SUB-HEADING: "Lawyers for Donnis George Musgrove say 1986 conviction was based on unconstitutional errors, prosecutorial misconduct and outright lies."
SUB-HEADING: "Alabama man off death row after 28 years to jailers: You will answer to God."
PHOTO CATION: "We believe there were constitutional errors in his trial and they were so great he deserves a new trial,’ said Cissy Jackson, an attorney for Musgrove. ‘He was wrongly convicted."
GIST: "Anthony Ray Hinton, who spent 28 years on Alabama’s death row for two murders despite his claims of innocence, walked free earlier this month after prosecutors admitted they couldn’t prove his guilt. Now another inmate who maintains he was wrongly convicted in a separate killing is challenging his death sentence in a case with eerie similarities to Hinton’s, down to allegations of botched ballistics evidence, a questionable eyewitness identification and the judge and prosecutor who handled both trials. Donnis George Musgrove, who has been on death row for 27 years but says he is innocent, is asking a federal judge to overturn his case – the first step toward what his lawyers hope will be freedom for a man they contend was wrongly convicted during a trial fraught with unconstitutional errors, cooked-up evidence, prosecutorial misconduct, inept defense work and outright lies. Experts have proven that a shell casing used during the trial to link Musgrove to the 27 September 1986 killing of Coy Eugene Barron had nothing to do with the crime, the defense claims, and police pressured Barron’s wife to identify Musgrove as the gunman even though she first told police she saw nothing. The Jefferson County prosecutor at Musgrove’s trial used bogus evidence to win the conviction against an overmatched defense lawyer, just as he did to Hinton a few years earlier, the defense contends. “We believe there were constitutional errors in his trial and they were so great he deserves a new trial,” said Cissy Jackson, an attorney for Musgrove. “He was wrongly convicted.” While the state attorney general’s office hasn’t yet responded to Musgrove’s arguments in court and declined comment this week, it has defended the conviction for nearly 30 years and once got the Alabama supreme court to reverse a lower state appellate court that overturned the case. Musgrove’s claims come at a time when capital punishment is under scrutiny in Alabama. Just in the weeks since Hinton was freed, another man who spent years on Alabama’s death row also was released.........While assistant district attorney Bob McGregor also is dead, he self-published a book in 2009 depicting both Hinton and Musgrove as cold-blooded killers. The book, titled “Whiskey Bent and Hell Bound,” has a gun and a bottle of whiskey on the cover. The book depicts prosecutors as “white hats” and defense lawyers as “black hats” taking up for “bad men and blood spillers.” McGregor, whose zealous tactics were attacked by lawyers for Hinton and Musgrove, described Hinton’s case as a favorite cause of “anti-death-penalty gangsters.” Hinton, he wrote, “just radiated guilt and pure evil” — words that seem ironic now that Hinton is free based on a claim of innocence. In the book, the prosecutor described Musgrove and Rogers as being “thugs” employed by a drug dealer who wanted Barron killed over suspicions he stole 40 pounds of marijuana. “This act of ultimate violence was somewhat out of character since both were professional car thieves by trade,” McGregor wrote. “But no one doubted that they were capable of murder if the price was right.” The man mentioned by McGregor as the alleged drug didn’t testify against Musgrove and Rogers and was never prosecuted in the slaying. “They had two guys on death row. That was all they needed,” said Jackson, Musgrove’s lawyer."
The entire story can be found at:
http://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2015/apr/25/another-alabama-man-death-row-claims-innocence
PUBLISHER'S NOTE:
Dear Reader. Keep your eye on the Charles Smith Blog. We are following this case.
I have added a search box for content in this blog which now encompasses several thousand posts. The search box is located near the bottom of the screen just above the list of links. I am confident that this powerful search tool provided by "Blogger" will help our readers and myself get more out of the site.
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/
Information on "The Charles Smith Blog Award"- and its nomination process - can be found at:
http://smithforensic.blogspot.ca/2013/12/the-charles-smith-award-presented-to_28.html
I look forward to hearing from readers at:
hlevy15@gmail.com.
Harold Levy; Publisher; The Charles Smith Blog;
