PUBLISHER'S NOTE: Kudo's to The New York Times and its reporter Richard Oppel Jr. for this very important story inspired by the recent flood of exculpatory evidence relating to Rodney Reed - a story which points out that there may well be other Rodney Reed's out there. One of them is Larry Swearingen, who, sadly, was executed on August 21 of this year. This Blog has been following his case for years. Read on to learn about James Dailey and Richard Glossip. Mr. Dailey was set to be executed on Nov. 7 in Florida, but last month a federal district judge granted a stay until Dec. 30, to allow newly appointed federal public defenders to research the case and file petitions. Shortly before Mr. Glossip’s scheduled execution in 2015, an Oklahoma appeals court voted 3 to 2 to deny a hearing to examine new evidence. One of the dissenting judges said that Mr. Glossip’s original trial was “deeply flawed.” Mr.
Glossip was about to be executed days later when Oklahoma’s governor
granted a last-minute stay because the state had the wrong execution
drugs. Oklahoma hasn’t executed anyone since as the state revamps its
procedures.
Harold Levy: Publisher: The Charles Smith Blog:
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PASSAGE OF THE DAY: “This year has had an extraordinarily high percentage of cases in which there is very serious evidence that people who did not commit the killing are being subjected to death warrants,” said Robert Dunham, executive director of the Death Penalty Information Center, a nonprofit group that tracks executions. In at least one case, lawyers and family members have continued to push for new evidence long after an execution took place. On Monday, a Tennessee judge declined to allow DNA testing requested by the daughter of Sedley Alley, who was put to death in 2006 but claimed his confession was coerced. The daughter, April Alley, will continue to appeal and ask the State Supreme Court to grant permission.
STORY: "Not Just Rodney Reed: New Evidence Taints More Death Row Convictions," by national enterprise and investigative correspondent reporter Richard A. Oppel Jr., published by The New York Times on November 19, 2019.PASSAGE OF THE DAY: “This year has had an extraordinarily high percentage of cases in which there is very serious evidence that people who did not commit the killing are being subjected to death warrants,” said Robert Dunham, executive director of the Death Penalty Information Center, a nonprofit group that tracks executions. In at least one case, lawyers and family members have continued to push for new evidence long after an execution took place. On Monday, a Tennessee judge declined to allow DNA testing requested by the daughter of Sedley Alley, who was put to death in 2006 but claimed his confession was coerced. The daughter, April Alley, will continue to appeal and ask the State Supreme Court to grant permission.
Bryce
Benjet, Mr. Reed’s lawyer, said he doubted that there were a higher
proportion of innocent people on death row than in the past. But efforts
to vigorously contest death sentences now reveal dubious convictions
more frequently, he said, bringing to the fore examples of bad forensic
science and other prosecution evidence that wilts under close
examination. “I don’t think the nature
of the cases have changed,” said Mr. Benjet, a senior staff attorney at
the Innocence Project who has represented dozens of death row inmates.
“The nature of representation has changed.” Here
are other current cases in which significant new evidence has surfaced.
In each of them, prosecutors continue to argue that the accused was
rightly convicted.
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SUB-HEADING: "A
Texas court suspended Rodney Reed’s execution. But researchers say
other current cases raise similar doubt about the guilt of the accused."
GIST: "The number of executions in the United States remains close to nearly a three-decade low.
And yet the decline has not prevented what those who closely track the
death penalty see as a disturbing trend: a significant number of cases
in which prisoners are being put to death, or whose execution dates are
near, despite questions about their guilt. Rodney Reed, who came within days of execution in Texas before an appeals court suspended his death sentence
on Friday, has been the most high-profile recent example, receiving
support from Texas lawmakers of both parties and celebrities like
Rihanna and Kim Kardashian West, who urged a new examination of the
evidence. Mr. Reed has long maintained that he did not commit the 1996 murder for which he was convicted. And in recent months, new witnesses came forward
pointing toward another possible suspect: the dead woman’s fiancé, a
former police officer who spent a decade in prison for kidnapping and
sexual assault. (He denies committing the murder.) Since the Supreme Court temporarily halted executions in 1972, at least 166 condemned inmates
have been exonerated before their death sentences could be carried out.
(Executions resumed in 1977 after states began revising their laws to
comply with the high court ruling.) Advocates say that some innocent men
have also been executed since then, including Cameron Todd Willingham, whom Texas put to death in 2004. Lawyers
for death row prisoners frequently argue that their clients did not
receive a fair trial, or file appeals on other procedural grounds. Yet
researchers say there now are a striking number of cases in which
significant doubts have been raised about the condemned man’s guilt. “This
year has had an extraordinarily high percentage of cases in which there
is very serious evidence that people who did not commit the killing are
being subjected to death warrants,” said Robert Dunham, executive
director of the Death Penalty Information Center, a nonprofit group that
tracks executions. In at least one
case, lawyers and family members have continued to push for new evidence
long after an execution took place. On Monday, a Tennessee judge declined to allow DNA testing
requested by the daughter of Sedley Alley, who was put to death in 2006
but claimed his confession was coerced. The daughter, April Alley, will
continue to appeal and ask the State Supreme Court to grant permission.
Bryce
Benjet, Mr. Reed’s lawyer, said he doubted that there were a higher
proportion of innocent people on death row than in the past. But efforts
to vigorously contest death sentences now reveal dubious convictions
more frequently, he said, bringing to the fore examples of bad forensic
science and other prosecution evidence that wilts under close
examination. “I don’t think the nature
of the cases have changed,” said Mr. Benjet, a senior staff attorney at
the Innocence Project who has represented dozens of death row inmates.
“The nature of representation has changed.” Here
are other current cases in which significant new evidence has surfaced.
In each of them, prosecutors continue to argue that the accused was
rightly convicted.
Larry Swearingen
Mr. Swearingen was convicted of the 1998 rape and strangulation of Melissa Trotter, a 19-year-old first-year student at a community college north of Houston.
Evidence at trial
The
authorities immediately suspected Mr. Swearingen, who was seen talking
to Ms. Trotter on Dec. 8, the day she disappeared. He was arrested three days later on unrelated warrants and charged with murder after her body was found on Jan. 2, 1999.
There
were no witnesses to the abduction or killing. But prosecutors amassed
circumstantial evidence that they said pointed to his guilt, including an anonymous letter
he later admitted to have written from jail that contained information
they said only the killer could have known. (Mr. Swearingen later said he had obtained the information from an autopsy report.)
The prosecution’s key evidence was one half of a pair of pantyhose recovered from Mr. Swearingen’s property. The state said it was a perfect match for another portion of hose that was used to strangle Ms. Trotter.
New for the defense
Blood
was found under Ms. Trotter’s fingernails, raising the possibility that
she and the killer had engaged in a violent struggle. DNA tests
determined that the blood was not Mr. Swearingen’s and had come from
another man who could not be identified. But a prosecution witness explained that away during trial testimony, saying contamination had probably muddied the results. This year, though, a state crime lab director questioned that explanation. The
timing of the death established at trial has also been called into
question. The medical examiner testified that Ms. Trotter had been
killed about 25 days
before her body was found, placing the murder date on roughly the same
day she disappeared. Since then, other experts have said the body was
found within two weeks of death. The medical examiner also later said after reviewing additional evidence that she believed Ms. Trotter’s body had been dumped in the woods within two weeks of its discovery. Mr. Swearingen had already been in jail for 22 days when the body was discovered. Doubts emerged, too, about the pantyhose. Other experts determined that the hose recovered from Mr. Swearingen’s property — found only after the police had already searched twice, and after Ms. Trotter’s body was discovered — did not match the hose used to kill her.
Status of the case
Texas executed Mr. Swearingen on Aug. 21. His final statement was: “Lord forgive them. They don’t know what they are doing.”
James Milton Dailey
Mr. Dailey was convicted and sentenced to death
for the killing of Shelly Boggio, 14, whose body was found floating in
the water near St. Petersburg, Fla., in 1985. She had been repeatedly stabbed and choked before drowning.
Evidence at trial
No witnesses or physical evidence tied Mr. Dailey to the killing. His co-defendant, Jack Pearcy, told the police that Mr. Dailey had committed the murder. Mr. Pearcy is serving a life sentence for his role in Shelly’s death. The case against Mr. Dailey, now 73, leaned heavily on the testimony of jailhouse informants who said Mr. Dailey had incriminated himself.
New for the defense
In 2017, Mr. Pearcy stated in an affidavit that he had killed Shelly alone. “James Dailey was not present when Shelly Boggio was killed,” Mr. Pearcy wrote.
At
a later hearing, Mr. Pearcy admitted that he had signed the affidavit,
but said some of it was untrue. He refused to testify about its specific
contents, invoking the Fifth Amendment.
An inmate who was once incarcerated with Mr. Dailey also stated
that he had heard two of the jailhouse informants who had testified
against Mr. Dailey plotting to provide prosecutors with false
information about him so that they would get reduced sentences.
A third jailhouse informant, Paul Skalnik, is a former police officer whose credibility has been called into question. The Tampa Bay Times characterized
him as a “prolific informer” who had been used to help send four men to
death row even though he had racked up more than 20 convictions,
including for grand larceny by fraud.
Status of the case
Mr. Dailey was set to be executed on Nov. 7 in Florida, but last month a federal district judge granted a stay until Dec. 30, to allow newly appointed federal public defenders to research the case and file petitions.
Richard Glossip
Mr.
Glossip was convicted of arranging the 1997 murder of Barry Van Treese,
the owner of a run-down motel in Oklahoma City that Mr. Glossip
managed.
Evidence at trial
Prosecutors said Mr. Glossip had been stealing from the motel till and was afraid that he was about to be fired.
They said he had enlisted Justin Sneed, a 19-year-old drifter doing
maintenance work at the motel, to murder Mr. Van Treese in return for
money.
The state’s case hinged on Mr. Sneed’s testimony
against Mr. Glossip, in return for which Mr. Sneed, who admitted that
he had committed the murder with a baseball bat, received a life
sentence.
Prosecutors also highlighted
Mr. Glossip’s behavior after the murder: In his first interview with
police officers, for example, Mr. Glossip did not mention that Mr. Sneed
had awakened him and told him about the killing. Mr. Glossip later said that he did not believe Mr. Sneed at the time.
New for the defense
No physical evidence tied Mr. Glossip to the murder, and his lawyers noted that Mr. Sneed had repeatedly changed his story before implicating Mr. Glossip. The lawyers later presented evidence that they said demolished Mr. Sneed’s credibility.
For
example, Mr. Sneed’s cellmate before trial said Mr. Sneed talked
extensively about the murder but never mentioned Mr. Glossip. Another
inmate said that he had heard Mr. Sneed say he set Mr. Glossip up, and
that he was “happy and proud of himself” for doing so. Richard
Leo, an expert on false confessions, also reviewed the case and stated
that investigators had fed Mr. Sneed the theory that Mr. Glossip had
masterminded the killing and that Mr. Sneed would be the scapegoat for
the crime if he did not confess.
The state dismissed the statements by inmates who knew Mr. Sneed, saying “no one should believe the sworn word of ‘an admitted liar, drug abuser, and thief.’” Defense lawyers said it was hypocrisy to cite that rationale when so much of Mr. Glossip’s prosecution hinged on an admitted murderer testifying to avoid death row.
Status of the case
Shortly before Mr. Glossip’s scheduled execution in 2015, an Oklahoma appeals court voted 3 to 2 to deny a hearing to examine new evidence. One of the dissenting judges said that Mr. Glossip’s original trial was “deeply flawed.”
Mr.
Glossip was about to be executed days later when Oklahoma’s governor
granted a last-minute stay because the state had the wrong execution
drugs. Oklahoma hasn’t executed anyone since as the state revamps its
procedures."
The entire story can be read at:
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/11/19/us/death-penalty-rodney-reed-crimes.html
PUBLISHER'S NOTE: I am monitoring this case/issue. Keep your eye on the Charles Smith Blog for reports on developments. The Toronto Star, my previous employer for more than twenty incredible years, has put considerable effort into exposing the harm caused by Dr. Charles Smith and his protectors - and into pushing for reform of Ontario's forensic pediatric pathology system. The Star has a "topic" section which focuses on recent stories related to Dr. Charles Smith. It can be found at: http://www.thestar.com/topic/charlessmith. Information on "The Charles Smith Blog Award"- and its nomination process - can be found at: http://smithforensic.blogspot.com/2011/05/charles-smith-blog-award-nominations.html Please send any comments or information on other cases and issues of interest to the readers of this blog to: hlevy15@gmail.com. Harold Levy: Publisher: The Charles Smith Blog;
The entire story can be read at:
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/11/19/us/death-penalty-rodney-reed-crimes.html
PUBLISHER'S NOTE: I am monitoring this case/issue. Keep your eye on the Charles Smith Blog for reports on developments. The Toronto Star, my previous employer for more than twenty incredible years, has put considerable effort into exposing the harm caused by Dr. Charles Smith and his protectors - and into pushing for reform of Ontario's forensic pediatric pathology system. The Star has a "topic" section which focuses on recent stories related to Dr. Charles Smith. It can be found at: http://www.thestar.com/topic/charlessmith. Information on "The Charles Smith Blog Award"- and its nomination process - can be found at: http://smithforensic.blogspot.com/2011/05/charles-smith-blog-award-nominations.html Please send any comments or information on other cases and issues of interest to the readers of this blog to: hlevy15@gmail.com. Harold Levy: Publisher: The Charles Smith Blog;
