STORY: "Hearing scheduled for Carlisle woman convicted of 1973 arson-murder: 'There was no crime here," by reporter Daniel Simmons-Ritchie, published by Pennlive.com, published on March 24, 2015.
GIST: For
42 years, Letitia Smallwood has been locked up for one of the most
notorious murders in Carlisle's history. After
this week, that could change. On
Friday, a pivotal hearing will be held in the Cumberland County Courthouse in
Carlisle in an appeal Smallwood is pressing over her 1973 arson-murder
conviction. Police charged Smallwood, then 20, with deliberately setting an
apartment blaze in downtown Carlisle that killed two people. The
Pennsylvania Innocence Project, a nonprofit based at Temple University that
works to overturn wrongful convictions, contends that the investigation into
Smallwood's case was fundamentally flawed. In
a hearing in October, the first of her appeals, Smallwood's attorneys
argued that police across the nation in the 1970s and 1980s used deeply
unreliable methods to investigate fires. Those methods have recently spurred a
reassessment of dozens of historic arson cases across the country - the
Pennsylvania Innocence Project argues that Smallwood's case deserves similar
scrutiny. Marissa
Bluestine, the organization's director, said while her team's argument in
October focused on how arson science had changed, her team's argument would
focus specifically on the flaws in the investigation in Smallwood's case. It
will take place before Judge Edward Guido.
"There
was no crime here at all," Bluestine said. "She has, for the majority
of her life, been imprisoned for nothing, and that's the point that we hope
Judge Guido will come away from the hearing with." "She has, for the majority of her life, been imprisoned
for nothing." - Marissa Bluestine, Innocence Project......... As
in Smallwood's first hearing, Friday will again see testimony from Jason A.
Sutula, a fire investigation expert. In
addition to Sutula, Bluestine said her team would be presenting testimony from
Joseph Roebuck, a hospital orderly who testified in Smallwood's 1973 trial. At
the time, Roebuck testified that he had overheard Smallwood seemingly confess
to starting the fire to a nurse. Roebuck's testimony was an important piece of
evidence the prosecution used to portray Smallwood as guilty. But
Bluestine said that Roebuck told the Pennsylvania Innocence Project, after the
organization contacted him as part of its research into Smallwood's case, that
he believed he had misunderstood the conversation between the nurse and
Smallwood. After testifying in 1973, Bluestine said Roebuck talked with the
nurse herself, who told him he had taken what he had heard out of context."
http://www.pennlive.com/midstate/index.ssf/2015/03/friday_could_prove_pivotal_in.html
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