any possible aggression. At about five o'clock
in the morning, unbeknownst to the women in the house, Wanrow's
brother-in-law went to Wesler's residence and accused him of
pedophilia. Wesler was intoxicated, and
he and an associate were persuaded to return to the Hooper home to
reconcile their differences. As Wesler attempted to enter the
residence, Hooper yelled at him to get out of there, causing some
commotion. Wanrow's three-year-old nephew awoke and began crying,
prompting Wesler, who had by this time entered the home, to state,
"My, what a cute little boy". Wesler made a move for the child,
which upset his mother, Wanrow's sister. An emotional situation
developed during which Wanrow drew her pistol and shot and killed
Wesler. His associate was also hit, but he survived and fled.
Hooper called Crime Check (similar to 911), and the call was
recorded. During the conversation, the telephone was passed to
Wanrow, who confessed to the killing and expressed a distrust of
the police. Although she was hysterical, Wanrow was not screaming.
This stereotype of a hysterical woman was used against her by the
prosecution to persuade the jury that she was calm. This recording
was to play prominently in her conviction and in its subsequent
overturn.
The trial
Unable to convince her public defenders to fight for her, Wanrow
initially pleaded guilty. Later, following the counsel of a new
attorney, she changed her plea to not guilty by reason of
temporary insanity and
self-defense. The prosecution
alleged that Wanrow was not in any danger and that she took the law
into her own hands. This argument relied on
ethnic stereotypes the jury would have
been familiar with from the media, and the verdict may have been
influenced by militant actions by the
American Indian Movement, which was
covered in a negative light in Spokane. In
1973, Wanrow was convicted of second-degree murder and
first-degree
assault. Defense attorney
Eugene I. Annis appealed the ruling on eleven counts of judicial
error. In
1975, the appeals court reversed the
conviction and ordered a retrial. They found that:
- the jury was not sequestered and an article of Wanrow's earlier
guilty plea appeared in the evening paper. When Wanrow's defense
moved for a retrial, it was denied after the jury was questioned as
a group whether they saw the newspaper and they said no,
- the recorded confession was used as evidence in violation of
the law,
- the judge's use of masculine pronouns while reading the law and
instructing jurors predisposed them to an interpretation of the law
that did not account for the necessity of weaponry in inter-gender
conflicts, especially considering the fact that Wanrow was
handicapped by a broken leg, a cast, and crutches at the time,
- the presiding judge had not allowed expert testimony that would
have provided necessary cultural background on the Colville Indian
culture, and,
- the judge did not read jurors a recently-enacted law that
dictated that they not interpret self-defense murder cases on the
basis of whether the defender was actually in danger of his or her
life, but only whether they believed themselves to be in
danger.
In
1976, the prosecutors in the case, Donald
Brockett and Fred Caruso, petitioned the Washington Supreme Court
against the ruling, but it was upheld in
1977.
During the Supreme Court appeal, Wanrow was represented by
attorneys Elizabeth Schneider of New York's
Center for Constitutional
Rights, Susan B. Jordan of San Francisco, and Mary Alice
Theiler from Seattle. The case was remanded back to Spokane
Superior Court for retrial. Prior to the scheduled 1979 trial, the
prosecution offered a plea bargain—if Wanrow pleaded to
manslaughter and second-degree assault, they would drop the weapons
charge (which carried a mandatory five-year prison sentence) and
they would not recommend prison. After lengthy discussions with her
attorneys, which also included William Kunstler, Wanrow learned
that self defense was included in manslaughter, and she agreed to
plea to the reduced charges. On April 26, 1979 following an all-day
mitigation hearing, Judge Harold Clark sentenced her to the maximum
30 years and suspended all but five years, which she was to serve
on probation. In lieu of one year jail time, he ordered 2,000 hours
of
community service, which she
served by counseling
alcoholics and
teaching culture to Indian students on her home reservation.
Results
The January 7, 1977 Supreme Court ruling regarding the trial of
Yvonne Wanrow was an important victory for the feminist cause of
gender-equality before the law. Wanrow was an active speaker for
the women's movement, which raised funds on her behalf. The
American Indian Movement helped Wanrow, too, and took advantage of
the opportunity to highlight unequal treatment of Native Americans
by the criminal justice system. Ellen Earth, a spokesperson of the
Yvonne Wanrow Defense Committee, is quoted as saying that the
committee wanted to "make the trial last as long as possible" in
order to reeducate "the jury about Indians". Wanrow stated, "The
trial would not have taken place had I been an affluent white woman
who killed an American Indian. Instead, after one week, I was
convicted by an all-white jury on May 13, 1973 (Mother's Day) for
killing a known child molester. I had heard about Wesler's
background as a sex offender the night before the shooting, but was
not allowed to bring up the information at trial. The police tape
played a role in bringing about the conviction — the jury was
allowed to hear it two times."
Another important result of the case is that judges must now use
gender-neutral language when issuing instructions to juries. The
interpretation of laws regarding women was shaped by the judgment,
and is now known as the "
Wanrow
Decision" or the "Wanrow Instruction".
In addition, according to authors on the subject who quote Wanrow
herself, the crime was an epiphany in the defendant's life. As a
result of her non-survival in mainstream American society, she
experienced
cognitive
dissonance and
poverty. Her killing of
Wesler served to awaken her to her traditionally ascribed
gender role, that of a mother devoted entirely
to her children. She also found solace in her culture's
spirituality and philosophy, which advocated a lifestyle that was
family-oriented and harmonious with nature. As a result, she
returned to her reservation, where she worked for the improvement
of the community and opposed mining to protect the environment. She
also became involved in later cases involving murder charges
against Indian women, and, in
1993 was the
International Indian Treaty Conference political prisoners
coordinator, when she advocated the case of
Norma Jean Croy.
References
- Schuetz, Janice E. The Logic of Women on Trial: case
studies of popular American trials (1994). Carbondale:
Southern Illinois University Press. ISBN 0-8093-1869-5
- Jones, Ann, (1938-). Women Who Kill (1980). New York:
Holt, Rinehart, and Winston. ISBN 0-03-040711-7
See also
External links
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