Westword posts, "Sir Mario Owens: False Evidence in Death-Penalty Case a "New Low," Defense Claims," by Alan Prendergast.
Determined to demonstrate just how far he believed Arapahoe County prosecutors had strayed over the line in the effort to obtain the death penalty against his client, defense attorney Jim Castle resorted to a visual aid. During a hearing late Friday, he presented District Judge Gerald Rafferty with a wheeled cart piled with documents that he said prosecutors were obligated to turn over to the defense before trial but failed to do so -- a transgression of due-process rights known as a Brady violation.
"There are so many violations in this case, I can't cover them all," Castle said. "How did this happen? This shouldn't happen. If it's allowed, we will accept a new low for justice in Colorado."
Castle's plea capped two weeks of convoluted -- and, at times, disturbing -- testimony and argument in an evidentiary hearing over whether government misconduct tainted the 2008 death sentence imposed on Sir Mario Owens. Along with co-defendant Robert Ray, Owens was convicted of the murders of Javad Marshall-Fields and his fiancee, Vivian Wolfe, in 2005; Marshall-Fields had been expected to testify against the two men in another homicide investigation.
Earlier coverage of the case begins at the link. Also available, more recent unrelated news from Colorado.
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.
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