Today's Virginian Pilot carries the editorial, "Weeks from death, on faulty evidence."
Last month, a federal appeals judge found the tactics used by Virginia prosecutors in a 2002 murder trial so egregious that he overturned the murder conviction and death sentence - a rare order in a state that has executed more inmates than any other except Texas.
After a hearing on the evidence, U.S. District Judge Raymond A. Jackson of Norfolk found 12 violations in the murder-for-hire trial of Justin Michael Wolfe in Prince William County. Among them: Prosecutors withheld from the defense pieces of evidence, notes, reports of police interviews and recordings of interviews with witnesses that would have helped Wolfe. Prosecutors also knowingly presented false evidence at trial, the judge found.
"The Court," Jackson wrote, "finds these actions not only unconstitutional in regards to due process, but abhorrent to the judicial process."
The state must decide this month whether to appeal. Based on the number of substantial errors in the case, Attorney General Ken Cuccinelli should decline.
The prosecution's conduct, brought to light during the recent hearing, should scare all of us. A Virginia man came close to being killed for a crime he didn't commit.
Prosecutors, the American Bar Association says, have a duty to seek justice, not merely to convict. They have an obligation to ensure there's sufficient evidence to proceed in criminal court. They're obligated to tell defense lawyers when they find evidence that helps their client.
In this case, only a judge's diligence in ordering a new hearing on the evidence allowed the public to see what led to the wrong man on death row.
And:
If Virginia is going to continue sentencing defendants to die, it must ensure that the trials are fair, that convictions are obtained after a thorough airing of the evidence, and that the person sent to the death chamber is actually guilty.
"A deserved rebuke in Prince William murder case," is the Washington Post editorial. It appeared July 28.
Judge Jackson noted that Mr. Ebert and his office withheld from the defense information about others who may have had motive to target the victim. Mr. Ebert and his colleagues also brought together prosecution witnesses and allowed them to smooth over inconsistencies in their testimony. The prosecutors failed on multiple occasions to live up to their obligations to disclose to the defense that government witnesses had contradicted each other or had changed their stories.
These failures were discovered only after Mr. Wolfe’s lawyers from King & Spalding, the University of Virginia’s Innocence Project Clinic and the Virginia Capital Representation Resources Center persuaded a court to force Mr. Ebert and his office to turn over all of their files.
The actions by Mr. Ebert and his office were so egregious that Judge Jackson threw out the murder conviction and death sentence against Mr. Wolfe. And he concluded that Mr. Ebert and a top deputy, Richard A. Conway, violated Virginia legal ethics rules that require prosecutors to “make timely disclosure” of evidence “that tends to negate the guilt of the accused, mitigate the degree of the offense, or reduce the punishment.”
During a hearing before Judge Jackson, Mr. Ebert was asked why his office did not have open-file discovery, which requires prosecutors to turn over to the defense all of the evidence gathered during an investigation. “I have found in the past when you have information that is given to certain counsel and certain defendants, they are able to fabricate a defense around what is provided,” Mr. Ebert responded.
Fabricate? The judge in this instance rightly took Mr. Ebert to task. “Essentially, in an effort to ensure that no defense would be ‘fabricated,’ [Mr. Ebert and Mr. Conway’s] actions served to deprive [Mr. Wolfe] of any substantive defense in a case where his life would rest on the jury’s verdict,” Judge Jackson wrote. “The Court finds these actions not only unconstitutional in regards to due process, but abhorrent to the judicial process.” The Virginia State Bar, which polices lawyers in the state, should determine whether Mr. Ebert and Mr. Conway committed violations that require disciplinary action.
Earlier coverage of the Justin Wolfe case begins at the link. Related posts are in the prosecutorial misconduct index.
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.
Comments