Robber says he did it to go back to prison
By Kristina Davis, UNION-TRIBUNE STAFF WRITER
Originally published July 30, 2010 at 10:27 p.m., updated July 31, 2010 at 12:02 a.m.
Peter Barry Lawrence pointed a BB gun at a bank teller and was surprised at the amount of bravado that surged through him. He threatened to shoot anyone who followed him out.
“I felt like Clint Eastwood or Charles Bronson,” he said. “There was a sudden rush of adrenaline.”
Lawrence, 71, made his getaway in his wheelchair, with $2,000 in cash on his lap. He was headed back to his rented room at the nearby San Diego Downtown Lodge, but he took a meandering route down Seventh Avenue until the police caught up with him five minutes later.
And just like that, the rush was over. But that was all part of the plan.
The way Lawrence tells it, Monday’s robbery of a Chase Bank was just a desperate ploy to get back behind bars, where he believes he will receive better medical care than he has been able to obtain on his own.
“In my opinion, freedom isn’t any good if you can’t sustain yourself on the outside,” Lawrence said during a jailhouse interview Friday.
He pleaded not guilty to the crime in court Wednesday, but said he hopes to plead guilty soon and put the whole thing behind him.
Seeking out treatment for diabetes, colon cancer, Parkinson’s disease, gout, heart disease and glaucoma has just become too much for him to handle on his own, he said.
He’s been surviving on $949 a month from Social Security and other government benefits, and has been getting his health care for free via Medicare and Medi-Cal.
“It got to be harder and harder to get to the doctor in a wheelchair, using the bus and trolley,” Lawrence said. “I got to the point where I stopped going. I said, ‘Heck with it. Let nature take its course.’ My quality of life was gone.”
Marilyn Holle, an attorney for Disability Rights California, said Lawrence’s story is a telling example of the health care system many face.
“There’s a lack of stable housing and a lack of case management,” said Holle, who is based in Los Angeles. “It’s not only about getting someone the treatment, but getting them to and from. And without stable housing, you’re not going to be able to get the services you need.”
Holle said she can see the attraction of prison health care for some.
“You’ve got a place to live and ... a prison system providing nursing facility-type care,” she said. “And you live in a community.”
That comfort is what Lawrence is counting on, having served three previous stints in federal prison.
He spent about eight months in Lompoc federal prison on a 1998 bank robbery conviction, and later spent another couple of months at a federal facility in Sheridan, Ore., after being caught for attempted bank robbery in 1999. A few weeks of that sentence were also spent in a hospital for an abscess, he said.
He was also sentenced to another few months in a Victorville federal prison for violating parole.
“I’m better off here,” Lawrence said, despite describing life behind bars as “primitive.”
But this time, Lawrence will likely be sentenced to state prison, because the District Attorney’s Office is prosecuting his latest bank robbery case.
Medical care in California’s prison system has been undergoing changes ever since a federal court ruled in 2002 that the state of the health care program was essentially cruel and unusual punishment under the U.S. Constitution.
Lawrence will possibly be one of the beneficiaries of those changes, Holle said.
According to the state, the annual medical-care costs per prisoner averages about $8,600, although some inmates on life-support cost as high as $2 million each a year.
Lawrence said the chance to get housed in a federal facility versus a state prison factored into his choice of crime, because the U.S. Attorney’s Office often prosecutes bank robberies.
In his previous robberies, Lawrence relied on threats of violence. Monday’s robbery was the first time he’d used a gun, he said.
At the suggestion of sheriff’s deputies, Lawrence said he has written a letter of apology to the male teller he targeted. In it, he recalled his own experience when, as a taxi driver, he was held at gunpoint by a drug dealer years ago.
“I was scared to death, so I know what the teller went through,” he said.
Lawrence said he spent most of his life as an honest, hard-working citizen, living in Arizona before he moved to Southern California. He drove taxis, buses and shuttles for several years. The gout and other problems with his feet put an end to that 14 years ago, and he hasn’t worked since.
“I’ve been well taken care of,” he said of his prison experience. “I don’t plan to leave prison alive. I feel relieved and glad it’s over.”
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