She Believes

by Jordan Smith

photograph by Jana Birchumn

On a warm July morning two years ago, Barbara Taft was on the Leander express bus headed to her job in downtown Austin when her life took a dramatic turn. On this day she had forgotten to bring a book with her to read on the bus so she picked up a copy of the Austin American-Statesman to pass the time. "I opened to the Metro section and there was Lacresha Murray's picture," Taft recalls. "I was instantly angry - fit to be tied - ready to blow up the Travis County Courthouse." That night, when Taft, a 48-year-old legal secretary, arrived home in Lago Vista from her job at the law firm of Fulbright and Jaworski, she was still agitated. Ordinarily a letter writer, Taft knew in this case a letter wasn't enough. She consulted with her husband of 14 years, Abraham, and the decision was made: They would picket the trial. "I didn't even really know any of the details of the case at that point," says Taft. "But when I saw her picture in the paper, I knew two things: that she was innocent, and that I was supposed to do something about it. That was the scary part."

That night the couple was on the phone enlisting the support of numerous friends to help them picket the courthouse. The next day, while Taft was at work, Abraham constructed the placards. Barbara Taft also knew that picketing the trial meant she was going to have to talk to her boss and longtime friend - attorney Mary Dietz - not just because she planned on leaving early the following day to begin her protest, but because Mary's husband, John Dietz, was the presiding judge in Lacresha's case. "I said, `tomorrow at 1pm I'll be picketing your husband's trial,' and she had this shocked face but she knew I wasn't kidding."

The following day Barbara and Abraham began protesting outside the courthouse. Halfway through the afternoon, a young woman came outside to talk to the protestors, Taft says. It was Shawntay Murray, Lacresha's older sister. "She came out to tell us thank you," Taft says. "Because no one had supported them before, everyone had assumed Lacresha was guilty because of the media coverage." In fact, Taft admits, even with her zealousness, she, too, had fleetingly considered jumping on the Lacresha-must-be-guilty bandwagon. "Because of the way they were portraying her in the media, I figured they must have some incontrovertible evidence that she did it," Taft says. So, that day on the courthouse steps, Taft asked Shawntay for the details of the case. "I was shocked," she recalls, "because there was no real evidence. There never was and there still isn't." Then, on the advice of her husband, Taft arranged to meet the Murray family and Lacresha herself. "When I met the family and Lacresha, I knew even more that she was innocent," Taft says. "Then they gave me a copy of the police interrogation and that was it for me; I knew what they had done to this child."

For the remainder of the first trial, Taft diligently picketed in front of the courthouse. She was devastated when the jury came back with a verdict of criminally negligent homicide and injury to a child. It was that day, August 9, 1996, that Taft's brainchild organization, People of the Heart, was born. "I realized all I needed was letterhead," says Taft, "so, I got on my computer, got a voice mail number and was in business." The group is made up of family and friends of Lacresha, local ministers and other Austinites who believe Lacresha's case is an example of a "justice system gone wrong."

While the group was growing and Taft was leading efforts to mobilize for Lacresha's second trial, things were not going well in the workplace at Fulbright and Jaworski. As soon as Taft formed People of the Heart, she was reassigned at work. No longer working directly for Mary Dietz, she became a floating secretary. "I told them my true commitment was to Lacresha," she says. And the firm acted accordingly, Taft believes, so as not to lend the impression that her association with Mary Dietz would automatically give her an inside line to John Dietz. "Which was crazy," says Taft. "I told John one time that I thought Lacresha had been railroaded by the system and he threw me out of his office."

The ordeal has not been easy for Mary Dietz. "I've always considered Barbara to be a very good friend and my feelings have not changed," Dietz says. "She's very smart, bright, and determined, which are all admirable qualities then and now. She is a very special person, and her commitment is strong ... There are probably lots of people in different situations," Dietz added, "who wish they had a Barbara Taft behind them because she is a very committed guardian angel."

During the second trial, Taft spent hours inside and outside of the courtroom. Again, she was devastated by the verdict: guilty of injury to a child. This time, instead of drawing a 20-year sentence as she did the first time around, Lacresha was sentenced to 25 years. At the end of that second trial, Taft knew what she had to do. She quit her job at Fulbright and Jaworski. "It was an integrity problem for me," she says. "During the trial I saw lawyers at their worst: cheating, manipulating and totally trashing out a child. I just could not work within that system any more." And so ended Taft's lucrative 30-year career as a legal secretary, but not her commitment to Lacresha.

In fact, Taft's support and her organization have both grown over the past year and a half. While working part-time jobs, such as selling vacuum cleaners door-to-door or serving as office manager of a Lago Vista real estate agency, Taft has increased the operations of People of the Heart. The group meets on the fourth Thursday of every month to discuss strategy, protests on the fourth Tuesday of every month outside the Court of Appeals' headquarters, the Price Daniels Building, and consistently updates their Web site at http://www.peopleoftheheart.org. It is through that Web site that the group receives most of its donations, which go directly into a fund used to pay legal fees and other expenses. "People click onto us from all over the world," she says. According to Taft, the most recent donations have come from England, a country that rallied behind Louise Woodward, the au pair charged with killing a child in her care in the United States. "Every day I'm on the phone, trying to get out the information about this case," Taft says. "My life is organized around what needs to happen with Lacresha, because there is no one else to do it."

For Taft, this means spending a lot of time trying to get media coverage, the key, she believes, to shedding light on the injustice of Lacresha's case. "The media stand between the people and the state," Taft says. So far, Dateline NBC, 60 Minutes, and 48 Hours have been looking into the case based on facts Taft has provided them. A writer for the New York Times Magazine has also interviewed Lacresha. But the Times canned the story, says Taft, because the writer had been assigned to write a story on a child killer and ended up painting an all-too-sympathetic portrait of Lacresha.

Despite that media setback, which could have garnered national attention favorable to Lacresha, Taft continues working tirelessly for the teenager. And if it happens that the Court of Appeals overturns Lacresha's verdict and she is eventually set free, Taft vows to continue to work in her behalf. "She'll need money for school. She wants to be a lawyer and I want to make sure that happens," Taft says. She pauses and recites a couple of lines from a poem she once wrote: "What if there ain't no God/Only us to get it right."

"Which is why I'm doing this," Taft says. "That's it. This is my life."