Michael Lenz
Michael Lenz was born on February 27, 1964, in San
Diego, California. He and his family moved to northern Virginia after his fourth grade. Although Lenz never
completed high school, he received his GED when he was 17 years old.
After several run-ins with the law, he returned to northern Virginia, where he camped outdoors and committed burglaries to
support his drug habit and other needs. He was arrested and charged for
these burglaries, and was sentenced to spend time in the Augusta Correctional Center.
On January 16, 2000
while an inmate at this facility, Lenz along with Jeffrey Remington, stabbed a
fellow prisoner, Brent Parker, to death. At trial, Lenz testified that
the slaying was religiously motivated. The Augusta County Circuit Court
jury deliberated for about an hour before sentencing Michael Lenz to death for
his role in Parker’s murder. Jeffrey Remington also sentenced to death, was on Virginia’s Death Row until his suicide in February of 2004.
On March 5, 2004
the Virginia Supreme Court ruled 4-3 to deny Lenz’s appeal for a new sentencing
hearing despite the Virginia Supreme Court’s ruling in Atkins vs.
Commonwealth, that it is vital to the defendant in a criminal case that the
jury have a proper verdict form. Lenz’s case, however, occurred before the
Atkins’ decision, and the majority decreed that the ruling was thus not
pertinent to Lenz’s claims.
In addition Lenz’s counsel in a series of appeals argued
that they were rendered ineffective by the distance and manner in which they
were allowed to consult with their client. Following the murder, Lenz was
initially transferred to a super-max prison 250 miles away from the Augusta
Correctional Center. Because the ineffective counsel claim was filed on direct
appeal rather than through a writ of habeas corpus it was denied as
procedurally defective, not because it was unfounded. Human beings should not
face executions as a result of procedural errors.
Michael Lenz has been issued an execution date of July 27, 2006.
On July 11, the Virginia
Capital Representation
Resource Center
submitted a clemency petition to Governor Timothy Kaine on behalf of Michael W.
Lenz, who is scheduled to be executed on July 27, 2006. Lenz
and his co-defendant, Jeffrey Remington, were convicted of killing Brent
Parker, another inmate in the Augusta
Correctional Center,
during a meeting of the Ironwood Kindred, a group of inmates who practiced the
Asatru religion. The Governor has been
urged to consider the following facts about the case and to commute Michael’s
sentence to life in prison.
Improper and Misleading Verdict Forms Were Given to the Jury.
There is no dispute that the
penalty phase verdict forms that were supplied to Michael’s jury failed to
include all of the lawful sentencing options and could never be used in a capital murder trial today. The forms given to Michael’s jury had two
critical flaws: first, they failed to
provide the jury with the ability to find one or both aggravating circumstances
and still sentence Michael to life (as they are permitted to do under the law);
second, they failed to provide the jury with the ability to sentence Lenz to
one of the three sentencing options for capital murder – life imprisonment plus
a fine of up to $100,000.
The Supreme
Court of Virginia recently reversed a death sentence in Morrisette v. Commonwealth, 613 S.E.2d 551 (Va.
2005), based upon one of the precise errors that occurred in Michael’s
case. In Morrisette, the court found that the defendant’s right to the
effective assistance of counsel was violated when his trial attorneys failed to
object to verdict forms that were materially identical to those used in
Michael’s case. The same court had
rejected Lenz’s identical claim by a 4-3 vote.
The only difference was that Lenz’s trial occurred on July 26-27, 2000,
before the Supreme Court of Virginia’s decision in Powell v. Commonwealth, 552 S.E.2d 344 (Va. 2001), and Morrisette’s
trial occurred on August 13-15, 2001, two months after Powell was decided. It was
in Powell that the Supreme Court of
Virginia first explicitly addressed one of the two problems that existed with
Michael’s verdict forms. The Governor
should intervene to ensure that the year and seventeen days that passed between
Michael’s trial and Morrisette’s is not the arbitrary difference between life
and death.
If Lenz is executed on July 27, 2006, he will be executed
pursuant to a sentence that was imposed by a jury that did not have all of its
sentencing options before it.
Lenz’s jury was deprived of critical information
that would have counseled in favor of a life sentence.
After a troubled childhood and
adolescence, Michael found himself homeless and destitute, living out of a tent
in the woods of Prince William
County. In order to support himself, he broke into
three residences and a restaurant to steal food during this time. He was convicted of burglary and possession
of a firearm in October 1993 and sentenced to 29 years and 90 days. He was sent to Augusta
Correctional Center.
According to prison records,
Michael was not considered a problem inmate at Augusta. While incarcerated, Michael was introduced to
the Asatru religion and helped form the Ironwood Kindred. The Asatru religion revives ancient Norse
religious practices of the Viking Age, which pre-dated Judeo-Christian
beliefs. The term “Asatru” translates to “belief in the Gods.” Asatru is an officially recognized
religion by the governments of Iceland,
Denmark, and Norway.
The victim in this case, Brent
Parker, was a convicted murderer serving a 50-year sentence for the brutal 1985 murder of Ralph “Jimmy” Jenkins in Winchester, Virginia. The crime occurred in a
trailer park, where Parker, for seemingly no reason, parked the car that he and
Jenkins were riding in together and suddenly attacked Jenkins. By all accounts Jenkins was highly
intoxicated and incapable of defending himself and just kept asking Parker “why
are you hitting me?” An eyewitness to
the crime testified that there was no provocation by Jenkins, and that Parker
was laughing and taking smoke and drink breaks during the hour-long beating. At
one point during the killing, Parker lifted Jenkins’ pants into the air and
showed them to onlookers, stating “I kicked his ass until I kicked him out of
his pants.” At Parker’s trial witnesses testified that
the only thing Jenkins was able to do while being attacked was “put[] his hands
over his head trying to keep any of [the blows] from connecting.” Witnesses
testified that Parker also balanced himself on one foot on top of Jenkins’ head
and yelled to his friends that he could balance himself on Jenkins’ ear. Parker later bragged that before leaving the
scene of the murder he backed over Jenkins with his car. Parker left Jenkins for dead and drove to a
nearby 7-11 with his friends where he proceeded to terrorize the young female
clerk for two hours. The clerk stated
that Parker was covered in blood from his knees down and that his car also had
blood on it. Parker bragged to the clerk
about how he “jumped up and down on [Jenkins’] head until he popped it,” and
demonstrated this for her as he laughed. Parker then stole beer and cigarettes from
the clerk, who stated “I wasn’t going to try and stop him after what he just
told me.” Parker also made sexual
advances towards her for the two hours he spent in the store that night.
In prison, Parker continued to be aggressive toward other inmates and
even correctional officers. During
Parker’s murder trial, Officer John Bryant was called to testify about threats
Parker had made to him in the jail.
Bryant testified that “[Parker] looked at my head and [Parker] said my
head would pop just like [Jenkins’] did.”
Other inmates described Parker as someone who “provoked other inmates
regularly . . . [and] would pick at them verbally and try to intimidate inmates
with threats.” One of the inmates that
Parker like to threaten was Michael Lenz.
Parker twice told Lenz that he would “sharpen the point of his cane and
stab [Michael] through [the] heart with it.”
Lenz had good reason to take these threats seriously; Parker boasted
about the fact that he was a convicted murderer, reminding Lenz “I am a
killer.” According to another inmate,
Parker also made a point of “telling people that he was considering hurting
Michael.” Parker also threatened to kill
Lenz’s closest friend, Jeffrey Remington.
Parker summoned Remington to Parker’s cell and, while another inmate
trapped Remington by blocking the cell door, threatened to kill him. Parker later threatened to kill Remington
again in a separate incident.
During a religious ceremony in January of 2000, Michael and Remington
stabbed Brent Parker to death in front of a room full of inmates.
At trial, the prosecutor argued
that Lenz and Remington viciously attacked Brent Parker and had “no excuse” for
doing so. The prosecutor repeatedly
described Brent Parker as “helpless” and “defenseless,” and claimed that Parker
“did nothing wrong.” The jury that
sentenced Lenz to death did not hear any of the details about Brent Parker’s
brutal killing of Jimmy Jenkins, or even that Parker was in prison for
murder. Lenz’s jury never knew that he
bragged about the man he had killed and threatened inmates and guards
alike. Although the jury knew that
Parker threatened to stab Lenz with the sharpened end of his cane, they had no
way of knowing how serious those threats were.
The jury also never heard about Parker’s repeated threats to kill Lenz’s
closest friend, Jeff Remington.
None of this information excuses Lenz’s uncharacteristically violent
act on January 16, 2000. Nor is it meant to suggest
that Brent Parker deserved to be stabbed 68 times. Lenz acknowledged at his trial that what he
did was wrong. However, this information
is highly relevant to explaining Lenz’s actions. Certainly, the jury that was charged
with deciding whether Michael lived or died should have been informed about the
disturbing chain of events that culminated with Michael’s killing of Brent
Parker. In his clemency petition, Michael has asked the Governor to consider
the fact that this violent incident was highly aberrational and was based upon
extreme provocation by an extraordinarily dangerous and aggressive inmate.
James Aiken, an expert on inmate
classification and prison management, has reviewed Michael Lenz’s case
extensively and submitted an affidavit in 2002.
Mr. Aiken concluded that despite that fact that Michael had killed
another inmate, he did not reflect the pattern of a prison predator and there
was “not a probability that Mr. Lenz
would commit criminal acts of violence” in prison. Aiken based this conclusion on several
factors: (1) Michael’s non-violent
criminal history; (2) Michael’s social history; (3) the fact that Michael had
previously “interacted with prison officials when he has encountered conflicts,
rather than resorting to violence….Lenz is not an individual that
systematically uses criminal means and violence to resolve issues;” (4) the
absence of any gang involvement; (5) Michael’s respect for authority, which was
noted even during the commission of this offense; and (6) Michael’s age. In addition, Mr. Aiken noted that Michael
would be housed in more secure facilities and would never be placed in similar
circumstances to those that preceded the killing of Brent Parker.
Petition for Writ of Certiorari:
Jurors consulted a Bible during penalty phase deliberations.
In a petition filed with the U.S.
Supreme Court, Michael seeks a new sentencing hearing based upon the fact that
the jurors in his case consulted a Bible during penalty deliberations. Remarkably, the Supreme Court of Virginia
held that Michael had not proved that the jurors consulted the Bible “about the
matter pending before the jury,” even though uncontradicted testimony showed
that when one juror asked whether the Bible addresses the appropriate punishment for
murder, another juror responded that the Bible answers that question, several
jurors then referred to unspecified chapters or verses of the Bible, and one
juror later recalled that the referenced Bible passages indicated that death is
the appropriate punishment for murder.
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