REMINDER:
"Rodricus
Crawford: Louisiana; Bulletin: Domonique Benn's exclusive News 12
investigation 'Fighting for a Father's Freedom' will be streamed live
on Monday evening (November 21) - at 10.00 pm on ksla.com;
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"An important hearing is scheduled Tuesday in one of Chris Tapp’s two active petitions for post-conviction relief. It could end with Tapp’s petition moving forward toward an evidentiary hearing, or with it being thrown out of court. Tapp is serving 30 years to life for the 1996 murder of Angie Dodge,
though many top experts have submitted reports finding that he was
wrongfully convicted. Tuesday’s hearing, scheduled for 10:30 a.m., concerns Tapp’s
allegation that Bonneville County prosecutors didn’t turn over tapes of
some interrogation and polygraph sessions Tapp underwent ahead of his
confession. Such evidence is called “Brady evidence” after the Supreme Court case
Brady v. Maryland, in which the court ruled that prosecutors must turn
over all evidence which tends to show a defendant isn’t guilty. At a September hearing, Judge Alan Stephens ruled that it was most
likely those tapes hadn’t been turned over since they weren’t noted in
court discovery records. But some of the tapes were subsequently found
in the files of one of Tapp’s prior appellate attorneys.........In the arguments Public Defender John Thomas has filed subsequently,
he has sought to turn Stephens’ attention to the evidence against Tapp
and whether he is, in fact, guilty of the crime for which he has been
imprisoned. “No objective trier of fact, after seeing the polygraph
videos and hearing expert testimony, could come to any conclusion other
than that Tapp should be acquitted,” he wrote. “He is an innocent man
who falsely confessed due to police coercion.” Thomas also argued that since the tapes were mislabeled, their
content was effectively “hidden” from Tapp’s defense attorneys. And
there’s still another polygraph video which has never been found. Thomas also emphasized a second basis for the petition — that the
information on those tapes is new evidence which is likely to produce an
acquittal. John Thomas asked Stephens to allow Judges for Justice co-founder Mike
Heavey, Boise State University polygraph expert Charles Honts and either
retired FBI Supervisory Special Agent Gregg McCrary or professor Steve
Drizin, legal director of Northwestern University’s Center on Wrongful
Convictions, to testify at an evidentiary hearing. All have authored reports concluding that Tapp falsely confessed under police coercion."
http://www.postregister.com/articles/news-daily-email-todays-headlines/2016/11/19/tapp-hearing-tuesday#