"THE SWEEPING REVIEW, WHICH CHISHOLM HOPES TO COMPLETE WITHIN THREE TO FOUR MONTHS, IS IN RESPONSE TO AT LEAST THREE CASES IN WHICH MEN WHO WERE CONVICTED OF HOMICIDE WERE RELEASED RECENTLY BASED UPON NEW DNA TESTS THAT IDENTIFIED A DIFFERENT SUSPECT IN THE KILLINGS. THE LATEST SUCH DEVELOPMENT OCCURRED MONDAY, WHEN A JUDGE ORDERED THAT WILLIAM D. AVERY, WHO WAS CONVICTED IN THE 1998 STRANGULATION OF A MILWAUKEE PROSTITUTE, BE RELEASED FROM PRISON BASED UPON A NEW DNA TEST THAT LINKS THE MURDER TO A SUSPECTED SERIAL KILLER."
REPORTER RYAN HAGGERTY; THE JOURNAL SENTINEL; Wikipedia informs us that: "The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel is a daily morning broadsheet printed in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, USA. It is the primary newspaper in Milwaukee, the largest newspaper in Wisconsin and is distributed widely throughout the state."
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"Milwaukee County prosecutors and national experts will review the roughly 2,100 homicide prosecutions filed in the county since 1992 in an effort to identity cases in which further DNA testing could either confirm or cast doubt upon the defendant's guilt, District Attorney John Chisholm said Monday," the Journal Sentinel story by reporter Ryan Haggerty published 24 May, 2010, begins, under the heading, "Milwaukee to review 2100 homicide cases," and the sub-heading, "Prosecutors seek cases where further DNA testing could confirm or cast doubt on defendants' guilt.
"The sweeping review, which Chisholm hopes to complete within three to four months, is in response to at least three cases in which men who were convicted of homicide were released recently based upon new DNA tests that identified a different suspect in the killings," the story continues.
"The latest such development occurred Monday, when a judge ordered that William D. Avery, who was convicted in the 1998 strangulation of a Milwaukee prostitute, be released from prison based upon a new DNA test that links the murder to a suspected serial killer.
Avery, 38, was convicted in 2005 of first-degree reckless homicide in the killing of Maryetta Griffin, 39, and sentenced to 40 years' imprisonment.
In April, however, Avery wrote a letter to Chisholm asking that a DNA sample taken from Griffin's body be sent to the State Crime Laboratory for testing.
The analysis excluded Avery and revealed that the DNA sample matched the profile of accused serial killer Walter E. Ellis.
Ellis was charged in September with killing seven prostitutes in Milwaukee over a 21-year period after investigators matched DNA found at all seven murder scenes to him. His trial is scheduled to begin in October.
Authorities have said Ellis' DNA also was found on an eighth murdered prostitute, Carron D. Kilpatrick, and a teenage runaway, Jessica Payne, but Ellis has not been charged with those killings.
As in Griffin's homicide, men other than Ellis were charged in the killings of both Kilpatrick and Payne before DNA linked Ellis to the crimes.
In the Kilpatrick homicide, Curtis McCoy was acquitted. In the Payne case, Chaunte Ott was convicted but was freed last year after Ellis' DNA was found on Payne.
In an unrelated homicide case, Robert Lee Stinson spent 23 years in prison before he was freed in 2009, after the Wisconsin Innocence Project produced evidence showing that DNA and bite marks found on the victim could not have come from Stinson.
Missing profiles
The decision to review all homicide cases filed in Milwaukee County since 1992 stems largely from the discovery last year that 17,698 DNA profiles were missing from Wisconsin's databank of felons' DNA.
As of May 20, the state Department of Corrections said it had collected 7,130 of the missing profiles.
The gap in the databank was discovered during the investigation that led to Ellis being charged in the seven homicides.
Ellis' DNA should have been in the databank, but authorities have said that in 2001 Ellis got a fellow inmate who already was convicted of a sex crime to submit a DNA sample in Ellis' name. State officials caught the disparity but never fixed the problem.
Because samples from Ellis and other inmates were missing from the databank, some DNA samples found at crime scenes could not be matched to suspects.
Such was the case in Griffin's killing.
DNA found on her body was tested after the murder, but no match was found at the time for the sample that was recently linked to Ellis.
If Ellis' DNA profile had been in the state databank at the time of Griffin's killing, "that would have changed everything," Chisholm said. "(Prosecutors) would have reviewed it in a totally different way. If that profile had shown up in any of these cases earlier on, we would have proceeded in a different manner, there's no question about that."
Without DNA evidence identifying other suspects, authorities investigating Griffin's killing focused their inquiry on Avery from the start.
But prosecutors initially didn't have enough evidence to charge Avery with killing Griffin. Instead, Avery was convicted of drug-dealing charges in 1998 and sentenced to 10 years' imprisonment.
Six years later, Avery was charged with first-degree reckless homicide in Griffin's killing after inmates with whom Avery was serving time told authorities he had confessed to the murder while in prison. Avery was convicted and sentenced to 40 years in prison.
Avery denies confessing to fellow inmates and believes the inmates lied in an attempt to reduce their own sentences, said Avery's lawyer, James Rebholz.
Avery was ordered released on a $50,000 signature bond Monday and is due back in court in September. Despite the order that Avery be released, he remained in custody Monday evening while his lawyers prepared to dispute the state's contention that Avery is still on parole from his 1998 drug conviction, Rebholz said.
Rebholz also said he is prepared to defend Avery if the state decides to seek a new trial in Griffin's homicide, but Chisholm said he expects Avery will be exonerated after investigators re-examine the case.
Rebholz, like Chisholm, said the gap in the state's DNA databank is largely responsible for Avery's homicide conviction.
"If the DNA situation had been settled years ago, if all the DNA that needed to be in the database were in the database, the oral swab that was not linked to anyone at the time of the crime would have established that it was not Mr. Avery, and in fact a specific person, that was probably responsible for this crime," Rebholz said."
The story can be found at:
http://www.jsonline.com/news/milwaukee/94736259.html
Harold Levy...hlevy15@gmail.com;
