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Spokane, Washington  Est. May 19, 1883

Don Paradis’ Defense Team Enlisted Actor Dustin Hoffman Contacted Echohawk In Bid For Clemency

Friends of Idaho death row inmate Don Paradis are trying to win him allies in high places.

Like Hollywood.

Last October, Patricia Matthews, the wife of Paradis’ New York attorney Edwin Matthews, asked film star Dustin Hoffman to intercede in the case.

Hoffman, she knew, was a strong supporter of gubernatorial candidate Larry EchoHawk. The actor had poured $50,000 into EchoHawk’s campaign. And with three weeks until the election, he was widely favored to win.

Matthews wrote Hoffman a letter. She enclosed a newspaper article and a fact sheet with the defense attorneys’ arguments for Paradis’ innocence.

Months later, she defends her approach.

“Any politician and any celebrity gets hundreds of things in the mail,” she said. “It isn’t sleazy to try and save this man’s life.”

She said that now she’s trying to win over other influential people. She wouldn’t say whom.

Paradis is a former motorcycle gang member convicted 14 years ago of killing 19-year-old Kimberly Anne Palmer of Spokane. On his behalf, Matthews wrote to Hoffman in October:

“It could be very meaningful if you were able to tell him (EchoHawk) that you knew of the case and were concerned, interested, hopeful that he could do something after he is elected.

“We don’t want him to have to take a position in the case until after the election, and then we would like him to be receptive to clemency.”

“We are enormously grateful for anything you can do,” she wrote. “It is wonderful that we live in a time when artists do have an influence on politicians.”

Hoffman did, in fact, forward the letter to EchoHawk. But EchoHawk said the two never discussed the case. The former attorney general said he simply forwarded the letter to the state attorney handling the case.

Efforts to reach Hoffman for comment were unsuccessful.

“The letter had no impact,” EchoHawk said in a phone interview from his Provo, Utah, home. “It got no special attention. I didn’t respond in any way, so that’s all there is to that.”

Still, prosecutors - including the state attorney to whom EchoHawk forwarded the letter - call Matthews’ letter a behind-the-scenes attempt to play politics with justice.

“They were hoping to pull political strings,” said solicitor general Lynn Thomas, who handles the case for the state. “These cases should depend on the facts and the judgment of the courts, not on whether some idiot from the motion picture industry has bought into this picture of his (Paradis’) innocence.”

Matthews defended the letter, saying the defense team is unabashedly trying to win clemency - a pardon or reduction in sentence - for Paradis.

Asking Hoffman to intercede with EchoHawk, she said, was simply a way to make sure EchoHawk read the defense team’s version of the facts.

“We didn’t go looking for just celebrities,” she said. “We tried to find friends or people who have some meaningful association with people we want to reach.”

“I don’t think it’s shameful,” she said. “I’m very proud of our efforts to see justice done.”

Paradis’ Idaho attorney is Bill Mauk - chairman of the state Democratic Party.

Mauk said he knew nothing of the letter until after it was sent. Nonetheless, he said he supports Matthews’ efforts.

“We’ve made it our business to try in every way possible to get people who are in a position to do something about Don Paradis’ innocence to look at his case,” Mauk said. “I have no apology to offer and no reservations about what we have done in that regard.”