"The West Virginia Supreme Court ruled on Tuesday that a man could withdraw a guilty plea after prosecutors withheld DNA testing that would have likely exonerated him. The decision could have major consequences for numerous prisoners currently locked-up. The ruling came in an appeal case filed by Joseph Buffey for the withdrawal of his 2002 guilty plea, which he said he was pressured to make by prosecutors and his lawyer after nine hours of interrogation. Buffey was 19 when he was arrested in 2001, in connection with burglaries that coincided around the same time as a robbery and rape of an 83-year-old woman. Initially, he said he had nothing to do with the crimes against the woman, but was advised that he might otherwise face a longer sentence by not cooperating. He pleaded guilty to the robbery and rape, and the burglary charges were dropped. He is serving a 70-year minimum sentence. Attorney and legal analyst Mychal Wilson told RT that suspects often agree to plea bargains for financial reasons and to increase judicial efficiency.......... The State Supreme Court ruled that as the plea bargain was negotiated, the prosecutors withheld information about an initial DNA test of the rape kit, which found unidentified samples but no DNA from Buffey. The court said that had the prosecutor disclosed the results, Buffey would not have pleaded guilty and probably would not have been convicted. According to the New York Times, the court found “the defendant repeatedly requested the results of the DNA testing, was incorrectly informed that such testing was not yet complete, and was presented with a time-limited plea offer that he accepted on advice of counsel.”
“Thus, Mr
Buffey’s due process rights, as enunciated in Brady, were violated by
the State’s suppression of that exculpatory evidence,” the court ruled."
https://www.rt.com/usa/321652-court-ruling-withdraw-guilty-pleas/
See related New York Times story: "The
State Supreme Court ruled Tuesday that as the plea bargain was
negotiated, the prosecutors withheld information about an initial DNA
test of the rape kit, which found unidentified samples but no DNA from
Mr. Buffey. Had it disclosed the results, the court said, Mr. Buffey
would not have pleaded guilty and probably would not have been convicted
at trial.The
defendant, the court found, “repeatedly requested the results of DNA
testing, was incorrectly informed that such testing was not yet
complete, and was presented with a time-limited plea offer that he
accepted upon advice of counsel.” “Thus,
Mr. Buffey’s due process rights, as enunciated in Brady, were violated
by the State’s suppression of that exculpatory evidence,” the court
ruled.
A
more recent DNA analysis of the evidence and comparison of the results
with a criminal database, requested on Mr. Buffey’s behalf by the
Innocence Project, linked the semen specimen to another man, who was
convicted of the same rape.
Yet
prosecutors have maintained that the DNA evidence did not in itself
prove that Mr. Buffey was innocent and suggested that he may have worn a
condom during the rape, even though the victim said she had been
assaulted by a single man who did not wear a condom.The
West Virginia authorities have 30 days to appeal the decision. If they
do not, they will have to decide whether to retry Mr. Buffey for the
robbery and rape, recharge him for the burglaries to which he admitted
or set him free, said Barry C. Scheck, co-director of the Innocence
Project, which helped argue the current appeal.“I
think this is a very important decision,” Mr. Scheck said. “It
unequivocally applies Brady to plea bargaining and requires the
disclosure of material exculpatory evidence.”“Now this is the leading case in the country for that proposition,” he said."
http://www.nytimes.com/2015/11/11/us/west-virginia-ruling-could-clarify-the-rights-of-criminal-defendants.html?ref=us&_r=0
See Innocence Project commentary: "Today’s
ruling is precedent-setting because it could have a profound impact on how
guilty pleas are obtained and also could prevent innocent people from pleading
guilty to crimes they did not commit due to fear that they might otherwise face
a much more severe sentence. This is significant, the Supreme Court of Appeals
wrote, because the criminal justice system today consists mostly of pleas, not
trials, and because the system as a whole benefits when defendants have access
to exculpatory evidence at all stages of a criminal prosecution. Roughly
10 percent of the nation’s 333 wrongful convictions proven by DNA evidence
involved innocent people who plead guilty, whether due to coercive
plea-bargaining, excessive schemes, ineffective lawyers or false confessions,
or a combination of these factors. Failure to disclose material exculpatory
evidence exacerbates all of these problems."
http://www.innocenceproject.org/news-events-exonerations/in-joseph-buffey-case-wv-supreme-court-of-appeals-issues-precedent-setting-ruling-around-prosecution2019s-obligation-to-disclose-exculpatory-evidence-during-plea-negotiations
