Paula Kensu has been rebuffed at every turn in her quest to get her husband out of prison, but she vows to keep probing for legal loopholes and writing letters to Gov. Gretchen Whitmer pleading for clemency.
Temujin Kensu, 61, who has maintained his innocence since he was convicted of first-degree murder 37 years ago, isn’t confident he’ll live long enough to see his wife’s efforts pay off.
“I have major medical problems: Severe combined immunodeficiency, rheumatoid arthritis, organ damage and shoulders, knees and ankles that all need to be completely rebuilt,” Kensu said during a telephone conversation from the Macomb Correctional Facility in Lenox Township. “I think I’m going to die in here.”
Paula Kensu said her husband’s attitude is more positive during visits.
“He doesn’t talk about his medical problems with me,” she said. “He puts on an upbeat face. He doesn’t want me to think he’s not coming home.”
Temujin Kensu and his advocates said there’s compelling evidence that he isn’t responsible for the Nov. 5, 1986, shooting death of his ex-girlfriend’s fiancé, 20-year-old Scott Macklem, in the parking lot of St. Clair Community College in Port Huron.
Witnesses said they saw Kensu more than 400 miles away in the Upper Peninsula shortly before the killing, but St. Clair County prosecutors argued he could have chartered an airplane to get to the crime scene in time, although they provided no evidence that he’d done so. A shotgun was used to kill Macklem, and while no murder weapon was produced during the trial, prosecutors showed the jury nunchakus and swords, and claimed Kensu, who practiced martial arts, was part of a Canadian ninja gang.
A jury convicted Kensu of first-degree murder. On Aug. 3, 1987, he was sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole.
After multiple failed appeals and a 2022 investigation by Michigan Attorney General Dana Nessel’s Conviction Integrity Unit that determined there was no path to overturn the conviction, Kensu said, “My only real hope is the governor.”
“I feel like I have a death sentence,” said Kensu, whose name was Fred Freeman before he converted to Buddhism. “Whitmer is in office in until 2027, and I don’t think I’ll live long enough to see a new governor come in. She’s denied all my other requests (for clemency), and I don’t see her changing her mind.”
Whitmer’s spokesperson, Stacey LaRouche, said Kensu can apply for a sentence commutation through the Michigan Parole Board. Kensu said he’s already gone through that process twice and was rejected, with a third petition pending before the Parole Board — a process that can take years.
St. Clair County Prosecutor Michael Wendling could free Kensu by dropping the murder charges. But Wendling told The Detroit News he stands by the conviction in the case that was initially handled by his predecessor Robert Cleland, who became a federal judge before retiring last year.
In June, Paula Kensu filed a complaint with the Michigan Attorney Grievance Commission against Wendling and Cleland. The filing claims Wendling failed to act after learning about problems with her husband’s case and that Cleland didn’t investigate Temujin Kensu’s complaints during the trial about his attorney, David Dean, who later admitted he was addicted to cocaine while defending the case. Dean, who died in 2018, was disbarred in 2001 for his drug use.
The Grievance Commission rejected Paula Kensu’s petition “due to the age of your complaint,” according to a July 27 letter she provided to The News.
Wendling said Kensu’s trial was adjudicated before he became St. Clair County Prosecutor in 2005, although he’s handled multiple appeals in the case. He stands by the conviction.
“Because Mr. Freeman has extinguished all his appeals that we’re aware of on every possible issue, I guess I’m now the focus,” Wendling said. “It’s now left for either the governor to pardon him, or for me to forget the whole thing (and drop the charges). I have no opinion about whether the governor should pardon him, but I believe in the conviction, or I wouldn’t have defended it in the appeals.”
Wendling said Kensu has appealed the case before three separate 31st District Court judges, six separate panels of the Michigan Court of Appeals, five appeals to the Michigan Supreme Court, along with two federal court petitions that were reviewed three times by the 6th Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals.
“I suppose I could go back decades later and second-guess the jury, the appeals court, the attorney general and everyone else, but I’m not going to do that,” Wendling said. “Mr. Freeman has had the benefit of the very best appellate staff who have reviewed every part of this conviction, and they’ve taken it before every court where they have standing.”
In her letter to the Grievance Commission, Paula Kensu complained, “Wendling childishly continues to refer to him as ‘Mr. Freeman.’ … It would be unprofessional of him to misgender somebody, so then why isn’t it unprofessional for him to (fail) to address him by his proper legal name, when he has been repeatedly asked to do so?”
Paula Kensu said the news that the Grievance Commission would not investigate her claims was disappointing, but she vowed to press forward.
Years of disappointment
Through the years, other developments have raised the hopes of Kensu and his supporters before ending in disappointment. In 2010, Detroit U.S. District Judge Denise Page Hood ordered a new trial based on prosecutorial misconduct. Hood ruled that Cleland had allowed false testimony by a man named Philip Joplin, who claimed Kensu had confessed to the murder while the two men were in a holding cell.
Joplin later recanted his story and said he’d received benefits for testifying against the defendant, although the appeals court noted that Joplin didn’t sign his recantation statement before he died. The appeals court also declined to order Hood to hold an evidentiary hearing.
When Nessel announced that her Conviction Integrity Unit would investigate Kensu’s case in 2022, his supporters’ hopes were rekindled. But many in the innocence community expressed dismay after the unit’s investigation determined Kensu was ineligible for relief because an alibi witness who came forward after his trial didn’t qualify as “new evidence.”
Because the CIU’s decision was based on a legal technicality and didn’t address Kensu’s innocence or guilt, Paula Kensu said she thought Whitmer would grant a pardon or commutation. Her hopes were buoyed in part because of the network of supporters her husband had gained over the years that included the late U.S. Sen. Carl Levin, former Michigan Supreme Court Chief Justice Bridget Mary McCormack and several Michigan legislators and law enforcement officials.
“Whitmer could let Temujin walk out of prison today if she wanted to, but for some reason, despite all these people screaming at her to do the right thing, she refuses,” Paula Kensu said. “It all boils down to politics. Nobody wants to admit they were wrong.”
When asked to comment on claims that Whitmer was ignoring requests for clemency because of politics, her spokeswoman LaRouche said in an email: “To receive a pardon or commutation, an individual must file an application with the Michigan Parole Board. The applications are reviewed by the parole board on a case-by-case basis, which may involve a public hearing. After the Parole Board conducts their review, their recommendation is sent to the governor’s office for review and a final determination.”
Temujin Kensu called LaRoche’s answer “ridiculous,” adding that he’s gone through that process in 2007 and 2020, “and both times, I was denied.”
Following Whitmer’s decision in 2020 to deny Kensu’s commutation petition, her office released a statement saying, “The clemency request for Temujin Kensu was denied, but we don’t have anything to add, as it’s our best practice not to comment on clemency applications.”
“I think (Whitmer) is just waiting for me to die,” Temujin Kensu said. “She probably figures I’m 61 and have terminal health issues, so she’ll just keep denying me until I’m gone. She’s got her eye on the White House, and she’d rather not be embarrassed by having to pay out millions of dollars in a wrongful conviction lawsuit and having to admit she was wrong about my innocence.”
No release ‘makes no sense’
Former Gov. Jennifer Granholm in 2007 rejected Kensu’s request for clemency, based on the recommendation of the Parole Board that the petition be denied because Kensu did not show remorse for the killing. Kensu argued it was impossible for him to regret something he didn’t do.
David Sanders, a board member at the Royal Oak-based Proving Innocence nonprofit, testified on Kensu’s behalf during his two-day commutation hearing in 2007. He said it “makes no sense” why Kensu’s attempts to get his case overturned have been denied.
“We’ve seen the governor release inmates who have committed some terrible crimes,” Sanders said. “Why she keeps stonewalling Temujin’s attempts is really perplexing, when everyone who looks at this case agrees it’s one of the most blatant wrongful convictions they’ve ever seen.”
Wendling said Kensu’s advocates are “focusing on four or five things we call red herrings that weren’t relevant to the jury.”
“The whole chartered plane thing was an aside; it was a small part of the case … the jury clearly didn’t believe the alibi witnesses who said they saw him in the UP,” Wendling said. “None of the judges who have heard the case believe he’s innocent, and I don’t think the governor believes it, either.”
Inspired by column
Temujin Kensu’s case has been covered by multiple media outlets, including a 2021 story by NBC News, the BBC in England, and podcasts from countries that include Australia.
“I was familiar with the murder because I grew up in the area where the victim grew up,” said Paula Kensu, a 48-year-old human resources manager at Ally Financial Services. “I went to the same high school as the victim, (Croswell Lexington High School in Croswell, in Michigan’s Thumb), and taught business administration in St. Clair Community College, where the victim was killed.”
Paula Kensu said she didn’t know about Kensu’s wrongful conviction claim until she read an article by Detroit News columnist Nolan Finley that ran on Christmas Day 2019.
“After I read Nolan’s Christmas article, I started digging into the case, and it really struck me how wrong it was,” Paula Kensu said. “I reached out to Proving Innocence and asked if there was anything I could do to help. Then I reached out to Temujin. I got on his visiting list and saw him about a half-dozen times before COVID hit.”
The couple were married on Nov. 4, 2022. It was Temujin Kinsu’s second marriage. His first wife, whom he married in 1990, died of cancer in 2012.
“I went through a mourning period, and it took seven years, but after Paula saw Nolan’s column and we started talking, I opened up, and we fell in love,” he said. “I’m crazy about her, and she does everything she can to help get me out of here. It’s like she never sleeps.”
Kensu and his advocates were encouraged when Nessel’s Conviction Integrity Unit agreed to investigate the case after a request by the University of Michigan Innocence Clinic. Valerie Newman, head of the Wayne County Prosecutor’s Conviction Integrity Unit, was asked to investigate the claim because Nessel’s CIU director, Robyn Frankel, said she had a conflict in the case.
Among the issues Newman investigated was a new witness, Beth Stier, who had gone on a date with Kensu the night of the killing. Police did not disclose during the trial that they’d interviewed Stier; Kensu’s advocates discovered her years later through a public records request.
Newman wrote in a letter to Kensu’s attorney, University of Michigan Innocence Clinic Co-Director Iman Syed, that Stier would not have provided fresh information to advance Kensu’s innocence claim. The CIU did not rule on Kensu’s innocence or guilt.
“The AG guidelines mandate there must be new evidence supporting factual innocence,” Newman wrote. “New evidence means evidence not at all considered at trial or during post-conviction appeals.”
Nessel backers criticize decision
The standard used by Nessel’s office to determine what constituted “new evidence” was panned by people that included self-described Nessel supporters U.S. Reps. Andy Levin, D-Bloomfield Township, and Rashida Tlaib, D-Detroit, and Michigan Sen. Stephanie Chang, D-Detroit.
“Attorney General Nessel and her team do remarkable work day-in and day-out to protect the rights of Michigan’s citizens,” the lawmakers said in a May 25, 2022 statement. “But the standard used by the CIU in its review of the Kensu case predetermined the outcome — to us, the wrong outcome.
“Kensu could not have committed and did not in fact commit the crime for which the state is taking away the entire rest of his life,” Levin, Tlaib and Chang said in their written statement. “And the continued resistance to this fact … by current and former local law enforcement officials does nothing to change the fact itself.”
The statement ended by pointing out that the Michigan Constitution grants the governor power to grant pardons.
“We pray that those with the power to grant relief conduct a full review and grant relief to Mr. Kensu,” the statement said.
Levin, who was voted from office in 2022, told The News: “I still believe in (Kensu’s) innocence, but I haven’t heard anything new about the case.”
Chang’s chief of staff, Ellen Heinitz, declined to comment. Emails to Tlaib’s staff were not returned.
Records requests denied
A week after the CIU’s decision, The News sent an open records request to the Attorney General’s Office seeking to review “any reports and/or other written materials related to the Conviction Integrity Unit’s investigation into the Temujin Kensu case.” Nessel’s office claimed complying with the request would cost $11,220.86.
Proving Innocence also filed a Freedom of Information Act request a week after the CIU decision seeking “the investigative report/documentation, prepared in substantial part by Assistant AG Valerie Newman.”
The Proving Innocence request was denied because, according to a July 14, 2022 letter from Nessel’s office, “the Department does not possess a record that is responsive to what you describe. … (T)he Conviction Integrity Unit does not prepare summary reports but may issue a closing letter to a claimant or the claimant’s attorney notifying them that the CIU is not moving forward on the case.”
Sanders said Proving Innocence sued to review the report, “and they fought us in court to keep us from seeing the report they originally said didn’t exist.”
On April 14, 2023, Michigan Court of Claims Judge Brock Swartzle ruled that Nessel wasn’t required to release the report because it falls under the “attorney work product” that isn’t subject to open records law.
“It makes you wonder what they’re hiding,” Sanders said. “Dana Nessel says she’s all about transparency, but she’s fought tooth and nail to keep this report from the public. Why?”
Nessel’s spokesperson, Kimberly Bush, said in an email: “The Department of Attorney General has received multiple FOIA requests for this internal advisory memo, which have been denied under the exemptions allowed for attorney work-product. That decision was challenged in court, and the Court of Claims in 2023 agreed that the internal memo is work-product and exempt from production.”
Not losing faith
Paula Kensu said the repeated setbacks have taken a toll, but she said she hasn’t lost faith.
“I write letters to Whitmer every holiday, asking her to find it in her heart to let my husband go,” she said. “I think we can build a movement that’s powerful enough that people will eventually do the right thing.”
Temujin Kensu said he’ll continue working toward his dream of “moving into a cabin with my wife in the woods away from everybody,” although he said he’s unsure if he’ll live to see it come true.
“I’ll fight till the day I die,” he said. “I just don’t have faith in this governor.”
___
© 2024 www.detroitnews.com
Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.
