The Final, Fateful Days of Lawrence Phillips

The Final, Fateful Days of Lawrence Phillips

http://thelab.bleacherreport.com/the-final-fateful-days-of-lawrence-phillips/

BALDWIN PARK, Calif. — His feet in shackles, arms in handcuffs, he shuffled into the courtroom in Bakersfield, California, a 40-year-old man dressed in a tan suit. It was Jan. 12, 2016.

He looked skinnier than he did in his playing days, but his face was still youthful, as if time hadn’t moved from when he was a running back at the University of Nebraska. As he scanned his surroundings, his brown eyes were bright with curiosity. He appeared fully engaged in the moment.

His handcuffs were removed. He smiled at his attorney. Even though he’d been living in isolation at Kern Valley State Prison in Delano, California, where he was 10 years into a 31-year sentence for felony assault with a deadly weapon and domestic assault, he still could summon a disarming, luminous smile.

He assured his lawyer that he was ready to hear the state’s evidence against him in the matter of the People of the State of California vs. Lawrence Phillips. In Case No. BF161330A, Phillips—the former running back for the Nebraska Cornhuskers and the St. Louis Rams, Miami Dolphins and San Francisco 49ers—was accused of murdering his cellmate, Damion Soward, on April 11, 2015. Phillips was facing the possibility of a death sentence if convicted.

Before the proceeding began, Phillips, upon noticing his lawyer, Jesse Whitten, looking uneasy, said to him: “Hey, relax, man—it’s only a preliminary hearing. I’m going to be held to answer the murder charge. This is only a formality.”

Sitting about four feet away in the courtroom at a separate table was Kern Valley State Prison corrections officer Jason Gaddis. Phillips had complained for months that Gaddis and other guards had been withholding or delaying his mail. Phillips was a prolific man of letters—in neat, steady cursive handwriting, he penned about a half-dozen missives a week to friends, family members and former coaches and teammates—and he believed that Officer Gaddis and other guards prevented his letters from leaving the prison and stopped outside letters from reaching him.

Kern Valley did not respond to Bleacher Report’s several requests for interviews with prison guards.

Now Phillips eyed Gaddis suspiciously in the courtroom. The most notorious prisoner at Kern Valley—a maximum-security facility in the San Joaquin Valley—Phillips had long felt that several guards at Kern had targeted him. According to Whitten, a few of the guards repeatedly asked him about his football career at Nebraska and in the NFL, but Phillips refused to rehash his past.

“Talking about football reminded Lawrence of everything that had been taken away from him,” said Whitten. “Lawrence hated to go down that path, so he didn’t talk. And some of the guards didn’t appreciate that. Some of them treated him with great respect, but some viewed this as Lawrence acting bigger than them. They thought he was arrogant.”

According to several people, Phillips was especially wary of Officer Gaddis. Internal prison documents obtained by B/R confirm that Gaddis, acting on behalf of Deputy District Attorney Andi Bridges, seized a tall stack of Phillips’ personal legal papers relating to an appeal he was working on. According to emails from Whitten, those papers included confidential attorney-client communication, and by the time copies of his legal work were returned to Phillips in a bag—Bridges kept the originals—the papers were a jumbled mess and the deadline for Phillips’ appeal had passed.

Another prison document obtained by B/R reveals that Gaddis seized special shoes and a knee brace worn by Phillips, who had problems with his feet and knees stemming from his football career. Gaddis took these items as part of an investigation. But according to Whitten, when Phillips asked for them to be returned, he was told he didn’t need them. A few months later, when Phillips was given medical attention, Whitten said a doctor informed Phillips that failing to wear the shoes had caused permanent damage and he would need surgery.

The testimony began. Officer Gaddis stepped into the witness stand. He described finding a letter in Cell 210 at Kern—a space that Phillips and Soward shared that measured about six-and-a-half feet by 13 feet. Gaddis discovered the letter about two months after Soward’s death. Dated April 10, 2015, the note was written by Phillips to his mother, Juanita.

Then Gaddis recalled a conversation he had with Phillips on July 20, 2015. He quoted Phillips as telling him, “Gaddis, no disrespect, but I don’t give a f–k about nobody, not even you. All I care about is me. At the end of the day, all I care about is me.”

Phillips had a vastly different recollection of that talk. In Phillips’ recounting, according to multiple sources, he told Gaddis, “No disrespect, but I’m just trying to do my own thing. I’m just trying to keep my head down and do my time.” Phillips was emphasizing that he didn’t want to be affiliated with any of the gangs at Kern.

The preliminary hearing concluded with the judge announcing there was enough evidence to move forward to trial. Phillips rose from his seat. Shaking his head, he gazed at Gaddis in disbelief. As another officer put him in handcuffs, Phillips continued to lock his eyes on Gaddis. His expression turned stern and he told Gaddis that he lied about their conversation “and you know it”—the last statement Phillips would ever utter in public.

He walked out of the courtroom and into a smaller room in the courthouse to change into his prison-issued orange jumpsuit. Whitten approached Phillips, who was flanked by three officers, to retrieve his tan suit.

“Lawrence, are you doing OK?” Whitten asked.

“I don’t want to talk right now,” he replied, eyeing the three guards.

“I’ll see you next week,” Whitten said.

Phillips nodded his head.

He was then escorted into an awaiting prison van. Less than 10 hours later, he would be found unresponsive in his single cell at Kern. The coroner ruled the cause of death a suicide.

B/R interviewed more than two dozen people for this story, including many who had direct contact and correspondence with Phillips in his final week. Not one of them believes that he died at his own hands.

So, what happened to Lawrence Phillips?

Right now, his final moments remain as mysterious—and troubling—as the man himself.

Now, in the courtroom, Whitten said Phillips sat close to the man he trusted the least at Kern Valley. Phillips was especially mystified that—of all the officers at Kern—it was Gaddis who had been appointed the lead investigator in the death of Soward.

The images flickered on the two video screens above the open casket in the dimly lit chapel in Baldwin Park, reminders of the promise Lawrence Lamond Phillips once possessed.

There was a picture of him in the Nebraska locker room after he ran for 165 yards and scored three touchdowns to help lead the Cornhuskers to a 62-24 win over Florida in the 1996 Fiesta Bowl, a victory that earned the school its second straight national title.

There was a snapshot of Phillips playing for the Rams, who drafted him with the No. 6 overall pick in the spring of 1996.

There was a photo of Phillips standing on a beach with his closest friends, looking like a typical college kid on spring break.

More images flashed as the somber notes of “Swing Low, Sweet Chariot” filled Christ Church of the Valley on Jan. 23— the day after Phillips had been scheduled to be arraigned on first-degree murder charges. A dozen of his former teammates then leaned over his body. Former Nebraska coach Tom Osborne joined them, putting his arms around his old players, many of them sobbing quietly.

Then the memorial service began. Over the next two hours, Phillips’ friends, mentors, teammates and coaches strode to a microphone that stood next to his casket.

“I can’t tell you why Lawrence was put in a cell with a convicted murderer,” said Ty Pagone, a former assistant principal at Baldwin Park High School, which Phillips attended. “I can’t tell you why he sometimes never got my letters in prison. He spent a half a year in the hole, in solitary, and he said it was more peaceful in there than being in the regular prison.”

“When Plan A didn’t work, they had to do Plan B,” said Thomas Penegar, one of Lawrence’s closest friends. “Lawrence had plenty of things in his room to keep his mind occupied. He had a plan.”

“The system failed one of our people,” said Clinton Childs, a former running back at Nebraska. “No way can you convince me that Lawrence committed suicide. No way.”

A few days before his death, Phillips sent a letter to George Darlington, the former defensive backs coach at Nebraska who had recruited him. In his writing, Phillips gushed about Nebraska’s 37-29 win over UCLA in the Foster Farms Bowl in late December, raving about the revival of the Cornhuskers’ old-school running game. He was already looking forward to the 2016 college football season.

“I never saw Lawrence act suicidal in any way,” Darlington said. “I have over 30 letters from him, and he was always upbeat. But Lawrence had killed a Crip in prison, and the Crips in the prison wanted to get the guy who killed their buddy.”

Five days before he died, Phillips met with his lawyer, Whitten, in a small, windowless room in Kern. He was all business during their four-hour cram session.

“I hope you don’t take offense that we don’t talk football,” Whitten said at one point. “Hopefully we’ll have time to talk about that in the future.”

“We’ve got a lot of work to do,” Phillips said.

He repeatedly told Whitten—and dozens of others in his letters—that he never wanted to join a gang at Kern Valley. According to multiple sources, there are three main groups at Kern among the black prisoners: the Bloods, the Crips and those who are unaffiliated. Phillips, who multiple sources say didn’t do drugs or drink alcohol in prison, steadfastly remained unaffiliated.

But one day about a year ago, Whitten said there was a fight in the prison yard between a white Crip member—who was under protection of the black Crip gang—and a white inmate who wasn’t a Crip. Word then circulated that there would be a brawl in the yard between black inmates and white inmates. The black inmates, the mandate went, were to raise their fists in support of the white Crip member.

“What started everything for Lawrence at the prison was this fight,” said Whitten. “He was unaffiliated, but he was expected to participate in this fight because it was viewed by the Crips as a blacks vs. whites fight, not a Crips vs. white fight.”

“When Lawrence got out in the yard,” continued Whitten, “he proned out—he laid down on the ground to signal to the guards that he wasn’t fighting. But the Crip guys took offense. They thought Lawrence should have been fighting.”

Phillips then expected that he would get beaten up or stabbed by a Crip member, according to multiple sources. He asked prison officials to be housed alone, fearful that a gang member would attack him in his cell. On more than one occasion, his wishes were honored.

“When Lawrence could meet someone and confirm they weren’t a gang member, he was cool with that. Then he’d be OK to live with them based on the evidence we had,” said Whitten.

In early April 2015, Soward, 37, was transferred from another prison to Kern. According to court documents, Soward—the cousin of former USC and Jacksonville Jaguar wide receiver R. Jay Soward—was a member of the Inland Empire Projects Gang in San Bernardino, California, which was affiliated with the Crips. He was serving 82 years to life for the murder of Michael Fairley, a rival gang member.

According to multiple sources, Phillips didn’t know Soward or his background. On April 9, Soward moved into Phillips’ cell. Phillips shook his hand and walked down a flight of stairs to help him move his belongings—housed in cardboard boxes—into the cell.

“Lawrence should not have been housed with a documented gang member,” said Whitten. “It wouldn’t have been hard to check.”

On the afternoon of April 10, Soward asked Phillips for a favor: Could he retrieve some papers for him on a lower level in their building? Phillips obliged.

At 10 p.m. that night, the lights fell dark at Kern. Moments later, a guard observed Phillips and Soward in their bunks—Soward on top, Phillips on the bottom—watching television. At 12:15 a.m. an officer conducted a security check of Cell 210 and reported seeing, through the window in the door, that Phillips and Soward were still in their bunks with the television on.

At 12:46 a.m., the alarm sounded in Facility A, Building 5 at Kern.

According to multiple sources who relayed Phillips’ version of the events, this was what transpired:

Soward rose from his bunk and began pacing back and forth. Phillips then rolled out of his, sensing something was about to happen.

“What’s going on?” Phillips asked.

“You should have rolled out,” Soward said.

Then the 6’4″, 229-pound Soward lunged at the 6’0″, 220-pound Phillips.

Soward swung a fist; Phillips ducked. Phillips immediately put Soward in a headlock, and the two fell to the ground. Phillips’ back hit the concrete floor first, Soward’s back on his chest.

Trying to control him, Phillips kept him in a sleeper hold while screaming, “Man down! Man down!”

He desperately tried to attract the attention of the guards. But it took several minutes, according to sources, for the guards to arrive. Phillips maintained his grip on Soward the entire time. After a few minutes, Soward fell limp. Phillips figured he had merely passed out and would be fine.

The first officer to arrive at the cell was Tommy Redmon, according to court documents. He found Phillips standing at the door. Phillips then moved to the side to show him that Soward was motionless in the middle of the cell.

Redmon ordered Phillips out of the cell. Phillips stretched his arms out through the food port of the door, enabling Redmon to handcuff him. He then emerged from the cell, and Redmon escorted him to a holding area.

As Phillips walked, he took Soward’s last words—”You should have rolled out”—to mean that he should have stayed in protective custody. The statement, he believed, was Soward’s attempt to tell him this was a gang hit and it was meant as nothing personal.

Redmon later described Phillips’ demeanor as “oddly calm”—a statement the deputy district attorney would later emphasize in court when presenting her case against Phillips.

“The guards immediately went to Lawrence, and they didn’t check on Soward for several minutes,” said Whitten. “When Soward finally was taken out of the cell, he was still alive.”

Forty hours later, he was pronounced dead. The cause of death, according to the coroner, was strangulation.

The DA alleged a different version of the events from what Phillips planned to present at trial. She argued in the preliminary hearing that he attacked Soward when his cellmate was asleep. She noted that several pill bottles of supplements that Phillips took were undisturbed on a table.

“There wasn’t a struggle because Mr. Phillips took Mr. Soward by surprise,” Bridges told the court. “And he did that by imposing bar-arm choke”—a chokehold—”around Mr. Soward’s neck. … He did it quickly, forcefully. He did it to the point where inmate Soward could not make any noise and call attention to the cell, he couldn’t struggle. He could not struggle.”

She continued: “So after years—and, to be specific, years 2005 to 2014—refusing cellmates, he finally took matters into his hands because Mr. Phillips is not going to be housed with anybody. Mr. Phillips is above that. … If someone attacked you, your adrenaline is up, you’re sweating, you’re protecting yourself. But Mr. Phillips was oddly calm as he left Cell 210 that night. … Mr. Phillips was going to give them what they wanted. He wasn’t going to tolerate this anymore. He was done. And so was Mr. Soward, because he applied the bar-arm hold to his neck and he squeezed the life right out of him.”

As the DA spoke, Phillips shook his head. He wouldn’t be allowed to raise a defense at this hearing. That hour would come in the future, and Phillips, according to multiple sources, eagerly awaited his day in court.

Whitten, Phillips’ attorney, was driving to Ventura, California, on January 13 for a court case when his cellphone rang. He answered to hear the shocked voice of Juanita Phillips.

“Did you hear the news?” she asked.

“What do you…” Whitten said.

“They killed Lawrence.”

Phillips was optimistic about his upcoming trial, according to multiple sources. When he met with his lawyers, he typically carried with him a stack of papers about 15 inches high of his own research. He spent countless hours in the prison library working on his own defense.

His favorite place at Kern, in fact, was the library. In junior high, standardized tests revealed Phillips to be intellectually gifted, and at Kern, he devoured books on subjects ranging from physics to mathematics to psychology. But in the last year, the library became his own legal office.

After his preliminary hearing, Phillips returned to his single cell in segregated housing at Kern. Inmates in this unit are checked every 30 minutes. His cell door was operated by a control tower in the unit. So if anyone entered or left the cell, the control tower operator would know.

The lights went out at 10 p.m. At just midnight, Phillips was found unresponsive in his cell. He was placed on a gurney and ferried to a local hospital, where at 1:30 a.m. he was pronounced dead.

The coroner, who won’t issue his full report for at least two months, later found a note that was tucked in Phillips’ left sock. According to Clayton Campbell, one of Phillips’ attorneys, the note read in part: “Did you hear the one about the football player who hung himself from the TV mount in his cell?”

But both Campbell and Whitten, who also examined the note, believe that Phillips’ hand didn’t craft the words on the paper that were in print letters. He wrote all of his missives in cursive.

“It’s clearly not Lawrence’s handwriting,” said Whitten. “It’s wildly different even to the untrained eye.”

Phillips’ family plans to hire a civil rights attorney to investigate his death.

“The people who may be responsible for Lawrence’s death are the ones conducting the investigation of Lawrence’s death,” said Campbell. “A civil rights attorney will depose the guards. Once you get the guards under oath is when the house of cards at Kern Valley could come down.”

The legend rode in the backseat of the silver Infiniti, gazing out of the window at the neighborhood where Lawrence Phillips grew up. It was nearly a quarter-century ago that Osborne first visited Phillips in L.A.’s Inland Valley on a recruiting trip, and now, an hour after attending the funeral, the 78-year-old remembered the player he never could save.

“I talked to someone who received a letter from Lawrence that was dated the day he died,” Osborne said, still looking out at the cool winter afternoon. “Lawrence wrote about the Nebraska volleyball team, which just won the national championship. Lawrence was very upbeat in the letter, looking forward, positive. He didn’t sound like a guy who would do himself in.”

Sitting next to Osborne was Darlington, who recalled a conversation he had with Nick Saban not long after Phillips ran for 206 yards and four touchdowns in Nebraska’s 50-10 victory over Saban’s Michigan State Spartans in the autumn of 1995—a game that remains one of the most lopsided defeats of Saban’s career.

“Nick said there were two backs that he’d seen in person who impressed him the most,” Darlington said. “One was Eric Dickerson, the other was Lawrence Phillips. We may never have had a more talented back at Nebraska than Lawrence.”

“I saw a lot of good in Lawrence,” Osborne said. “But he was hurt as a kid, and he just had trouble rising above it, trouble overcoming his demons. But now it’s important to shed as much light as possible on what happened to Lawrence in prison. Transparency is important. It just doesn’t seem like a lot of things add up.”

The car pulled into the Ontario International Airport in San Bernardino County. Osborne climbed out of the back seat to begin his journey back to Nebraska on a commercial flight. As he walked, he looked at the snow-capped San Gabriel Mountains in the distance. He then closed his eyes and could be seen silently shaking his head.

And so it ended as it began with Lawrence Phillips—so many questions, never enough answers.