Bulletin: David Faulkner; Jonathan Smith; Maryland; Washington Post reports that two of three men convicted in a grisly 1987 murder on Maryland’s Eastern Shore have asked a judge to appoint Attorney General Brian E. Frosh to take over the case after state prosecutors disclosed that new handprint evidence points to a different suspect in the case. Reporter Spencer S. Hsu. " “No reasonable juror who saw the palm print — knowing where it was left and by whom it was left — would have convicted Jonathan Smith or David Faulkner,” Benjet said." (Bryce Benjet: A staff attorney for the Innocence Project);

"Two of three men convicted in a grisly 1987 murder on Maryland’s Eastern Shore have asked a judge to appoint Attorney General Brian E. Frosh to take over the case after state prosecutors disclosed that new handprint evidence points to a different suspect in the case. David Ronald Faulkner and Jonathan David Smith Sr. were sentenced to life and Ray Earl Andrews Sr. to 10 years in prison in the Jan. 5, 1987, house burglary and stabbing death of Easton resident Adeline Wilford, 64. In February, after the Maryland Court of Appeals unsealed the case, prosecutors disclosed that palm prints — recovered from the sill of an open window and inside the utility room of Wilford’s home — had been found a year earlier to match those of a Maryland inmate, Ty Anthony Brooks. Brooks, 47, was convicted in a similar break-in and assault of an elderly woman that occurred in Easton three months before Wilford’s killing and was accused of other burglaries, according to police records and attorneys. “That window is no different than the knife that was used to murder this woman,” Bryce Benjet, a staff attorney for the Innocence Project, argued in a hearing this month before Talbot County Circuit Court Judge Stephen H. Kehoe, whom the men are asking to reopen their case and declare them not guilty. “No reasonable juror who saw the palm print — knowing where it was left and by whom it was left — would have convicted Jonathan Smith or David Faulkner,” Benjet said. Although Brooks was an early suspect, his prints were not added to a state database until 2012, and they weren’t tested or matched in the Wilford case until February 2014. Prosecutors then opposed releasing Brooks’s name, later explaining that they overlooked files identifying him as a suspect. The fact was pointed out by the defense after it successfully asked Maryland’s high court to open the record. In a recent interview with Maryland State Police, Brooks, who was sent back to prison in 2013 for theft, denied ever seeing Wilford, being in her house or knowing or participating in a break-in with the defendants, according to a transcript filed June 11 by Smith in a bid for exoneration. “Never seen this house or that lady. In my life,” Brooks said in the transcript. Jane Tolar, an Easton lawyer who Brooks told police represented his family, said she was unable to comment. His family members also declined to comment. Prosecutor Joseph S. Michael said he believed that even if information about Brooks is admissable as evidence, it would make him a potential co-defendant at most and not exonerate the others. “There is no way to tell when those palm prints were left at that location,” Michael said. The match of the palm print is the latest twist in a difficult investigation. No physical evidence linked the defendants to the crime, which went uncharged for 13 years as investigators sifted through leads and tested more than 300 sets of fingerprints."
http://www.washingtonpost.com/local/crime/two-men-serving-life-in-prison-for-1987-murder-ask-md-judge-to-reopen-case/2015/06/24/4fa7e24e-0ed3-11e5-a0dc-2b6f404ff5cf_story.html