Escapee May Find His Years Of Asylum At An End

Supporters think Phillip Chance was railroaded into an Alabama prison 21 years ago. But now, a dozen years of freedom offered by Michigan may come to an end.

DETROIT - Phillip Chance is losing his grip on freedom.

Since escaping from an Alabama prison, Chance has been living in Detroit with the blessing of a Michigan governor even though he had been convicted of murder at age 15.

Over the years he has married, fathered two kids, worked a variety of jobs to make ends meet and stayed out of trouble with the law.

Now he might lose it all.

On Oct. 19, Wayne County Sheriff's deputies and FBI agents - one of whom had been hunting Chance because he had a "bad attitude" - arrested him at his east side Detroit home. They told him his asylum in Michigan had expired. Alabama was calling - from prison.

"The situation is devastating to deal with, you know? This is 21 years old," said Chance, now 37. "And to have one incident, man, haunt you that long . . . "

Chance's last two decades are a tale of jail to freedom to jail to freedom. On Nov. 22, a Detroit judge will decide whether the next chapter is jail, where he would resume a life sentence interrupted by his escape to Detroit in 1981.

A 1987 U.S. Supreme Court ruling that took away a governor's power to refuse extradition is the reason Chance's freedom now hangs in the balance.

His recent arrest boggles the mind of the man who in September 1982 declared Chance a free man after a swell of support from Detroit-area political and legal leaders.

"It troubles me a great deal," said former Gov. William Milliken, who gave Chance his freedom because of evidence that he was railroaded through the Alabama legal system. "It was my understanding it was permanent."

Gas-station robbery

In the fall of 1972, 15-year-old Phillip Chance, who had never been in trouble with the law, left Detroit with his older brother for Butler, Ala., to visit a cousin. At a gas station, the cousin robbed, shot and killed the owner, a white man.

Chance maintains that he and his brother were outside with the car and didn't know what their cousin had done until later. Chance cooperated with police who arrested all three of the black teenagers. He even told them where his cousin had stashed the stolen money.

He said the cops told him he had to be jailed temporarily because he was a witness and they could not risk letting him return to Detroit. But later they also charged him and his brother with murder.

Chance said his lawyer recommended pleading guilty, because the community was demanding justice. If he'd been convicted in a trial, Chance said he was told, the judge would sentence him to two life terms plus 10 years. Take the deal and he'd get out in a year with good behavior.

He took the supposed deal and pleaded guilty. But Chance and the other two got life imprisonment with no parole for at least 10 years.

Once behind bars, Chance was an exemplary prisoner, so much so that he eventually earned his way from a maximum-security facility to a work-release program. After several years in the pen, Chance's keepers had enough faith in him that he was allowed to drive a Department of Corrections van as a day job.

But despite unusually supportive letters from inmate counselors and others, the Alabama parole board in May 1981 said he was a threat to the community and that his eight years in prison were not enough.

Days later, Chance walked away from a work-release program and fled to Detroit. Two days after arriving, he got a job. And he stayed out of trouble until federal agents picked him up a year later.

As Michigan courts moved to extradite him to Alabama, Chance began gathering support from people willing to listen to him. Erma Henderson, then president of the Detroit City Council; Sgt. Ralph Woolfolk, a Detroit homicide detective; local ministers, and others wrote to Milliken, who eventually granted a rare personal hearing for Chance.

Milliken was persuaded to give Chance his freedom. And the former governor stands by that decision.

"I took these matters very seriously and I tried to be sure that justice was being done," he said. "I would not have taken this kind of thing lightly."

In the years since he was given asylum, Chance said he's been hauled to jail about a dozen times. Any time he was pulled over in traffic or asked for identification, the warrant from Alabama would pop up on the computer. But he always got out in a couple of hours after authorities confirmed Milliken's order.

Until June of this year, Chance was reveling in his freedom, working jobs ranging from a substance-abuse counselor to shoe salesman to construction worker.

Arrested at work

This summer, Chance was working as a security guard and had gone through a background check by the State Police. They found the warrant from Alabama and arrested him.

They took him to the Wayne County Jail. But workers there knew Chance had been given asylum and he was released quickly.

The State Police, meanwhile, refused to give up. They notified the Alliance Fugitive Team - a task force of federal and local officers - about Chance, who was described as being cocky and having a bad attitude toward officers when they arrested him at work.

According to one FBI agent with knowledge of Chance's arrest, the pursuit of Chance became a "pet project." An agent contacted Gov. John Engler's office about Milliken's asylum order and was told it no longer applied because of the 1987 Supreme Court ruling.

Cheri Arwood, who is in charge of extraditions in Engler's office, said there's nothing Michigan can do to stop his extradition.

"What he failed to understand was that asylum was only good as long as the governor was in office," she said. "This is a very serious offense. Alabama has wanted him returned for years. It certainly is not in our best interest to intervene in that."

Nelson Burnett, assistant legal adviser for the Alabama Board of Pardons and Parole, said Chance's only hope is to appeal to his office once Chance is back in Alabama. But pardons are not granted unless a prisoner is first paroled, Burnett said. Chance must return to jail.

Otherwise, "there's no way by state law that he could get a pardon except by proof of innocence and that's never been done to my knowledge here."

His wife of 10 years, Jacquelyn, and daughters Jac'Dell, 7, and RoShauwnda, 2, don't know what they'll do without him.

"I'm interested in knowing what the price is," Chance said. "I'm a working man. I live paycheck to paycheck. I don't have stocks and bonds and CD's and mutual funds and IRA's, you know? . . .

"I was told by Governor Milliken personally to get on with my life and do something productive with it. I think I've done that. I've done that."