Fugen Gulertekin (lower left) with some of her closest friends who supported her throughout her "trials and tribulations."

Fugen Gulertekin Won’t File for Clemency
But will continue to strive to prove her innocence
Bircan Unver, President, FTAA’s "Fugen Gulertekin Support Campaign" Committee - Special to The Turkish Times - Last spring, Fugen Gulertekin wished to apply to the governor of Ohio for clemency, hoping to be released early from prison. As most of you know, she was sentenced to eight years without parole for allegedly harming a child in her home day care center. The prosecution claimed the baby (who is alive and well) suffered from "shaken baby syndrome," and that Fugen was the one who shook the baby. She has now been in prison for four years.

Fugen sent us a letter on March 1, 2001, to get general public support for her clemency application. Therefore, we launched a signature campaign to support her for this purpose during our second panel on her case, which was held at the Turkish House in New York City on March 17, 2001.

However, since then we have felt that Fugen has had some reluctance to complete her clemency application. Despite this, we had asked by her attorney in April, 2002, to send the signed support letters which we collected in the United States, Canada, Europe, and Turkey, and flowingly we sent them.

While her clemency application was being prepared to submit to Ohio Governor Robert Taft, Fugen changed her mind and stopped this process, because she still believes that she can prove her innocence, even though proving her innocence will take more time and cause her to remain in prison longer than if she got clemency.

Fugen informed us in a letter dated July 25, 2002, about not going ahead with her application for clemency and her reasons for this decision. Fugen stated that if she asks for clemency, she will have to state (or at least imply) that she is guilty, and this would hurt her chances for proving her innocence later. This is a brave thing for Fugen to do, because this means she may have to stay in prison for another four years, where she is suffering every day.

At the same time, she underscored the fact that she will need our support now more than ever in order to prove her innocence. Below is information about where Fugen's case stands today, what has happened up to now in terms of the legal process, and what are the possibilities from now on.

We, of course, still believe that Fugen is innocent, and we are hoping to help her to prove it.

Therefore, we still need your support in any way possible, especially money for her legal bills. It is unfair to her attorneys to ask them to keep going on her cases when her funds are almost totally used up.

Your contributions may either be wired directly to her trust fund or sent, by check made out to her trust fund, to Nancy S. Erickson, Esq., who is in charge of her funds:

Fugen Gulertekin Trust Fund
CITIBANK
114 Seventh Avenue
Brooklyn, NY 11215
ABA: 021000089
Account NO: 92484603
Nancy S. Erickson, Esq.
172 Fifth Avenue #31
Brooklyn, NY 11217

Thank you very much for supporting Fugen Gulertekin and our campaign "A Support Campaign For Fugen Gulertekin".

For more information: www.lightmillennium.org/fugen_gulertekin/fugen_list.html

A SUMMARY OF ABOUT FUGEN GULERTEKIN’s CASE:

A. The Habeas Corpus Case in Federal Court
A habeas corpus case in federal court attempts to overturn the state court criminal conviction on the grounds that the state court conviction was obtained in violation of the defendant's rights.

Here, Fugen is claiming several violations, including ineffective assistance of counsel.

1. She lost at the district court level, and has appealed to the Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals. Fugen's attorney, John Feldmeier, states that the Sixth Circuit will give us a date for oral argument. He expects to hear any time now, but he is not surprised that he has not heard yet. A habeas corpus case usually takes longer to get a date for oral argument. We usually get 6-8 weeks notice of oral argument. At oral argument, John would make all the legal arguments, including, most importantly, ineffective assistance of counsel. At oral argument, John can only make legal arguments, he cannot bring in evidence.

2. However, after oral argument, the Court will decide whether or not to grant Fugen an evidentiary hearing.

3. If Fugen gets a hearing, John will make all the legal arguments, including most importantly ineffective assistance of counsel, and bring in evidence to support these arguments. He could argue, among other things, that Tom Tyack should have consulted medical experts concerning:

a) shaken baby syndrome ;

b) whether CPR could have caused the symptoms the baby had

c) whether the big bird incident could have caused a skull fracture

d) whether the child's reflux problem (which was not revealed to Fugen before the incident but was in the medical records and therefore should have been brought up as an issue by Tom at trial) could have been the cause of the child's choking

e) whether the child may have had a neurological problem (either known to the parents or unknown to them), as evidenced by the behavior of the child that Fugen observed -- including the failure to grasp normally.

After the hearing, the Court would issue a decision, which could be either:

1. Conviction affirmed

2. Grant a new trial (in which case we would have to raise a lot of money for the new trial and get all kinds of experts to testify for Fugen at the trial).

4. If the Court denies Fugen a hearing, that is the end of the matter in terms of getting the conviction overturned. (I do not think there would be any point to trying to appeal to the United States Supreme Court, even if we had the money to do so, which we do not). She would have no other way to prove her innocence within the legal system unless new evidence came up later. Of course, she could write a book or do anything else she wanted to do to try to persuade people of her innocence, but she would not be able to get her conviction overturned.

B. The immigration case
Fugen has been ordered deported after she serves her sentence. Her immigration attorney, Douglas Weigle, has appealed this, and the Board of Immigration Appeals has asked him to submit a brief by September 27, which he is now preparing. We are hoping that the Sixth Circuit will give a good decision before the Board of Immigration Appeals decides the appeal, which we expect to lose. She has been convicted of a felony and is not a citizen, so that is automatic deportation.

C. Money
"We don't have any in Fugen Gulertekin Trust Funds. We don't even have the funds left to pay the bills that we expect to get soon from her two attorneys." (Nancy Erickson is in charge of Fugen Gulertekin's trust funds. This statement was made by Ms. Erickson).

D. Zelis Gulertekin (daughter of Fugen)
This is the only good news. Zelis got a full scholarship to U.S.C (University of Southern California) in L.A. and is there now. She maintained an extremely high average in high school despite all the stress caused by the injustice to her mother. Therefore, her full tuition and paid by her school but she also needs financially support for her other basic expenses at the school which her mother and mother are not able to provide.

(P.S. Our heartfelt thanks go to Nancy Erickson for providing us Fugen Gulertekin’s updated information.)