I have no idea whether any of the three men actually did it, killed that man all those years ago. The courts say it is so.
You have to, though, respect the dead man and his memory, not to mention those who loved him. He has been 18 years gone now.
In a sense, Paletha Barnes lost her two brothers that night too.
Someone — it is not clear who — pulled a trigger the night of June 13, 1992, killing James McGregor as he rode in a car with three other people.
The judge gave Brian and William Lee, and a buddy, Eric Lightner, life in prison, tacking on an additional 50 years for each of them.
All three have been housed at the Limon Correctional Facility ever since.
It is, of course, not surprising that Paletha Barnes, 46, insists her brothers committed no such crimes. What is not usual is the lengths she has undertaken to get people not only to hear her, but also to believe her.
On June 14, 18 years and a day after the shooting, she staged a rally and “March 4 Justice” at the state Capitol on her brothers’ behalf, pleading for Gov. Bill Ritter to commute their sentences.
Close to 40 people attended, she said.
“They were people who remembered, who wanted to support me,” she said.
The story of what happened that night is an old one: There was the requisite night-club confrontation and brief scuffle. Each side retired to find weapons, followed by the eruption of gunfire from cars on a Denver street corner.
Paletha Barnes today is as certain of her brothers’ innocence as the system is of their guilt.
She will tell you over and over how her brothers never killed that man, that the bullet that entered the man’s chest was a ricochet fired from inside his own car.
Her brothers were arrested almost immediately. Police found not a trace of gunpowder residue on either of them. The murder weapon? It was never found.
The trial occurred during a highly charged time, she said, the so-called Summer of Violence in Denver. The cops and the D.A., she said, were under extreme pressure to make arrests, to get convictions.
“The judge, with his sentence, said he was making an example of them,” she said.
She telephones her brothers at least twice a month. In the two weeks she spent here organizing the march, she visited them in prison twice.
“That time was almost like a dream,” Paletha Barnes said in an interview from her home in Norman, Okla. “The event was just a deep prayer, a cry for attention, that someone will find the compassion to help my brothers.”
Certainly they made bad choices, she said. They were there that night. But they “did not kill anyone,” she says firmly. “That is our plea.”
Brian is 40 now. William is 37. They were just kids when they went to prison, she said, men who have never once professed anything other than their innocence.
“Our family has been blessed in that they both have kept us strong by not giving up, of how certain they are in what they have always maintained.”
I ask what her next step might be. She thinks about this for a long time.
“Now, I guess I am trying prayer, and staying in touch with those I have met,” she said.
“I just know something positive will one day happen.”
Bill Johnson writes Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays. Reach him at 303-954-2763 or wjohnson@denverpost.com.
