[Home]  [Headlines]  [Latest Articles]  [Latest Comments]  [Post]  [Sign-in]  [Mail]  [Setup]  [Help] 

Status: Not Logged In; Sign In

Israeli Troops Reach Deepest Point In Lebanon Since Ground Op Began Elon Musk Met With Iran's UN Ambassador Schumer Moves to Silence Criticism of Israel as Hate Speech With 'Antisemitism Awareness Act' Historic English town that inspired Charles Dickens’ best stories RFK Jr drives pharma to 15-year low COL. Douglas Macgregor : What happen at the secret meeting between Israel and Russia? The CDC Planned COVID Quarantine Concentration Camps Nationwide NASA staff beg Elon Musk to 'clean house' after agency spent millions of Americans' money on DEI agenda Sanctuaries Freed 22,000 Criminal Aliens Sought by ICE Under Biden "Human Please die": Chatbot responds with threatening message Antifa Groups Recruiting, Organizing And Mobilizing For Violence During Donald Trump's Second Term In Office Joe Biden's "WTH" Moment of the Day with President of Peru..... Germany: Police Raid Pensioner's House, Drag Him To Court After He Retweets Meme Calling Green Minister "Idiot" Israel's Most Advanced Tank Shredded To Pieces In Gaza Chinese Killer Robo Dog Israeli Officials Belatedly Claim Secret Nuclear Site Destroyed In Last Month's Iran Strikes Lake County California Has Counted Just 30 Percent of Votes – Ten Days After Polls Closed! Real Monetary Reform More Young Men Are Now Religious Than Women In The US 0,000+ online influencers, journalists, drive-by media, TV stars and writers work for State Department "Why Are We Hiding It From The Public?" - Five Takeaways From Congressional UFO Hearing Food Additives Exposed: What Lies Beneath America's Food Supply Scott Ritter: Hezbollah OBLITERATES IDF, Netanyahu in deep legal trouble Vivek Ramaswamy says he and Elon Musk are set up for 'mass deportations' of millions of 'unelected bureaucrats' Evidence Points to Voter Fraud in 2024 Wisconsin Senate Race Rickards: Your Trump Investment Guide Pentagon 'Shocked' By Houthi Arsenal, Sophistication Is 'Getting Scary' Cancer Starves When You Eat These Surprising Foods | Dr. William Li Megyn Kelly Gets Fiery About Trump's Choice of Matt Gaetz for Attorney General Over 100 leftist groups organize coalition to rebuild morale and resist MAGA after Trump win

Pious Perverts
See other Pious Perverts Articles

Title: Legal experts slam Texas judge-prosecutor link
Source: [None]
URL Source: http://news.aol.com/story/_a/legal- ... 80917055909990004?ecid=RSS0001
Published: Sep 17, 2008
Author: AP
Post Date: 2008-09-17 07:16:30 by Disgusted
Keywords: None
Views: 220
Comments: 4

Legal experts slam Texas judge-prosecutor link By JEFF CARLTON,AP Posted: 2008-09-17 05:59:24 DALLAS (AP) - Legal experts are harshly criticizing a former judge and an ex-Texas prosecutor, saying their alleged sexual affair while handling cases together represents a black eye to the system.

"It's such incredible bad judgment because it throws every conviction into doubt," said Fred Moss, a Southern Methodist University law professor.

An apparent open secret 20 years ago in Collin County legal circles, the alleged affair became part of the public record again last week.

Lawyers for death row inmate Charles Dean Hood sought a stay of execution in the nation's busiest death penalty state, arguing former Judge Verla Sue Holland was biased because of her relationship with ex-Collin County District Attorney Thomas O'Connell.

About 30 former prosecutors and federal and state judges have already signed a letter sent to Gov. Rick Perry arguing the alleged relationship had to be considered when it came to Hood, convicted in 1990 of fatally shooting two people in Plano.

The letter states that a sexual relationship, which Hood's lawyers say the judge and prosecutor acknowledged under oath during depositions last week, "would have had a significant impact on the ability of the judicial system to accord Mr. Hood a fair and impartial trial."

Hood received a reprieve, although the alleged affair was not the reason. The Texas Court of Criminal Appeals wants to reconsider whether the jury instructions were flawed.

"The appearance of impropriety is absolutely there and it does affect the integrity of the system," said Rick Hagen, president of the Texas Criminal Defense Lawyers Association. "And you can't deny that."

Attorneys for Holland and O'Connell declined to discuss their clients' depositions, citing a gag order. In an affidavit, former assistant district attorney Matthew Goeller said it was "common knowledge" that the judge and prosecutor "had a romantic relationship" from at least 1987 until about 1993. Hood was tried in 1990.

Neither Holland nor O'Connell have been publicly disciplined by the State Commission on Judicial Conduct or the State Bar of Texas.

Besides Hood, there are four other death row inmates convicted in Collin County during the overlapping tenures of O'Connell and Holland. Three were convicted in front of other judges; a record for the fourth could not be located.

Moss said he expects the appeals court to find a reason to grant a new trial for Hood, who was convicted of killing a 26-year-old former dancer and her 46-year-old boyfriend.

"What it does is bring the whole system into question," Moss said. "It's a real black eye to the system and very unfortunate. It shakes the confidence of the public in the criminal justice system."

Post Comment   Private Reply   Ignore Thread  

#1. To: Disgusted (#0)

Not possible.

Lawyers (shysters) have "professional ethics".

Cynicom  posted on  2008-09-17   7:20:41 ET  Reply   Trace   Private Reply  

The legal system is like an insestuious pond of defective DNA.

Disgusted  posted on  2008-09-17   7:24:19 ET  Reply   Trace   Private Reply  

Lawyers (shysters) have "professional ethics".

Pettifoggers

HOW is it that (you) the Private citizen is being touted as the debtor when the PRIVATE FED RESERVE loans CREDIT to other PRIVATE BANKS ???

noone222  posted on  2008-09-17   7:24:50 ET  Reply   Trace   Private Reply  

On Aug. 24, 1993, the State of Texas executed Ruben Cantu by lethal injection. Twelve years later, the Houston Chronicle published an investigative series detailing compelling new evidence of Cantu's innocence.

On the night of November 8, 1984, two Latino teens broke into a house still under construction, apparently intending to rob the two illegal immigrants who were staying there. Pedro Gomez, 25, and Juan Moreno, 19, were laborers helping to build the house and were guarding the place because of an earlier theft. The two were awakened by the intruders. After giving the robbers his wallet, Gomez tried to pull a gun from under the mattress. He was shot dead. Moreno was shot nine times, but miraculously survived.

Moreno, as the surviving eyewitness, was key to any prosecution. He told the police that his attackers were two young Latinos who he thought he had seen around the neighborhood. During the investigation San Antonio police detectives showed Moreno multiple photographic lineups of possible suspects from the neighborhood, each of which included Cantu's photograph. The first was on December 16, 1984. However, Moreno was unable to identify Cantu or anyone else. The investigation then stalled - the police had no DNA or other physical evidence, and Moreno could not identify Ruben Cantu as an assailant.

A few months later, on March 1, 1985, off-duty police officer Joe De La Luz was drinking and playing pool at a local lounge. Cantu was there doing the same. The two had a barroom altercation that ended with Cantu shooting at and wounding the officer.

After months of inactivity, the investigation into the murder of Pedro Gomez was abruptly reopened the day after the barroom shooting-and focused explicitly on Cantu. No new evidence had been uncovered in the interim, but on March 2, 1985 a detective went back to Moreno with Cantu's photo.

For a second time Moreno failed to identify Cantu, though Moreno later said that it was then that he learned Cantu had shot a police officer. The police were still not yet ready to give up their quest to prosecute Cantu and returned to Moreno's house one day later. This time a different detective went back to Moreno to try to get an identification. This time they took the 19-year-old illegal immigrant to the police station and for a third time showed him a photospread including Cantu's picture. Finally, the police got what they wanted - Moreno ultimately agreed to identify Cantu as the perpetrator. He later provided the only testimony at trial linking Cantu to the crime.

While Cantu had admitted the barroom fight with and shooting of De La Luz (who had a history of similar incidents), he always maintained his innocence in the attack on Gomez and Moreno. His codefendant, 15-year-old David Garza, did not acknowledge his presence at the murder but he did admit to being there and to the robbery of Gomez and Moreno. In doing so, he managed to negotiate a plea deal from the prosecutors. Usually in cases where there are multiple defendants, the prosecution will try to get one defendant to flip on any others and testify against them. But Garza never did that.

The Houston Chronicle's in-depth investigation revealed accounts directly from Garza and Moreno that implicate someone other than Cantu in the shooting and corroborate what Cantu had been saying all along until the moment he was executed - that he was innocent and he was not even there that night. Indeed, alibi witnesses place Cantu in Waco on the night of the robbery-murder, over a hundred miles away.

Garza attested in a sworn statement that "Ruben Cantu had nothing to do with the murder, attempted murder and robbery of the two men at 605 Briggs Street. I should know." What would cause Garza to tell the truth regarding something that he had remained silent about for so many years? Garza attributes it to an ever-growing guilt he has felt; his silence helped send his best friend to his death. Garza said, "Part of me died when he died." And Garza wasn't the only one who had something new to say.

The prosecution's sole witness, Juan Moreno, has said that his testimony was not true. In reference to Cantu being the shooter, Moreno now says that he is "sure it wasn't him? It was a case where the wrong person was executed." Moreno told the Chronicle that Cantu was never there that night. He only identified Cantu on the third try because he felt immense pressure from the police to do so. His story suggests that police exploited the vulnerability of the 19-year-old illegal immigrant. Both Moreno and Garza assert that they have nothing to gain by coming forward with the truth - except unburdening their consciences.

While the San Antonio police continue to insist that Cantu was guilty of the murder of Pedro Gomez, the forewoman of the jury that sentenced him to die was deeply troubled by the new revelations. "When the pieces come together in the wrong way, disaster happens," she said. "That's not the way our legal system is supposed to work. Ruben Cantu deserved better."

Sam Millsap, the former Bexar County District Attorney who decided to seek the death penalty against Cantu said, "The person I prosecuted in 1985, Ruben Cantu, was probably innocent. . . . . What we see over and over again are situations where witnesses who have no reason to lie recant testimony and for good reasons."

The judge who presided over the 1985 trial has not commented on Cantu's guilt or innocence. But he conceded that "People do lie under oath, and people do get convicted on the basis of lies? This case, like thousands of other cases in the system across the country, cries for a thorough examination of the process."

On Feb. 17, 2004, Cameron Todd Willingham was strapped to a gurney in a Texas death chamber as he declared his innocence for the last time. Minutes later, he was executed by lethal injection. In December of the same year, the Chicago Tribune uncovered secrets behind the Willingham case, addressing questions left unanswered and raising doubts left unacknowledged.

On Dec. 23, 1991, Willingham was at home with his three daughters. His wife, Stacy, left their home in the morning to pay the bills and shop for Christmas gifts at a Salvation Army store. The family had been struggling that year; Todd, as everyone called him, had recently been laid off, and Stacy was supporting the family with her wages from a bar. The Willinghams were two months behind on rent, and they had even stopped paying some bills in order to save money for Christmas.

Willingham recalled waking up briefly as his wife was leaving the home around 9 a.m. When he heard their one-year-old twins, Karmon and Kameron, crying, he woke up to feed them and went back to sleep. About an hour later, his two-year-old daughter Amber woke him with her cries, and the house was already full of smoke. Willingham remembers not being able to see "anything but black" toward the front of the house. The circuits were popping throughout the home as Willingham frantically went to his daughters' bedroom. At this point, his hair caught on fire, and he was able to see little more than the glowing of the ceiling. Willingham called out for his children and felt along the floor and bed for them, but he could not find them. This is when debris began falling from the ceiling, causing him to burn his shoulder. He fled the home through the front door.

After fleeing his house, he asked his neighbors to call the fire department and screamed to them, "My babies is in there and I can't get them out." A neighbor, Mary Barbee, then asked other neighbors to place the call because her own telephone was disconnected. Willingham reported that, while this was happening, he tried to re-enter his home, but it was too hot. Then, he knocked out two bedroom windows with a pool cue, but could not get into the bedroom.

Buvin Smith arrived on the scene after hearing the neighbor's call over a radio scanner. Smith remembered restraining Willingham from going onto the porch, and heard him yelling that his "babies were in the house" and noticed that he was "acting real hysterical."

Almost immediately, Willingham became a suspect. According to the Chicago Tribune, prosecutors often are able to rely on circumstantial evidence in cases when a child dies and the parent survives. In this case, the prosecution convinced the jury that Willingham killed his children because they interfered with his beer-drinking, dart-throwing lifestyle. The jury believed it.

Neighbors told investigators that they did not believe Willingham tried hard enough to save his children. In fact, Barbee said that she saw Willingham standing by the fence as heavy smoke came out of the windows. Also, she told investigators that Willingham seemed more concerned with moving his car away from the burning house as the windows blew out than with saving his children.

Willingham's wounds were treated shortly after the fire. Firefighters did not think that his burns were severe enough had he indeed searched for his daughters in the manner he described. His shoulder, back, and hair were burned, but his bare feet were not burned at the bottom.

Police stated that, the day after the fire, Willingham complained about not being able to find a dartboard in the wreckage of his home. Others mentioned hearing loud music and laughter in the following days as the couple attempted to salvage their belongings.

A police chaplain grew suspicious that Willingham's hysterics during the fire were not genuine. The chaplain, George Monaghan, noted that Willingham seemed "too distraught."

In addition to these evaluations of Willingham's behavior, fire investigators reported over 20 indicators of arson. These include the "crazed glass," or the web-like cracks in the glass. Until more recent research was completed, arson specialists believed this to be a clear indication that an accelerant had been used in the fire. The fire experts also noted that the fire had reached a stage known as flashover, when a fire reaches such a high temperature that an explosion results. This further supported their reasoning that an accelerant had been used.

Willingham was charged with murder on Jan. 8, 1992, just two weeks after the fire. In August of the same year, his trial began, after Willingham turned down a deal from the prosecution and insisted that he was innocent. During the trial prosecutors presented inmate Johnny E. Webb as a witness. He testified that Willingham confessed at the county jail to killing his children in order to cover up the fact that his wife, Stacy, had been physically abusing them. Webb, a recovering drug addict, was taking psychiatric medication to relieve post-traumatic stress syndrome. The prosecution also presented as witnesses the neighbors who claimed that Willingham should have done more. Fire investigators Doug Fogg and Manuel Vasquez also testified at Willingham's trial. Both of these investigators testified in court that the fire was caused by arson. Both of these investigators testified to assumptions about fire that have been scientifically proven to be wrong.

Today, we know better. When the Chicago Tribune investigated the case, several experts reviewed documents, trial testimony, and video documentation of the fire scene and concluded that the original investigation was terribly flawed . Gerald Hurst, a Cambridge University-educated chemist, and John Lentini, John DeHaan, both private consultants specializing in fire investigation, along with Louisiana fire chief Kendall Ryland, examined the materials. They suggest that this fire may have been simply accidental.

After the Chicago Tribune investigation, Lentini worked with the Innocence Project to assemble an independent, perr-review panel of arson experts. The five-member panel - with a combined 138 years in high-level fire investigation experience - issued a 44-page report on the case, They determined that "each and every one" of the forensic interpretations made by the state's experts at Willingham's trial was not scientifically valid. For example, the original investigators determined that an accelerant was used because wood cannot burn hot enough to melt aluminum. In fact, according to these leading experts, it can. The 1991 investigators also claimed that the brown rings on the Willingham's front porch were another indicator of accelerant usage. Experts called this "baseless speculation," explaining that fire-hose water often leaves brown rings on surfaces after evaporation.

But this information didn't just come to light recently - shortly before Willingham was executed, Hurst reviewed the case and issued a report that dismissed every single indicator of arson Fogg and Vasquez had originally cited. What was done with this report? Texas judges and Gov. Rick Perry turned it aside, confident of Willingham's guilt.

Jury members are less confident now. One jury member asked, "Did anybody know about this prior to his execution? Now I will have to live with this for the rest of my life. Maybe this man was innocent."

On December 7, 1989, Texas executed 27-year old Carlos De Luna. Sixteen years later, the Chicago Tribune published a three-part investigative series implicating another man and discrediting the evidence against De Luna.

In February 1983, Wanda Lopez was stabbed to death during the night shift at a gas station convenience store where she was clerk. Lopez did not have to die. If police had responded to the first of her two 911 calls, she would be alive today, as would De Luna. Instead, police waited to respond until the end of Lopez's second call, after a series of yes or no questions with a dispatcher revealed that a Hispanic male was in the store with a knife and after Lopez screams revealed she had been stabbed. The officers' delay in reaching the scene may explain their haste to complete the investigation, compounding the tragedy by convicting and executing the wrong man.

After a brief manhunt, police found De Luna hiding underneath a pick-up truck. Recently released from prison, De Luna had been violating parole by drinking in public. Police reports say he was staggering and intoxicated. School reports show he was developmentally impaired.

De Luna immediately told police he was innocent and offered to name a man he had seen inside the gas station. Police ignored De Luna. Also ignored was the fact that he didn't have a drop of blood on his body or clothing, even though the knife victim and killer had physically struggled, drenching the crime scene in blood. De Luna was arrested too soon after the crime to have cleaned himself up.

Back at the gas station, police brought Kevan Baker, their single eyewitness to the crime, to the squad car where De Luna was shirtless and handcuffed in the back seat. After police indicated to Baker that De Luna was the killer, he identified De Luna. Baker told the Tribune he was never sure De Luna was the man he had seen and would have been less sure if police had not hinted they had the right man. Baker originally told police the killer wore a moustache, was dressed like a derelict, and ran northwest behind the gas station. Witnesses placed De Luna east of the gas station. He had no moustache and was dressed in a white button-down dress shirt and dress pants.

From the moment De Luna was arrested until the night he was executed, he insisted he hid under the truck because he was on parole and got scared when he heard sirens coming. He told the officer who arrested him that he was not guilty but knew who was. At trial De Luna named Carlos Hernandez as the man he saw inside the gas station, across the street from the bar where De Luna had been drinking. As the Tribune investigation revealed, Carlos Hernandez was a well-known Corpus Christi criminal and armed felon. He habitually wore a moustache, dressed like a "hobo" and carried a buck knife like the one found at the Lopez crime scene.

Police ignored De Luna's statements. Moments after Baker identified De Luna, police ended their investigation and turned the crime scene over to a stunned store manager who couldn't believe he was allowed to wash down the store so soon after a major crime. Police photographs of the scene reveal (1) a shoe heel print framed in blood (the victim was barefoot when she was killed; De Luna's shoes had no blood on them); (2) a partially smoked cigarette butt near the location of the stabbing (the assailant brought a Winston cigarette pack to the counter before attacking the victim; Winston was Hernandez's brand); (3) a dark red button (Baker told police the killer was wearing a red flannel shirt; according to friends, Hernandez's "winter uniform" was a red flannel shirt); and (4) the murder weapon, an 8-inch buck knife smeared with blood.

Except for the knife, police seized none of these items. Their photographs show the lead investigator trampling on bloody evidence that was never seized. Only four fingerprints were lifted from the scene, none from the knife, and none matched De Luna. A well-known former Corpus Christi police detective, Eddie Garza, told the Tribune the police investigation was incompetent.

At trial, the prosecution argued that De Luna had stabbed Wanda Lopez during the commission of a robbery. The Tribune's investigation revealed, however, that no money had been taken from the scene. Baker told the police the victim's struggle with the assailant looked like a lover's quarrel. Hernandez's neighbors say he knew Lopez and was romantically interested in her. There is no indication De Luna knew Lopez. The supposed robbery was the only factor elevating the murder to a death-eligible crime.

Absent blood, fingerprints, or other physical links to the crime, prosecutors rested their case against De Luna on three things. First was the 911 audio tape of the brutal killing. The tape incensed the jury but gave no hint of who killed Lopez except that it was a Hispanic male. Second was Kevan Baker's night-time identification of De Luna. Baker was prompted by police and shown only a single suspect, not the line-up that standard procedure required. Mug shots reveal that De Luna and Hernandez look strikingly similar. Both were 5'8" tall, 160 pounds, with wavy black hair. Shown pictures of the two men, relatives of both repeatedly mistook one for the other. The only difference was in the two Carloses' m.o. De Luna had many arrests but was never found to have possessed or used a weapon. Hernandez committed most of his crimes with a large knife.

Third, prosecutors said De Luna was a liar. De Luna identified "Carlos Hernandez" as the killer, but - argued the lead prosecutor - Hernandez was "a phantom." In fact, the untruth was the state's. Hernandez was known and notorious to police and prosecutors. Just two months after Lopez was killed, police arrested Hernandez behind a 7-11 Store at night, a knife in his pocket. Around the same time, police informants told Detective Garza that Hernandez had told them he killed Wanda Lopez. When given this information, the lead detective on the Lopez case ignored it. Still worse, one of the prosecutors at De Luna's trial admitted that he knew Hernandez personally. Only three years earlier, he had interviewed Hernandez on suspicion of knifing a young Hispanic woman to death. When arrested for that crime, Hernandez was carrying a buck knife.

Just as police steered Kevan Baker to identify De Luna, the prosecutor's claim that Hernandez was a phantom prompted the jury to convict DeLuna and sentence him to die. De Luna's attorneys also were misled. Although De Luna's family never wavered in their belief that their Carlos could not have killed Wanda Lopez, the lawyers they hired to help him never went to the courthouse to look up Carlos Hernandez's lengthy record of violent convictions and never otherwise investigated his crime. It was not until a decade and a half after De Luna was executed that the Tribune found five people, including Hernandez's own niece, who heard Hernandez confess to stabbing and killing Lopez. Hernandez repeatedly laughed about his "stupid tocayo" who went to jail for Hernandez's crime. "Tocayo" is the Spanish word for "namesake." All five kept this information to themselves, fearing Hernandez's wrath. Some assumed they would be questioned but never were.

In 1999, ten years after De Luna was executed, Hernandez died in prison of liver cirrhosis. During that decade, Hernandez stabbed another young Hispanic woman nearly to death and accumulated five additional arrests, the last of which, an assault with a knife, landed him in prison for the last time.

When confronted with the evidence of Hernandez's guilt and De Luna's innocence, the De Luna prosecutors admitted they should not have told the jury Hernandez was a phantom. Still, they offered no apologies for their actions. No one has apologized to Carlos De Luna or his family for wrongly taking his life. Nor has anyone apologized to Lopez's family for botching that investigation or to Hernandez's subsequent victims, who would have been safe if police and prosecutors had properly investigated the Lopez murder. And what about the jurors who were led to believe that De Luna was guilty? They too deserve an apology.

On June 21, 1995, Larry Griffin was executed by the State of Missouri. Up to his last moments, he insisted that he was innocent. Ten years later, at a press conference called by Congressman William Lacy Clay, the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund announced the findings of a year-long investigation that confirmed Griffin's innocence.

On June 26, 1980, Quintin Moss, a 19-year-old drug dealer, was killed on Olive Street near the corner of Sarah Avenue, a notorious center for prostitution and drug dealing known as "the stroll." He was shot by two men in the passenger seats of a slow moving car and hit 13 times. Moss, the shooters, and virtually everybody else in the neighborhood was African American.

Larry Griffin was a logical suspect. Six months earlier his brother, Dennis Griffin - a major drug dealer - had been murdered. It was widely believed that Quintin Moss killed Dennis Griffin. But Larry Griffin was one of a long list of plausible suspects. Quintin Moss had many enemies in the drug trade, and it was common knowledge that there was a contract out to kill him.

The star witness at Griffin's trial was a white man named Robert Fitzgerald. In June 1980, Fitzgerald, then 36, was a convicted felon living in a St. Louis motel under the federal witness protection program, waiting to testify against a former associate in crime in the murder of a Boston police officer. His record included convictions for possession of heroin, auto theft, armed robbery, and credit card fraud.

By the time of Griffin's trial, in 1981, Fitzgerald was back in jail in St. Louis, on new felony charges of credit card fraud. He was release the very day that Griffin was convicted. Fitzgerald told a peculiar story to the jury:

On June 26, 1980, he and an African American friend, "Carl" (who has never been identified or interviewed) were driving across town to take Carl's four-year-old daughter to Carl's mother's house. The battery lost all power, and the car rolled to a dead stop on "the stroll" around 12:30 p.m. Carl and an acquaintance of his removed the battery and took it to be recharged. For the next four hours Fitzgerald remained on that block with his broken down car, babysitting the four year old black girl.

Carl and his friend returned after 4 p.m., and were putting the battery back in the car when the drive-by shooting occurred. They jumped under the car and Carl yelled, "Get my baby!" Fitzgerald threw himself over the little girl and looked up at the windshield and front passenger-side window of the car moving toward him. He got a good view of a black man with a pistol leaning out the front passenger seat and firing a handgun. As the car left, he memorized its license plate. Fitzgerald then went to the dying Moss and was trying to take his pulse when the police arrived. He told the officers that he could identify the shooter and gave them the license plate number of the murderer's car. Later, at the police station and at trial, Fitzgerald identified Larry Griffin as the shooter in the front seat.

Other than Fitzgerald's testimony, no evidence at trial - no other witness and no physical evidence - placed Larry Griffin at the scene of this crime. As early as 1983, a Justice of the Missouri Supreme Court urged reversal of Griffin's convictions because "The only eyewitness to the murder had a seriously flawed background, and his ability to observe and identify the gunman was also subject to question."

Thirteen years after Moss's murder, Robert Fitzgerald admitted committing perjury when he positively identified Griffin in court as the person who shot Moss. Fitzgerald also revealed that the police suggested to him that he pick out Griffin's photo before he did so. Along with Fitzgerald's admission, the Legal Defense Fund investigators obtained new evidence from three other critical witnesses:

* Patricia Moss Mason, Quinitin Moss's sister, was near the scene of the shooting. She saw it from a distance and could not identify the killers. But she had been back and forth to Olive Street repeatedly that afternoon, and has no doubt that there was no white man there, no broken down car, and certainly no white man tending to a young black girl.

* At trial, only one police officer corroborated Fitzgerald's testimony, Patrolman Michael Ruggeri, the first police officer on the scene. But that officer, now retired, told Legal Defense Fund investigators and a reporter for the St. Louis Post-Dispatch that in fact he saw no one else with Moss when he arrived at the murder scene. It was not until several minutes later that Fitzgerald walked up. Ruggeri also says that he did not see Fitzgerald's broken down car near the corner of Olive and Sarah, nor any young black girl, and that these are not things he would have missed because the car would have been processed as evidence, and the girl would have been screaming and would have required care. As for Fitzgerald at the scene of the shooting: "He might have been around the block. He might have been across the street. He may have been, you know, I don't know where he was, but he wasn't there," Ruggeri said.

* Wallace Conners was also at the corner of Olive and Sarah that afternoon. Moss was there to sell drugs, Conners was there to buy. Conners was struck by a stray bullet and taken to the hospital. When police initially interviewed him in the hospital, Conners did not identify Griffin as a shooter. Three days later Conners left St. Louis. He did not testify at Griffin's trial, and was never contacted either by the prosecution or by the defense at any time after June 1980. The Legal Defense Fund located him in Los Angeles in 2004.

Conners knew Larry Griffin, and states unequivocally that Griffin was not one of the shooters: "If it would have been somebody who I knew or something, I would have recognized them because I did get a look." Equally important, Conners - like Patricia Moss Mason - is certain that Robert Fitzgerald was not on the scene that afternoon. He would have stood out in the all black neighborhood, and if his car had been parked where he said it was -20 feet away from the shooting - Conners would have jumped behind it rather than run the other way. Also, Conners said, if Fitzgerald had been there, "he would have been shot just like everybody else."

The Legal Defense Fund investigation identified three other potential suspects as the driver of the murder car, and the two shooters. Unlike Larry Griffin, these men were deeply involved in the drug trade. St. Louis City Circuit Attorney Jennifer Joyce has reopened the case, assigning two top lawyers to investigate the Moss murder case as if it had happened yesterday rather more than 25 years ago.

Several members of Quintin's Moss's family support this new investigation. His sister Sherry Moss said that she has always doubted Griffin's guilt. And his oldest brother, Walter, said he will reserve judgment about whether Griffin was guilty until after the reinvestigation is complete, but he feels that the original police investigation was inadequate.

Margurette Hollinshed, Griffin's sister, welcomes the reinvestigation in hopes of absolving her brother. She admits that Larry Griffin made mistakes in his life, but notes that he always confessed when he actually committed a crime. This time, he maintained his innocence until the last moments.

www.democracyinaction.org...%20Executed%20Section.dwt

bush_is_a_moonie  posted on  2008-09-19   23:01:59 ET  Reply   Trace   Private Reply  

[Home]  [Headlines]  [Latest Articles]  [Latest Comments]  [Post]  [Sign-in]  [Mail]  [Setup]  [Help]