The Outcome of Jacob Wideman’s Hopes for a Favorable Ruling from an Arizona Judge

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Jake Wideman: Hey, Beth.
Beth Schwartzapfel: Hey there.
Jake Wideman: So, I have the decision.
Beth Schwartzapfel: Hi folks. It’s Beth. Remember how I dropped in here in August to tell you the judge had held a hearing in Jake’s case, and we’d be back when he issued his ruling?

Jake Wideman: Under advisement ruling. On October 4th, 2023, this matter came before the court for argument on Wideman’s second complaint for special action relief…

Beth Schwartzapfel: Well, here we are. I was in Dallas reporting on a different story in October when the phone rang. It was Josh Hamilton, Jake’s attorney. He sounded like someone had died. I didn’t have a tape recorder on me in the car that day, but I called him back later.

Josh Hamilton: I opened it up and the first thing that jumped off the page to me was that I thought it was very short. It was only about two pages long. And so as we went, as I quickly read through it, I just, you know, I was…shocked, I guess.

There’s a lot to say about the ruling itself, and we’ll get to that. But the upshot is this: the judge ruled against Jake. He’ll stay in prison, definitely for at least another year, possibly for the rest of his life.

Jake Wideman: I was really, uh, surprised is not the word for it. I was shocked. I really was. I, of all possible outcomes, I didn’t think that one was very realistic.

I’m going to skip a thorough recap here because the backstory is long and complicated, and if you’re listening to this update, you probably already know it. If you haven’t listened to Violation, or our last update, please go back and listen to those first or this update won’t make much sense.

But, long story short, Jake was waiting on a Maricopa Superior Court judge to rule on his second special action — which, because you can’t technically appeal a parole board’s decision, is a sort of sideways way to argue before a judge that the board’s actions were unfair.

This time around, he was arguing that his second parole revocation hearing, which was ordered by a different judge in 2019, had been just as unfair as his first. Last year, Jake filed another special action, arguing that the second hearing had also been unfair, and actually the whole process raised red flags. Jake and his lawyers used that phrase, red flags. “The evidence shows” — and I’m quoting here — that the Arizona corrections department “was actively searching for a reason to violate Wideman” — that means to revoke his parole — “and suggests it may have even deliberately orchestrated the violation.” The oral arguments for that second special action were held in August, and that’s when we brought you our last update. (sound from hearing)

Remember we told you that, broadly, the judge had three options? The first was to release Jake altogether. Jake and his lawyers knew this was a long shot, but they made the argument anyway. They said that when it comes to Jake’s case, the parole board has acted in a way that’s quote, “arbitrary and capricious” and “vindictive” and that because they can’t be trusted to be fair, the judge should take the decision making out of their hands and just reinstate his parole and release him.

The judge’s second option was to order a second do-over of Jake’s parole revocation hearing, with or without some additional guidance or guardrails. This is the outcome Jake thought he had a real chance of getting.

Jake Wideman: I thought the worst case scenario was that he would just simply send it back to the board with, you know, no instructions or anything like that and give the board carte blanche again to essentially do what they wanted to do. But I didn’t. Uh, I didn’t spend a lot of time even conceiving of the idea that he would shoot us down completely. But that’s exactly what happened.

The judge’s third option — the worst-case scenario as far as Jake was concerned — the one he says he didn’t even spend much time thinking about, because he didn’t even think it was possible for the judge to find that he’d been treated fairly under the law. Judge Mark Brain chose that third option. He said that Wideman “failed to demonstrate a basis for relief.” The entire decision, header and all, was two-and-a-half pages. Just as a point of comparison, the first judge’s ruling on Jake’s last special action was 16 pages.

Daniel Medwed: The brevity of this opinion was a little bit like an emphatic period at the end of a sentence. Reading this made me feel as though the court was signaling enough is enough. Daniel Medwed is a professor of criminal law at Northeastern Law School. He has no connection to this case but I asked him to read the judge’s ruling and some of the related documents. Jake’s legal arguments to Judge Brain were 87 pages, the board’s reply was 101 pages with appendices, plus the parties went back and forth in additional dozens of pages about whether the transcript of the revocation hearing was reliable and accurate — all of which is to say, there were a lot of complex legal arguments to consider.

Medwed: There was an element of exasperation in the tone of this that I found a little bit. Disturbing. Because, of course, I think Mr. Wideman’s claim is an eminently credible one to make, which is, ‘Arizona, tell me why I’m being recommitted. How possibly could my behavior here, my failure to set up this appointment, how could you go from that indiscretion to a finding of lapsing into criminal conduct? You know, show me the chain of inferences that led you there.’ And that strikes me as a very reasonable request. And if the board and the court had actually shown those, that chain of inferences more clearly and more transparently, I think I would have accepted this opinion more than I did.

But Judge Brain agreed with the Board that the reasons they had provided to support the idea that Jake was returning to “criminal ways” were good enough. In fact, at the hearing in August, it was almost as if he invited the board’s lawyer — her name is Kelly Gillian-Gibson — to explain why they were good enough.

Kelly Gillian-Gibson: It would be improper, um, for me to attempt to explain why a decision maker’s decision was correct.

Judge Brain: I don’t even think you need to argue It’s correct. I think you need to argue it’s plausible.

Kelly Gillian-Gibson: What you can say is plausible is that the delay of time, how often Mr. Weidman delayed getting done, what the probation, or excuse me, the parole officer asked him to do, suggests that he was avoiding, um, complying and trying to manipulate the system. And in his ruling, he wrote, quote, “the Court is not authorized to substitute its judgment for the Board’s judgment, but instead merely to determine whether the Board acted within its discretion. Here, there was evidence that Wideman’s parole officer had prodded Wideman to begin counseling with Dr. McCaine for some time, and he had failed to do so.”

Dr. McCain is that therapist who Jake was supposed to make an appointment with. And so, Jake and his attorneys are back to square one. Except for the nine months he was out on home arrest, he’s now been behind bars for 37 years — and he has very few avenues out.

Jake Wideman: He could appeal Judge Brain’s decision to the Arizona Court of Appeals, and then to the Arizona Supreme Court. If they deny him, he could move over to federal court and start a chain of appeals there. All of this could take years. Like any prisoner who was convicted in the 1980s, before Arizona abolished parole, he ALSO has the option of having a parole board hearing each year and asking for release, just like he did for years. But legally speaking, said his lawyer Josh Hamilton, doing that would mean he accepts the …