QUOTE OF THE DAY: "Francke’s brother Patrick Francke, who has been a staunch defender of Gable and believes that he was wrongly convicted, said in an email that he was “ecstatic!” by the Supreme Court ruling. He praised the advocacy of Nell Brown, Gable’s assistant federal public defender. “Big day, red letter day,” Francke said.
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PASSAGE OF THE DAY: "Seven of the state’s eight material witnesses who implicated Gable in the high-profile murder had since recanted, and the record showed police had “pressured and incentivized them to testify against him,” at the time of Gable’s trial, (Defence Attorney) Brown wrote. “The Ninth Circuit affirmed the district court’s holdings, after a detailed presentation of new evidence, that the state court violated Gable’s right to present his defense by excluding Crouse’s confession, and that a reasonable jury, more likely than not, would have acquitted Gable had it heard all the evidence,” Brown wrote in her response to the state’s petition. Brown argued that Gable’s defense at trial “was violated by the exclusion of trustworthy evidence of another man’s guilt.” “Having no physical evidence against Gable, the State built its case exclusively on the testimony of incentivized witnesses — jailhouse snitches and criminals,” Brown wrote."
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STORY: "US Supreme Court denies Oregon petition to reinstate Frank Gable’s conviction in killing of state prisons chief," by Staff Writer Maxine Bernstein, published by The Oregonian, on April 24, 2023.
GIST: "The U.S. Supreme Court Monday declined Oregon’s petition to hear arguments or reverse an appellate court’s ruling that vacated Frank Gable’s conviction in the 1989 murder of state Corrections Director Michael Francke.
Justice Brett M. Kavanaugh would have granted the petition after the nation’s high court held two conferences on the state’s petition April 14 and April 21, according to the court’s order.
A three-judge panel of the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in September had affirmed Oregon
U.S. Magistrate Judge John V. Acosta’s decision in April 2019 to release Gable in one of the most publicized and debated murder cases in Oregon’s modern history.
The panel found that no reasonable juror would have convicted Gable in light of another man’s multiple confessions to the killing, which had been excluded from Gable’s trial, and because nearly all the witnesses in the case had recanted since the trial.
Gable, 63, has been on federal supervision, living with his wife in Kansas, as the court challenges wound their way to the Supreme Court.
The U.S. Supreme Court’s denial of the state’s petition was issued as part of its Monday court orders, without oral argument or explanation.
The ruling means that Oregon must either grant Gable a new trial, which is unlikely, or allow his release to stand.
Roy Kaufmann, a spokesperson for the Oregon Department of Justice, said it will be up to the Marion County district attorney to decide whether to retry Gable or drop the charges.
“This represents the end of the appeals that DOJ has been handling,” he said by email.
Francke’s brother Patrick Francke, who has been a staunch defender of Gable and believes that he was wrongly convicted, said in an email that he was “ecstatic!” by the Supreme Court ruling. He praised the advocacy of Nell Brown, Gable’s assistant federal public defender.
“Big day, red letter day,” Francke said.
Later Monday morning, Acosta, noting the U.S. Supreme Court order, scheduled a status conference in the Gable case for May 1.
Gable, a local methamphetamine dealer at the time, was arrested 15 months after Francke’s death when another man said he saw Gable stab Francke.
The state argued at trial that Francke interrupted Gable as Gable broke into Francke’s car to get “snitch papers,” drawing from the grand-jury statement of one witness.
The trial jury found Gable guilty of aggravated murder, and he was sentenced in 1991.
John Crouse, a Salem man who was on parole for a robbery at the time, repeatedly said he killed Francke, telling numerous law-enforcement officers, as well as his mother, brother and girlfriend, that he stabbed Francke when Francke caught Crouse burglarizing his car.
The 9th Circuit found that the exclusion of the confessions at Gable’s trial was wrong and violated Gable’s due-process rights.
The state Department of Justice had argued in a 35-page petition that the 9th Circuit wrongly second-guessed the state trial court judge who barred Crouse’s confession.
The state has contended that Crouse’s claims were untrustworthy, that he didn’t make them under oath and no one else corroborated his account.
“To the contrary, he denied committing the crime in his only sworn testimony on this subject,” Deputy Attorney General Lisa M. Udland and Solicitor General Benjamin Gutman wrote.
“Over the course of nine months, Crouse offered multiple, inconsistent, different stories about the murder, including stories in which he was a paid hitman and part of a government conspiracy.
Police could not corroborate any of those stories, and Crouse ultimately recanted all of them,” they wrote.
Further, the state argued that the trial judge didn’t violate Gable’s due process because Crouse, out of earshot of the jury, had waived any right against self-incrimination and was available to testify. When called to the stand outside of the jury’s presence, Crouse denied killing Francke but refused to answer other questions, according to the state.
Assistant Federal Public Defender Nell Brown challenged the petition, defending Gable’s release.
Seven of the state’s eight material witnesses who implicated Gable in the high-profile murder had since recanted, and the record showed police had “pressured and incentivized them to testify against him,” at the time of Gable’s trial, Brown wrote.
“The Ninth Circuit affirmed the district court’s holdings, after a detailed presentation of new evidence, that the state court violated Gable’s right to present his defense by excluding Crouse’s confession, and that a reasonable jury, more likely than not, would have acquitted Gable had it heard all the evidence,” Brown wrote in her response to the state’s petition.
Brown argued that Gable’s defense at trial “was violated by the exclusion of trustworthy evidence of another man’s guilt.”
“Having no physical evidence against Gable, the State built its case exclusively on the testimony of incentivized witnesses — jailhouse snitches and criminals,” Brown wrote.
Brown on Monday declined comment on the U.S. Supreme Court ruling, and said Gable would have no comment.
The 9th Circuit had called the facts on appeal “extraordinary.”
“In the 30 years since trial, nearly all the witnesses who incriminated Gable have recanted. In short, no reasonable juror could ignore the heavy blow to the State’s evidence given the significance of the recantations.
The affidavits show how undisputed investigative misconduct paved the way for a string of criminal associates to turn on Gable to help themselves,” the 9th Circuit ruling said.
The state Justice Department countered in its legal filing that “not all reasonable jurors would find the recantations” by other witnesses credible. Those recantations “may undermine the credibility of the evidence of guilt but generally do not affirmatively establish innocence; and second, recantations—especially by witnesses who have little to lose by recanting—are inherently untrustworthy,” Utland and Gutman wrote."
The entire story can be read at:
PUBLISHER'S NOTE: I am monitoring this case/issue/resource. 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;
SEE BREAKDOWN OF SOME OF THE ON-GOING INTERNATIONAL CASES (OUTSIDE OF THE CONTINENTAL USA) THAT I AM FOLLOWING ON THIS BLOG, AT THE LINK BELOW: HL:
https://www.blogger.com/blog/post/edit/120008354894645705/4704913685758792985
FINAL WORD: (Applicable to all of our wrongful conviction cases): "Whenever there is a wrongful conviction, it exposes errors in our criminal legal system, and we hope that this case — and lessons from it — can prevent future injustices."
Lawyer Radha Natarajan:
Executive Director: New England Innocence Project;
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FINAL, FINAL WORD: "Since its inception, the Innocence Project has pushed the criminal legal system to confront and correct the laws and policies that cause and contribute to wrongful convictions. They never shied away from the hard cases — the ones involving eyewitness identifications, confessions, and bite marks. Instead, in the course of presenting scientific evidence of innocence, they've exposed the unreliability of evidence that was, for centuries, deemed untouchable." So true!
Christina Swarns: Executive Director: The Innocence Project;
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YET ANOTHER FINAL WORD:
David Hammond, one of Broadwater’s attorneys who sought his exoneration, told the Syracuse Post-Standard, “Sprinkle some junk science onto a faulty identification, and it’s the perfect recipe for a wrongful conviction.”
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