Ex-Inmate Freed by DNA Finding Wants to Be 'Regular Old Person'

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By Baltimore Sun

Published: 08/06/2003

It wasn't long into Chris Conover's trip to the Inner Harbor - his first ever, although he had seen pictures of the waterfront during his 18 years living in a prison cell - that his mother spotted the whispering.
Someone had recognized them: the adoring, sweet-looking mother and her broad-shouldered son, whose image walking away from the Baltimore County Courts Building had run through the media days earlier.
Diana Conover said the quick glances did not seem nasty, but she couldn't say they were sympathetic. Her son said it didn't matter what they were. He said that if he started to care too much whether strangers believed his story, he might go crazy.
When his lawyers announced June 18 that Chris Conover, 48, was walking away from his life sentence because DNA evidence had undermined the case against him, Conover became a public figure. But unlike other clients of the Innocence Project, the New York-based legal clinic that works to free the wrongfully accused, Conover would not be the celebrity 'exoneree.'
Instead, his case was wrapped in ambiguity. While he, his lawyers and his family were adamant about his innocence, prosecutors insisted on his guilt. Even as he strives to, as he said, 'be a regular old person,' questions linger about his involvement in a 1984 double homicide.
In a recent interview, Conover described that ambiguity as another challenge in the torturous transition from prison to freedom.
'It does bother me that people have to wonder,' he said.
Prosecutors expressed frustration recently at what they see as undue attention to Conover's case.
'He is not innocent,' said Baltimore County's Deputy State's Attorney Stephen Bailey. 'He got a terrific break.'
It bothers Diana Conover, 71, that prosecutors say her son is guilty of the robbery and execution-style shooting that left a drug dealer and his stepdaughter dead. And it bothers her that people might believe them.
In the days before her son's release, she prayed that people would be kind to him. He would have enough challenges without the lingering questions. In the past two weeks, she has been helping Chris Conover put together the details of life that most people take for granted: getting a Social Security card, a driver's license, socks and underwear.
He has panic attacks. They come on randomly, he said, a feeling of doom and dread. He would like to see a psychologist, he said, but cannot afford one. Because of the plea deal, Conover will not receive any compensation for his time in prison.
Nina Morrison, director of the Innocence Project, said her organization is trying find a doctor who could treat him.
'Generally, our clients have an enormously difficult time when they get out,' Morrison said. 'They are facing so many obstacles.'
But in many ways, Chris Conover is fortunate. He has a home, a family and a childhood friend who gave him a job as a title researcher. He started work three days after his release.
'I just want to be normal,' he said. 'And I'm in a rush to get there.'
The woman to whom he was engaged in 1984 has stood by him, he said. This week, he and his girlfriend sat next to each other by Loch Raven Reservoir for hours.
'It was staggering to me,' he said. 'I couldn't believe we were talking without a screen between us.'
Conover has visited with his nephew and nieces, played with a family dog and gone for morning runs through Towson. In prison, running was limited to the basketball court-size yard.
He is living at his mother's apartment and tucks her in every night. He empties the dishwasher and takes out the trash, and sometimes tears up when she thanks him for doing jobs he is so happy to do.
He said he has received cards and hugs from well-wishers. But he knows that eventually he will run into someone who challenges him, who accuses him of getting out easy.
He said he has decided that when that happens, he will be polite and gracious. But he also said he hopes to get to a point where nobody recognizes him as the inmate who got out.
'That's my goal,' he said, 'to be a regular old person. To move into the mainstream. Nothing special. Because that is special.'
Diana Conover talks openly about her oldest son's troubles as a teen-ager - the friends she didn't like, the drug use and, finally, the prison sentence for robbing a pharmacy.
During those years, it seemed that the guidance she and her husband tried to provide didn't matter, that the trips to the Outer Banks, the sports teams, the loving family were all for naught.
In early 1984, however, Conover finished his prison sentence for the robbery. He moved in with his younger brother. He proposed to his childhood sweetheart. And, according to him, he was drug-free.
'It was the time to start life over,' Diana Conover said.
But in the early morning hours of Oct. 20, two white men and a black man went into the home of Charles 'Squeaky' Jordan, a drug dealer involved in the city's heroin trade, on Brice Run Road in Randallstown. Jordan, his wife and his stepdaughter were shot execution-style.
Linda Jordan, Charles Jordan's wife, survived. She soon identified Gregory Jones of Baltimore, another drug dealer, as the trigger man. Two months later, still without a white suspect, police who knew of Conover's past put his picture in a photo array for Jordan.
Jordan said Conover 'resembled' one of the white attackers, according to court papers. In a later lineup, she picked him out again.
At trial, witnesses testified that they had seen Conover at a birthday party that night. But an FBI scientist said he could tell by looking through a microscope that two hairs found on one of the victim's body came from Conover. The jury convicted him on May 23, 1985.
'That period was just so awful,' Diana Conover said. 'The horror of it, the charges were so terrible. It was just a nightmare.'
In prison, Chris Conover placed a collect call to his mother every evening for 18 years. They talked about his life in prison: how he kept working on his case and learning the law, how he was elected to the 'inmate advisory council,' how he tutored other inmates.
They also spoke about the life in Towson that went on without him. They spoke about his nieces and nephew growing up, about the construction accident that killed his younger brother, about the death of his father.
Eight years ago, they started talking about the Innocence Project, which had agreed to take his case. In May 2001, the clinic received initial results from DNA testing on strands of hair prosecutors had used to connect Conover to the crime.
The results showed that the two hairs came from two white men, neither of them Conover. After more testing, the prosecutors agreed with the findings and acknowledged that they undermined the original case.
But Conover, they said, was still guilty. Those hairs didn't necessarily come from the killer, they said. If they needed to, they would try Conover again.
In his mother's Towson apartment last week, Conover mused about the deal he struck with prosecutors to get out of prison.
He knows that Morrison, of the Innocence Project, would have preferred that he fight for a clear exoneration. But he was going crazy in prison those last months, he said, tortured by the tease of potential release.
He rejected some plea offers presented by prosecutors, he and Morrison said. But he said that by the time they offered the Alford plea to armed robbery, in which he maintained innocence but acknowledged that prosecutors might be able to convict him, he was desperate.
He said he was suffering panic attacks. He couldn't stand to be in the locked day room to eat or make a phone call. He couldn't sleep and had thoughts of suicide, which terrified him.
He also thought about whether he wanted to risk a trial in Baltimore County, with its high conviction rate. He decided to take the plea.
Bailey and other prosecutors said Conover took the plea deal because he was guilty.
'Why is an innocent guy pleading guilty after all these years if they think the evidence proves he's innocent?' Bailey said after Conover's release.
Conover said there were many reasons. But he also said that he realizes he can never prove his innocence, especially not to those convinced of his guilt.
'I know this is probably a letdown for [Nina Morrison],' he said. 'But I didn't want to risk a jury trial. I know that I've already walked into one courtroom and been wrongfully convicted.'

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