"The
state Supreme Court already had agreed to postpone by 30 days making
final its decision allowing a state prison inmate from Clarksburg to
withdraw his guilty pleas in a 2001 rape/robbery.
Will the justices
give the office of West Virginia Attorney General Patrick Morrisey 14
more days? That’s what Solicitor General Elbert Lin and assistant
attorney generals Gilbert Dickey and Katlyn Miller requested in a filing
with the state’s highest court late Tuesday. Miller, Dickey and Lin want more time to review the voluminous
file in the case of Joseph A. Buffey, 33, of Clarksburg. They’re trying
to decide whether to appeal the West Virginia Supreme Court’s decision
to the U.S. Supreme Court. The justices previously granted the 30-day stay that expires on Friday. The 14-day extension sought in Tuesday’s motion has been agreed upon by Buffey’s lawyers, according to the motion.........If an appeal is filed with the
U.S. Supreme Court, Lin, Dickey and Miller will have to persuade the
nation’s highest court that there’s a constitutional issue that needs to
be resolved nationally. In Buffey’s case, that might be
the issue of whether potentially exculpatory evidence must be shared
with defendants at the plea-bargaining stage of prosecutions. Buffey’s November victory at the
state Supreme Court turned on that issue, as the justices decided the
state had DNA results that would have been favorable to Buffey’s defense
prior to the acceptance of his guilty pleas, yet that information
wasn’t shared with the defendant or his lawyer at that time. The lawyers for Buffey previously
acknowledged the issue might have enough merit for the case to be
accepted to the U.S. Supreme Court’s docket, although that’s no sure
thing. But Buffey’s attorneys are
confident that if that happens, the justices in Washington will uphold
the unanimous ruling by West Virginia’s Supreme Court. Buffey is serving a 70-year term
for two counts of first-degree sexual assault and one count of
first-degree robbery of an 83-year-old woman. As it stands, his first chance to see the parole board would be Dec. 8, 2041. Buffey went to prison after pleading guilty in 2002 to the crimes that occurred Nov. 30, 2001. Allan Karlin of Morgantown and
Barry Scheck and Nina Morrison of the Innocence Project, as well as
Sarah Montoro, formerly with Karlin’s Morgantown law firm, have been the
main lawyers seeking to overturn Buffey’s convictions. Additional DNA work by those lawyers eventually pointed the finger at Adam Derek Bowers, 30, of Clarksburg, as the assailant. Bowers was convicted at trial
this year and has been sentenced to 70 years in prison, the same term
that Buffey received from Harrison County Chief Circuit Judge Thomas A.
Bedell back in May 2002."
http://www.theet.com/news/local/state-ag-s-office-seeks-another-stay-from-w-va/article_29cbb5a7-542d-5284-a219-8ee653a554fb.html
http://www.theet.com/news/local/state-ag-s-office-seeks-another-stay-from-w-va/article_29cbb5a7-542d-5284-a219-8ee653a554fb.html
