Charles Voyde Harrelson was a Texas gambler and contract killer who was twice convicted of murder in killings that prosecutors said were done for payment. In 1973 a state court convicted him of the 1968 murder of Sam Degelia Jr., of Hearne, Texas, and sentenced him to 15 years. He was paroled in 1978. On May 29, 1979, less than a year later, U.S. District Judge John H. Wood Jr. was killed in San Antonio. Federal prosecutors said Harrelson had been promised $250,000 by Jamiel Chagra, a drug trafficker whose case was assigned to Judge Wood. On December 14, 1982, a federal jury in San Antonio convicted Harrelson of the murder of the judge, of conspiracy to murder him and of conspiracy to obstruct justice. He was sentenced to two consecutive life terms and died in federal custody in Colorado in 2007.
The federal case was one of the largest investigations the FBI had run. It lasted three years, involved about 70 full-time agents and cost an estimated $5 million or more. No physical evidence tied Harrelson to the crime. The case relied on informants, circumstantial evidence, witness identifications and more than a thousand recorded conversations, many of them made in federal prison. At trial Harrelson denied the killing. The Fifth Circuit affirmed his convictions in 1985, and the Supreme Court declined to hear his last appeal in 2004.
Harrelson was born in 1938 in Lovelady, a small town in east Texas. In 1960, in California, he was convicted of armed robbery, his first felony. He worked as a salesman and as a professional gambler, and by the late 1960s he was also working as a contract killer. Estimates of the number of killings attributed to him have run as high as about 50, but only two deaths ever produced a conviction.
The first death for which Harrelson stood trial was that of Alan Harry Berg, in May 1968. Prosecutors said Harrelson had been paid $1,500 for it. He was arrested in 1968 and tried in Angleton, Texas, with Percy Foreman as his lawyer. The jury heard eyewitness testimony. It acquitted him in September 1970. Berg's death is therefore not one for which Harrelson was ever convicted.
Sam Degelia Jr. lived in Hearne, Texas. In 1968, about six months after the Berg killing, he was killed in South Texas, near McAllen. A contract on his life, worth $2,000, had been taken out by Pete Thomas Scamardo. While Harrelson was awaiting trial in the Berg case he and two other men were charged with the Degelia murder.
The prosecution took years. Harrelson's first trial ended with a deadlocked jury. Scamardo was tried separately. The jury held him responsible for the death and gave him seven years' probation. At Harrelson's second trial, in 1973, he was convicted of the murder of Sam Degelia Jr. and sentenced to 15 years. The prosecutor had sought the death penalty, and the sentence was lenient by comparison. With credit for good behavior Harrelson served about five years and was paroled in 1978, roughly eight months before Judge Wood was killed.
Before June 1979 an anonymous caller told the Texas Rangers that Harrelson had been in San Antonio on the day Judge Wood was killed. Ranger Captain Jack Dean, who had followed Harrelson's career for several years, confirmed that he had been in the city. Dean gave a senior FBI official in San Antonio what he knew about Harrelson, including a photograph, and offered to help interview him if the FBI followed up. The official told him the Bureau no longer needed his help.
John Howland Wood Jr. was a judge of the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Texas. President Nixon nominated him on October 7, 1970; the Senate confirmed him on November 25, 1970, and he held the seat until his death on May 29, 1979. That day had been set for the start of the trial of Jamiel Chagra, an El Paso drug smuggler whose case was assigned to him.
Jamiel Chagra was one of three brothers from El Paso. Joseph Chagra, an attorney, represented Jamiel and, from February 1980, Harrelson in a case in Harris County, Texas. Federal investigators came to believe that Jamiel Chagra had arranged the judge's murder because he did not want to stand trial before him. Jamiel Chagra was later convicted on the drug charges before another judge. He jumped bond before sentencing, was arrested again in Las Vegas and received 30 years.
The prosecution said Harrelson, who had already been convicted of a killing for $2,000, was promised $250,000. Elizabeth Chagra, Jamiel's wife, took money to Las Vegas as part of the arrangement. The judge's widow received a handwritten letter of five pages from Elizabeth Chagra in September 1981 and gave it to prosecutors. In it Elizabeth Chagra apologized for her part in the killing. She wrote that her husband had come home one day in March 1979 and said he was going to kill Judge Wood, a remark she had not taken seriously, and that in the summer he had asked her to take money to Las Vegas, telling her it was the payoff.
The FBI-led inquiry ran from the day of the killing until the indictments of April 1982. About 70 agents worked on it full time. They logged some 82,000 hours and conducted roughly 30,000 interviews. The cost was put at between $5 million and $10 million, and the inquiry was one of the most extensive federal investigations since the inquiry into the 1963 Kennedy killing.
In February 1980 Harrelson was arrested in Houston on federal drug charges and a further offense. He posted bail and fled. He was arrested again on September 1, 1980, near Van Horn, Texas. After that arrest he told police that he had killed Judge Wood. In December 1981 he pleaded no contest to the federal charges arising from the Van Horn arrest and received 40 years.
Federal agents recorded Joseph Chagra's visits to Jamiel Chagra at the federal penitentiary in Leavenworth, Kansas, and conversations at the Harris County jail. A prison informant who had been moved to Leavenworth and became friendly with Jamiel Chagra also taped their conversations from October 1980. A filter team approved by a court screened the material for privileged exchanges. The defense argued that the recordings of Joseph and Jamiel Chagra were protected attorney-client talk. The government answered that Joseph Chagra was himself part of the conspiracy, which took the exchanges outside the privilege.
A federal grand jury returned indictments on April 15, 1982. Five defendants were named: Harrelson, his wife, and Jamiel, Joseph and Elizabeth Chagra. Joseph Chagra agreed to plead guilty to conspiracy to commit murder in return for a sentence of no more than ten years and an agreement that he would not have to testify against his brother. He agreed to testify against the Harrelsons and Elizabeth Chagra. He served six and a half years.
The grand jury charged Harrelson with three offenses. Count 1 charged him, with Jamiel, Joseph and Elizabeth Chagra, with conspiracy to murder Judge Wood "on account of the performance of his duties," under 18 U.S.C. section 1117. A further count charged Harrelson and Jamiel Chagra with murder under 18 U.S.C. sections 1111 and 1114. Count 3 charged all the defendants with conspiracy to obstruct justice under 18 U.S.C. sections 371 and 1503. Jamiel and Joseph Chagra were also charged with a drug conspiracy. Jamiel Chagra was tried separately.
Harrelson, his wife and Elizabeth Chagra were tried together in San Antonio, from October 7 to December 14, 1982, before U.S. District Judge William S. Sessions. Ray Jahn led the prosecution. Harrelson was defended by Thomas G. Sharpe Jr., his wife by Charles Champion and Elizabeth Chagra by Warren Burnett. The trial lasted nine weeks.
The government's central witness was Joseph Chagra, whose testimony was admitted after the court ruled that his relationship with Harrelson was not one of attorney and client. The jury also heard the Leavenworth recordings and the recordings made at the Harris County jail. The Fifth Circuit later said the government should have sought proper authorization for some of the recordings, but held that admitting them did not require reversal. Two witnesses who had picked Harrelson out from photographs, one of them in a live lineup as well, testified. Both had been hypnotized before they identified him, and the defense challenged their evidence.
The judge's widow read Elizabeth Chagra's letter to the jury. A separate ruling allowed Elizabeth Chagra's conversations with her husband to be heard on the ground that they were made in furtherance of a continuing crime. Elizabeth Chagra testified that she believed the money she had delivered was meant to settle a gambling debt.
Harrelson testified that he was in Dallas, about 270 miles from San Antonio, when the judge was killed. His lawyer had told the jury that he would show the Harrelsons were in Dallas that day.
The jury of nine women and three men deliberated for about twenty hours over four days. On December 14, 1982, it found Charles Harrelson guilty of the murder of a federal judge, of conspiracy to murder him and of conspiracy to obstruct justice. His wife was found guilty of conspiracy to obstruct justice, and Elizabeth Chagra of conspiracy to murder and conspiracy to obstruct justice. A federal murder conviction carried mandatory life imprisonment, and federal law provided no death penalty. In the days after the verdict the Bexar County district attorney's office was considering whether to try Harrelson on a Texas capital murder charge, which carried a possible sentence of death. No state trial followed.
Sentencing was put back so that the related trials could be finished. In March 1983 Harrelson was sentenced to two consecutive life terms. Elizabeth Chagra was sentenced to 30 years on the conspiracy and tax counts.
Jamiel Chagra's trial was moved to Jacksonville, Florida, and held from January 10 to February 7, 1983. The jury acquitted him of murder and of conspiracy to murder. It convicted him of conspiracy to obstruct justice and of conspiracy to possess marijuana. He was convicted of tax offenses at a separate trial. He was released on parole in 2003 and died in Mesa, Arizona, in July 2008.
The three defendants appealed together. On February 15, 1985, a panel of the Fifth Circuit, with Judge Gee writing, decided United States v. Harrelson. The court rejected each of the main challenges. It held that the trial court had not abused its discretion in refusing to move the trial because of publicity and that the examination of potential jurors was adequate. It upheld Judge Sessions's refusal to step aside under 28 U.S.C. section 455(a), a challenge that arose from his relationship with the dead judge. It affirmed the admission of Joseph Chagra's testimony, of the Leavenworth recordings and of the Harris County jail recordings, upheld the denial of separate trials for Elizabeth Chagra and Harrelson's wife, and held that the testimony of the two hypnotized witnesses had not been shown to have had a substantial effect on the verdict. It affirmed the convictions of Harrelson and his wife.
The court did reverse one conviction. Elizabeth Chagra's conviction for conspiracy to commit murder under section 1117 was set aside and sent back for retrial, because the instruction to the jury had not required proof of premeditation and malice aforethought and so had changed the charge in her indictment. Her conviction for conspiracy to obstruct justice stood.
In 1998 a post-conviction challenge to Harrelson's federal conviction was filed in San Antonio. The judge first assigned to it, Fred Biery, disqualified himself, and the matter passed to Judge Orlando Garcia in 2000. The challenge argued that the defense had cost about $7,000 against the government's $5 million to $10 million, and that most of the evidence came from prisoners who had been offered shorter sentences. By mid-2001 the matter had been postponed. On March 29, 2004, the Supreme Court declined, without comment, to hear Harrelson's appeal in Harrelson v. United States. His lawyer argued that his trial counsel had not represented him adequately, that he had not been in San Antonio on the morning of the killing, and that counsel had failed to collect evidence that other people were responsible. Harrelson was then 65.
In July 1995 Harrelson and two other inmates made an attempt to escape from federal custody in Atlanta, and he was afterward moved to a federal prison in Colorado.
He died in federal custody in Colorado on March 15, 2007, of what the Bureau of Prisons said were apparently natural causes. He was 69, and he was still serving his two life terms.
At the time of Judge Wood's death, federal law made it an offense to kill a federal judge on account of the performance of official duties. Section 1114 of Title 18 covered that killing and punished it under the sections that follow it. Section 1111 defined murder as "the unlawful killing of a human being with malice aforethought," and section 1117 made it an offense to conspire to commit such a murder. In 1982 a federal conviction for murder carried mandatory life imprisonment, and federal law had no death penalty, while the Texas capital murder statute did. The prosecution also depended on the rule that the attorney-client privilege does not cover a lawyer's conversations with a client when the lawyer is himself a party to a continuing crime. The trial court applied that rule to Joseph Chagra, and the Fifth Circuit upheld it.
Harrelson denied involvement in Judge Wood's death at trial and in his appeals. His position was that he was in Dallas on the day.
After his arrest in 1980 he claimed involvement in the 1963 killing of President Kennedy. He later called the claim "an effort to elongate my life" and withdrew it. Some observers, and at least one expert, have pointed to a resemblance between Harrelson and the tallest of three men photographed under escort in Dealey Plaza after the Kennedy killing. Dallas arrest records identified the three men under other names, and the FBI located and questioned two of them. The claim was never tested in a court.
The number of killings attributed to him is also unproven. Estimates have run as high as 50. A Mafia member in witness protection put the number at about six. Only the Degelia and Wood killings resulted in convictions, and the Berg case ended in acquittal.
1938: Charles Voyde Harrelson born in Lovelady, Texas.
1960: Convicted of armed robbery in California.
May 1968: Alan Harry Berg killed; Harrelson charged.
1968: Sam Degelia Jr., of Hearne, Texas, killed in South Texas; Harrelson charged.
September 1970: Harrelson acquitted of the murder of Berg at trial in Angleton.
1973: Convicted at a second trial of the murder of Degelia; sentenced to 15 years.
1978: Paroled.
May 29, 1979: U.S. District Judge John H. Wood Jr. killed in San Antonio.
February 1980: Arrested in Houston on federal drug charges and a further offense; released on bail.
September 1, 1980: Arrested near Van Horn, Texas.
December 1981: Pleads no contest to federal charges from the Van Horn arrest; sentenced to 40 years.
April 15, 1982: Federal grand jury indicts Harrelson, his wife and Jamiel, Joseph and Elizabeth Chagra.
October 7 to December 14, 1982: Trial in San Antonio before Judge William S. Sessions.
December 14, 1982: Jury finds Harrelson guilty of the murder of a federal judge, conspiracy to murder and conspiracy to obstruct justice.
January 10 to February 7, 1983: Jamiel Chagra tried in Jacksonville, Florida; acquitted of murder and conspiracy to murder.
March 1983: Harrelson sentenced to two consecutive life terms.
February 15, 1985: Fifth Circuit affirms Harrelson's convictions.
July 1995: Escape attempt in Atlanta; transfer to federal custody in Colorado.
1998 to 2001: Post-conviction challenge filed in San Antonio; postponed in mid-2001.
March 29, 2004: Supreme Court declines to hear Harrelson's appeal.
March 15, 2007: Harrelson dies in federal custody in Colorado.