Tom Caraway

The Tom Caraway Case

Tom Caraway is approaching his seventies. Until now, he's never been to prison—never even had a traffic ticket. He's been in prison for nearly 18 years for a crime he did not commit.

Below is detailed the outrageousness of the case of Tom Caraway, a man who was wrongfully convicted of using the U.S. mail to send someone an explosive device, resulting in a mandatory minimum 30-year federal prison sentence.

Tom's case stinks. The injustice emanates from the sense of truth and justice in our souls.

Before highlighting the strikingly unfair aspects of Tom's wrongful conviction, we want to stop and place great emphasis on a crucial fact:

Because of a change in the law, Tom's crime no longer constitutes a "crime of violence." And because his crime no longer constitutes a "crime of violence" under the law his mandatory minimum 30-year sentence is void, which is the result of the use of a destructive device in furtherance of a crime of violence. In the absence of the mandatory minimum 30-year sentence Tom's new statutory maximum sentence is 20 years. Tom has been in prison for about 17 years. Thus, under the new law Tom would be released immediately.

Tom cannot read or write. And this issue must be litigated in federal court before Tom can take advantage of the change in the law. Notably, a prisoner does not have a right to an attorney at the post-conviction stage. Thus, Tom's only hope of benefiting from the change in the law is to capture the attention of an attorney who can champion his release.

Putting the change in the law aside, we will now examine Tom's wrongful conviction.

At Tom's trial, the government (and the defense attorney) brushed aside DNA evidence, fingerprints, and key eyewitnesses. Instead, it sold a story—a story about a man scorned because his wife left him for another man, Spud Owens, one of his friends. The government maintained that Tom built a highly sophisticated explosive device and got his daughter Jess to drive his 21-year-old son Shawn an hour to the Wamego post office in rural Kansas to mail the package to Spud. The government also maintained that Shawn wrote the addresses (both return and sender) on the package, wrapped it in twine, and gave it to a postal clerk, witnessed by postmaster Dan Heideman. Two days later, Spud received the package, and after opening it, he sustained minor injuries to his hand. 

Thus, Tom received 30 years in federal prison for having his son mail the package (containing an explosive device) to Spud

That was the government's case theory.

But as was previously mentioned, the government found hair samples inside the package (in the tape) and a palm print and fingerprints (lifted from the tape). Naturally, the government swabbed Tom's mouth (to run a DNA test) and collected hair samples from Tom. Tom vehemently maintained his innocence and happily cooperated by providing multiple samples on different occasions. 

But neither the DNA (hair) nor palm and fingerprints matched Tom (the alleged builder of the device) or Tom's son Shawn (the alleged mailer of the package). Incredibly, the government only had its forensic team run the DNA (hair) against Tom's and Shawn's DNA—the government nor the defense attorney ever requested the DNA be run against the national database to match the DNA to the culprit. 

The government shrugged off the fingerprints, palm prints, and DNA by telling the jury the following:

"Hairs. Fingerprints. That's going to be a jury mystery. We will never know who belongs to those hairs or who belongs to those fingerprints. That's just part of the evidence. It's not a television show like CSI where everything matches up. If everything matched up, we probably wouldn't be here. But it doesn't match up; it's not like a TV show."

They could have tested the DNA and fingerprints against the national database. Mystery solved. 

When the Kansas University Innocence Project began working on Tom's case (in 2017), they had to inform Tom of a tragic dead end: the government (illegally) destroyed all DNA evidence. Likewise, the Innocence Project in New York, New York ran into the same dead end: "Specifically, [The U.S. Postal Inspection Service] wrote to your former attorney...and told her that all of the evidence in your case was...destroyed as of 2012."

The government destroyed the DNA and fingerprint evidence. So not only did the government (nor the defense) test the DNA and fingerprints against the national database, but after Tom was shipped off to prison, the government illegally destroyed the evidence so it could never be tested, ensuring the truth would never see the light of day.

Preserved evidence can help solve closed cases – and exonerate the innocent. Preserving biological evidence from crime scenes is critically important because DNA can provide the best evidence of innocence – or guilt – upon review of a case.

None of the nation's more than 350 DNA exonerations would have been possible had the biological evidence not been available to test. Had the evidence been destroyed, tainted, contaminated, mislabeled, or otherwise corrupted, the innocence of these individuals would never have come to light.

And then there was the handwriting on the package. Again, the government maintained that Tom's son, Shawn, wrote the addresses on the package. The government brought in an expert in handwriting, but after five samples, the handwriting didn't match Shawn's writing. The government's counter was that Shawn was probably high on methamphetamines, and when one is high on methamphetamine, it affects their handwriting. 

Sure. That explains away the handwriting.

It gets more incredible. 

The day after the explosion, investigators naturally went to the Wamego post office to interview the postal clerks and postmaster. Here the case becomes even more troubling. Dan Heideman was the U.S. postmaster who witnessed firsthand the actual crime having been committed. 

In his interview, investigators showed him a picture of Tom's son, Shawn, but postmaster Heideman said with absolute certainty that was not the man who mailed the package. 

Incredibly, eyewitness postmaster Heideman was not called as a witness at the trial. Postmaster Heideman was a key eyewitness whose powerful testimony would have put a stake right through the heart of the government's case theory, which hinged on the fact that Shawn mailed the package.

And then, there were the materials used to make the explosive device. Tom had a sprawling mechanic's garage with all kinds of knick-knacks commonly found in practically every mechanic's garage. Not a single item in Tom's garage matched the many pieces used to make the device.

Then, of course, there was Tom's son (Shawn, who allegedly mailed the package) and daughter (Jess, who allegedly drove Shawn to the Wamego post office). Both adamantly maintained Tom did not give Shawn the package to mail, even providing sworn grand jury testimony to that effect.

When absolutely nothing pointed to Tom and fit their case theory—not the key eyewitnesses, not the DNA evidence found inside the package, not the latent fingerprints and palm prints found inside the package, not the handwriting on the package, not the materials—they were all out of options. And since Shawn, Jess, and eyewitness postmaster Heideman didn't tell the story investigators wanted, investigators had to get Shawn and/or Jess to change their stories and to follow their script, that is, to say that his father gave Shawn the device to mail and that he mailed it. I mean, it's not as if they could bully postmaster Heideman into changing his story.

The government turned up the heat. Using the full weight of the U.S. government, investigators leaned hard on Shawn, then on Jess. 

As was stated, for nearly three years, in seven different interviews, Shawn denied the accusations, but investigators were relentless. 

The government sent Shawn a formal letter stating that he would be charged if he did not testify against his father and say what the government wanted him to say. Shawn was looking at a mandatory minimum of 30 years in federal prison, with no parole and a possible life without parole federal sentence. If, however, he did agree to change his story, follow the government's script, and testify against Tom, he would receive complete immunity and a possible $20,000 reward. 

Faced with the threat of a mandatory minimum 30-year sentence and a possible life sentence, Shawn agreed to discard his previous seven interviews and sworn grand jury testimony to go with his eighth version, the version law enforcement wanted. 

Then there's Tom's daughter Jess, who supposedly drove Shawn to the post office in Wamego (about a 45-minute drive). Like Shawn, Jess said it never happened. And like Shawn, Jess provided sworn grand jury testimony consistent with her position. But investigators would not stop threatening her. At Tom's trial, Jess testified under oath that after years of browbeating and intimidation by investigators, Shawn had come to her and pleaded with her to change her story, or he and she would go to jail. Still, Jess refused. But everything was set up, Shawn explained. Investigators were waiting on her. Shawn, Spud Owens, and Tom's ex-wife all coaxed her to the police station to meet with investigators. It was a hard press.

At Tom's trial, Jess said after years of harassment from law enforcement, Tom's ex-wife, Spud, and Shawn, the overwhelmed, terrified, and emotionally drained Jess finally agreed to change her story to what investigators wanted to hear. At Tom's trial, Jess testified that she was seven months pregnant and had two little kids at home, and she couldn't even feed the kids as she had no money for groceries. And if she would change her story and tell investigators that she did drive Shawn to the post office to mail the package, not only would law enforcement not take her to jail, but her mom would give her much-needed financial support, Jess testified. 

Jess further testified that Shawn and her mother kept dangling the $20,000 reward in front of her, telling her she would get half if she changed her story. 

At Tom's trial, Jess made incessantly clear that she never drove Shawn to the post office and that Shawn was making up the story (his eighth version) to appease investigators so he could avoid prison time. Jess' testimony didn't sit well with the government, so the government charged Jess with perjury because she dared to tell what really happened.

Tom's boss Rex Larson also testified at the trial. Rex testified that he ran a small business and closely watched his employees. He produced time sheets, paychecks, and his sworn testimony that showed that Tom was at work in Holton, with the car that Shawn testified was used to drive to Wamego (the only vehicle in the family belonged to Tom; they lived in rural Kansas) at the time the device was mailed, making it impossible for Shawn's story to be true. 

The government also had witnesses testify that Tom had threatened Spud, the man who had an affair with his wife. Additionally, the government put on the stand a methamphetamine cook who testified (in exchange for a reduced sentence in a federal drug case) that he found a book about how to make bombs on Tom's property. The book, however, vanished because meth cook Mark said he let a friend borrow it. On top of that, government witnesses testified that they heard a loud bang on Tom's property once and that Tom was a good mechanic and welder, the implication being that Tom had the skill to build the explosive device.

Notably, this was a highly complex bombing case crammed into a three-day trial. Trials such as these typically take months. 

It's also strange that the government's story is that Tom's motive for building and mailing the device to Spud was to seek revenge for Spud's affair with Tom's wife, Denise. But when government witness Spud Owens testified under oath at trial, on direct examination from the government, he swore up and down that he hadn't even seen nor heard from Tom's wife for about ten years; and that he only heard from her after the bombing. Bizarre. Yet another "mystery."

Whose hair (DNA) was it? Whose fingerprints? Why not test the DNA against the national database? Why not call U.S. postmaster Heideman to testify? He witnessed the crime and said with absolute certainty it was not Shawn. 

Because the evidence didn't match the government's case theory, the government bent, twisted, and manipulated the "evidence" to fit its narrative. That's the sad truth.

So instead of DNA evidence and fingerprints and a key eyewitness being center stage at Tom's trial, it was a sideshow—people testifying that they heard Tom threaten the victim, a man who stole his wife, and a meth cook who, in exchange for his freedom in a federal drug conspiracy case, said he found a phantom bomb-making book on Tom's property, a book that was never recovered, and similar hocus-pocus nonsense design to cast Tom in a bad light. 

Tom has a spotless disciplinary prison record. Despite having been wrongfully convicted, he has invested almost two decades in programs offered by the prison system, a testament to Tom's character. Tom's achievements in prison are much too lengthy to list here. 

Tom needs the help of a skilled attorney who can advocate for a post-FIrst Step Act Compassionate Release or Clemency grant.

Compassion is not a feeling; compassion acts.