Words
by Sean Sellers

Almost Empty
The happiest day of my entire life was the Valentine’s Day I got married on Death Row. I cried that day. The worst day of my entire life was the unmarked day a year and a half later when my wife left me. I cried that day too. Two sets of tears, and they couldn’t have been more different. The first from a soul that finally felt whole. The second from a soul that was shattered beyond hope of repair -- or so I thought.

In the months that followed that day I found all my passion for life gone. A bleakness and darkness worse than any I’d ever known as a Christian enveloped me, and I set myself to die. I had nothing left to live for, and no strength left to search.

I sat down over a two week period to say my last words; with my pen and paper I began to write what I thought were going to be the final stories from my heart. The first week I wrote The Beast, a short story published in my book Shuladore. The second week I wrote the play you have here, "Almost Empty." It was a simple scenario. If I were about to die what would I like to SAY? So I wrote this play as straightforwardly as I could. A 28 year old death row inmate, about to be executed, meets with his attorney for the last time, to empty himself. In this play I poured myself out as much as I could. All the issues that had gone through my mind over the years regarding my being on death row, and some of the pain as well, came flowing out of my pen, until with the last word I was done. At that moment I set the play aside, and had nothing more to say. I was ready to die.

Fortunately, or unfortunately (depending on how my day goes usually) I didn’t die then. It was God’s will for me to say alive, learn to breathe without effort, learn to wake up without disappointment that yet another prayer for death had gone unanswered, and ultimately to discover that the most shattered heart, with love, can indeed be mended, made whole, and beat passionately again. But everything I said in this play, during that darkest period of brokenness, is still very much a part of me, and I believe it has a lot of merit.

If you would understand the issues of my heart, of being on death row, and the struggle that brings, if you would truly understand ME, then you must read "Almost Empty".

I offer it now for that purpose.


 

The Law and My Case Explained 2 October 1998
This morning I read the brief my attorney Steve Presson first filed with the Supreme Court. So many people have asked me and my friends about my case, and it’s always been hard to explain because of the "legalese" involved. It’s because of all those blank stares and questions of "what’s that mean?" that I think Constitution and Law should be a four year required course in High School just like English is. I would really like to see someone put that through legislation. The Law touches every citizen, and we are called upon to perform jury duty as a part of the public. We elect judges and civil servants to uphold the Law. Shouldn’t we all KNOW the law for these reasons alone? Not to mention the need to know our own rights. Anyone who thinks the Police are going to explain all your rights to you when they’re arresting and working to convict you, is deluded. America needs to know the Law better than it does. As you read this, and realize how much you didn’t know, keep that in mind. Maybe someone will agree enough to put those steps in motion and get it taught as a required subject in High School.

I was 16 years old when I was arrested. I did well in school, but I didn’t know anything about the Law. Sometimes I think if I did I wouldn’t be here today. I’m not saying I wouldn’t have been CAUGHT. I’m saying I wouldn’t have committed my crimes. You see, when I was 16 there were things happening in my mind that to this day I still have trouble explaining. We hear stories of postal workers going off the deep end and coming to work with a gun shooting everyone in sight. The stress of their jobs pushes them over the edge. I think today they have some kind of stress watch program to look for warning signs in employees, and prevent that from happening. Take the person OUT of the stressful environment and the crime never happens. No one gets hurt.

When I was 16 my home life was like an exercise in stress. Between school, work, a girlfriend I loved but my mother hated, my parent’s way of discipline, and my very confusing search into Satanism for values, I was a mess. I practically lived in my room, and avoided my parents every chance I got. Then, after a BIG argument one weekend my mom said, "you want to leave, then get the fuck out!" And while she and dad were gone to a friend’s house that afternoon I packed all my stuff and moved out. That evening at work dad showed up, took the keys to my pickup, and made me come home. The next day they forced me to move my stuff back, and then the stress doubled. They were determined to keep me under their thumb after that. As an example, when mom sent me to the store to get something for her, she watched me leave from the front yard. The store was to the right. I turned left to drive around the block -- I needed some time alone to think, and decided to take my time going to the store. Because I turned left instead of right I was grounded for a month. I spent all of December, including Christmas break, doing nothing but going to school and work. The only time I could see Angel, my girlfriend, was at work. And then it was literally SEE her. Not talk, not spend time with, just SEE her as I worked.

I didn’t know the Law said at 16 I could legally be ON MY OWN. If I had known that, I would never have come back home. I remember literally counting the days to my 18th birthday so I could move out. I don’t think I would have ever did what I did if I’d known I COULD leave that house. It was the stress in that house that made me seek out Satanism, and ultimately the stress that made me make the decisions I did. I’m sure someone will say that’s only an excuse. No. No excuse. It’s a reason. Reasons provide explanations not justification. That’s what I’m trying to offer. My mind was a MESS , and it was the stress of that house that pushed me over the edge.

It wasn’t a sudden process. And I tried to get help a couple of times. I told one of my teachers I thought I was going crazy. I was serious. She said she’d get me someone to talk to, but I think she forgot. I told my mother the same thing. She blew it off. People who needed psychiatrists were weak. Her son was NOT weak.

So I ended up killing three people. An innocent store clerk, and my mother and father. That’s what makes this so hard to write. How do I explain the legalities of my defense when I’ve committed the crimes? How do I offer explanations, and say I want to LIVE after that? All I can offer as an answer is two things: When a man has repented of his evil deeds, and given his life and soul to God’s service, there comes a moment when he must forgive himself, and live according to God’s reality rather than humanity’s. That is NOT easy. But I am either a murderer, or I am a Christian. 2 Corinthians 5:17 (Therefore, if any man be in Christ, he is a new creature; old things are passed away; behold all things are become new) is either a true spiritual reality, or it’s a false delusion.

Second, the reason I want to live is to serve God. I want to make a good difference in this world to make up for my evil past. Again, Ezekiel 33:14-16 (Again, when I say to the wicked, you shall surely die; if he turn from his sin, and do that which is lawful and right, if the wicked restore the pledge, give again that he had robbed, walk in the statutes of life, without committing iniquity; he shall surely live, he shall not die. None of his sins that he has committed shall be mentioned to him, he has done that which is lawful and right; he shall surely live.) is something either a man of God must accept, or he must not call himself a man of God.

That’s WHY I want to live. Why I even fight for life. But the Law isn’t cognizant of spiritual realities. It can’t be. How can a judge look into a man’s heart and see what is really there? The Law has its own criteria for determining punishment, mercy, and justice. And I want to try to explain some of those things in my case.

When I went to trial the State, meaning the prosecution, was given unlimited resources to convict me. That means the District Attorney was allowed to hire any expert witnesses, conduct any tests, and make any investigation he wanted, not matter how much it cost. There were no monetary restrictions placed on the prosecution. But my defense, on the other hand, was limited to $750. My court appointed attorney was forced to pay for my defense total from that amount. Any expert witnesses he hired, any tests he conducted, anyone he flew in from out of state, had to be paid for from that $750.

We all saw the millions of dollars spent on O.J. Simpson’s defense. If he’d had only $750 to spend do you think he’d be free today? That became the first claim that I had an unfair trial. My attorney couldn’t properly defend me under that restriction. He needed more money to investigate everything. What few people know though is that my attorney paid for some things himself in a desperate effort to do his job right. He paid for plane tickets to fly in some of the witnesses from out of state because the defense fund was already spent. He could only do so much though with his own money.

At trial a psychologist testified that I was "legally unconscious" at the time I committed my crimes, and I did not know what I was doing. Of course the State brought in a psychologist of their own to say I wasn’t. They argued back and forth with all sorts of psychological terms until neither I nor the jury understood what was being said. With more money a comprehensive evaluation could have been done and everything could have been cleared up, but there was no money left to spend on it.

The State won. I was convicted of three counts of first degree murder, and they wanted me sentenced to death. I didn’t know anything about how the death penalty worked, and it was a few years here in prison before I learned it all. Here’s how it works:

Not every murder can be punished by death. The law says just because a person commits murder doesn’t mean he should be executed himself. Capitol Punishment is the most extreme punishment a government can invoke, and because of that it must be reserved for specific kinds of crimes, and criminals. The State of Oklahoma has a list of things that merit Capitol Punishment. These are called Aggravating Factors or Aggravators. The Aggravators that apply in a case are presented to the jury by the State. Then the defense presents any reasons why the person should NOT be given the death penalty, and these reasons are called Mitigating Factors or Mitigators. It’s up to the jury then to do two things. 1. Determine whether or not the aggravators apply in the case. And 2. weigh the aggravators against the mitigators and determine whether the death penalty is deserved.

The problem with all that is juries often, no ALWAYS, have to first be educated about the Law, and have the process carefully explained to them, with detailed written instructions for them to follow. It quickly gets very complicated.

In my case the State filed three aggravators:
1. That the murders were especially heinous, atrocious, or cruel.
2. The existence of a probability that the defendant would commit criminal acts of violence
that would constitute a continuing threat to society.
And in the case of my parents:
3. That the defendant knowingly created a risk of death to more than one person.

The jury found all three of those aggravators did apply in my case and sentenced me to three death penalties.

Then I came to prison, at age 17, and the appeals began. The appeal process has nine steps, and the law states you have to completely exhaust each step before you can go on to the next. My first step - called Direct Appeal - was written and filed by one of the attorneys working in the same office as, and under the authority of my trial attorney. She did a pretty good job too, except for ONE little thing.

My direct appeal was denied. And the second step, rehearing (where you go back and ask again, sort of like saying "are you sure about that decision?") was also denied. Then something happened.

A psychologist named Dorothy Lewis went around the country, with some kind of grant, with a team of psychologists, doing a study on juveniles on death row. I had a two day full psychiatric evaluation, and when it was done, my new attorney, in preparation for my third step called Post Conviction Relief, hired her to come back for a further evaluation. I saw Dr. Lewis again for further tests, and she told my attorney she thought I had MPD, was pretty certain of it in fact, but I needed still MORE tests to be sure. Of course nobody told me that until about a year later. I didn’t know what the heck was going on with all the weird questions.

Then a lady named Antonia Campese came along. She was a film maker, and she interviewed me for a project she was working on. She liked me. We became friends and she ended up organizing a defense for me. A group called Freedom Village USA run by Fletcher Brothers, a minister, agreed to help fund my defense, and Antonia hired me some private attorneys, and got some more psychological and neurological tests done. She put herself in bankruptcy doing it. Together they put about $30,000 into my defense, and I was then told what they thought.

I had MPD. Multiple Personality Disorder.
Yea Right.
I’d seen "Sybil". That was not me.

There was no way I had MPD. But they explained that "Sybil" wasn’t always what MPD constituted. They refused to tell me much about it though. They didn’t want to educate me on it so as to skew the tests. I fought the diagnosis, however, telling them they were wasting a lot of money, until they brought in an EEG and mapped my brain waves. That was something that absolutely could not be faked. The EEG showed different brainwaves for different "alter personalities".

I had MPD. Multiple Personality Disorder.
I really did.

As stunned as I was, it did explain some things. Those times I said I thought I was going crazy. Apparently I really was. Suddenly everything sort of fell into place. Why I was so confused about what exactly happened. Why my trial psychologist said I was unconscious at the time of my crimes. Why I felt like different people sometimes. Why I’d heard voices in my head growing up. Why I had black periods where I would remember nothing at all.

So we filed my Post Conviction Relief Application and presented the newly discovered evidence of my MPD. But here’s where the Law gets weird, and here was where I learned just how Oklahoma Courts behaved.

The Law says that if you fail to file a claim in the FIRST STEP - direct appeal - then you are NOT allowed to file it any time later in the entire appeal process. If you try the courts tell you that claim is "waived" and procedurally barred. The only way you can file any new claim is if it is newly discovered evidence. And then it has to meet four criteria:

1. The new evidence must be material.
2. The new evidence could not have been, with due diligence, discovered before trial.
3. The new evidence is not cumulative; and
4. The new evidence creates a reasonable probability of changing the outcome of the trial.

We presented to the court, the fact that MPD typically takes seven years to properly diagnose - it is the most missed, and misdiagnosed mental illness there is, and the fact that the tests I took which showed it were not even developed before my trial. That plus the fact that the EEG which proved it, cost $5,000 and could not have been done by my trial attorney with a limit of $750 to spend on my defense.

The Oklahoma Court of Criminal Appeals did something strange, however. We had filed this claim in our original application, but they cited a part of the law referring to subsequent applications (one’s filed later, and usually late) and they said:

... Although... [this claim] presents a valid ground for post-conviction relief... it has been waived ... Sellers failed to introduce this evidence at trial, on direct appeal and at rehearing, and has not presented a "sufficient reason" to explain why he did not.

So they did three things. #1 they told us we had not presented a sufficient reason as to why this claim was not brought up in trial - ignoring the reasons we DID state. They said it could have been discovered at trial. HOW? Nobody knows, but they still say so. #2 they told us it DOES merit relief - meaning I have a valid claim, and by law I should be taken off death row and given a lighter sentence or a new trial - but because it was not raised on direct appeal it is waived. #3 it will not be allowed in Post Conviction Relief because it wasn’t filed right - that’s where they claim it was in a subsequent application rather than the original, which it clearly was not.

The short of it all was this: We filed a valid and legal claim, according to Law, and the Courts misapplied, and stepped around their Law to deny it, and keep me on death row.

But that’s the way the law is used. When I came to prison I thought the Law was fair. I honestly did. As I began to learn it however, I saw how district attorneys and judges use the Law to do whatever they want in the name of justice. For example, remember those aggravators in my case? Those three reasons why I received the death penalty? Aggravators are supposed to limit what crimes can be punished by death. They are supposed to separate general murders from significantly horrible ones and serve to single out those few cases that deserve extreme punishment. An aggravator cannot by law, be applicable to every murder or it fails in it’s purpose.

Well, that one that speaks of a murder being especially heinous, atrocious or cruel was for years, applied to EVERY murder a district attorney wanted to seek the death penalty for. Those words were given no definitions. The Supreme Court finally ruled that was not constitutional and forced them to add specific definitions to those words. That aggravator was then only applicable to cases involving some kind of torture or pain before death.

When they did that that aggravator was removed from my case. It did NOT apply to me. One of the reasons I was sentenced to death did not apply to my case. But the courts left me on death row there too, because they said the other two aggravators outweighed all the mitigators in my case. That’s for a jury to weigh, not a judge, but the fact is there were SO many cases with heinous atrocious or cruel misapplied to them, that if they had followed the Law and let a jury decide each of them again, practically every single person on death row in Oklahoma would have been given a new trial. They weren’t about to do that so they just "re-weighed" them all themselves and kept everyone on death row.

I’ve learned the Courts are good at doing that kind of stuff. If they can keep someone on death row they will. They’ll twist, re-write, and interpret the Law however they need to do it. I’m being very honest about this. It’s not the ranting of some criminal raging against the system and how it "persecutes" me. It’s just the honest truth. As you will see.

The fourth step was rehearing for Post Conviction Relief. Another one of those "are you sure about that?" steps. It was denied, of course. (They’re always sure.)

Step five was State Supreme Court which was also denied. Without comment I believe. They just have to say "NO".

Step six was Federal District Court. This is where we leave the State Courts and appeal the decision higher to the Federal Government. Typically the Federal courts are very concerned with constitutional issues. Unfortunately we got a judge who seemed to be downright insulted that we dared to appeal when there was no issue of innocence. Why I committed the crimes, and my mental state was irrelevant to him. I was guilty. ‘Nuff said.’ Denied.

Step seven was the 10th Circuit Federal Court. And this is where things got downright bizarre. Here’s what they said:

It firmly appears from the district court’s observation Petitioner’s claims are not fanciful; indeed, they are supported by significant evidence the person facing death for three murders is not the person who committed the crime.

Indeed, if believed by a jury, Petitioner’s evidence of the culpability of an alter personality renders the person known as Sean Sellers actually innocent. Yet, we cannot reach that point because of the limited nature of Federal habeas corpus and the precedent by which we are guided.

Claims of actual innocence based on newly discovered evidence have never been held to state a ground for Federal habeas relief absent an independent constitutional violation occurring in the underlying state criminal proceeding.

The Oklahoma Court of Criminal Appeals erroneously ruled the claim [of newly discovered evidence of MPD] had been waived.

... the error is one of state law not cognizable in habeas corpus because "federal habeas corpus relief does not lie for errors of state law."

We are not unmoved by Petitioner’s dilemma. Nor are we unconvinced that given an opportunity by a state court he could not cast doubt on the propriety of the sentence he faces. Yet, granting him relief on these grounds is beyond the present scope of federal habeas corpus. He is not completely without recourse, however, because apparently still has access to Executive Clemency.

So the 10th Circuit Court basically said, "yeah, you’re right, Sean Sellers is innocent of the crimes by Law. The State Court was wrong not to give you relief in Post Conviction Relief. But we don’t correct State errors, we only deal with Constitutional errors that happen at trial, so we can’t help you. Good luck in Clemency though."

No one we’ve talked to has ever heard of a court saying something like this. It’s almost as if they really were trying to help but could not, because of the Law. Weird huh? The Executive Clemency they spoke of is a last ditch effort to go before the Pardon and Parole Board to literally beg for mercy. The Board is a five seat panel that offers a recommendation to the Governor, and the Governor decides yes or no.

On the day the 10th Circuit decision was published a reporter called Oklahoma Governor Frank Keating. He said, in the newspaper, "His crimes were heinous and atrocious, and he should receive the punishment that the jury recommended." Keating has also said publicly several times, that no murderer will receive clemency while he is in office.

Rehearing to the 10th Circuit was also denied.

That brings us to step nine. The U.S. Supreme Court. The highest court in the land. We have three issues to present to them. First, we’re arguing that the State mishandling of the newly discovered evidence and disobedience of the Law there is a violation of due process. Second we’re arguing that the Clemency process in Oklahoma due to Governor Keating’s statements, and policy, is not being conducted in a fair and impartial manner according to the Law. And third, we’re arguing that the "continuing threat to society" Aggravator is being arbitrarily applied to all murder cases just like heinous atrocious and cruel was. Again, the State has established no criteria for determining how to apply "continuing threat" to someone. They just stick it to anyone they want. If a person commits murder, he’s a continuing threat.

We seem to have some legitimate claims, but the fact is the Supreme Court only hears one out of every 500 cases presented to it. If we lose then there’s only Clemency left, and we already know how the Governor feels about that.

There have been some very warm moments in my life when it comes to the Law. Polermo Italy made me an honorary citizen in order to offer support for my life. The government of that city said to America, "Give Sean to us. We will take him. We want him. We believe in him." That was incredible.

When the 10th Circuit all but declared me factually innocent, stating the person who committed the crimes was not Sean Sellers, I felt like at last the Federal Government had affirmed the spiritual reality I have come to live under. Even if they did not overturn my case, they at least validated my claim. That was something.

However, most of my contacts with the Law have been pretty cold, as you can see now. I don’t know what will happen, but if the law is followed properly then I won’t be executed. If I am, then the State of Oklahoma has had to break its own laws to do so. And that even the Federal Government has declared. Remember, the 10 Circuit wrote:

"The Oklahoma Court of Criminal Appeals erroneously ruled the claim had been waived."

I keep thinking if the public knew the Law, then things like that would not be accepted.

-- Sean Sellers