A Snitch, a Brady Violation, and Freedom - The Michael Toney Case

The Fort Worth Star-Telegram has posted Alex Branch's report, "Defendant freed, nine months after conviction and death sentence were overturned."

Michael Toney was released from the Tarrant County Jail on Wednesday night, nine months after his conviction and death sentence for the 1985 bombing deaths of three people in a Lake Worth trailer were overturned.

District Attorney Joe Shannon said he learned Wednesday that the Texas attorney general filed a motion to dismiss the case against Toney without prejudice.

That means prosecutors could still decide to retry the case after further investigation, he said.

The attorney general took over the case after the Tarrant County district attorney’s office recused itself in January because evidence favorable to Toney’s defense was withheld during his 1999 trial.

A spokeswoman for the law firm O’Melveny & Myers L.L.P. in San Francisco, which represents Toney, said in a statement, "Our client Michael Roy Toney is grateful that the attorney general’s office is taking the appropriate step of pausing to conduct an independent investigation that will take a closer look at the evidence in this case."

And:

Toney was convicted of planting a briefcase bomb outside a Lake Worth trailer, killing Angela Blount, 15; her father, Joe Blount, 44; and her cousin Michael Columbus, 18.

Toney has always maintained his innocence. No physical evidence connected him to the crime.

In December, the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals overturned Toney’s conviction after the district attorney’s office acknowledged that evidence was withheld.

Prosecutors withheld at least 14 documents that cast doubt on the accounts of crucial witnesses against Toney, namely his ex-wife and his former best friend.

Toney told the Star-Telegram in a December prison interview that he believed that the prosecutors were more concerned with closing the case than finding the truth.

"They had blinders on," he said. "Once they thought they could convict someone, innocence didn’t matter."

Earlier coverage of the Toney case is here.  The testimony of a jailhouse snitch played a major role in Toney's conviction.  The responsibility of the state to provide exculpatory evidence to the defense was articulated in the 1963 Supreme Court ruling in Brady v. Maryland; more via Oyez.