Monday, Jul. 12, 1971
A Way for Lester
The law is designed to provide order in human affairs, but its technicalities sometimes lead it helplessly toward injustices. In such cases, though, men can occasionally find ways to rescue fairness. In Michigan recently a way was found for Lester Stiggers.
A black child of divorced Arkansas parents, Stiggers awoke one night at age ten to find his father trying to attack him sexually. At 15, when his father came at him with a belt, Lester in desperation blew the man apart with a shotgun. Sentenced to life imprisonment for first-degree murder, he went to Arkansas' infamous Cummins Prison Farm. "Once I was beaten every day for a month," he recalls, "because I didn't have the money to pay off a trusty." Transferred to another prison, he earned a five-day leave and promptly fled to Detroit, where his mother lived.
As soon as he arrived, early last year, he went to the police. But no fugitive warrant had been served for him, and he was not held. Stiggers quickly started putting himself together, earned a diploma in auto repair at a community college, and worked as a busboy, dishwasher, mechanic and carpenter. Then, almost a year later, the Arkansas fugitive warrant arrived and he was arrested.
Rare Intervention. Extradition between states is usually a mere formality. The Constitution commands that each state surrender criminals from other states. Still, Governors must go through the procedure of granting the extradition request. For two months, while Stiggers remained in a Detroit jail, Michigan's Governor William Milliken deliberated. Popular interest in Stiggers' case developed; at a hearing, he said that he was sure he would be killed once he was back inside an Arkansas prison. Though it is rare for a Governor to do so, Milliken finally decided that "extradition would not serve the ends of justice."
Astonishingly, Michigan's refusal to give up Stiggers was received with understanding even in the rebuffed state. Said Arkansas Governor Dale Bumpers who campaigned as a prison reformer, "By the expiration of my administration, I hope there will never be any cause for a Governor of another state to refuse to extradite a man to Arkansas." As for 21-year-old Lester Stiggers, 1971 is going to be a good year. When he left Detroit's Wayne County jail, he already had plans. "Got a job all set," he said. "Start Monday. Gonna try to go to Wayne State University at night. There's not gonna be any more trouble."
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