Failed Appeals = New Lawyer
After failed appeals in the mid-1970s, Phillips thought he might win if he could just find a better lawyer. But first, he needed the funds. So, he took a job at the Jackson prison’s license plate factory, working the assembly line. The wages were by no means good, but for prison standards, $100 a month plus bonuses meant Phillips could open a bank account and watch the money accumulate.
Richard Phillips. Source: Twitter
Four years later, he saved enough to pay for one of the best appellate lawyers in the state of Michigan. As he thought of his kids and wrote love poems to women (real and imaginary), he waited. On January 1st, 1979, Phillips was in his cell when an inmate walked in with some news. He’d just seen Fred Mitchell (the prosecution’s star witness) in the chow hall. At that point, it had been 2,677 days since Phillips saw his children…