PUBLISHER'S VIEW: Barry Beach's walk to freedom earlier today owes much to the Herculean efforts of The Centurion Ministry, and NBC's Dateline. For a full understanding of this extraordinary parody of justice, I recommend the Wikipedia account of the case - part of which is published below. It is an extraordinary read. Harold Levy. Publisher; The Charles Smith Blog.
GIST: Montana Governor Steve Bullock today signed an executive order, granting Beach's request for clemency. Beach has served more than 32 years in prison for the 1979 murder of Kimberly Nees in Poplar, Montana. Beach has long proclaimed his innocence. He applied for clemency last year, but Montana's Board of Pardons and Paroles turned him down. Soon after, the state legislature passed a law giving the Governor the power to grant clemency even if the Board denies it. That law went into effect October 1st. Dateline has been following Beach's case for nearly a decade. After a 2009 report aired, new witnesses came forward in the case and a district judge granted Beach a new trial. He was released on bond and lived and worked in Billings for 18 months, until Montana's Supreme Court voted 4-3 to overturn the lower court's order and return Beach to the state prison. He served another 2 ½ years behind bars before walking out of prison today. Link provided to most recent Dateline NBC's most recent report.
The entire story can be found at:
http://www.nbcnews.com/dateline/barry-beach-clemency-request-approved-expected-walk-out-jail-free-n467176
WIKIPEDIA ACCOUNT: Barry Allen Beach born February 15, 1962)[1] is an American who was sentenced to life imprisonment without parole for the 1979 murder of Kimberly Nees in Poplar, Montana. During the years following his conviction, his case has drawn national attention.[2] Beach has gained support from influential state and national advocates who say his murder confession, the lynchpin of his conviction, was coerced.[3] In 2015, his sentence was commuted to time served, plus ten years on probation..........Questions regarding trial: Many questioned the evidence and prosecutorial conduct of Marc Racicot during the trial, and rumors persisted that a group of girls were responsible for Nees’ murder after the conviction. Poplar's police chief revealed that the night after the murder, a police officer broke into a sealed room where evidence from the crime scene was stored. The police officer was the father of one of the original suspects that was not charged. Because of his entrance, the evidence stored inside was inadmissible in court. A strand of pubic hair that was recovered from the crime scene was one piece of evidence that was ruled out.[5] Crime lab scientist Arnold Melnikoff had claimed that the hair had "similar characteristics" to Beach’s hair,[8] but an autopsy had revealed that there was no indication of recent sexual activity.[5] At a subsequent job, Melnikoff was subsequently found incompetent and fired by the State of Washington for his inability to analyze hair. Melnikoff had testified against at least two other men in the state of Montana who were wrongly convicted of murders of which they were later exonerated.[8] Although the hair was inadmissible as evidence and was not proven to belong to Beach,[5] Marc Racicot, then a prosecutor for the Attorney General’s Office who would go on to become governor of Montana, told the jury that a pubic hair had been found on Nees’ sweater that was, "in fact, the defendant’s."[8] Racicot reiterated this mistruth during his closing statements.[5] In his closing arguments, Racicot minimized the importance of many pieces of evidence from the crime scene that did not implicate Beach in the murder. Racicot claimed that the footprints found at the scene, which did not match Beach’s, could have been left by police, even though the prints indicated bare feet and sandals. He also said that the bloody palm print found on the truck might have belonged to Kim to explain why the print did not belong to Beach. However, multiple police reports concluded that the print belonged to neither Nees nor Beach.[8] The tape of Beach’s confession had been erased and thus could not be heard during Beach’s trial. A transcript of the confession was read instead.[5] Beach maintains that his confession was coerced.[5][9] The same detectives involved in Beach’s interrogation elicited confessions of murder from at least two other men that were shown to be false. According to Beach, Commander Alfred Calhoun, who was one of the detectives that interrogated Beach, promised him he would personally see him fry in an electric chair. Beach also claims that during the interrogation, he was asked to speculate how the murder might have taken place and was asked to give a hypothetical narrative as if he were the murderer. Beach claimed that he gave the confession because he had been instructed to do so and was told that he could prove his innocence later when he was transported back to Montana.[4] Since Beach’s confession, the lead detective on the case in Louisiana, John "Jay" Via, has been accused of misconduct, and his credibility has been placed into question. According to Via's personnel file, he was suspended without pay on at least four occasions, placed on a one-year probation, twice threatened with the possibility of termination, and ordered to undergo a neurological examination to ascertain whether there was anything "organically or physically wrong with his ability to think and remember". Via was also accused of soliciting a false testimony in another murder case.[7] Beach’s confession, the only piece of evidence tying Beach to the crime, has been questioned for its inaccuracies. Racicot’s argument placed a high level of significance on Beach’s knowledge of what Nees was wearing the night of her murder. Beach said Nees was wearing a brown sports jacket and plaid blouse. In fact, she was wearing a white sweater and blue and red blazer.[8] A transcript of a call that took place before Beach’s confession between Montana’s sheriff and Via cast more doubt on Beach’s confession. The transcript suggested Via believed Nees was wearing a brown plaid shirt, very similar to the inaccuracy that appeared in Beach’s confession. The detective denied any wrongdoing, but some believe that Beach was fed details of the murder to make his confession more convincing.[4] Beach confessed to putting Nees’ body in a garbage bag feet first and then dragging her body to the river by her shoulders. However, evidence showed that Nees’ body had been dragged by her feet. Also, police had found no shred of a garbage bag on the rocky path leading to the river from the truck.[4] Beach's confession also indicated that he threw the murder weapons and keys to the truck into the Poplar River; however, the river was searched by divers on several occasions and none of these items were found in or near the river.[10] Crime scene reports indicated that the truck at the scene of the crime was parked 257 feet (78.3 m) away from the Poplar River, but Beach reported that Kim’s truck was parked right by the river. Beach also said that he wasn’t sure if Kim was bleeding after the attack, but the crime scene indicated considerable bleeding, both inside and out of the truck.[8] In his confession, Beach alleged that he choked Nees, but an autopsy found no indication of strangulation. Beach also claimed that after the murder, he wiped his fingerprints from the truck, but many fingerprints, four palm prints and one bloody palm print were found on the truck, none of which belonged to Nees or Beach.[8] Finally, Beach said that Nees tried to escape from the driver’s side door, but the bloody palm print was on the passenger's side. Centurion Ministries involvement: Beach requested help from Centurion Ministries, who agreed to research his case after their investigators reviewed the facts of the case and noticed an absence of physical evidence that tied Beach to the murder, despite the abundance of evidence collected at the crime scene. Centurion Ministries formally took on the case in 2000.[11][12] In doing so, they conducted an exhaustive reinvestigation of Beach’s conviction.[13. Centurion’s investigators uncovered evidence, including testimonies from people who said that a group of girls confessed to them about killing Nees. One of these girls was Dottie Sue "Sissy" Atkinson. Witnesses, including her own brother, said Atkinson implicated herself in the murder.[4] Atkinson was allegedly jealous because Nees had a romantic relationship with Alex Trottier, the father of Atkinson's daughter.[5][14] However, none of the fingerprints or the palm print belonged to Atkinson.[4] Centurion Ministries also brought a motion to conduct DNA testing on the evidence, which a judge granted in 2005. However, the state said it could not locate the evidence collected from the crime scene, including the pubic hair, a bloody towel, hairs contained in more than 100 slides, cigarette butts, or Nees’ jacket. Therefore, DNA testing could not be conducted.[8] In August 2006, Centurion Ministries submitted an application for clemency on Beach’s behalf to the office of then governor Brian Schweitzer.[15] Centurion Ministries used the analysis of Professor Richard Leo, an expert in false confessions, to support Beach. Leo stated, "[false confessions are] one of the leading causes of wrongful conviction" and concluded that Beach’s confession lacked specifics that, as police claimed, "only the killer could have known".[5] The Montana Board of Pardons and Parole on August 23, 2007, rejected the application, stating that "no proof of innocence, or newly discovered evidence of nonguilt" was presented. "It is apparent to us that it would have been impossible to create so detailed and so correct a false confession in any event: but the validity of that observation is underscored brightly by the facts that Mr. Beach knew and explained much which the officers had not been able to piece together," the board said. 2011 trial and release: A Dateline special on the case aired April 4, 2008, and prompted more support for Beach.[4] On November 24, 2009, the Montana Supreme Court ordered an evidentiary hearing for the case,[17] to determine "whether a jury, acting reasonably, would have voted to find Beach guilty beyond a reasonable doubt".[4] Centurion Ministries made a motion asking for a new judge to hear a new appeal of Beach’s conviction, which the Supreme Court of Montana approved, appointing Fergus County District Judge E. Wayne Phillips to the case. In August 2011, Beach appeared before court for the retrial. During his first appearance in court, he was met with applause.[4] Beach’s lawyers called new witnesses that had come forward after the airing of Dateline’s special. Steffie Eagleboy,[5] then 10 years old, testified before court that she witnessed the murder. She said she then saw a patrol car pull up to the scene of the crime after the murder. According to Eagleboy, a police officer exited the vehicle to assess the scene before leaving. Because she had seen a cop at the scene already, she said she saw no point in going to the police about what she had witnessed.[4]Other witnesses alleged that Atkinson and Joann Jackson, another former suspect of the crime, had told them about how they committed the crime.[4] The State of Montana contended that the new witnesses were not credible. Montana Attorney General also claimed that none of the evidence exonerated Beach or suggested multiple attackers were involved.[4] In November 2011, Judge Phillips issued a ruling that there was clear and convincing evidence that a jury could find Beach innocent in the case and granted Beach a new trial. Beach was released from prison to the custody of Billings businessman James "Ziggy" Ziegler, who had met Beach through prison prayer service. Hours after the ruling, after nearly three decades behind bars, Beach was free on his own recognizance, pending a new trial.[4] In Billings, Beach started his own maintenance company and then became the head of maintenance at a hotel. Beach also traveled throughout Montana giving speeches on hope.
PUBLISHER'S NOTE:
