Danny Fulgencio
Steven Phillips is suing his attorney, Kevin Glasheen, over legal fees.
"But ... basically the testimony coming to me today is that ... Mr. Glasheen was useless and worthless, and I'm not buying that, because he wasn't."
The judge's is a sentiment not uncommon, especially in the tight-knit community of exonerees. Even among those who are now suing him, their emotions conflict.
Danny Fulgencio
Exonerated prisoners like Steven Phillips have been paid millions by the state. But no one's made more than their lawyers.
Danny Fulgencio
Jeff Blackburn, the Innocence Project of Texas' chief legal counsel, has come under fire for fees he took from exonerated prisoners.
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"They love Kevin Glasheen," former client James Giles says of his exonerated brethren. "I love him too. But I ain't gonna take no chance that he gonna give me no money if I don't file a lawsuit."
"I thank God for what Kevin and them did," adds James Waller, a former client who isn't currently suing Glasheen. "But like I say, we need to make things right and keep it right."
Steven Phillips sits with his thin, bare legs crossed in the kitchen of a Carrollton house just off the interstate. It's a hot August afternoon. His straw panama is shoved down on his head, and he peers from beneath it through a pair of thick wire-frame eyeglasses that amplify his bright green eyes.
Around him are the kinds of men he knows well — addicted, broken, paroled. He bought this house with the compensation money he got from the state. It serves as a halfway house and spiritual center for men on their second, third, even their fourth chances. In the beginning, instead of paying rent, the men slept on the unfinished floors and restored the place, laying new tile, refinishing the walls, making the place livable again. Phillips liked the metaphor. They restored the house and, while they were at it, they restored that part of them they lost in prison or to drugs.
"I don't know if they can learn anything from me," he says. "I just show up and not be a bad example. There's something to say for showin' up."
He's trying to be an example for Charles, 24, whom he's taken into his home as a son, along with Charles' pregnant girlfriend and child. Charles spent time in juvenile lock-up for aggravated robbery. He's the same age now that Phillips was when he went to prison.
Frank, a stocky guy with a neatly trimmed goatee, is on probation now, facing at least five years in prison — which would be his third trip — if he gets violated.
J.D., a new tenant, has only been out a couple of months after doing a long bid for prison-gang related stabbings. He belonged to the Texas Mafia, and would have beefed with Frank in prison. Now they're on the same softball team.
As they talk prison life, J.D. mentions that he served his sentence out at Coffield Unit. Phillips snatches his straw hat off of his head and looks at J.D., eyes wide through his eyeglasses.
"Remember me?"
The men laugh for a moment, and then Phillips grows serious. "We don't hold any of that against you here."
He knows that here, in the company of men whose past lives are a litany of mistakes, no white knights will be found. Or, for that matter, are there bad guys in black hats.
