By Pablo Lopez / Fresno Spotlight
The time has finally arrived for convicted killer Douglas “Chief” Stankewitz to prove his long-held belief that Fresno law enforcement framed him for murder 46 years ago.
Starting Monday, Jan. 22, Stankewitz, 65, and his legal team will present evidence in Fresno County Superior Court that accuses sheriff deputies and prosecutors of planting a gun, coercing a key witness and lying about gun evidence to get a death penalty conviction in the 1978 killing of Theresa Graybeal.
The hearing in Superior Court Judge Arlan Harrell’s courtroom is expected to take up to 10 days. Stankewitz’s legal team plan to call about 45 witnesses — many of them past and present law enforcement officials who have made sure that Stankewitz has remained behind bars in San Quentin State Prison.
Since 2016, Stankewitz has been defended pro bono by legendary San Francisco civil rights attorney J. Tony Serra, Bay Area attorneys Curtis L. Briggs and Marshall Hammons, as well as Washington attorney Alexandra Cock, who is working as a paralegal on the case. Fresno attorney Peter Jones is Stankewitz’s court-appointed attorney for his pending sentencing hearing. His case fills at least 60 banker boxes of documents.
A key witness will be James Ardaiz, former presiding judge of the 5th District Court of Appeal in Fresno, who prosecuted Stankewitz in 1978 that resulted in a death sentence. The witness list also includes former prosecutors who are now Fresno County judges: Amythest Freeman, Lisa Gamoian, and Noelle Pebet.
The crux of the hearing is a habeas corpus petition filed by Stankewitz’s legal team that accuses sheriff officials of planting a gun in a car that Stankewitz was riding in. The gun was key evidence to convict Stankewitz in two trials. But according to the petition, the gun did not kill Graybeal nor was it used to kidnap and rob her. The petition says sheriff’s officials and prosecutors have long known that Stankewitz did not kill Graybeal and have hidden the evidence from defense lawyers and the court for decades.
In addition, sheriff’s officials and prosecutors have lost more than 50 key pieces of evidence, including shell casings, blood evidence and tape-recorded interviews, that would have been instrumental in defending Stankewitz at trial. And instead of seeking the truth, the petition says Fresno prosecutors presented false, coerced and misleading testimony to convince jurors to give Stankewitz the death penalty. The petition asks Judge Harrell to throw out Stankewitz’s conviction and free him.
Opposing the petition is Robert Veneman-Hughes, a senior deputy in the Fresno County District Attorney’s Office. In a 136-page brief, Veneman-Hughes denied the allegations that law enforcement framed Stankewitz and argued that Stankewitz received a fair shake from Fresno justice system.
The killing
Stankewitz, a Monache Native American from Fresno, was 19 years old when he was arrested in connection to Graybeal’s killing. In a nutshell, the prosecution’s account is this:
On Feb. 8, 1978, Stankewitz, Teena Topping, 19, Marlin Lewis, 22, and Billy Brown, 14, were stranded in Manteca, so they hitchhiked to Modesto, where Topping saw Graybeal, 22, walking to her car in a Kmart parking lot. As Graybeal opened the car door, Topping pushed her inside and jumped into the car. Stankewitz jumped into the front passenger seat; Lewis and Brown got into the back seat. During the ride to Fresno, prosecutors contend Stankewitz had a pistol and Lewis had a knife.
When the group arrived in Fresno, they picked up Christina Menchaca. While the others stayed in the car, Stankewitz, Topping and Menchaca did drugs in the Olympic Hotel in Chinatown. Several minutes later, they returned to the car, moving slowly and their eyes glassy. The group then drove to Calwa to purchase heroin. While Menchaca went to a drug dealer’s home near Tenth and Vine streets, Stankewitz and Graybeal stood outside the car to have a smoke. From inside the car, Brown saw Stankewitz walk toward Graybeal, raise a gun, and shoot Graybeal once in the head at close range, killing her.
Brown later told law enforcement officials that Stankewitz returned to the car and said: “Did I drop her or did I drop her?” He said Stankewitz and Lewis laughed about it.
Returning to Fresno, the group went to a bar, where Menchaca tried to sell Graybeal’s watch. Stankewitz then tried to sell the watch in Clovis but was unsuccessful. Meantime, Brown went home and tearfully told his mother what had happened. She called the police and Brown gave a statement to an investigator. Later that evening, police arrested Stankewitz, Topping and Lewis, who were still in possession of Graybeal’s car. Menchaca was arrested nearby. “The pistol that had been used to kill Ms. Graybeal was found in the car,” the prosecution’s account said. Graybeal’s watch was in Menchaca’s jacket.
Titan pistol
Because of legal errors, Stankewitz has been tried twice — and convicted twice — of kidnap, robbery and murder that resulted in a death sentence. In 2019, however, he was resentenced to life in prison without parole, but that sentence could change.
His petition for habeas corpus, a constitutional right that protects people against unlawful and indefinite imprisonment, has been pending since January 2021. The fact Harrell is holding a hearing on a habeas corpus petition involving murder is rare. To understand Stankewitz’s legal journey and view court documents, his supporters have a website called justiceforchief.org.
In court papers, both sides agree Graybeal was an innocent victim, killed in cold blood. What has long been disputed is whether Stankewitz shot Greybeal and bragged about it. His lawyers say Stankewitz is innocent; they contend one of his associates killed Graybeal.
Prosecutors have long said a .25-caliber Titan semi-automatic pistol killed Graybeal. At the crime scene, a .25-caliber shell casing was discovered 18 feet to 21 feet from Graybeal’s body. Although no slug or bullet was found, a prosecution expert testified at Stankewitz’s two trials that the .25-caliber shell casing found near Graybeal’s body was fired from the Titan pistol that was later found in Graybeal’s car. But no scientific analysis was done to determine what caliber of bullet killed Graybeal. The petition also says there is no physical evidence — gunshot residue on Stankewitz’s hands or his fingerprints — to tie Stankewitz to the murder weapon. Stankewitz, Topping, Lewis and Menchaca also gave taped interviews to detectives, but the tapes are lost. Law enforcement transcribed the interviews of Topping, Lewis and Menchaca, but they never signed them.
In the upcoming hearing, the trajectory of the bullet that killed Graybeal will be hotly contested. An autopsy report says Graybeal was 160 centimeters or nearly 5 foot, 3 inches tall. The report said the angle of the bullet was 10 degrees upward. Stankewitz is 6 foot, 1 inch tall. Therefore, he couldn’t have shot Graybeal because the gun would be pointed downward, his lawyers contend. Lewis on the other hand was much shorter, around 5 foot, 3 inches tall.
During Stankewitz’s two trials, a prosecution witness and Graybeal’s father testified that she was 5 feet, 7 inches tall. The prosecution minimized the importance of the bullet’s trajectory to the jury, arguing Stankewitz was the shooter.
If the gun was planted, defense lawyers don’t know who did it. After Stankewitz and the others were arrested, Fresno police officers confiscated Graybeal’s car, but did not search it. Police officers impounded the car, but did not lock it before turning the vehicle over to sheriff’s officials, the petition says. The Titan pistol was discovered in the back seat under the driver’s seat where Lewis was sitting. Lewis even told police he held the gun at some point and was outside the car when Graybeal was killed, the petition says. After taking photos of the interior of the car and searching for evidence, the vehicle was returned to Graybeal’s family two days after her murder.
Billy Brown
Yet another big issue that will be explored at the upcoming hearing is Brown’s testimony. The petition says Brown gave conflicting accounts of Graybeal’s murder during the two trials.
In 1993, Brown gave his final public account of what happened in a sworn written statement to Stankewitz’s legal team. San Francisco investigator Mimi Kochuba has been subpoenaed to authenticate Brown’s statement in which he said: “I did not at any time see Doug Stankewitz hold a gun. I did not see who pulled the trigger.” Brown also said he never heard Stankewitz say anything about “dropping her.” Rather, it was Lewis who said that, he said. Brown said he was pressured into testifying because prosecutors would have charged him with murder. “Three to four weeks before the trial, I was ‘schooled’ by the district attorney regarding my testimony,” he said. Brown also said he was given alcohol before he testified to calm his nerves and that he was “buzzed” on the witness stand. When he tried to testify truthfully, Brown said prosecutors pulled him aside and threatened him with contempt of court and loss of immunity.
Brown died in May 2006 of acute intoxication and the combine effects of alcohol and opiates, his death certificate says. The petition also says that in late 2000, prior to his death, Lewis confessed to shooting Graybeal to Laura Wass, an advocate for Native Americans. Wass has been subpoenaed to testify at the hearing.
A different gun
To bolster their case for death, prosecutors told jurors that the .25-caliber Titan gun used to kill Graybeal also was used in the attempted murder and robbery of farmworker Jesus Meras outside a bar in Rolinda, west of Fresno, just hours after Graybeal was killed.
During the two trials, prosecutors said Stankewitz fired three times at Meras but missed. But in 2017 Stankewitz and his lawyers learned for the first time that a sheriff report says the three shell casings from the Meras shooting were .22-caliber and therefore not a match to the Titan murder weapon. And inside a sheriff’s evidence envelope that was supposed to contain the .22-caliber shell casings were three .25-caliber shell casings that were test-fired from the Titan pistol.
“It appears the .22 caliber shell casings were removed and replaced with .25-caliber shell casings,” the petition says. Meras never identified Stankewitz as the shooter. He also misidentified Graybeal’s car. Meras, however, was able to identify Menchaca and his paycheck, belt and boots were discovered in Graybeal’s car after it was impounded.
In March 2020, Stankewitz’s legal team re-interviewed Meras. He told a defense investigator that he was actually robbed in 1975 or 1976 — not in 1978 when Graybeal was killed, the petition says. Meras is on the witness list for the upcoming hearing.
Legal journey
Death penalty cases typically take years to go to trial because defense lawyers need time to conduct an extensive investigation of their client’s life and criminal history. But Stankewitz’s first death penalty trial began about five months after his arrest.
Court records say Topping, Menchaca and Lewis accepted plea deals for lesser charges and did not testify against Stankewitz during his two trials. But five yellow sheets of paper seized from Stankewitz’s cell were introduced as evidence. “The handwriting on the papers was identified as Stankewitz’s,” the prosecution contended. The papers contained narrative scripts for Topping, Lewis and Menchaca that blamed the killing on Lewis.
In September 1978, Stankewitz was convicted of murder, kidnap and robbery after the jury deliberated less than an hour. In October of that year, he was sent to Death Row at San Quentin Prison in Northern California. Because the trial judge did not hold a competency hearing, the California Supreme Court in 1982 threw out Stankewitz’s conviction and death sentence. That’s because prior to his trial, a court-appointed psychiatrist reported that Stankewitz suffered from paranoid delusions, believing his public defender was conspiring with prosecutors to convict him. In fact, during the trial, Stankewitz slugged his attorney in the face. He also escaped during the trial for three days before being captured at a party about three miles from the courthouse, according to The Fresno Bee archives. The trial judge, Robert L. Martin, never called a mistrial.
In a second trial in 1983, he was convicted and sentenced to death again. But in 2012, a federal appeals court upheld Stankewitz’s murder conviction but threw out the death sentence because of ineffective counsel and because jurors weren’t told of Stankewitz’s abusive childhood and mental defects. His case returned to Fresno County Superior Court, and after seven years of legal wrangling, prosecutors decided in 2019 not to pursue the death penalty and sought a sentence of life in prison without parole.
At a hearing in May 2019, Harrell said his lone option was to give Stankewitz life in prison without parole at San Quentin Prison. But in June 2022, the Fifth District Court of Appeal in Fresno said Harrell was wrong; Harrell has the discretion to give Stankewitz a lesser sentence that could free him or give him a chance at parole. The appellate court ordered Harrell to hold a new sentencing hearing. The sentencing hearing, however, is on hold until Harrell rules on Stankewitz’s habeas corpus petition.
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Pablo Lopez
Pablo Lopez served six years in the Navy aboard the fast-attack submarine USS Puffer as an electrician’s mate. In 1984, he graduated from College of the Desert and then from University of Southern California in 1986. After covering hard news for 32 years, he retired from the Fresno Bee in 2019. In 2022, he picked up the pen again. His goal is to put a spotlight on Fresno politics, courts and the people who made a difference.