PUBLISHER'S NOTE: What do police, often jailhouse, informants have to do with forensic science? (I'm glad you asked). Investigative Reporter Pamela Colloff give us a clue when she writes - at the link below - "I’ve wanted to write about jailhouse informants for a long time because they often appear in troubled cases in which the other evidence is weak." That's my experience as will as a criminal lawyer and an observer of criminal justice. Given the reality that jurors - thanks to the CSI effect - are becoming more and more insistent on the need for there to be forensic evidence, it is becoming more and more common for police to rely on shady tactics such as use of police snitches, staging lineups, coercing, inducing, or creating false confessions out of thin air, procuring false eyewitness testimony or concealing exculpatory evidence. "
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QUOTE OF THE DAY: "David Oscar Markus, a Miami defense attorney who has successfully litigated misconduct allegations against federal prosecutors, said the admonishment of the prosecutors is as brave as it is rare. “Sadly this is not some isolated incident,” Markus said. “If a defense lawyer had come close to this conduct, he would be in handcuffs and charged with obstruction. But little is done to prosecutors who cross the line.”
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PASSAGE OF THE DAY: "Among the irregularities the judge found was testimony from inmates who said they were granted favors including conjugal visits when they were brought to the Miami Police Department’s Homicide Unit to coordinate their testimony against Smith as state witnesses. But the most damaging allegations against Von Zamft came from recordings of his conversations with an inmate in which, in anticipation of the resentencing trial, he discussed arranging jailhouse meetings among several witnesses so they can coordinate their testimony — something Smith’s lawyers were never told, as is required in criminal prosecutions. In a 2022 phone call, Von Zamft also discussed sidelining another witness whose version of events had shifted over the years, saying that if she didn’t testify as he wanted, “I will find a way to make her unavailable” and read her previous testimony into the record. “On television, Perry Mason, defense attorney extraordinaire, always managed to find the smoking gun at the end of every episode,” the judge wrote of that exchange. “In real life, this happens very rarely. It happened here.”
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STORY: "Veteran Miami prosecutor quit's after judge's rebuke over conjugal visits for jailhouse informants," by Associated Press Reporter Joshua Goodman, published on March 8, 2024, (Joshua Goodman is a Miami-based investigative reporter who writes about the intersection of crime, corruption, drug trafficking and politics in Latin America. He previously spent two decades reporting from South America.)
During his career Michael Von Zamft has led some of the biggest murder, conspiracy and racketeering cases in the Florida state attorney’s office in Miami and at times served as a trainer and supervisor to younger prosecutors.
He resigned this week following a stunning rebuke by the judge, who disqualified him and another prosecutor, Stephen Mitchell, from the resentencing trial of gang leader and convicted murderer Corey Smith.
Judge Andrea Ricker Wolfson said she found evidence of “witness testimony manipulation” and “severe recklessness” by prosecutors stretching back to the case’s origins 24 years ago and continuing to the present.
“The allegations in this claim are like a rabbit hole in Alice in Wonderland,” the judge wrote in her 15-page order. “The prosecutors in this case have lost sight of their responsibility, and justice demands their disqualification.”
State Attorney Katherine Fernandez Rundle said Friday that she accepted the resignation of Von Zamft, her colleague of almost 30 years, and reaffirmed her commitment that all prosecutors seek “truth and justice” lawfully and with “honesty, integrity and professionalism.”
Her office did not respond to questions by The Associated Press about whether she had initiated any discipline actions against the prosecution team behind the case or filed a complaint to the Florida Bar.
“I will ask my top litigators to examine every aspect of this case and determine the best path forward,” Rundle said in a statement, in which she also defended the decision to seek the death penalty for Smith. “We are also the voice of the murder victims who cannot speak for themselves.”
Von Zamft declined to comment.
Among the irregularities the judge found was testimony from inmates who said they were granted favors including conjugal visits when they were brought to the Miami Police Department’s Homicide Unit to coordinate their testimony against Smith as state witnesses.
But the most damaging allegations against Von Zamft came from recordings of his conversations with an inmate in which, in anticipation of the resentencing trial, he discussed arranging jailhouse meetings among several witnesses so they can coordinate their testimony — something Smith’s lawyers were never told, as is required in criminal prosecutions.
In a 2022 phone call, Von Zamft also discussed sidelining another witness whose version of events had shifted over the years, saying that if she didn’t testify as he wanted, “I will find a way to make her unavailable” and read her previous testimony into the record.
“On television, Perry Mason, defense attorney extraordinaire, always managed to find the smoking gun at the end of every episode,” the judge wrote of that exchange. “In real life, this happens very rarely. It happened here.”
David Oscar Markus, a Miami defense attorney who has successfully litigated misconduct allegations against federal prosecutors, said the admonishment of the prosecutors is as brave as it is rare.
“Sadly this is not some isolated incident,” Markus said. “If a defense lawyer had come close to this conduct, he would be in handcuffs and charged with obstruction. But little is done to prosecutors who cross the line.”
Smith was an alleged leader of what’s known as the John Doe Gang, a drug organization that sold marijuana and crack cocaine in a poor, predominantly Black neighborhood of Miami in the late 1990s.
His conviction in 2004 in the killing of four individuals was touted at the time as a major victory against gangs and was the culmination of years of federal and state investigations.
Another prosecutor who worked on that case, Bronwyn Miller, was appointed as a judge on the Miami-Dade County Court. She now sits on the Third District Court of Appeal in Florida.
Smith was sentenced to death for two of the killings on the recommendation of a majority of jury members, but in 2017 state law changed to require a unanimous vote in capital punishment cases. As a result the death sentence was vacated.
Despite her admonishment of the prosecutors, Wolfson rejected Smith’s argument that there is a broader culture of misconduct that should bar Rundle’s office from pressing forward on the case.
“We cannot help but remain concerned that given the tenure of these attorneys, the issues raised were not unique to them or this case,” Craig Whisenhunt and Allison Miller, attorneys for Smith said in a statement.
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/
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/
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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.
https://deadline.com/2021/11/alice-sebold-lucky-rape-conviction-overturned-anthony-broadwater-12348801
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MORE VALUABLE WORDS: "As a former public defender, Texas' refusal to delay Ivan Cantu's execution to evaluate new evidence is deeply worrying for the state of our legal system. There should be no room for doubt in a death penalty case. The facts surrounding Cantu's execution should haunt all of us."
