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04/01/2009
Seven years behind bars for a crime he didn't commit
Irvin Schoenwetter wept when he took his first breath of air outside the prison walls.
He had served his time, but he was not truly a free man. He had spent seven long years behind bars for a child rape he did not commit.
He was no longer an inmate, but he was still a prisoner of the circumstances that in 1988 had taken him to Sioux Falls and the state penitentiary.
No doubt the quiet Flandreau man fought back tears again earlier this month, overwhelmed with emotion as he learned that – 22 years after he was first accused and then imprisoned – he was finally exonerated.
The victim had recanted her testimony years earlier, and on March 12, five years after receiving Schoenwetter’s petition, Gov. Mike Rounds, had given him a full and complete pardon.
- So, since she ruined his life, why don't she get put into prison for the same amount of time? We need to take a stand on these false accusations, and then, just maybe, people will stop making false accusations. And this makes you wonder, how many of the over 600,000 sex offenders, are actually a victim of this kind of false accusations? I wonder!
Schoenwetter’s conviction for third-degree rape and incest was overturned, his status as a sex offender reversed, and the records of his court case two decades ago forever sealed.
Schoenwetter was only 21 years old in July of 1987, just about to turn 22. His half-sister, Cindy Schoenwetter, was 7, and both were living with Cindy’s mother – Irvin’s stepmother – in Huron at the time.
Within a few short weeks, Schoenwetter would be accused of repeatedly molesting his young housemate, and a year later, he was tried and convicted of rape and incest.
He was sentenced to 10 years.
That wasn’t what happened, however.
According to a deposition Cindy gave to Flandreau attorney John Shaeffer in 2000, she was molested in the summer of 1987 by her mother’s boyfriend. At the time, the man was living with Cindy, her mother, Irvin and another brother.
The first incident occurred while Cindy’s mother was at work. Cindy told her about the rape the next day. Even though the molestation continued,
Cindy’s mother and her boyfriend convinced the child to say it was Irvin who raped her. When she objected, they called her a liar. Her mother’s boyfriend told her, Cindy said, to say that Irvin was molesting her.
The man threatened Cindy, telling her that if she didn’t say it was Irvin who raped her, that the family would end up homeless, with no money or food, and that her mother would be unhappy.
And so,
the child was forced to accuse her brother.
Schoenwetter first found out he was being accused of molestation after he had moved out of their Huron home and into his birth mother’s house in Flandreau.
“My first thought … when I found out about the charges against me,” said Schoenwetter, “I thought, ‘I didn’t do it.’ And I was very angry with my stepmother.”
Schoenwetter swears that his anger was never directed at Cindy, only his stepmother.
“She was a little girl,” Schoenwetter said. “
She wasn’t telling the truth, but that’s because she was scared. I was never angry with her. I only felt bad for her. She was too young.”
Cindy’s mother later married the man who raped Cindy. He became her stepfather. A few years later, the marriage ended in divorce.
Schoenwetter was arrested in August of 1988. He spent the next three months behind bars in the Huron Regional Correctional Center and was found guilty of third-degree rape and incest on Nov. 30, 1988. He was sentenced to 10 years in prison.
Schoenwetter pleaded not guilty but says he was advised by his attorney not to testify at his trial.
His court-appointed attorney for the trial was George Danforth, who still practices law in Huron today. Asked about the trial and Schoenwetter’s case, Danforth will only respond, “I don’t recall much about that.” Still, Danforth is the attorney who handled Schoenwetter’s appeals.
Because the incidents occurred before DNA testing was common practice,
Schoenwetter was convicted by Cindy’s testimony only, Shaeffer, the Flandreau lawyer said.
There were no physical evidence presented.
- You see folks, like I've said a thousand times, it only takes a ticked off friend or relative to accuse you of sexual abuse, and your life is over!
Schoenwetter was 23 years old when he said goodbye to his young wife and first set foot in the South Dakota State Penitentiary in Sioux Falls. The first emotion he felt walking through the doors of the prison was fear, he says. “I remember the first thing I heard. Another inmate shouted ‘Welcome to the jungle baby!’ at me. I was scared.”
Schoenwetter said he would lie to the other inmates about his charges. He told them he was serving time for grand theft – auto. Because he was innocent, Schoenwetter says he couldn’t bear to have others thinking he was a child rapist. He was also lying out of fear.
“
I saw what happened to the other inmates that were in there for rape and child-molestation,” said Schoenwetter. “I didn’t want them to find out that that’s was what I was charged with.”
Schoenwetter said that while he was in Sioux Falls, only one other inmate knew the truth about the sentence. This man came to be, and remains today, a close friend.
“He believed that I was innocent,” Schoenwetter said. “He didn’t judge me.”
Schoenwetter went to prison with only an eighth-grade education. A naturally reserved, quiet person, he didn’t receive the encouragement he needed as a child from some authority figures in his life.
“Teachers told me that I wasn’t that smart,” he said. “That’s why I dropped out of school.”
While serving out his sentence, Schoenwetter eventually obtained his general education degree. He also received a transfer to the Mike Durfee State Prison (formerly known as Springfield prison in Springfield, S.D.).
The prison in Springfield is a medium-security state facility. Schoenwetter went there to participate in a training program in automotive repair, which had been his passion. But that small bit of joy evaporated after only a few weeks because some of the other inmates in Springfield found out about Schoenwetter’s rape conviction, and he was forced into protective custody and eventually transferred back to Sioux Falls for his own safety.
Throughout his years in prison, Schoenwetter maintained his innocence to everyone involved in his case. He stayed in constant contact with his lawyer, trying to work his way through the appeals system. Danforth appealed the case on two issues. One was the lack of physical evidence used to convict Schoenwetter.
The other was the testimony of a social worker involved with Cindy. The woman’s testimony was allowed as evidence against Schoenwetter, though the social worker was not present at the trial, and Danforth had been unable to question it.
The Supreme Court upheld the circuit court’s ruling. Schoenwetter would be forced to serve his entire sentence.
During his years in prison, Schoenwetter said his friends and family all stayed in touch with him regularly, always maintaining their belief that he was innocent, although his wife divorced him and he has since lost touch with her.
February 15, 1995, was an emotional day for Schoenwetter and his family. It was the day he was finally released from prison, three years early, due to good behavior.
He remembers walking out with tears streaming down his face. His mother and two brothers were there to take him out to eat, and then drive him home. He immediately moved in with his mother in Flandreau.
Schoenwetter lived the next few years of his life quietly. He found work in Flandreau as a mechanic in Flandreau. He had to register as a sex offender. He was convinced, though, that no matter how long it took, he would one day be able to clear his name, and that the world would know he was an innocent man.
“From the first day I met (Schoenwetter), I did not doubt his innocence,” said Shaeffer.
It wasn’t until his brother died in 2000 that things started to turn around for Irvin.
Cindy had contacted Schoenwetter shortly after the funeral. At the time, she gave him two notarized documents stating that he was indeed innocent, that the crimes he spent most of his adult life paying for were not his fault. The young woman said she was moved by her brother’s death.
Schoenwetter then hired Shaeffer, who advised him to re-contact his half-sister. But once again, he was unable to locate her. It took four years before they got together again.
In an interview with Shaeffer in 2004, Cindy, now 23, with two children of her own, said “I guess I just feel really bad about it, and I want (Schoenwetter) to be able to have a better life.”
Shaeffer sent the first letter, requesting a pardon for Schoenwetter, to Gov. Mike Rounds in 2004. The next month, he filed an application for the pardon.
Rounds requested that the South Dakota Board of Pardons and Paroles perform its own investigation of Schoenwetter’s case.
The Board unanimously recommended a pardon.
A few months later, Rounds’ office interviewed Schoenwetter and Shaeffer. Rounds then requested that the South Dakota Division of Criminal Investigation perform its own investigation.
Years went by. Shaeffer said he called Rounds’ office repeatedly, but was told again and again that the pardon was still being considered and investigated. Shaeffer threatened to take Schoenwetter’s story to the press. But Schoenwetter wouldn’t allow it. He didn’t want to hinder his chances of receiving the pardon.
It wasn’t until Russell Olson, South Dakota District 8 Senator, asked to get involved, and requested the pardon himself, that some action was taken.
Shaeffer received a call from Rounds himself on March 11 of this year, five years after he first wrote to the governor. Rounds said that he was granting the pardon, and that official documentation would be arriving in the mail a few days later.
Now, Schoenwetter simply wants to be left alone. He wants his name cleared. He wants to walk as a free man.
“That’s all I ever wanted,” Schoenwetter said. “… to have my name cleared. I wanted to be able to watch my nephews wrestle, and go to the school for the kids’ performances. All I ever wanted was for people to know that I was innocent, that I didn’t do it.”
