Free Tyrone Noling

Virtual Freedom
Convicted and behind bars, their voices roam the Web

Tuesday, March 13, 2007
Andrea Simakis
Plain Dealer Reporter

Diane Will is a 46-year-old phlebotomist from McKeesport, Pa. She has two grown kids and a granddaughter with killer dimples.

Soon, she'll take time off to visit her friend Tyrone Noling in Youngstown, but she'll have to empty her pockets and go through a metal detector to do it. Those are the rules when calling on a prisoner at the Ohio State Penitentiary. The grandmother and the inmate have never met -- she's never even heard his voice on the phone -- yet when she signs her name in the visitor's log, she'll become one of only a handful of people to see him in his 17 years in prison. Even his mother hasn't made the trip.

Will had never heard of Noling or his conviction for the 1990 murder of an elderly couple in Atwater Township, until she discovered his MySpace page, an Internet snapshot filled with personal details from sexual orientation to zodiac sign. (Her favorite singer, Seattle's James David, another person she met online, sent Will and his 7,758 other virtual friends a message urging them to log onto www.myspace.com/freetyronenoling).

It was only a matter of time before prisoners tapped into the power of the Web. Victims' rights groups hate the idea. Free-speech advocates say there is no way to stop crooks sounding off on everything from the dehumanizing effects of long-term incarceration to their favorite "American Idol" contestant. And no one should try.

Once the province of earnest emo bands, wannabe actress/models and toasted college freshmen, an Internet site has become de rigueur for a more agenda-driven set. Hillary Rodham Clinton announced her candidacy on the Web; the Marines recruit on MySpace; and Honda used it to hawk the Element.

Just because an inmate has an online presence doesn't mean he's e-mailing teens, downloading porn and trolling Friendster and Flirtomatic from his cell. Though a handful of county jails allow soon-to-be released prisoners limited access to employment sites and resume building software, most convicts in this country aren't allowed within spitting distance of a computer.

Noling can't see his own MySpace profile or hear the song James David wrote for him, a guitar-heavy ballad that plays as users scroll through the page. (How it all works eludes him. When Noling went inside, he'd just turned 18 - there was no such thing as Google or eBay or Internet cafes).

Vicky Buckwalter, a private investigator, built the site for him and chaperones it. She answers questions from people like Diane Will and posts various documents, the most recent a copy of the polygraph test Noling took years ago indicating he was telling the truth when he denied killing Bearnhardt and Cora Hartig. That's another advantage of taking a case to a virtual jury - you can enter things in the record that aren't admissible in court.

Using Web to appeal for justice

A four-month online drive just helped free a man in Texas.

Tyrone Brown, sentenced to life in prison 17 years ago for smoking pot while on probation for robbery, was granted a conditional pardon by Gov. Rick Perry last Friday. Brown's Web site, savemrbrown.com, started by Florida lawyer Charlie Douglas after he saw a "20/20" broadcast detailing the case, directed people to bombard local and state officials with pleas to release Brown.

Douglas, a Web novice, found a medical student in California to build the site for him. Others started MySpace and FaceBook pages. "We launched a humongous campaign," says Douglas. And a relentless one. "This was a team effort, this was not the work of any one person or any one group," he says. "But in my heart, I can't help but believe that our group and the people that we have out there all across America, united by the Internet, were able to make this change."

Though prison diaries aren't new - think "In the Belly of the Beast" by Jack Henry Abbott and Eldridge Cleaver's "Soul on Ice" -the technology to disseminate the hopes, fears and anguish of those behind bars to 12 million users a day is.

Locked up but not silenced

"Social networking technologies like MySpace and FaceBook really have no boundaries," says Lev Gonick, vice president of information technology at Case Western Reserve University. "The walls of the prison will never be high enough to shut off communication."

Some use the Web to sell art a la John Wayne Gacy, find reliable pen pals or land prospective mates (see menofthepen.com and womenbehindbars.com). Others do it to feel human, something along the lines of "I post, therefore I 7am."

Donald "Duke" Palmer, sentenced to death in 1989 for shooting two men on a roadway in Belmont County, is a fan of Lindsay Lohan and the Olsen twins and never misses "The Late Late Show With Craig Ferguson." With the help of an outside blogger, Palmer posts with the regularity of a recently downsized computer nerd. He lodges complaints ("It must've only been about 45-50 degrees Fahrenheit in here this morning.") and writes poetry ("Woke up today and found myself in a prison cell. Just like yesterday and everyday . . . in this concrete hell."). He even shares his hate mail.

Dear Duke:

. . . I'm curious, what on earth can you possibly share with the world? I'm sure you do enjoy living. Just as those two people you murdered enjoyed their lives before you took them. . . You've been on death row for 14 years . . . Why not drop your appeals and be a man for a change? Your victims deserve to rest in peace.

Sincerely,

A Citizen for Swift Justice

Noling, for his part, isn't looking for a wife or to share his views about life on death row. He says he just wants a chance to tell his side of the story, something he never did in the courtroom. His lawyers, he says, advised him not to take the stand.

"My name is Tyrone Noling and I am currently on Ohio's Death Row for a double homicide I did not commit," his MySpace statement reads. At first, Will was skeptical. Then, as she clicked on link after link, her mind changed. She devoured newspaper articles about his case and signed an electronic petition demanding he be given a new trial. She wrote a state senator, asking her to take up Noling's cause, and posted a notice on her own site that Noling's 35th birthday is coming up - "March 22nd!" she says without hesitation - with a reminder to send him a card.

Noling joined the MySpace community after reading an article in November about 30 death-row inmates in Texas who'd tapped friends and family members to create pages for them. Andy Kahan, director of the mayor's crime-victim's office in Houston, asked MySpace to "draw the line somewhere" and ban inmate profiles that glorify killers and provide them with a platform to "influence young minds," as a significant chunk of the site's more than 100 million users are thought to be teens. MySpace has said little about the controversy and refuses to comment about whether it has ever taken down a convict's page.

Company won't serve as censor

Today, the company is "evaluating" prisoner profiles and "will remove anything that violates our terms of service" by using hate speech, threatening someone or "advocating violence."

"We don't step in the middle of free expression," MySpace told The Plain Dealer in an e-mail. "There's a lot on our site we don't approve of in terms of taste or ideas, but it's not our role to be censors."

States have tried to ban third parties from setting up Web sites for prisoners but have lost in the courts. That leaves just one solution. In the electronic marketplace of ideas, if you're offended by an inmate's site, start one of your own.

That's just what people are doing. Last year, for example, a MySpace page was created by Adeline, a San Francisco woman hit by an SUV, thrown 50 feet and left to die. It now boasts 97 members. The story of her survival and heartbreaking narratives from other victims can be found at the site (groups. myspace.com/victimsofcrime).

"That's what constitutional free speech is all about," Noling says. "Voice your opinion, just like I'm voicing mine."

To reach this Plain Dealer reporter:

asimakis@plaind.com, 216-999-4565