Richard Arlin Walker
Special to ICT
A Superior Court judge in Fresno, California, has ordered an evidentiary hearing for Douglas Stankewitz, writing there is “reasonable likelihood” he may be entitled to release after 45 years in prison for a murder the Big Sandy Rancheria man says he didn’t commit.
Judge Arlan Harrell made the decision on Sept. 29 after reviewing Stankewitz’s petition for the hearing, which outlines evidence his legal team intends to introduce, and the prosecution’s response to the petition.
“The court finds that there is reasonable likelihood that Petitioner may be entitled to relief and that Petitioner’s entitlement to relief depends on the resolution of issue[s] of fact,” Harrell ruled. “Therefore, an evidentiary hearing is required.”
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Stankewitz’s habeas corpus petition – which claims he was wrongfully convicted and should be immediately released – cites missing evidence, recanted testimony used to convict Stankewitz, a confession from a co-defendant, and a questionable history for the handgun investigators say was the murder weapon.
Harrell scheduled a status conference for Oct. 27 to determine if the parties are ready to proceed. He also scheduled another status conference for Nov. 16 on resentencing, but that would be unnecessary if he orders Stankewitz’s release.
Alexandra Cock, a member of Stankewitz’s legal team, said she was talking to Stankewitz on the phone when she learned of Harrell’s decision. “I read the order over the phone and he was relieved,” Cock said.
“Based on everything that has happened so far and all the evidence we have garnered and continue to get … he is definitely feeling like freedom is almost here,” she said. “He is frustrated because everything takes so long, but he is feeling very optimistic.”
The hearing marks a big victory for Stankewitz and his legal team, who have long sought the opportunity to introduce new evidence they believe will prove his innocence. He once faced execution in San Quentin’s electric chair — his execution was scheduled and rescheduled five times — until efforts by his defense team led to a new sentence of life without the possibility of parole.
Longest-served Death Row inmate
Stankewitz has lived on San Quentin Prison’s Death Row since his 1978 conviction in the carjacking-murder of Theresa Graybeal, 21, of Modesto, a Northern California city near Sacramento.
Graybeal was kidnapped as she walked to her car in a Kmart parking lot in Modesto. Stankewitz and three friends were looking for a way to get home to Fresno, about 90 miles south.
Cock said Stankewitz had assured Graybeal she would not be harmed — saying they just needed a ride to Fresno — and the co-defendants testified that the young woman had relaxed, chatted with them and shared her cigarettes.
Graybeal was killed that night when the group dropped her off in a vacant lot in the Calwa area of unincorporated Fresno.
Read more:
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A teen co-defendant was granted immunity in exchange for testifying that Stankewitz committed the murder, but he later recanted his testimony. Three other co-defendants were convicted of lesser charges.
Stankewitz’s sentence was vacated in 2012 when his trial lawyer admitted he failed to introduce mitigating evidence that might have spared him the death penalty, including evidence Stankewitz sustained physical abuse as a child, received treatment in a state hospital beginning at age 5, and had received psychiatric and psychological evaluations.
Stankewitz was resentenced in 2019 to life without the possibility of parole.
Mitigating evidence aside, however, the defense team over the years has compiled evidence they say prove Stankewitz’s innocence:
*In 1993, co-defendant Billy Brown recanted his testimony that he saw Stankewitz kill Graybeal, saying his testimony was coerced. Brown was a minor at the time and was questioned without the presence of a parent or attorney. Two other co-defendants, Teena Topping and Christina Menchaca, told investigators in 1978 they were in the car when Graybeal was shot and didn’t see who fired the gun.
*In 2000, co-defendant Marlin Lewis told Laura Wass, regional director of the American Indian Movement, that he shot Graybeal. Lewis died later that year, but Wass recounted the confession in a sworn deposition.
*In 2019, Roger Clark, a certified police procedures consultant and retired Los Angeles County sheriff’s detective, stated that the trajectory of the bullet indicated Stankewitz, at 6-foot-1 and the tallest of the co-defendants, was too tall to have been the gunman. Additionally, “the prosecution never tested the car for blood, gunshot residue, or the bullet; these tests were standard procedure at the time of the incident and could have been exonerating to Stankewitz,” Clark reported.
*Also in 2019, senior scientist Chris Coleman of Forensic Analytical Crime Lab discovered that X-rays of Graybeal’s remains were missing from evidence stored at the Fresno County Sheriff’s Department. The X-rays “would help to determine whether the firearm in evidence is the correct firearm and assist in reconstruction of the actual damage to the victim, including determining the trajectory of the bullet,” Coleman wrote in a sworn statement.
*In 2022, Troy Jones, who was in Fresno County Jail with Stankewitz after the latter’s 1978 arrest, said in a sworn statement that Stankewitz told him at the time that a younger co-defendant killed Graybeal “in a misguided attempt to impress him.” Jones said Stankewitz “seemed troubled by the events.” Jones said he shared the information with a Fresno County District Attorney’s investigator during a 30-minute interview.
*In 2023, a forensics lab determined that the gun introduced by investigators as the murder weapon – a Titan .25-caliber handgun — was not the gun used to kill Graybeal. Investigators never determined what caliber of bullet killed her, according to court documents, and the gun presented as the murder weapon had been taken into custody by the Sacramento Police Department five years earlier.
Sacramento Police has no record of the gun being claimed by its owner, and Stankewitz’s legal team contends the gun was made available – as allowed by state law – to other law enforcement agencies for their use.
In this case, the defense contends, the gun was introduced by Fresno County Sheriff’s investigators as the weapon that killed Graybeal. James Ardaiz, the retired district attorney who prosecuted Stankewitz in 1978, called the argument that the gun was planted “ludicrous.”
Guilt by association
Stankewitz said in an earlier interview with ICT that investigators suspected him because he’s Native and because of his family’s previous encounters with law enforcement.
His maternal grandfather, Sam Sample, was a well-known Goshawa culture-bearer and advocate for Native people whose death was reported in local newspapers. But Stankewitz’s mother and father — Sample’s daughter and son-in-law — and several siblings ended up in prison for violent crimes.
Stankewitz was beaten by his mother and he moved among foster homes, a state hospital and juvenile hall during his childhood and early teens. When he was 15, he was the driver of a car fleeing the scene of an alleged robbery and assault; a passenger in the car was killed in a shootout between Stankewitz’s brother and a pursuing police officer.
Stankewitz doesn’t deny his past, but he denies killing Graybeal.
“If I could talk to [the Graybeal family] today, I would tell them I feel bad that they lost their daughter, their wife, whoever she was to them,” he told ICT on Nov. 16, 2021. “She was only 22 years old. That was a devastating loss to everybody. I hold her in my prayers every morning, her and her family. I wish it hadn’t happened, but I didn’t do it.”
He added, “I was the target because I’m Indian and because of my family and my family name. My family was known for violence, was known for trouble, was known to start trouble and to be at the wrong place at the wrong time. But police knew I didn’t do it. They just wanted any Stankewitz.”
Looking ahead
While Stankewitz no longer faces the death penalty, he has chosen to stay on San Quentin’s Death Row because he believes it is safer than being in the general prison population, and because it’s familiar to him.
He meditates and exercises daily in his cell, listens to his radio, talks with his legal team, and for two or three hours a day works on his case. Several prison guards and prison chaplains wrote letters of support for Stankewitz in 2018, describing him as courteous, helpful and respectful to prison staff and other inmates.
The world would be an unfamiliar place for Stankewitz if he is released. He was 20 when he arrived at San Quentin; he’s now 65. There have been seven U.S. presidents, seven California governors and two wars since then. He would be released into a world that is faster and more technologically advanced, with personal computers, the internet, cell phones and social media that didn’t exist when he arrived at San Quentin.
Cock said Stankewitz would live with a member of his legal team, who would help him transition to a new life. Stankewitz told ICT he would look for employment as a general worker in construction. He said he looks forward to a homecooked meal.
Meanwhile, Ardaiz told ICT he still believes Stankewitz is guilty. And David Graybeal, who struggled through the 1980s to cope with his wife’s death before remarrying and starting a family, told ICT in February 2022 that Stankewitz should spend the rest of his life in prison.
“It doesn’t matter who pulled the trigger. They were all guilty of kidnapping and murdering Theresa,” he told ICT. “She was a beautiful young woman who had her whole life ahead of her. They didn’t need to kill her.”
Three of four co-defendants are known to have died, Cock said. Marlin Lewis died in 2000; Billy Brown died in 2006; and Teena Topping, who drove Graybeal’s car from Modesto to Fresno, died in 2015 or 2016
ICT could not confirm the whereabouts of Christina Menchaca, who joined the co-defendants in Fresno and was present when Graybeal was killed.
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