Willie Horton

A homicidal career criminal, Willie Horton briefly became, through improbable circumstances, a national villain and a symbol of everything that was wrong with the American criminal justice system. Also, in the eyes of many liberals, his moment of prominence was a symbol of what was wrong with American political campaigns. This began on October 26, 1974, in Lawrence, Massachusetts, when he led two accomplices in the robbery of a gas station. Horton murdered the teenage station attendant, stabbing him 19 times and dumping him in a garbage can. He was caught and convicted, receiving a life sentence. He was expected to languish in prison. But it turned out that at the time, the Massachusetts prison system allowed weekend furloughs for all inmates, including those sentenced to life without parole. In 1976, the state legislature attempted to end that, but could not overcome opposition from then Governor Michael Dukakis, who pocket-vetoed the measure. Horton received one such furlough in mid-1986, and proceeded to become a fugitive. Successfully evading capture, Horton committed another crime in Maryland, breaking into a couple's home and brutalized them at gunpoint, sexually assaulting the woman. In October of that year, he was caught by Maryland authorities and sentenced to two life terms. When the state of Massachusetts sought his return, it was refused, on the grounds that Horton could be furloughed again to commit more crimes. The victims attempted to meet with Dukakis to persuade him to eliminate the furlough program, but he refused the meeting. Amid the crime wave going on in the United States at the time, that was thought to be the end of the matter. However, a combination of investigative journalism and political ambition eventually brought the case to the nation's attention, and made the case about far more than Horton himself and his crimes. It was an open secret that Dukakis harbored ambitions to become President of the United States. But that same year, a local newspaper from the city of Horton's original crime, the Lawrence Eagle Tribune, published an extensive series of articles investigating both the Horton case and the Massachusetts criminal justice system in general, and the articles reflected very badly on it. The articles won the paper a Pulitzer Prize. The articles found the attention of Readers Digest, which published its own damaging account of the incident. Dukakis's advisers brought this to his attention, leading him to quietly end the furlough program. Then Dukakis launched his Presidential campaign in 1988. The furlough issue was initially brought up in April of that year by U.S. Senator Al Gore, though he never mentioned the Horton case specifically. Dukakis brushed off the criticism and proceeded to win the Democratic Party's nomination. He started the general election well ahead in the polls. But conservative activists and Republican officials in Massachusetts brought this case to the attention of officials of the Presidential campaign of then Vice President George Bush, and it caught the full attention of his top aides, Campaign Manager Lee Atwater and Campaign Communications Director Roger Ailes, who were astonished and saw the issue as a way to completely discredit Dukakis. Atwater himself vowed, "By the time this election is over, Willie Horton will be a household name." In June of 1988, Bush himself started bringing up the topic in campaign speeches, and in the Summer of that year, the issue was clearly damaging the Dukakis effort. Horton himself got into the act when he did an interview with the liberal newspaper "The Nation," and proclaimed his innocence, against all the evidence. And in early October, the Bush campaign released a TV commercial cut by Ailes, portraying criminals entering and exiting a prison through a turnstile, while the voice-over accused Dukakis of running a "revolving door prison policy," and adding that "Michael Dukakis says he wants to do for America what he's done for Massachusetts." The ad was run thousands of times around the country and is believed to have been the most effective political ad since the famed "Daily Girl" ad run by Lyndon B. Johnson in 1964. Near the campaign's end, Democrats accused Bush of exploiting racial fears, pointing out that Horton was African-American while his victims were white. Bush proceeded to win the election. Democrats were resentful of the tactics that the Bush campaign used, and in political circles, Horton's name is considered symbolic of using inflammatory symbols to wage negative campaigns. Horton himself remains in prison, where he will spend the rest of his life.