Brandi Grissom writes "Inmate’s Release Brings Call for New Evidence Law," for the New York Times in its Sunday edition with expanded Texas coverage. The Texas Tribune version is, "Morton Case Sparks Calls for Texas Evidence Law Reform." Here's an extended excerpt:
Days after Mrs. Morton’s badly beaten body was found in her bed in August 1986, someone used her credit card in another city. And a check was cashed with her forged signature.
The sheriff’s investigators who saw Mr. Morton as the prime suspect had that information and a transcript of the grandmother’s call. But when he was on trial facing a life sentence for murder, his defense lawyers knew none of it.
A quarter-century later, after six years of fighting for DNA tests that now almost certainly will result in the reversal of Mr. Morton’s conviction, his lawyers say prosecutors withheld this and other exculpatory evidence from his original defense lawyers and from the trial judge despite orders to turn it over. In court filings, the prosecutors have denied accusations of wrongdoing.
Since 1994, DNA tests have exonerated 44 Texas inmates, according to the Innocence Project of Texas, based in Lubbock. In the wake of those cases, Texas lawmakers have made significant reforms to criminal justice procedures to help prevent wrongful convictions. But defense lawyers and Mr. Morton’s advocates argue that under antiquated Texas discovery laws, the alleged injustices that robbed him of 25 years could still happen.
“Michael’s struggle would be in vain if we didn’t think soberly about what went wrong in his case and how it can be fixed,” said Nina Morrison, senior staff lawyer for the Innocence Project, which worked on Mr. Morton’s case and which is based in New York.
The landmark 1963 United States Supreme Court decision Brady v. Maryland requires prosecutors to provide defendants with exculpatory evidence — information that could prove their innocence. But Texas law does not define “exculpatory evidence,” and there is no statewide standard; prosecutors or trial judges typically decide what qualifies. State law does not require prosecutors to automatically share with defense lawyers even basic information like police reports and witness statements.
Many prosecutors, including district attorneys in Dallas, Houston, Fort Worth and Austin, have adopted open-file policies that require their lawyers to share all their evidence with the defense.
Tarrant County adopted its policy in the 1970s, said Jack Strickland, a former defense lawyer who is deputy chief in the district attorney’s criminal division.
“The more serious the case, the more serious the potential consequences,” Mr. Strickland said. “We wanted to have as much transparency as we could because of the stakes involved.”
In 2010, the Timothy Cole Advisory Panel, a committee created to recommend new laws that might prevent wrongful convictions, urged legislators to adopt a mandatory statewide discovery policy. Seven of Texas’ first 39 DNA exonerations involved evidence suppression or other prosecutorial misconduct, according to the panel’s report.
The panel — named after a Lubbock man charged with rape who died in prison before DNA evidence exonerated him — told lawmakers that Texas should follow the example of other states that require lawyers on both sides to share information in criminal cases.
“We have 254 counties in this state, and potentially 254 ways of deciding what the defense will see prior to trial,” said Kathryn Kase, executive director of the Texas Defender Service and a member of the Tim Cole panel.
Since 2007, lawmakers have proposed more than a half-dozen measures that would have expanded access to discovery. None have passed.
"Michael Morton's lawyers aim to prove misconduct," is Chuck Lindell's latest Austin American-Statesman report.
While Michael Morton begins rebuilding a life after almost 25 years in prison, his lawyers are moving forward on phase two of their quest for justice: looking into the investigators and prosecutors whose efforts sent him to prison for a murder he did not commit.
Angered by revelations of hidden evidence and apparently ignored leads that could have saved Morton from a wrongful conviction, defense lawyers have promised to conduct a vigorous investigation in the coming weeks.
Details of how that investigation will proceed remain hidden behind sealed court records, but presumably Morton's lawyers will seek to force onetime District Attorney Ken Anderson, now a district judge, and other former Williamson County officials to testify under oath in depositions.
Any new information unearthed would be added to allegations of official misconduct that are pending at the state's highest criminal court.
And:
Innocence Project lawyers received the transcript in 2008 under Texas open records laws over objections from the sheriff's office and Bradley. They also found a summary of the telephone transcript in a district attorney case file marked "trial documents," said John Raley, a Houston civil lawyer who has been working on Morton's behalf since 2005.
Morton's lawyers argue that withholding the transcript violated the U.S. Constitution by trampling Morton's right to fair treatment by the legal system and his right to view prosecution evidence that could cast doubt on his guilt.
Defense lawyers also say that Anderson and investigators violated the trial judge's order to turn over all of Wood's reports and field notes.
Before the 1987 trial, District Judge William Lott announced that he would review the material to make sure no exculpatory evidence was improperly withheld from Morton. Anderson assured Lott that he would meet with Wood to ensure that all relevant investigatory material would be provided, trial transcripts show.
After reviewing the documents, Lott announced that he had found no hidden evidence and then sealed the file for review by an appeals court.
That sealed file, opened in August, contained only a five-page report detailing the first day of Wood's investigation and a one-page form, signed by Morton, allowing his house and pickup to be searched. None of the four recently revealed documents, all of which were generated by Wood or copied to the sergeant, was included.
"Trial prosecutors' deliberate failure to produce the Wood documents was a knowing and egregious violation of Morton's due process rights and renders his trial fundamentally unfair," Morton's lawyers said in court briefs.
Anderson did not return calls seeking comment.
Earlier coverage of Michael Morton's case begins with the preceding post.
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. Related posts are in the prosecutorial misconduct index.
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