SCALES OF JUSTICE CAN SWING WILDLY

Two very different men commit two very different crimes. When both
violate probation, there are very different results: The robber gets
life; the killer remains free.

First came the poor man, barely 17 years old - too young to buy beer
or vote, but an adult under the Texas penal code. He took part in a
$2 stickup in which no one got hurt. He pleaded guilty to aggravated
robbery and was put on 10 years of probation.

He broke the rules once, by smoking marijuana. A Dallas judge
responded in the harshest possible way: He replaced the original
sentence with a life term in prison.

There Tyrone Brown sits today, 16 years later, tattooed and angry and
pondering self-destruction. "I've tried suicide a few times," he
writes. "What am I to make of a life filled with failure, including
failing to end my life?"

Now the flip side of the coin, also from Judge Keith Dean's court: A
well-connected man pleaded guilty to murder - for shooting an unarmed
prostitute in the back - and also got 10 years of probation.

The killer proceeded to break the rules by, among other things,
smoking crack cocaine. He repeatedly failed drug tests. He was
arrested for cocaine possession in Waco while driving a congressman's
car, but prosecutors there didn't press charges.

Judge Dean has let this man stay free and, last year, exempted him
from most of the usual conditions of probation. John Alexander "Alex"
Wood no longer must submit to drug tests or refrain from owning a gun
or even meet with a probation officer. He's simply supposed to obey
the law and mail the court a postcard once a year that gives his
current address.

The judge's written court policies say that defendants who have
broken the rules are not eligible for postcard probation. But no one
can make him obey his own standards. Indeed, judges in Texas and most
other states have few limits on possible punishments when defendants
violate probation, which sets the stage for lawful but extreme disparities.

And "you can't tell what the reasons are," said Kevin Reitz, a
University of Minnesota law professor who is one of the nation's
leading experts on sentencing guidelines. "I call this a black box
system. You have someone with a lot of power and no burden of explanation."

Judge Dean, a widely respected 20-year veteran of the Dallas criminal
bench, said he wouldn't discuss the two cases because he might have
to rule on them again someday. In general, he said, he tries to
evaluate "the potential danger to the community" when someone
violates probation "and what, in the long run, is going to be in the
best interest of the community and the person themselves."

The judge gave Mr. Wood his special privileges without receiving a
formal request, court records show. "This certainly undermines one's
confidence in the judicial system around here," said Rick Jordan, who
was the prosecutor on Mr. Wood's case and now is a defense attorney.

Mr. Wood, who is 46 and raises show dogs, said he has avoided prison
by having top-flight legal counsel and building good relations with
probation officers. His sentence is set to expire at the end of May.

One of his prominent lawyers, George Milner Jr., "had to go see the
judge on something else" last year, Mr. Wood said, and agreed to seek
early release from probation. Mr. Milner reported back that Judge
Dean "couldn't do the early release but would do this other deal" -
postcard probation.

"We didn't ask for that," Mr. Wood said. "It was a compromise."

Judge Dean said such requests are generally handled informally, with
prosecutors getting only an oral alert. He said he bases his
decisions on recommendations from his probation officers.

Probation records show that Mr. Wood failed five drug tests, but
public court files mention only two. It's unclear why there is a
discrepancy or which records Judge Dean reviewed.

Letting a killer stay free after several failed drug tests is
"unheard of with this judge," former probation officer Don Ford said.
And "life in prison for smoking a joint - that's harsh in any case."

Judge Dean usually let defendants like Mr. Brown off with a warning
the first time they tested positive for marijuana, Mr. Ford said. A
second such test failure typically meant two days in jail.

The Brown Crime

Tyrone Brown's story began on a February night in 1990. A child-abuse
victim and high school dropout from Oak Cliff, he was roaming the
upper Greenville Avenue area with another 17-year-old.

They spied Bill Hathaway walking home from his restaurant job.
According to police and court records, Mr. Brown's friend pointed a
pistol at Mr. Hathaway and demanded money. (In an interview with The
Dallas Morning News, Mr. Brown said he was the one who held the gun.)

The records say Mr. Hathaway handed his wallet to Mr. Brown, who
removed the cash - two $1 bills. The victim asked for his wallet back
and got it.

The men parted ways. Mr. Hathaway called police, who quickly caught
the two robbers nearby and returned his money.

There was no trial. Judge Dean soon accepted guilty pleas from both
teens and assessed the same sentence: 10 years of
deferred-adjudication probation.

Under this increasingly common approach to jurisprudence, a judge
finds that there is evidence to convict someone but doesn't.
Defendants who complete probation successfully end up with no criminal record.

However, if they break the rules of supervision, the judge can revoke
their probation, convict them of the original charge and sentence
them to prison.

Mr. Brown tested positive for marijuana in May 1990, a month after
starting probation. Prosecutors filed a revocation motion - the
standard response - but made no sentencing recommendation.

At a hearing in early June, Mr. Brown's court-appointed lawyer asked
Judge Dean to send the youth to boot camp, where defendants typically
spend a few months under military-style rules before returning to probation.

The judge, according to a transcript, did not address that proposal.
Nor did he mention Mr. Brown's juvenile record (he was charged with
exposing himself to a woman, for example, and got caught riding in a
stolen car).

Judge Dean simply reminded the teen that prosecutors initially
recommended a five-year prison sentence instead of probation, "and I
told you ... that you wouldn't see anything like that five years if
you got in more trouble." Then he pronounced the life sentence and
added, "Good luck, Mr. Brown."

Defense attorney Matt Fry did not protest, the transcript shows.

In an interview, he said he did not remember the case and had no
record of it. Renie McClellan, a court-appointed lawyer who
represented Mr. Brown in a failed appeal, said she, too, had no
memory or record of the matter.

Mr. Brown's family did not attend the hearing and did not believe him
when, in a phone call from jail, he explained what had happened.

"He told me they gave him life and I said, 'Life for what?' "
recalled his mother, Nora Brown. "I almost had a heart attack."

Mr. Hathaway, the robbery victim, knew nothing about the case's
outcome until contacted recently by The News. He, too, was astounded.

"Goodness gracious," he said in a phone call from Virginia, where he
now lives. "You have got to be kidding me. ... Nobody touched me at all."

Meanwhile, Mr. Brown's co-defendant, Lewis Bivins, also got in
trouble while on probation - he pleaded guilty to car theft. Judge
Dean sent him to boot camp and let him return to probation.

Only after Mr. Bivins committed two further crimes - burglary and
another robbery - did the judge send him to prison. He, too, is now
serving a life sentence.

The Wood Crime

John Alexander Wood's journey toward Judge Dean's courtroom began on
a March evening in 1995. He picked up a 22-year-old hustler named
Larry Clark on an Oak Lawn street, and they went to Mr. Wood's nearby home.

Police reports, citing Mr. Wood's statements and physical evidence,
say the two men had sex, for which Mr. Wood paid $30. Afterward, Mr.
Clark asked for a ride home, but Mr. Wood balked and demanded his
money back. A fight ensued.

Mr. Clark ran into the back yard, which was enclosed by a high fence.
Mr. Wood, using a small semiautomatic pistol, fatally shot him from
behind and took the money from Mr. Clark's pocket.

Mr. Wood, who had no criminal history, initially pleaded not guilty
to murder and went to trial in 1996. As jurors were about to conclude
deliberations, the prosecution and defense cut a deal that Judge Dean
approved: The defendant pleaded guilty to murder in exchange for 10
years of deferred-adjudication probation.

Jury forewoman Dana Toney said the plea bargain didn't change much.
Jurors, she said, believed the killing was an accident, were close to
convicting Mr. Wood of negligent homicide and would have been happy
to put him on probation.

There is no court transcript of the case because there were no
appeals, but Ms. Toney said the defense argument went like this: Mr.
Wood feared Mr. Clark, who was high on drugs, and fired a warning
shot that he hoped would scare the man off. He stumbled when pulling
the trigger, making the gun point toward Mr. Clark.

Mr. Wood largely agreed with this summary, although he told The News
that he shot Mr. Clark in the side as the man turned toward him.

"It was sort of a self-defense type of situation," Mr. Wood said.
"Judge Dean understood this."

The official autopsy shows that Mr. Clark was shot in the back.

Mr. Jordan, who was the prosecutor, said he agreed to the plea
because he sensed that jurors were sympathetic to Mr. Wood. And
indeed they were.

"Alex came across as very boyish - a little-boy haircut, combed over,
and big glasses," Ms. Toney said. "He didn't look like the kind of
guy who would go around shooting people in the back."

Ms. Toney said she attends Prestonwood Baptist Church and was swayed
by prominent Baptist defense witnesses. They included Mr. Wood's
father, John Alvin Wood, who was a former pastor of First Baptist
Church in Waco; and the Rev. O.S. Hawkins, who was pastor of First
Baptist Church in Dallas.

"You see O.S. Hawkins, a pillar in the community, stand up and put
his own reputation on the line," she said. "It carried a lot of weight."

The prosecution had no such star witnesses. Mr. Clark, the slain man,
was orphaned as a little boy in Alabama - his father drank himself to
death; his mother, after remarrying, died of injuries from a car
accident. He had maternal grandparents in rural North Texas, but the
prosecutor's efforts to get them to court failed.

So to establish the victim's identity for jurors, Mr. Jordan had to
summon a Dallas police officer who once arrested Mr. Clark for prostitution.

That opened the door to questions about criminal history, which led
back to a sordid tale that the grandparents hadn't told the prosecutor about.

After his mother died, Mr. Clark was raised in Oxford, Ala., by his
stepfather, whom relatives today describe as an abusive drug dealer.
When Mr. Clark reached his mid-teens, he killed the man and buried
him in a shallow backyard grave.

Oxford Assistant Chief Ron Herbowy, who investigated the killing,
said: "You couldn't help but like the boy. You almost felt sorry for him."

A juvenile judge concurred, first refusing to send Mr. Clark to adult
court for trial and later sentencing him to probation instead of detention.

But jurors in Dallas came to see Mr. Clark as the predatory half of
the equation, even though Mr. Wood was the only armed party. Ms.
Toney's conclusion: "You almost feel like [Mr. Wood] did the world a
favor" by killing Mr. Clark.

Mr. Clark's grandmother, Jane Peel, said she didn't attend the trial
because she was overwhelmed by grief. Her grandson, who'd lived with
her and at other area locations in the months before his death, was
her last living link to her daughter.

Ms. Peel, now a widow, said she has come to believe that Mr. Wood got
probation for murder because of his prominent father.

And "it was two gays," she added. "According to everyone, [her
grandson] was a nobody.

"But that's not true. He was somebody who was loved."

The Wood Aftermath

The prosecutor, Mr. Jordan, said he made his peace with the plea
bargain because he expected Mr. Wood to break the rules of probation.
That's because witnesses such as John Orr, the killer's landlord and
employer, told authorities he had an explosive temper and once
threatened to kill a co-worker.

Mr. Jordan was right about the rule breaking. But "it looks like
somebody turned a blind eye," he said.

Mr. Wood successfully completed nearly three years of probation
before testing positive, in March 1999, for cocaine use. It was the
first in a long series of troubles, probation records show.

Two months later, at 5 o'clock in the morning, Waco police stopped
Mr. Wood for a minor traffic violation and found crack cocaine on the
floor of the old Ford Crown Victoria he was driving. The license
plate was HOUSE 11A - one of the numbers assigned to U.S. Rep. Chet Edwards.

Mr. Edwards, a Waco Democrat who remains in office, is married to Mr.
Wood's sister. He told The News he was in Washington at the time and
had left the car in a friend's care; he said he didn't know whether
Mr. Wood had asked to borrow it. The friend, real estate agent Cindy
Evans, said she didn't recall.

The police reports say Mr. Wood, when asked what he and a passenger
were doing in the neighborhood where he was arrested, claimed that a
maid had asked him to bring her a prescription from a 24-hour
pharmacy. The woman he identified was a drug dealer, according to the reports.

But Mr. Wood told The News that he was in the area to pick up the
passenger, a male friend who "was in all kinds of trouble." He said
that he hadn't known there was crack in the car and that the friend
must have put it there.

At the time, Mr. Wood was living in Waco. Probation officials there
had been supervising him, as a courtesy to their Dallas County
counterparts. Now they washed their hands of him.

Dallas County took over supervision but, contrary to state standards,
let Mr. Wood keep living in Waco. He was assigned to a program in
which a probation officer is supposed to make surprise visits to
high-risk offenders instead of letting them report to a county office
- - yet records show that Mr. Wood, 100 miles away, got no visits.

Dallas prosecutors asked Judge Dean to revoke his probation, citing
the arrest and the cocaine test failure. But there was no quick
ruling, as there had been after Tyrone Brown tested positive for marijuana.

The judge, a Republican, left the matter pending for several months,
with Mr. Wood free on bail. Meanwhile, he failed two more drug tests
in the summer of 1999 - both times after denying that he was still
using cocaine, according to probation records.

Such false denials are supposed to lead to revocation of probation,
the judge's written policies say. But Judge Dean let him go to a
private inpatient treatment center instead of prison.

Mr. Wood's next break came while he was at the center, in Minnesota:
The district attorney's office in Waco dropped the possession case
against him and his friend, Steve Canuteson.

Prosecutor Antonio Pina said his records show that he lacked evidence
to convict Mr. Wood. He said he let Mr. Canuteson go because he
pleaded guilty to an unrelated charge.

When arrested, each suspect had told officers that the drugs belonged
to the other, police reports say. Most such cases result in the
conviction of both defendants, prosecution and defense experts told The News.

"When they point fingers at each other, I prosecute them both if I've
got a good case," Mr. Pina said. He said he didn't have records that
detailed the evidence problems and didn't recall the matter.

Mr. Canuteson, who lived with Mr. Wood in 1999, told The News that
they both avoided prosecution because "it was Chet Edwards' car." He
did not elaborate beyond saying that "Alex had extreme political
ties. I met Chet Edwards so many times."

Mr. Pina said the Edwards connection "never came into the picture.
.. I would remember that."

Mr. Edwards said he didn't recall meeting Mr. Canuteson and had no
contact with authorities on the matter.

"I have never made a single phone call, talked to a single official
or testified in any way in behalf of Alex," he said. "It would be
totally inappropriate."

Mr. Edwards said he was angry with his brother-in-law over the arrest
and believes that "Alex should be treated by the judicial system in
the same way as any other citizen. ... [It] should not give
preferential treatment to anyone for any reasons."

In early 2000, Judge Dean dismissed the probation-revocation request
at Dallas County prosecutors' request. Rachel Horton, District
Attorney Bill Hill's spokeswoman, said it is not clear why the office
sought the dismissal.

By April of that year, Mr. Wood was back in trouble. A police report
says he broke a glass door to enter the Rowlett home of Margaret
Worth, whom he knew from dog-show circles, and demanded a puppy they
both claimed to own.

Dallas County prosecutors filed another probation-revocation motion,
then withdrew it after Ms. Worth decided to drop charges. She told
The News she backed down after Mr. Wood's father proposed a deal:
"I'd keep the puppy if I dropped the charges."

Ms. Worth's take on the son, who has long lived off his parents'
wealth: "Rules just don't apply to him."

In January 2001, Mr. Wood failed a drug test for the fourth time -
again after denying that he was using cocaine. Records show that a
probation officer then warned that if he "even had the belief that
[Mr. Wood] was still using drugs," a motion would be filed
recommending a prison sentence.

It turned out to be an idle threat. In March 2001, a probation
officer found evidence that Mr. Wood had diluted his urine to pass a
test, but there were no consequences.

And in early 2002, he tested positive for the fifth time. Judge Dean
let him stay free without even paying cash bail, let him go to
another drug-treatment center instead of prison, and afterward even
let him travel to Italy.

Probation officials apparently didn't touch base with Waco police,
where there were emerging and persistent danger signs.

Mr. Wood, for example, had been living with at least two men who had
multiple criminal convictions. One rule of probation was that he
avoid people of "disreputable or harmful character."

Probation officers "never knew about it," Mr. Wood said. "Basically
[the men] were homeless, and I was too nice and let them camp out
here, and it caused me trouble."

At different times in recent years, he has accused the men of
stealing from him, then told Waco police that he didn't want to
prosecute. He accused one of the men of threatening him in an effort
to collect a debt.

Last summer, shortly after Judge Dean gave him the
one-postcard-a-year deal, Mr. Wood and one of the housemates vanished
for a time. So did an SUV and credit card belonging to Mr. Wood's father.

The father complained to police but didn't follow through on pressing
charges. Instead, he called an officer and said "his son had been
dropped off at his residence [with the SUV] and was heavily sedated
and couldn't talk."

Early this year, Mr. Wood summoned police because the same housemate
had tried to kill himself with a drug overdose. The man, Mr. Wood
told officers, had recently stepped outside their home with a gun
"hoping that the police would show up and shoot and kill him."

Mr. Wood told The News he is now volunteering as a drug counselor at
Mission Waco, a high-profile charity. But the agency's executive
director, Jimmy Dorrell, said Mr. Wood hasn't even gone though the
application process and, because of the murder, couldn't pass a
background check.

The Brown Aftermath

All the while Mr. Wood has been free, Tyrone Brown has been behind
bars. He hasn't been a model prisoner.

He started taking classes to finish his high school education, but
quit. He joined a gang - "the closest thing to my family," he said.
He fought with guards, which led to solitary confinement. He flirted
with suicide.

And he found out he has a daughter - his girlfriend in Dallas, it
turned out, had been pregnant when his probation was revoked. His
little girl is now a teenager, almost as old as he was back when
Judge Dean wished him luck in prison.

"She got past the stage where she'd cry every time she'd think about
him," said her mother, Omika Saulters. Still, "she talks about her
daddy all the time. She asks, 'Is he ever coming home?' "

Mr. Brown has learned to talk a little about his own father, who has
never visited him in prison.

"He beat us so bad," the prisoner told The News. Juvenile court
records say he and a brother spent a year in foster care because of
the father's violence toward them and their mother.

The mom, Nora Brown, tells him that Christian faith is the way to
survive prison's hell.

"Where's your God at now?" he once fired back at her in a letter. But
they've patched things up some since then.

"I tell him, 'You've got to show those people you're not there to
make it your home,' " said Ms. Brown, who can show you the scar near
one eye where her ex-husband hit her with a candlestick. " 'You've
got to show them you want to get out of there.' "

In the last couple of years, Mr. Brown has cleaned up his act and
renounced his gang ties, prison officials said. He spends much of his
time reading - everything from Stephen King to self-help books to a
thesaurus - and he writes poetry.

He's eligible for parole in 2009. The only way to get out sooner,
state officials said, would be for Gov. Rick Perry to commute his sentence.

"I am on the verge of giving up completely," Mr. Brown admitted,
"because I am tired of holding on to nothing. I've been trying to
hold on for over 15 years, but for the most part I've been by myself."