PASSAGE OF THE DAY: "If upholding the rule of law means upholding prosecutorial misconduct, secret payments in return for lies, falsified police reports and perjured testimony, then we need some new rules and new laws. Not to mention some officials who want to find a way to do the right thing instead of a way not to."
EDITORIAL: "Everyone knows Lamar Johnson is innocent. Why won't Missouri give him a new trial?" by The Kansas City Star, published on March 4, 2021.
GIST: Lamar Johnson has been in a Missouri prison for 26 years for a murder that the evidence, the real killers, and the reality that you can’t be in two places at one time all say he did not commit.
Prosecutors in the office that convicted him of shooting Marcus Boyd dead on his porch in St. Louis in 1994 now see it that way, too, and have filed a motion for a new trial. To which our criminal justice system once again this week said: So what?
Johnson has a standing 2 p.m. phone call with one of his lawyers, Kansas City attorney Lindsay Runnels, on every day there’s a court decision in his case. So when he got the news on Tuesday that the Missouri Supreme Court had ruled that St. Louis Circuit Attorney Kim Gardner has no authority to petition a court for a new trial, how did he react?
Johnson has a standing 2 p.m. phone call with one of his lawyers, Kansas City attorney Lindsay Runnels, on every day there’s a court decision in his case. So when he got the news on Tuesday that the Missouri Supreme Court had ruled that St. Louis Circuit Attorney Kim Gardner has no authority to petition a court for a new trial, how did he react?
“This one was tough,” Runnels said. But he’s like, ‘Lindsay, you sound terrible; you OK?’ As with a lot of these guys” who are in prison and should not be, “grace abounds.”
Which is inspiring, of course, though not as uplifting as some actual justice in response to Johnson’s actual innocence would be.
Gardner, as noted in the decision, points to minor matters like ”newly discovered evidence of innocence,” including the confessions of two other men who admitted to murdering the victim and stated Johnson was not involved; newly discovered evidence of perjury by material witnesses, including the sole eyewitness’s recantation of his identification of Johnson as the shooter and false police testimony regarding Johnson’s alibi location” and the state’s failure to disclose that the sole eyewitness was paid to identify Johnson.
OK, but what else you got?
The ruling has nothing to do with any of that. It looked only at “whether there is any authority to appeal the dismissal of a motion for a new trial filed decades after a criminal conviction became final. No such authority exists; therefore, this Court dismisses the appeal.”
The same Supreme Court that says current rules don’t permit such a thing has the authority to change those rules.
If they wanted to, Missouri lawmakers could also clear this obstacle to justice, with a law explicitly granting that authority to the circuit attorney.
And Republican Missouri Attorney General Eric Schmitt could stop standing between Johnson and freedom, though he’s so interested in opposing Gardner that Johnson’s life seems beside the point.
Schmitt’s spokesman said the ruling makes clear “that the law does not allow the Circuit Attorney’s Office to file a motion for new trial almost 25 years too late.”
The AG, his spokesman said, is only involved “to ensure that the rule of law is upheld and the proper procedure is followed, and that’s exactly what we did.”
FALSE POLICE REPORTS, FAKE EVIDENCE, PERJURY:
If upholding the rule of law means upholding prosecutorial misconduct, secret payments in return for lies, falsified police reports and perjured testimony, then we need some new rules and new laws. Not to mention some officials who want to find a way to do the right thing instead of a way not to.
It isn’t as though this is a maneuver never before attempted by a Missouri prosecutor. St. Charles County Prosecutor Tim Lohmar threw out two rape convictions in 2018, after new information cast doubt on the guilt of the two men. “When I as a prosecutor have reason to believe that a conviction lacks integrity,” Lohmar said, “I have a responsibility to make it right.” Which is true, but apparently doesn’t apply to Kim Gardner. And under this ruling, how is any Missouri conviction integrity unit, like the one Gardner started, supposed to work?
The U.S. Supreme Court has never held that the U.S. Constitution allows for “freestanding” claims of innocence. So wrong as it seems — and is — innocence is not the “get out of jail finally” card that not having committed a crime should be.
(Get your governor to grant you clemency if that’s the case, Chief Justice William Rehnquist said in the 1993 majority opinion in Herrera v. Collins, which involved the innocence claims of a man who almost certainly wasn’t innocent.)
Now, Johnson will file a last-ditch petition for habeas corpus relief, which goes all the way back to the Magna Carta’s provision against unlawful imprisonment. Proving that you are being detained in violation of the U.S. Constitution is somewhere between extremely difficult and forget about it.
“If he gets a fair hearing,” Runnels says, “he will be exonerated.”
Our attorney general could make that hearing happen sooner or could delay it and then delay it some more. We wish which he’ll choose were more of a mystery.
The entire editorial can be read at:
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;
