Is Michael Perry Guilty?-- the Confession

Ok in the last part I left off with the detectives from the Montgomery County Sheriff's Office arriving at the residence of Cathleen Lazrine at approximately 2:00 AM on the 30^th of October 2001 looking for Michael Perry and Jason Burkett. The Sheriff's Office as you will remember got the Lazrine's address from Miranda Mapes when she *69'd a call she received from Michael Perry.

The Lazrine's advised the officers that Jason Burkett and Michael Perry had been at the residence earlier but were no longer at the residence.

Now this next part I am going off memory here because I loaned out my files on this part, but I have a really good memory so I'll give it a whirl.

The Sheriff's Office knew Jason Burkett and Michael Perry were in the area driving the white Isuzu belonging to Sandra Stotler so they advised the patrol units in the area to be on the look out for them. At approx. 5:00AM on the 30^th of October 2001 a patrol Sergeant with the Montgomery County Sheriff's Office observed several subjects sleeping in a white Isuzu in the front parking lot of a business in The Woodlands area of Montgomery County, TX. A computer check of the tag revealed the vehicle was the white Isuzu belonging to the murder victim Sandra Stotler.

The Sergeant requested back-up and attempted to perform a felony stop of the vehicle. He identified himself as being from the Montgomery County Sheriff's Office over the loud speaker and the subjects inside the vehicle began to awaken. The Sergeant identified three white males in the vehicle. As other units arrived the subjects were advised to exit the vehicle. The Sergeant advised that it appeared the subjects were going to exit the vehicle without incident when all of the sudden the driver, later identified as Jason Burkett, put the vehicle in gear and drove at the Sergeant striking him with the vehicle.

Several shots were fired by the police at the fleeing vehicle causing the driver to lose control of the vehicle and wreck into the front of a neighboring business. The occupants began exiting the white Isuzu at which time the driver, Jason Burkett, turned with a shotgun in his possession and fired at least one round at the pursuing officer. The officers then returned fire and Jason Burkett was struck by several shotgun pellets fired from the police.

The rear occupant of the vehicle gave up without incident but the other two occupants, Burkett and Perry, fled into the business and exited by way of a window in the back and fled on foot. After a brief search of the area Michael Perry and Jason Burkett were located at the residence of Cathleen Lazrine. Now I skipped through the turn by turn prior to getting to the Lazrine's residence so understand that.

Now during the arrest the police supposedly entered the residence and threw both subjects, Burkett and Perry, to the ground and arrested them. There are varying versions of the arrest ranging from the subjects being pistol whipped to them being slapped around. Regardless of the version you believe something took place in that residence during the arrest of Michael Perry and Jason Burkett that should not have taken place.

I have been involved in several officer related shootings and pursuits and emotions run high; your adrenaline is pumping and you feel like you just drank 100 cups of coffee; to say you are wired would be an understatement. It is exactly at times like this that the true professional behind the badge comes out because yes you can hurt people and get away with it; yes you can inflict "incidental justice" for all the wrongs the world has done to you that has been building, but a professional does not. The true law enforcement professional realizes that their job is merely to bring the "alleged" before the court so that the court system can try and punish the guilty.

I'm tough on the police in this series; especially the Montgomery County Sheriff's Office, but I promise you that the vast majority of all law enforcement officers are good hard working men and women doing a thankless job protecting you and me from the very bad in this world, and I commend them. In fact I make it a point every time I'm in a restaurant with my family and see one in there eating to stop on my way out and thank them for what they do.

Unfortunately you have officers like Sgt. Sydney Blair, who was formerly with the Montgomery County Sheriff's office but is now with the Department of Homeland Security, that think they are above the law and can do whatever they want because they wear the badge. See it's not hard to identify officers like Blair because all you have to do is look at their record; how many citizen complaints does an officer have on his record? How many times has an arrestee required medical care after an arrest? How many excessive force complaint has an officer received? I spent decades in law enforcement and never had a citizen complaint; never had an excessive force complaint, so it really is easy to spot the bad apples after awhile.

Now the Montgomery County Sheriff's Office and the Montgomery County Attorney's Office have obstructed access to information on Sydney Blair using whatever means they can, and when I did get information it was incomplete at best, and with Texas's absolutely ridicule public records law information on Blair has been a challenge to locate, but this is what I know. Sydney Blair has several complaints of excessive force by citizens; there is an allegation that he put a teenagers head through a window on a traffic stop; he was asked to leave his job as a school resource officer for the Conroe Independent School District because of an incident involving the use of excessive or inappropriate force on another teenager at the Conroe High School.

When I see an officer like Sydney Blair involved in the arrest of Michael Perry and Jason Burkett I have no choice but to believe the allegation of abuse are true in this case.

In January 2007 Jason Burkett provided me with a statement allegedly by Cathleen Lazrine who stated "When Jason was arrested, lots of police came to my home. They kicked, hit, and stomped on Michael Perry's head. They were saying that Perry and Jason were wanted for triple homicide". Now I attempted to run down Cathleen Lazrine but she had moved from the address I had and I ran out of time before I could locate her.

Since I couldn't independently verify with Cathleen myself what happened I had to compare her alleged statement to the injuries received by Michael Perry during his arrest. I had a very well respected medical doctor look at the injuries and he advised me that they would support the statement or in layman's terms the injury were probably received in a manner like the statement suggests. Why is that important you ask?

It's important because in this country confessions are suppose to be "freely and voluntarily" made without force or threat of force. Senator John McCain in a recent presidential debate brings up a point and although I'm not a fan of McCain's I respect his knowledge as a prisoner of war. The point McCain brought up was that if you inflict enough pain on a person or you instill enough fear of further abuse then a person will confess to anything.

So if I hear one more time that Michael Perry confessed I'm going to puke. Michael Perry was assaulted and beaten so any alleged confession made by him has to be suspect.

Let me talk about the injuries to Michael Perry for a minute and I'm going to put up documentary evidence so you can see what I'm talking about in a slideshow to.

Michael Perry was transported to the Conroe Regional Medical Center by Montgomery County EMS. During this trip Michael alleges that Sydney Blair continued his abuse of him. Now this trip would normally take about 6 minutes in ambulance but according to EMS records the trip took about 20 minutes on that day; now why is that I wonder?

Now Conroe Regional Medical Center just happened to be the same place Sandra Stotler worked and was well known at. Anybody want to take a guess at what type medical care Michael Perry received at the hospital as a result of the fact the staff knew he was arrested for allegedly killing their friend Sandra? I want you to think back to the last time you were in a hospital when I describe Michael Perry's treatment. The EMS transferred Michael Perry with the following observations; the subject had numerous lacerations about the arm and wrists with blood soaking through the bandages; the subject was complaining of a headache; the subject advised he had been drinking and taking drugs; there are signs of a hematoma behind the right ear with free following blood coming from the ear.

Ok so what do we have here? We have a patient with lacerations lousing enough blood to soak through bandages; we have a patient complaining of headache with signs of a possible head injury with free flowing blood coming from the ear; you have a subject stating he was on drugs and alcohol so what did this doctor do? He didn't have blood drawn to confirm whether the person was in fact on drugs or alcohol; he did not x-ray the person's head to rule out a serious head injury; he stitched up the lacerations and told the police to get him out of there and take him to jail. Do any of you not think that if it was you or I going into the ER with the same symptoms that our care would have been different? I have no doubt that I would still be paying off the bill to Conroe Regional Medical Center because they ran every test in the world on me, but on Michael Perry they never even drew blood.

Here's the kicker; the deputies transport Michael Perry directly from the hospital to the jail and at receiving the nurse inspects Michael and when she finds out that the doctor did not do a head x-ray she refused to accept him and ordered him be taken back to the hospital for re-evaluation. So basically the nurse told the doctor, hey doctor I think you made a mistake and you really need to look at this patient again. The deputies get Michael Perry back to the hospital and the doctor "refuses" to re-examine Michael's head injury even after having the nurse tell him an x-ray should at least be done. This little game went on until finally the jail doctor cleared Michael's admission to the jail with instruction to schedule a head x-ray.

Now do any of you think Michael Perry truly got quality medical care? Now with a subdural hematoma what you have is a swelling of blood between the brain and the skull. Some of the keys signs are mental confusion, memory loss, headaches, and dizziness.

Now the confession doesn't seem so "freely and voluntary" does it?

Now add in the fact that Michael Perry is bipolar and on drugs and alcohol and it's quite possible he had not idea what his rights were let alone understand the consequences of giving up his right.

Now I'm going to call Det. Carey Mace out on this confession. You see Det. Mace may be able to fool some of you that have never been in law enforcement but he damn sure can't fool me. The confession of Michael Perry is a fraud and here is why; no detective worth their wait in gold would write out a summary for a suspect; I don't care if the suspect has to write with two broken hands you make them write it themselves so attorneys like Steve Jackson can't claim you made up the statement and had them sign it. In Michael Perry's case Det. Mace wrote up a summary of what Michael supposedly said and then had him sign it as his confession; no way in hell so that's strike one Mace.

Next Mace takes a taped statement; there is not a detective in the world that would take a written and a taped statement from a subject; why take a written statement if you have the taped statement in the person's own words? The minute you take a second statement you leave yourself open should the subject change one word in either statement then the defense attorney with attack the validity of the statements; strike two Mace.

Next Mace sends the tape of the confession to the Houston Crime Lab to be " cleaned up" as they stated. The hospital room where the confession was taken is considered a "sterile environment" in the sense that the police controlled the entrance and exit from the room. Once it was determined Michael Perry was not in immediate life danger the police had absolute control over him at that point. They could very well have told the doctor and nurse to get out for 10 minutes and shut the door to the room so that confession should have been perfect. There should have been no need to "clean it up" coming from a sterile environment; so that is strike three Mace and your so called confession is out of here.

In all my time in law enforcement I have never seen a bigger bunch of "crap" as this supposed confession. How any judge could rule it admissible is beyond me because clearly the evidence supports it was not freely and voluntarily given, and that it is extremely likely that Michael Perry neither understood what he was doing or the significance of waiving his right to counsel.