"A
now-retired Texas prosecutor struck secret deals to secure key
testimony in more than one death penalty case, according to a new
report. After uncovering evidence last summer that Navarro County
prosecutor John Jackson arranged such a deal in one death penalty case,
The Marshall Project, a news nonprofit focused on criminal justice
issues, reported Tuesday that Jackson did the same in another, earlier
case. In both instances, the report says, defense attorneys were not
told about the deals and those testifying reported feeling pressured
into doing so and guided in what to share. The new story alleges
that Jackson bolstered a 1986 case against Ernest Baldree—who
was charged with murdering a husband and wife during a robbery—with
testimony from Kyle Barnett, who was an inmate with Baldree. But
Barnett says he never wanted to testify against Baldree: “The
prosecutors there had me in a position where it would be real hard on me
if I refused,” he said, according to the report. Barnett said Baldree
admitted to the murders, but was also remorseful, saying he was high on
speed and didn’t know what he was doing—a fact, he says, prosecutors
were uninterested in hearing. “The scenario that Barnett
described strongly echoes allegations later made in the far more famous
case of Cameron Todd Willingham, who was executed in 2004 for the arson
murder of his three young daughters,” Maurice Possley and Maurice
Chammah write. Jackson had, for more than 20 years, denied making
a deal in that case, too, but a story by Possley republished by The
Washington Post last summer cast doubt on his denial."
A second jailhouse snitch claims a secret deal with Texas prosecutor http://www.washingtonpost.com/news/post-nation/wp/2015/08/18/texas-prosecutor-made-secret-deals-in-more-than-one-death-penalty-case-report-says/