Published: Saturday, November 27, 2010, 6:00 PM Updated: Saturday, November 27, 2010, 7:45 PM
David Harris | Flint Journal
Amiko Kensu, of Swartz Creek, has been instrumental in getting her husband Temujin’s conviction of a 1986 murder overturned. Kensu’s husband, Temujin, has been incarcerated for 23 years, claiming his innocence throughout.
Temujin Kensu has been in prison for 23 years, waiting to hear the words “You are free.”
Now he may be closer than ever.
Kensu, a Burton native formerly known as Frederick Freeman before he converted to Buddhism, is serving a life sentence for the 1986 slaying of 20-year-old Scott Macklem in the parking lot of St. Clair Community College in Port Huron. Kensu maintains his innocence.
A appeals court judge last month overturned the first-degree murder conviction, citing an ineffective lawyer and a prosecutor’s misconduct. Kensu will get another trial if the state attorney general’s office loses its appeal.
“There’s the anticipation that you might get out, but you also have fear that it might get overturned,” said Kensu, in a 30-minute phone conversation with The Flint Journal from the Saginaw Correctional Facility. “You have highs and lows. (The waiting) is the hardest part. Over the years you get used to it.”
Kensu has been close before. In 1990, 1995 and 2004, he believed he was close to getting released by having his conviction overturned, but was disappointed when the attempts were unsuccessful.
So he waits.
“Sometimes it’s better to know it’s bad news than to not know at all,” he said.
State prosecutors are fighting to keep him in prison.
At a commutation board hearing in September, the attorney general’s office said it believes Kensu should remain in prison.
The St. Clair County Prosecutor’s office also believes Kensu is guilty, said Prosecutor Michael Wendling, in an interview before the conviction was overturned.
“He’s where he belongs, in prison,” Wendling said.
The Macklem family declined to comment when The Flint Journal reached Scott Macklem’s father’s house by phone.
His father, Gary Macklem, told the Port Huron Times Herald that he questioned why the judge didn’t wait for the commutation board decision.
“I just think something stinks,” he told the paper, declining to comment further.
U.S. District Judge Robert Cleland, who was the St. Clair County prosecutor during Kensu’s murder trial, said he did not allow false testimony by a witness who told jurors that Kensu confessed to murder while they were in a temporary holding cell.
Cleland said the witness, Philip Joplin, received no deal for testifying. Joplin later said he made up the story to win early release from prison.
“Any sort of promise, suggestion or hint of leniency in return for his testimony is utterly false,” Cleland said in a six-page affidavit filed by the Michigan Attorney General’s Office.
Prosecutors say Kensu killed Macklem because he was jealous of Macklem dating an ex-girlfriend.
But Kensu claims he was 400 miles away where he was living in the Upper Peninsula and had no means of transportation. Witnesses at the trial have corroborated his claim.
Kensu became a suspect because his ex-girlfriend said he was jealous of Macklem. He was arrested after his fingerprint was found on an ammunition box.
A witness said at the trial that he saw Kensu drive away from the crime scene. It was later found out that the witness was hypnotized and gave a wrong license plate.
“This is a case where there’s nothing — no evidence, witnesses, anything,” Kensu said. “Every single person that has come to look at the case has come to the exact same conclusion that I did not commit this crime.”
The case caught the attention of many innocence groups, including the Innocence Clinic at the University of Michigan. They also believe Kensu is innocent and should be released.
Kensu often dreams of what he would do if he would be let out. Take a walk where there’s no barbed wire. Eat a pizza. Play with the dog.
“I haven’t had real brownies in 24 years,” he said. “There’s so much that I haven’t done. I want to use a computer.”
He grew up in Burton, but lived with his grandparents who lived on Milbourne Avenue in Flint where he went to Southwestern and Northern high schools. His mother, Monice Atkins, still lives in Burton.
Amiko Kensu, who lives in Swartz Creek and works as a service manager at Meijer, has been fighting for her husband’s release for much of the time. The two met through a mutual friend before the incident.
When she found out what happened to him about three years after he was convicted she sent him a letter. At the time she believed he was guilty.
“I wrote to him, but I said ‘don’t expect me to be sorry for you,’” she said. “He wrote back and he said ‘I didn’t do this.’ I said ‘yeah, right. Isn’t that what they all say?’”
But after Amiko read the trial transcript she changed her mind and now believes he is innocent.
The two started seeing each other in the early 1990s and were married in a jail house ceremony in 2001.
“Obviously, I’m in love with him,” she said.
She’s also hopeful she will be able to see her husband be a free man.
“I want to take a long walk with him ,” she said. “I want him to enjoy some fresh air.”
Information from The Associated Press was used in this report.
Article source: http://www.mlive.com/news/flint/index.ssf/2010/11/after_more_than_20_years_in_pr.html
Category: Prison Time
Article source: http://nationalcybersecurity.com/?p=41244
