Who is Michael Turner (Part II)
Will the real Michael Turner please stand up?
The previous installment of this series can be found here, at Who is Michael Turner (Part I)
Since there are a lot of Michael Turners out there, I thought I would go through some of the not-so-good ones first so that the better ones will be at the top. Here’s an example of the bottom-of-the-barrel Michael Turners:
Michael Turner is a Georgia prisoner serving life plus 20-year sentence for burglary, rape, aggravated sodomy, and aggravated assault. This guy has my specific name, to the letter. Michael Alan Turner. Still, he’s a scumbag. I do not know the specifics of the crime he committed. You can find a copy of the decision of the 11th Circuit Court of Appeals here, and if that doesn’t work you can download my PDF copy.
In September 2002, Michael Turner filed a section 2254 petition for writ of habeas corpus. On July 28, 2003, the magistrate judge recommended denial of Michael Turner’s petition. (This was within a month of the beginning of HarvestSEO and just one week before I registered the domain name.
By the way, I’m not an expert on this kind of stuff, but I believe only an incarcerated person can apply for habeas corpus, so if this was me I would have had to have someone else register the domain. Of course, it would still probably have been difficult to communicate with my then employees in The Philippines, let alone my clients, and get the business running.
On October 18, 2004, the district court adopted the recommendation and dismissed Michael Turner’s Petition. Turner submitted some other motion under Rule 60(b)(1) seeking to overturn the district court’s dismissal of his petition on October 17, 2005 (a year later less one day) for being untimely. The district court denied this motion (no date stated) and Turner appealed, apparently to the federal 11th Circuit Court of Appeals.
Anyway, the 11th Circuit Court overturned the district court on September 20, 2006, while I was honeymooning in The Wonderful Philippines, saying that the Rule 60(b)(1) motion was timely and should have been considered on its merits, however it also said that it considered the Rule 60(1)(b) motion to be a rehash of his petition for writ of habeas corpus which had already been denied and sent the case back to the district court with instructions to deny the Rule 60(b)(1) motion on other grounds.
Thus, with his petition for writ of habeas corpus denied, Michael Alan Turner remains in some State of Georgia penitentiary, and barring the rare circumstances where an innocent man is convicted, and assuming such is not the case here, then he’s unlikely to get out of jail any time soon.
I was able to find some information on this guy. You can do an offender search through the Georgia Prison website. Search for “Turner, Michael, Alan” and “Life” for Sentence Status. One alias is “Michael Allen Turner”. He’s been in jail since July, 1985, so he’s been in jail for 23 years and is 59 years old, so he was 36 when he got locked up. There is no indication he is roaming around The Philippines, other than that he has the very same name as mine.
Ne’s not quite as gwapo as me either.
I am not familiar with Georgia sentencing guidelines, but a sentence of life plus 20 years sounds like a long time. It reminds me of the joke where some 50 year old guy gets sentenced to 60 years imprisonment. He tells the judge, “I don’t think I can do it.” and the judge responds, “Well, just do the best you can.”
This is one Michael Turner I am certainly glad I am not. I would much rather be the famous comic book artist Michael Turner even though the latter is dead. At least he led a decent life and made a difference in thousands of peoples lives.