STORY: "Witness implicates alternative suspect in Texas death penalty case, by Chicago Innocence Project President David Protess, published in the Huffington Post on July 9, 2012.
GIST: "Camera rolling, a student-journalist hands the witness a photo taken by police at a gruesome crime scene. The witness studies the photo and turns away, seemingly repulsed. Then she tears up. It isn't a photo of the female murder victim, Twila Busby, or her two adult sons, butchered in their Pampa, Texas home on New Year's Eve in 1993. Rather, it's a color photo of a tan jacket, stained with blood and sweat -- and found next to Twila's lifeless body. Based on the stain patterns, the jacket was likely worn by the killer, an expert
concluded. But the jacket didn't belong to Hank Skinner, who was convicted of the slayings and sentenced to death in 1995. So whose was it, the young reporter wanted to know? "I am 100 percent sure this was Robert Donnell's jacket," the witness declares. "He wore it all the time." The witness, Deborah Ellis, knew Donnell well. Her parents lived next door to him in Pampa at the time of the murders and Donnell's wife, Willie Mae, was "like a grandmother to me," Ellis says. Ellis also knew that Donnell was Twila's alcoholic uncle who'd harassed her at a New Year's Eve party the night of the murders, and that he'd left the party after Twila and hadn't returned home for hours. Soon afterward, Ellis saw him suspiciously scrubbing the interior of his pick-up truck and replacing its rubber floorboards. But police arrested Hank Skinner instead because he was in the home at the time of the crime, disbelieving his claim that he'd passed out on the couch from drinking vodka laced with prescription meds. And, despite a witness and two toxicologists who corroborated Skinner's story, he was convicted and dispatched to Texas' death row -- coming within 47 minutes of execution before the Supreme Court issued a stay.........For more than a decade, Texas lawmen
fought the testing. They lost before the U.S. Supreme Court, they lost before the Texas legislature and they were about to lose earlier this year before the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals when they finally relented. On June 1, they
agreed to test the unexamined evidence. Two weeks later, they made a stunning admission:
The jacket had vanished. "No one's ever been able to find that thing," shrugged Gary Noblett, who manages the Pampa police department's evidence room. Skinner's lawyers were outraged. "Mr. Skinner has insisted that this jacket should be tested because it may have been worn by the assailant," said attorney Rob Owen. "It is difficult to understand how the State has managed to maintain custody of items as small as fingernail clippings, while apparently losing something as large as a man's windbreaker jacket."
The entire story can be found at:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/david-protess/witness-implicates-altern_b_1656016.htmlPUBLISHER'S NOTE:
I am monitoring this case. Keep your eye on the Charles Smith Blog for reports on developments.
The Toronto Star, my previous employer for more than twenty incredible years, has put considerable effort into exposing the harm caused by Dr. Charles Smith and his protectors - and into pushing for reform of Ontario's forensic pediatric pathology system. The Star has a "topic" section which focuses on recent stories related to Dr. Charles Smith. It can be found at:
http://www.thestar.com/topic/charlessmith
Information on "The Charles Smith Blog Award"- and its nomination process - can be found at:
http://smithforensic.blogspot.com/2011/05/charles-smith-blog-award-nominations.html
Please send any comments or information on other cases and issues of interest to the readers of this blog to: hlevy15@gmail.com
Harold Levy: Publisher; The Charles Smith Blog.
