Unluckiest Man on Death Row

Joe D'Ambrosio's story offers reasonable doubt about Ohio justice.


Joe D'Ambrosio's father believed in the virtue of work. For decades, he punched the clock at General Electric, installing liners in train engines. He taught his only son that a job provides two rewards: a paycheck and self-respect.

Keenan (left) and Espinoza (center) both had checkered pasts. The only blotches on D'Ambrosio's record were two DWIs.Dad always told me, You work. I don't care if it's flipping burgers, you work,' D'Ambrosio recalls.

He intended to abide by his late father's credo, following an honorable discharge from the Army in 1985. The North Royalton native returned home after a four-year hitch that saw him awarded the Good Conduct and Army Achievement medals for his skill as a mechanic. He figured finding work in an auto shop would be easy. He found misfortune instead.

D'Ambrosio learned that his Army mechanic's certification carried no value in the private world -- he would need two years of training to become recertified. The $27,000 tuition may as well have been $27 million.

For the next three years, he pumped gas, installed car alarms, mowed lawns. He earned a paycheck, but pride proved more elusive. So he drowned his frustration at the Saloon, a Coventry Road bar that offered cheap drinks and the comfort of regulars.

D'Ambrosio had little else on his mind on August 31, 1988. At some point that Wednesday night, a voice pierced the pub's din. A gaunt man with a mustache said he was a foreman of a landscaping crew and asked if anyone needed work.

Landscaping sounded as good as anything else to D'Ambrosio. He introduced himself to Ed Espinoza, and the next day he met with Espinoza and Michael Keenan, owner of Sunshine Landscaping. Keenan hired him on the spot.

Less than a month later, he, Espinoza, and Keenan were in jail. The following February, D'Ambrosio was sentenced to death after a three-day trial -- likely the shortest capital case in state history.

Like almost every one of Ohio's 201 death-row inmates, D'Ambrosio claims innocence. But unlike the others, there are people who actually believe him. Inside the state Public Defender's Office, he is known as "the unluckiest man in the world." Two Ohio Supreme Court justices have argued his life should be spared. Death-penalty critics contend his case pulses with reasonable doubt.

D'Ambrosio appreciates the support. Still, he wishes he didn't need it.

"If I hadn't been in that bar that night and met Espinoza, I wouldn't be here now."



In September 1988, Tony Klann was 19. He looked younger. A flop-cut topped a boyish face; a rattail hinted at a free spirit. He scraped by as a deli stockboy and mowing lawns for Sunshine Landscaping. He used the money to party on life's fringes.

A haphazard student who struggled to finish high school, Klann had good attendance at the bars in Coventry and Little Italy. His friends were anyone with extra beer or pot and a couch to crash on. His girlfriend danced at a strip club. To Klann, midnight felt like noon.

"He liked people who were kind of living on the edge," says Richard Klann, Tony's father.

Richard and his then-wife, Diane, adopted Tony and his sister when they were toddlers. The Klanns represented the fifth and last set of parents for the siblings, a warm ending to their bleak foster-care odyssey.

Tony grew up "happy-go-lucky" despite a learning disability that his classmates teased him about, Richard recalls. As he grew older, he itched for freedom, leaving home at 18 with few plans and less money. "I emancipate myself," he wrote in a note to his father.

But it was a more practical Tony who met Richard for dinner at a Mayfield restaurant on Tuesday, September 20, 1988. He said he wanted to escape the drug-and-booze scene and start fresh. He talked about setting up his own landscaping business, an idea his father heartily endorsed.

"He was doing his own thing, finding his way," Richard says.



Cleveland homicide detectives Ernie Hayes and Mel Goldstein received word of a body floating in Doan Creek on Saturday afternoon, September 24. They found the victim's neck sliced from ear to ear; two puncture wounds exposed his trachea. His face, chest, back, right forearm, and left wrist were slashed. Half his forehead was bashed in. Most of his blood had drained away, turning his skin bone white.

The detectives scoured the creek bank near Martin Luther King Jr. Drive and East Boulevard for clues. "There was nothing there," Goldstein says.

In the late 1980s, the Cleveland homicide unit shone like few others, boasting an 80 percent "solve rate" on murder cases that ranked among the best for metro police forces nationwide. Success came as veteran detectives ran hard on the long leash let out by their superiors.

"You were free to do whatever you needed to do, so long as you got results," Hayes says.

Detective Leo Allen took over the case on Monday, September 26. His legwork bore results in a scant three hours.

Allen visited the Cuyahoga County morgue that morning on another case and wound up talking with three men -- Paul Lewis, James Russell, and Adam Flanik -- who were there to identify the body of a friend pulled from Doan Creek. None of them could be located for this story.

Lewis sometimes let Tony Klann stay at his Little Italy flat. Like Flanik and Russell, he knew Ed Espinoza and Michael Keenan from the neighborhood bars. He also had spoken to D'Ambrosio on occasion.

Lewis, nicknamed "Stoney" for his love of weed, said he last saw Klann alive on Friday night, September 23. He and Keenan bumped into each other around 8 p.m. that evening at the Saloon, where they had a drink before driving down Coventry Road to Coconut Joe's. Both bars have since closed.

Read more of this very long article on: http://www.clevescene.com/2001-11-22/news/unluckiest-man-on-death-row/

A question of truth, life, death (old article)

01/26/03

Karen R. Long
Plain Dealer Reporter

All along, Joe D'Ambrosio has said he is innocent.

But since he had no money, no visitors and scant education, insisting on his innocence seemed pointless, almost absurd.



Now, a Catholic priest who heard his story by accident and a veteran public defender who has heard every story in the book think D'Ambrosio is telling the truth. The pair have put thousands of hours into reconstructing a sordid murder centered in Little Italy 14 years ago.

They found out that the man hacked to death had been the only witness subpoenaed in a rape four months earlier. The accused rapist supplied police with D'Ambrosio's address and a suggestion that they investigate him.

Fourteen days after D'Ambrosio was charged in the murder, the rape indictment was dropped.

Carmen Marino was the prosecutor for both the rape and the murder. He retired a year ago. Marino now says he has no memory of the rape case, which he reassigned to another assistant county prosecutor.

That man, Lindsay Jerry, died in 1993.

Marino said his murder prosecution was both successful and ethical.

But the Ohio public defender's office has raised enough doubt about D'Ambrosio's conviction that a federal judge has ordered a review of all the evidence. In late November, U.S. District Judge Kate O'Malley ordered Cleveland police and the county coroner's and prosecutor's offices to turn over all records and original evidence from the murder and the rape to the state public defender's office.

Lawyer Joe Bodine is leading the investigation. He has worked on appeals for convicted killers for more than a decade. "Joe [D'Ambrosio] is the only client I've ever had who is utterly credible," Bodine said.

He called O'Malley's order "the single most expansive discovery order handed down" in a capital case from a judge in Ohio.

The Ohio attorney general's office must defend D'Ambrosio's conviction in federal court. "Obviously, we are very prepared," said spokeswoman Kim Norris. "The last time the victim was seen alive, D'Ambrosio was holding a knife to his throat."

On Feb. 5, a federal court officer will drive to Detroit with two hunting knives confiscated from D'Ambrosio's apartment. There, Wayne County Coroner Dr. Werner Spitz will compare them to descriptions and photos of the wounds on the victim's body. Spitz is a nationally recognized authority on such injuries. D'Ambrosio's legal team anticipates that the knives and the wounds will not match.

"A lot of guys on death row tell me they are innocent," said the Rev. Neil Kookoothe, an opponent of capital punishment who is also a lawyer. "I don't believe any of them except Joe D'Ambrosio."

Kookoothe said he remains astonished that D'Ambrosio was convicted of murder and sentenced to death without forensic evidence. D'Ambrosio waived his right to a jury. A three-judge panel found him guilty.

For the family of the murdered teenager, Tony Klann, it is unthinkable that a horror resolved in 1989 has come back to haunt them. They believe Cuyahoga County prosecutors held the right three men responsible.

"There's been rumblings about new evidence," said salesman Richard Klann, the victim's father. "I still think this jerk D'Ambrosio is guilty. I sat through every minute of the trials. Fourteen years later, the idea of more trials - it's just churning through my body all the time."

'That is what I live with'

Tony Klann had a choir-boy face and a bowl haircut that made him look younger than his 19 years. People around Little Italy and the Coventry neighborhoods knew him as "Little Tony." Klann had a sunny, social disposition. But he was frequently broke.

The week he was murdered, Tony and his girlfriend, a Cleveland State University student, met Richard Klann for dinner. Tony outlined his ideas for launching a small landscaping business. The older Klann was delighted.

His son had struggled with a learning disorder so severe he was unable to read a clock. Tony had quit Cleveland Heights High School after the 10th grade and abandoned an alternative school in Columbus the day he turned 18. When he returned to Cleveland, Tony drifted a bit and partied. Now, he seemed to have a direction. Richard Klann offered to buy a landscaping truck.

Four days later, a jogger found Tony's body floating in Doan Brook, next to Martin Luther King Jr. Drive, near Parkgate Avenue. On that Saturday afternoon in September 1988, the corpse looked so stiff and unworldly that the runner poked it with a tree branch. When divers pulled it out, they could see Tony's neck was slashed ear to ear, his windpipe punctured twice. Three large slashes opened up his chest. Defensive wounds marked his wrist and elbow.

"They hit him with a bat, breaking his forehead," Richard Klann said. "They took him down to Doan Creek and asked him to put his head back, and he did, and they slit his throat. I always taught him there was another way out besides a fight. I wish I could have said, 'Now is the time to kick them where it hurts.' Tony put his head back - that is what I live with."

Prosecutor Marino said there was no way the 5-foot-5 Tony could have fought off a trio of men. "Klann was truly an innocent person," he said. "His whole life, he didn't harm anybody."

Marino said the three men jailed for Klann's murder were not subtle. He said D'Ambrosio, Michael Keenan and Eddie Espinoza were the only ones witnesses saw drunk, carousing, swearing, shouting and later driving around with the victim.

All four knew each other through Sunshine Landscaping. Keenan, 39, owned the business and Espinoza was his foreman. D'Ambrosio met Espinoza in The Saloon, a now-defunct Coventry bar, where Espinoza offered him a landscaping job. It was three weeks before Klann was murdered.

"Keenan was a real low-life, that guy, and a convicted rapist," Marino said. "For some reason, Keenan thought Tony Klann had taken his drugs or knew who had taken his drugs. They decided to grab up this kid and force him to tell them." Marino paused. "I guess things got out of hand. Keenan got frustrated and took the kid down to Doan Creek."

Espinoza, 26, became the prosecution's star witness. Based on his testimony, D'Ambrosio and Keenan were sentenced to die. Espinoza took a plea of voluntary manslaughter and served 12 years of a 15- to 75-year sentence. He was freed, with no parole obligations, in 2001.

On the witness stand, Espinoza described a party scene marinated in alcohol and cocaine. He testified the crime started with a night of drinking in Coventry bars that escalated when Keenan discovered drugs missing from his work truck. He suspected a man named Paul Lewis, known as "Stoney" because of his affinity for being high.

Espinoza testified that "Little Tony" was plucked off Mayfield Road and enlisted in pursuit of Lewis, who lived in Klann's apartment building. But Lewis was not home that night. Espinoza said that sometime before daybreak, the chase ended in a surreal butchery. He said Klann cried out for mercy while D'Ambrosio pursued him with a curved hunting knife, splashing after the bleeding boy in Doan Brook.

That sounded wrong to Kookoothe, an associate pastor at St. Clarence Catholic Church in North Olmsted. The priest was visiting another death-row inmate when he stopped at the cell next door and heard D'Ambrosio's story. "There was something about Joe that just doesn't click with the crime," he said. "He was personable, straightforward. My curiosity started to grow."

Kookoothe, with degrees in nursing and law earned before his ordination, followed that curiosity to the coroner's office. He asked to see the photographs of Klann's injuries. He stopped when he got to the close-up shots of the two holes in the trachea. With such an injury, no victim - physiologically - could have begged for mercy. Yet Espinoza testified that D'Ambrosio had jumped into the creek to "finish the job" after Keenan had nearly severed the teenager's head.

"Just from the nursing perspective, I saw those punctures in the trachea and I thought, 'Oh my. Something is not right,' " Kookoothe said. The punctures insinuated to him that somebody wanted Klann to shut up.

An accidental tip

A dozen years after Tony Klann's body was cremated, Richard Klann unintentionally tipped D'Ambrosio's lawyers to a new lead. He remembered that his son told him about seeing a man raped in his apartment building. Richard Klann didn't sense that his son feared for his life, but Tony wanted out of the neighborhood.

Kookoothe decided to check police records of sex crimes around the time of Klann's death.

"I took the names of people involved in the [murder] case - Mike Keenan, Eddie Espinoza, Paul Lewis -and pulled up the criminal records," the priest said. "When I pulled up Paul Lewis, there was a rape case, so I asked for the microfiche. I see the one witness subpoenaed on the rape is Anthony Klann. My heart went into my stomach. Here was this guy testifying against Joe and he is indicted for rape."

The rape victim was a legally blind man living in Klann and Lewis' apartment building on East 120th Street, in the shadow of Holy Rosary Church. On Oct. 20, 1988, 14 days after the indictments for Klann's murder, the rape charge against Lewis was dropped.

"Counsel realizes that even suggesting that the prosecutor might have concealed a critical deal struck with a key witness implies serious transgression," D'Ambrosio's lawyers wrote in an appeals brief. "But it would not be uncharacteristic for Prosecutor Marino to have engaged in such a deceptive act. Carmen Marino has a long history of prosecutorial misconduct."

Marino dismissed the accusation as "lying and disingenuous." He said he did not remember a Paul Lewis rape prosecution. Marino keeps his old case logs, with a record of their outcomes. He brought out his log for 1988. It showed that he had three murder prosecutions that summer. A notation indicated that at crunch time with those trials, Marino gave the Lewis prosecution to Lindsay Jerry, a colleague who later died of cancer.

Marino said he had no idea why the rape case was dismissed.

The rape victim thinks his justice was traded off for Lewis' testimony. In an interview, the victim said the moment he heard that Klann was murdered, he called Cleveland police to suggest that crime was connected to the sexual assault on him. The victim said no one followed up until last fall, when D'Ambrosio's lawyers found him.

"I was 22 years old. What did I know about the law?" asked the victim, who now lives in Lakewood. "I'm surprised no one contacted me. I thought that was pretty cold. Tony got murdered and Paul Lewis is the squeal guy on that whole case."

Facts don't add up

For D'Ambrosio's advocates, his story has an "Of Mice and Men" quality. The John Steinbeck novel features a big, slow-witted, but honest man caught in a tragic murder.

At 6 feet 2 and 200 pounds, D'Ambrosio keeps his shoulders back and his gaze direct. He is proud of his four years as an Army mechanic. Book learning was not his strength, but D'Ambrosio was good with his hands. He eked out a 1.9 GPA at North Royalton High School and enlisted. D'Ambrosio loved the service, even basic training. He made sergeant in three years.

When he returned to civilian life, and Cleveland, D'Ambrosio expected to make better than a soldier's wages. Two years of odd jobs had left him without a checking account, without a driver's license and on the verge of eviction from his apartment. At age 26, he was ready to re-enlist.

Instead, Cleveland police appeared at his door. His last day of freedom was Sept. 26, 1988.

"I had no idea what was going on," said D'Ambrosio during an interview at the Mansfield Correctional Institution last month. "None of my family had ever been in trouble. None of my friends. You just don't break the law. That's what it's there for. I grew up believing in Perry Mason: Sit back and let the lawyer do his job." D'Ambrosio paused. "That's what got me here."

D'Ambrosio's three-day trial was the shortest capital trial in modern Ohio history. "You don't have to be a lawyer, let alone a rocket scientist, to realize some of this doesn't make any sense," Kookoothe said. "His legal representation was awful."

The priest started a list of facts that didn't add up:

The first homicide detectives on the scene, Mel Goldstein and Ernest Hayes, concluded Klann had been killed elsewhere and dumped in Doan Brook.

Despite the bloody nature of the murder, there was no blood found anywhere around the creek. The bank was undisturbed. No bent or broken underbrush showed signs of a struggle.

Klann's body had scrape marks along the shoulder blades, consistent with being dragged.

The time element didn't track. D'Ambrosio admits to being out with Klann, Keenan and Espinoza on Thursday night, Sept. 22, when Coconut Joe's served 25-cent shots. But D'Ambrosio says he was dropped off unevent- fully at his apartment after the search for Lewis had proved futile.

In court, Espinoza repeatedly switched his testimony about the murder date. Marino argued that the hunt for Lewis began Friday night and Klann was murdered early Saturday.

Prosecutors found a man who corroborated Espinoza. The witness testified he looked out his Little Italy window and saw D'Ambrosio sitting in a truck and holding a knife to Klann as the smaller man wept. D'Ambrosio's team counters now that the sight angles and darkness would preclude seeing any such scene.

D'Ambrosio claims he and Klann were sitting quietly in the truck, listening to the radio, while Espinoza and Keenan barged around looking for Lewis.

D'Ambrosio had no criminal history. His only legal trouble was two DUI convictions.

Marino's recollection was similar. "Mike Keenan was a sociopath," Marino said. "Joe D'Ambrosio was a kid who had everything going for him. He had the bad luck to hook up with Keenan, who was really dangerous."

Asked about the discrepancies at the crime scene, Marino shrugged. "Things are really strange," he said. "What you expect at the scene is what you get 75 percent of the time. Look at the [Sam] Sheppard case."

'We're on God's time'

D'Ambrosio may be the one man on Ohio's death row to say his childhood was happy. He was the longed-for boy born to Italian-Americans Joe and Dorothy D'Ambrosio. His father died when he was 17, his mother in 1998. Their son said two things help him endure his years of shackles and cinderblock.

"My dad brought me up right," said D'Ambrosio, who shaves his head and wears multiple tattoos. "I had my military training. Between those two things, I know I can't let this get to me. Once this nightmare is over, I got to go back to the world."

D'Ambrosio wants that world to see him as a man in the wrong place at the right time, the day before Klann's murder. Asked if alcohol contributed to Klann's death, he shot back, "I have no idea. I wasn't there. The bar stuff and all that happened 24 hours before Anthony Klann died. All Espinoza did was put the two days together."

In 1994, D'Ambrosio passed up an offer to move off death row in exchange for testifying in Keenan's retrial. "I won't lie for them, " D'Ambrosio said. "Lying on the witness stand is what got me here in the first place. My immortal soul is worth much more than that."

D'Ambrosio said he does not blame God for his predicament. "I blame the people who corrupted the system. That's man's work.

"We're on God's time," he said. "Now he allows me a good attorney and new evidence and people coming forward. I'll be on God's schedule when I'm freed. I don't let myself get happy, though, because I can't see the next thing coming."

To reach this Plain Dealer reporter:

klong@plaind.com"This email address is being protected from spam bots, you need Javascript enabled to view it!" , 216-999-5012

Cold-Case Murder May Lead to Death Penalty

ST. CLAIRSVILLE — At 63 years of age, Eugene Blake has spent more than half his life in West Virginia’s penal system for the murder of two women. If convicted in the 1982 murder of Lansing resident Mark Withers, he could be taking up residence on Ohio’s death row.

Blake was named in a three-count indictment Wednesday charging him with the March 19, 1982, murder of then 21-year-old Withers, who resided at 13 East Center St., Lansing.

Withers was shot to death, and his 17-year-old female companion was raped during the early morning hours while the two were parked at Gould Park in Bridgeport.

During a Thursday news conference, Belmont County Prosecutor Christopher Berhalter said Blake is charged with three counts of aggravated murder. Berhalter said the three murder charges stem from different specifications associated with the Withers murder, pointing out that Blake faces the death penalty if convicted.

Blake had been housed at the Mountain State’s medium security Huttonsville Correctional Center but was moved recently to the Mount Olive Correctional Complex, West Virginia’s only maximum security prison.

Berhalter said Blake was moved within the past couple of months after Ohio authorities expressed interest in him. The Mount Olive facility was opened Feb. 14, 1995, as a replacement for the aged West Virginia Penitentiary at Moundsville.

Blake’s prison time began in the late 1960s in Wayne County, W.Va.

He was convicted March 29, 1968, of the Jan. 15, 1967, stabbing death of Donna Jean Ball, 18, a Chesapeake and Potomac Telephone Co. operator who was on her way home after work. Trial documents indicate Blake forced Ball’s car off the road on a secluded area of W.Va. 75 in Wayne County. He stabbed her eight times before she broke away long enough to stop a passing motorist.

After getting into the motorist’s vehicle, Ball pointed toward Blake.

“That’s the car. That’s the man,” she screamed.

Blake sped away. The motorist drove to Ball’s home to alert her family then continued to Cabell-Huntington Hospital, where Ball was pronounced dead. The woman died in the rear seat of the car en route to the hospital.

Blake was sentenced to life without mercy in the West Virginia Penitentiary, but he only served 10 years because on Dec. 23, 1976, then-Gov. Arch Moore commuted Blake’s sentence to life with mercy. Blake was paroled in 1979.

Moore could not be reached for comment Thursday.

While awaiting trial for the Ball murder, Blake was sent to the Weston State Hospital for mental evaluation and on Aug. 25, 1967, he and eight others escaped from the facility.

Blake was recaptured three days later in a car he had stolen after overpowering a Pickle Street farmer and his wife. Police found a shotgun in the stolen car.

Another murder conviction for Blake came in Ohio County on Oct. 18, 1985, when Blake was found guilty of the Oct. 17, 1984, rape and murder of Maryann Hope Helmbright, a 13-year-old Wheeling girl. Prosecutors proved Blake had taken Helmbright from the former Silver Fox Bar he managed on Market Street.

A former bartender testified he saw Blake and Helmbright emerge from a back room of the bar between 1:30 and 2 a.m. on Oct. 24. The witness said as the two were leaving the bar, Blake muttered to him, “Take a good look ..., it’s the last time you’ll see her pretty young face.”

Testimony said Blake took Helmbright to Wheeling Island, where he shot her in the head. He then transported her body to the Morgantown area, where a hunter found her body 75 feet off Chapline Hill Road.

Blake was again sentenced to life without mercy. In addition, under West Virginia’s three strikes law he received yet another life without mercy sentence to be served consecutively with his sentence for for killing Helmbright.

Those sentences were later vacated by the West Virginia Supreme Court of Appeals; Blake was returned to Ohio County for a new trial.

Rather than face another jury, Blake pleaded guilty to the charge and, as part of a plea agreement, he was sentenced to 15 years to life. As a result of that plea agreement, he is eligible for parole again in 2011.

At Thursday’s news conference, Berhalter said Ohio authorities are seeking to have Blake extradited from West Virginia to face the Withers murder charges. Berhalter also credited work of the Bridgeport Police Department, the Ohio Attorney General’s Office and the Ohio Bureau of Criminal Identification and Investigation in solving the case.

“I would be remiss if I didn’t specifically note all the outstanding work of BCI&I Agent Charles Snyder,” Berhalter added.

BCI&I Superintendent Robert Fiatal commended those who solved the crime and pointed to the expertise of forensic scientists who developed DNA evidence.

“DNA was a lead producer in this case,” he said.

Berhalter also read a statement from the Withers family in which they expressed gratitude for the case being solved.

“For our family, these past few days have been bittersweet,” the family wrote. “Even though we now have some resolution, it has caused us to relive a horrible event from the past. We ask you (the media) respect our privacy.”

At the time of the Withers murder, Bridgeport Patrolman Tony Leonard told reporters the assailant walked up to the car, knocked on the window and began screaming for Withers to unlock the door and give him their money.

A newspaper account of the crime reported there were two theories of what had happened: One source reported the man knocked on the car window and when Withers rolled down the glass, he was shot in the temple; another report said Withers was dragged from the car and then shot.

The reports said the female companion, a Wheeling resident at the time, described the assailant as a white male, 6 feet, 4 inches tall, between 250 and 260 pounds with blond hair. She said he was wearing a ski mask, tan cowboy boots, a silver wrist watch and a silver belt buckle with the initial “G” on it.

Police told reporters after Withers was shot, “his body was thrown over a fence down a hill near the park.”

Published reports said the girl was raped after Withers was killed and, when the assailant left the area, she walked to a nearby residence and awakened the residents and called the police.

Former Bridgeport Patrolman Brad Johnson said he and Leonard found the body and later found the girl, who “took off from the park by herself.”

The girl reportedly told authorities that after the shooter threw Withers’ body over the fence, he returned to the vehicle and demanded she have sex with him or he would kill her.

According to the report, the girl was forced into a wooded area, raped three times within one and one-half hours and told to walk for several minutes before returning to the car.

The assailant then walked out of the woods. She was treated and released at the former Martins Ferry Hospital.

Joe D'Ambrosio: Man on death row should get new trial, court rules

A Cleveland man who has spent nearly two decades on Death Row must be given a new trial or let out of a prison, a federal appeals court ruled Thursday.
The three-judge panel agreed with a ruling made in 2006 by U.S. District Judge Kate O'Malley that Joe D'Ambrosio is entitled to a new trial because prosecutors withheld several pieces of crucial evidence that could have exonerated him.




Turning over the evidence would likely have resulted in a different verdict for D'Ambrosio, who was found guilty and sentenced to death after a trial in 1989, the court said in its opinion.

Supporters of D'Ambrosio, 47, hailed Thursday's decision and called on prosecutors to release him from a state prison near Youngstown.

"We're hoping the state does the right thing," John Lewis, part of a team of lawyers from Jones Day who are representing D'Ambrosio for free. "In our view, the evidence that was withheld shows D'Ambrosio did not commit this crime."

Cuyahoga County Prosecutor Bill Mason, through a spokesperson, said he is still considering whether to appeal the decision or retry the case. "We're disappointed in the ruling," Mason said in the statement.


D'Ambrosio claims he was wrongly convicted for the 1988 murder of Tony Klann, then 19. Klann was found dead in Doan Brook, stabbed in his chest and with his throat slashed.

Following a weeklong hearing in 2004, O'Malley ruled that prosecutors withheld 10 pieces of evidence that could have helped exonerate D'Ambrosio and should have been turned over to the defense under court rules.

In one instance, prosecutors did not tell D'Ambrosio's lawyer that the man who accused D'Ambrosio of the murder had his own motive for killing Klann. The man -- Paul Lewis -- was charged in a rape case in which Klann was the only witness.

Also, defense attorneys were not told that the two homicide detectives investigating the case believed Klann was killed elsewhere and then dumped in Doan Brook. That directly contradicted the testimony of Eddie Espinoza, the state's only eyewitness. Espinoza pleaded guilty to manslaughter and served a reduced sentence -- 12 years -- for his testimony.

"The most telling piece of evidence was from the police officers," Lewis said. "These are police officers who came willingly to a hearing and testified that they did not believe the crime was committed where (Espinoza) said the crime occurred."

Shortly after Klann's body was found on Sept. 24, 1988, Paul Lewis pointed investigators to D'Ambrosio, Thomas "Michael" Keenan and Espinoza, who worked together landscaping.

The trio was looking for Lewis because Keenan believed Lewis had stolen drugs from him. Espinoza later testified that they found Klann in Little Italy and forced him into their truck because they thought Klann could lead them to Lewis.

Espinoza testified during the 1989 trial that the men drove to Doan Brook, where Keenan slit Klann's throat and pushed him into the creek. Klann begged for his life and tried to escape, but D'Ambrosio caught him and killed him, Espinoza testified.

However, detectives said they found no blood on the creek bed, signs of a struggle or tire marks leading to the creek.

At the time of the murder, Lewis faced charges for raping Klann's roommate. Klann was the only witness subpoenaed to testify against Lewis.

Ralph DeFranco, D'Ambrosio's lawyer in the murder trial, testified that prosecutors never told him about the rape case. Former Assistant County Prosecutor Carmen Marino knew about Lewis' rape case but did not inform DeFranco, as he was obligated to do, O'Malley said in her order for a new trial two years ago.

O'Malley said in that ruling that defense lawyers could have crafted a different strategy had they known about the case.

The appeals court Thursday upheld O'Malley's ruling and concurred that D'Ambrosio would probably not have been found guilty if the evidence was turned over.

The state can ask the appeals court to reconsider the ruling as a whole. The state can also petition the U.S. Supreme Court. Neither body is obligated to hear the case, Lewis said.

D'Ambrosio will likely remain jailed during the appeals process. He has remained in prison since O'Malley initially ruled in March 2006 that he deserved a new trial.

Ruling on death penalty due soon

ELYRIA — Attorneys challenging the state’s lethal injection process on behalf of two accused killers failed to prove that the way the state executes prisoners is unconstitutional or that it violates Ohio law, according to prosecutors defending the process.

The state’s protocols are not only constitutional, they meet the requirements of an Ohio law that requires executions to be quick and painless, Assistant Lorain County Prosecutor Tony Cillo wrote in his closing argument, filed Tuesday.

“Because the undisputed evidence establishes that the properly anesthetized inmate cannot feel pain, Ohio’s three-drug cocktail is, by definition, ‘painless,’ ” Cillo wrote.

Lorain County Common Pleas Judge James Burge said he will likely issue a ruling in the cases of Ruben Rivera and Ronald McCloud, who could face execution if convicted in separate killings in Lorain, within the next two weeks.

Jeff Gamso, one of the attorneys representing the pair, has conceded that the three-drug cocktail used by Ohio in executions offers a painless death if properly administered, but he argued that the state can’t guarantee that nothing will go wrong in the execution process

Cillo asked Burge to throw out the closing argument submitted by Gamso, who also serves as legal director for the American Civil Liberties Union’s Ohio chapter, saying that he didn’t follow the judge’s instructions on how he should present his argument.

Gamso also had asked Burge to reconsider allowing him to interview the three members of the execution team with medical training, something Burge had previously refused.

In his closing argument, Cillo also renewed his objections to Burge even holding hearings on the constitutionality of lethal injection, saying that the judge shouldn’t even consider the issue unless McCloud and Rivera are convicted and sentenced to death.

Burge and the Ohio Supreme Court both rejected that argument, and Burge held hearings earlier this year in which two anesthesiologists testified that the lethal injection protocols used in Ohio were sound, as long as they are done correctly.

But the defense expert, Mark Heath, argued that if the first drug in the process — a sedative — didn’t keep an inmate unconscious, the second and third drugs — which paralyze the condemned inmate and stop his heart — would cause excruciating pain.

Mark Dershwitz, who testified for prosecutors in the case, said the amount of the sedative used by the state is powerful enough to kill an inmate without the aid of the other two drugs.

That prompted Gamso to say that the state should switch to using only the sedative, although he remains opposed to the death penalty.

Cillo countered that a recent U.S. Supreme Court decision upheld lethal injection and Gamso had failed to prove that there was a significant chance of something going wrong.

Contact Brad Dicken at 329-7147 or bdicken@chroniclet.com.

Do defendants in Georgia have any right at all to competent representation?

During his five years as a justice of the Georgia Supreme Court, four of them as chief justice, Norman S. Fletcher says he voted to affirm "countless" murder convictions and a significant number of death sentences. But today Judge Fletcher is having second thoughts about one man he voted to send to the executioner in June 1993.

Curtis Osborne is scheduled to be put to death by the state of Georgia tomorrow night for a gruesome double murder he committed in 1990. There is no question that Osborne is guilty. But Fletcher says neither Osborne's jury nor the Georgia Supreme Court knew the full truth about his history at the time they made their decisions. Most importantly, he says, they didn't know that Osborne's lawyer was a racist and had never put in the time needed to present his client's mental problems and abused past, having concluded that, "The little nigger deserves the death penalty."

On Monday, despite a letter from Fletcher and other testimony, the Georgia parole board rejected without comment Osborne's appeal to have his sentence commuted to life in prison. This is a monument to the bankruptcy of the constitutional right to be represented by an attorney. The Supreme Court has never explicitly stated what level of competence is required to satisfy the Sixth Amendment's right to counsel, instead inviting state and local bar associations to come up with their own standards. But the local bars have been notoriously unwilling to challenge the performance of their bad-egg members. This case demonstrates that it's past time for the high court to wade back in and demand rigorous standards to which lawyers are held accountable. Osborne's lawyers are filing a series of last-minute appeals in an attempt to save his life.

The lawyer that Georgia assigned to Curtis Osborne, Johnny Mostiler, barely lifted a finger to defend him. Mostiler never hired a psychiatrist to examine evidence that Osborne was a victim of childhood abuse, and was borderline retarded, despite a court-ordered sanity evaluation that had found "indications of depression, paranoia, and suicidal ideation." He never examined the history of mental illness in Osborne's family because, he said, he didn't know how to conduct that kind of investigation. Mostiler called no expert witnesses to testify for his client and didn't bother to interview the state's experts before they appeared at trial. And he rejected appointment of a second attorney to help with Osborne's defense, which the American Bar Association and all serious death penalty litigators say is essential if a capital murder defendant is to receive a fair trial.

And then there is the matter of Mostiler's alleged racism and how it might have affected his defense of Osborne. The most explosive evidence of racial bias is contained in an affidavit by one Gerald Steven Huey, a client of Mostiler's. In addition to the quote Judge Fletcher cites, Huey says Mostiler made it clear that he would not be spending much money on Osborne's defense because "that little nigger deserves the chair." Huey also charges that Mostiler was offered a plea bargain under which Osborne would have received a life sentence in exchange for a guilty plea, but that the lawyer said he "would never tell Mr. Osborne about it because he deserved to die."

Huey might not be the most credible witness on the planet. He's serving a life sentence for murdering and dismembering a drinking pal and didn't come forward with his claims until 2000, long after Osborne's trial and appeal. By then, Mostiler was dead and couldn't defend himself. But Huey isn't alone in suggesting that Mostiler's racism might have infected Osborne's defense. In March 2000, Derrick Middlebrooks, an African-American on trial for selling cocaine, asked the trial court judge to replace Mostiler, saying the lawyer told him that he wouldn't go to a particular neighborhood "because them niggers would kill him."

Asked by the trial judge about the comments, Mostiler didn't deny them. And in a new affidavit filed on Monday, Arlene Evans, who practiced law in the same county as Mostiler, says she also heard him use "racial slurs like 'nigger.' " She recounted one conversation in which, "Mr. Mostiler said he thought young black men were lazy and asked me why I thought that was so."

Perhaps most importantly, Evans says she has first-hand knowledge of Mostiler's failure to adequately defend Osborne. Evans was initially assigned to Osborne's case, after he was charged with murder in 1990. Because she had never tried a death penalty case, she asked the court to appoint co-counsel, and Mostiler was assigned to work alongside her. But over the next several months, Evans said Mostiler "was always too busy to meet with me or me and Mr. Osborne." Evans says she withdrew from the case in April 1991, eight months after Osborne's arrest, out of frustration, "Because I did not feel I was qualified to handle a death penalty case, and because I did not believe Mr. Mostiler was prepared to defend Curtis Osborne." Unfortunately for Osborne, that left him with only Mostiler. Although Evans insists she has spoken out about her former co-counsel before, it is a great pity that her detailed allegations did not surface until Monday.

In his letter to the parole board, Judge Fletcher explains why he did nothing to correct the injustice in Osborne's representation when the case came to him on appeal in 1993. His "weak response," he said, was a result of the limited review appellate judges provide: They can address only issues raised and ruled on by a lower court judge. Because of Mostiler's "grave shortcomings," the mitigating evidence about his past that might have saved Osborne's life never got a hearing. One state trial judge considered and rejected a claim that Osborne deserved a new trial because of Mostiler's ineffective lawyering, but that ruling came before the evidence of Mostiler's racial views emerged. No court has addressed the evidence that Mostiler's failure to act on his client's behalf might have resulted from his racial animosity. Now the only chance for Osborne is that the Georgia Supreme Court or the U.S. Supreme Court will order a lower court to review Mostiler's track record. It's a slim one.

If Your Lawyer Wants You Executed

By David Von Drehle

In 1990, Curtis Osborne, a small-time cocaine dealer and addict, killed two people in a dispute over $400. His crime revulsed the town of Griffin, Georgia, one measure of which was the bigoted remark a local inmate reported hearing at the jail: "That little nigger deserves the chair."

As repulsive as the remark was on its own, far more disturbing was the fact that the person alleged to have uttered it was Osborne's own court-appointed lawyer. And somehow, through years of appeals in state and federal courts, no tribunal has squarely confronted this basic but fundamental question: is a person on trial for his life entitled to a lawyer who does not hold him in contempt and believe he should be executed?

Osborne is scheduled to be executed Wednesday. His last-ditch plea to have his sentence commuted to life in prison was denied this morning by the state Board of Pardons and Paroles, despite supportive letters from Georgia luminaries including former President Jimmy Carter and former deputy attorney general Larry Thompson — a Democrat and a Republican, respectively.

His case is a vivid example of the way legal "technicalities" have tipped the scales from favoring death row prisoners to favoring the state. Georgia officials, after all, never had to try to prove that Osborne's lawyer was not a bigot, or even that his feelings about his client shouldn't matter one way or the other. Instead, they were the beneficiaries of court rulings that said the issue was moot for procedural reasons.

From the record of his case, Curtis Osborne was a numbskull junkie who managed to sell his friend's motorcycle for $400, then pocketed the money. When the friend came after the cash, Osborne shot the man and his girlfriend at close range. He later tried to explain the gunshot residue on his hands by saying that he fed his dog doses of gunpowder, but the authorities weren't impressed. Osborne eventually cracked and confessed.

Soon after, the flamboyant Johnny Mostiler, a local lawyer known for his abundant jewelry, handlebar moustache and overwhelming caseload, became his attorney. In those days, Mostiler represented all the indigent inmates in the county for a flat annual fee, hundreds and hundreds of felony cases. His clients often filed into court shackled to one another in rows to enter their guilty pleas, according to a profile in American Prospect magazine. So suffice it to say that he didn't have a lot of time for Osborne.

Preparation for a first-rate capital defense can often take hundreds of hours, including an extensive investigation of the accused's childhood, mental health, drug abuse history and so on. But the law does not promise a first-rate defense. As a panel of judges from the 11th Circuit Court of Appeals said in denying Osborne's request for a new trial, "for a petitioner to show deficient performance" by an attorney, "he must establish that no competent counsel would have taken the action that his counsel did take." And how do you show that? "There are no absolute rules," the judges said vaguely.

So throughout Osborne's legal odyssey state and federal judges combed through his appeals in an effort to decide just how third-rate Mostiler's work actually was. Osborne argued that Mostiler should have uncovered exculpatory evidence. The courts decided that the evidence wasn't exculpatory enough. Osborne's lawyers said Mostiler should have called experts to challenge the prosecution case. Courts decided that experts would not have changed the outcome. Osborne challenged the failure to conduct a robust examination of the role of mental illness and addiction in his unraveling. The courts believed Mostiler's testimony that he never saw any evidence of drug abuse or illness. Instead, Mostiler chose to argue to the jury that Osborne's crimes were not premeditated, an ultimately unsuccessful strategy that appeals courts found to be nonetheless reasonable.

All in all, Osborne's has been a fairly typical capital appeal, in which the defense team heaps allegations on the original lawyer — the high-living Mostiler died of a coronary in 2000 — while the prosecution extols the brilliance of the condemned man's trial attorney. "Mostiler was the toughest trial lawyer in Spalding County," one prosecutor declared of a man far better known for engineering guilty pleas than for winning cases in the courtroom.

Which leaves the alleged racist remarks and the attorney's apparent belief that his own client deserved to die.

Those words didn't actually surface until years after they were allegedly uttered, when another Mostiler client at the time of Osborne's trial reported the slur. He said Mostiler indicated that he wasn't planning to work very hard to save the killer and that he wasn't telling Osborne that the state was offering a plea bargain to life in prison. The issue of the plea deal had already been raised in an earlier appeal before the lawyer's death, and when Mostiler testified that he conveyed the state's offer and Osborne turned it down, the appellate judges chose to believe him over his former client.

It's too late to ask him about the n-word in Osborne's case — but this is not the first time Mostiler has been accused of using the word to describe a client. In another case, a defendant unsuccessfully tried to get a new lawyer because Mostiler was calling him hateful names. When the judge turned to the lawyer, Mostiler didn't deny it. "I honestly can't say whether I said it or not. I don't use those terms out in public," was as far as he would go.

But neither Mostiler nor the State of Georgia was ever pressed on the matter. State courts ruled that Osborne waited too long to raise the issue, and federal courts deferred to that decision. The 11th Circuit panel closed the matter in dry and technical terms: "The state trial court relied upon Georgia procedural rules in denying Osborne relief on this claim. As such, the claim is barred from federal review."

Of course, we are talking about a confessed killer of two people. Some Americans believe that all such aggravated murders should be punished by death. That's not the law, however: in 1976, the Supreme Court ruled that mandatory death sentences are unconstitutional. Instead, each capital case must be individually scrutinized on its own merits.

But is this individual scrutiny possible when the prisoner's attorney slurs him and says he deserves to die? For Curtis Osborne, the ultimate insult is that such a crucial question is barred from review.

Protests Set to Protest Sonnier-Bey's Execution on Tuesday

TEXAS DEATH PENALTY ABOLITION MOVEMENT

PO Box 595, Houston TX 77001 ~ 713-503-2633 ~ Abolition.Movement@hotmail.com

Meetings on 1st Tuesday of the month at S.H.A.P.E. Center, 3815 Live Oak at Alabama at 7:00 PM

June 3, 2008

Press Advisory Contact: Gloria Rubac 713-503-2633



Texas to Resume Executions Despite Evidence That the System is Fatally Flawed;
Protests Against the Execution of Derrick Sonnier-Bey Planned in Houston and Huntsville



Activists will gather around the state of Texas today to protest the first execution in over eight months in the state. Derrick Sonnier-Bey is scheduled to become the 406th victim of the country’s busiest death chamber at 6:00 PM on Tuesday in Huntsville.



The Texas Death Penalty Abolition Movement will hold two protests on Tuesday.



In Houston protesters will gather at 5:00 PM at the Mecom Fountain with signs and banners to protest the execution. Mecom Fountain is located at the entrance to Herman Park where Main Street and Montrose Blvd. Meet in a traffic circle.



Also at 5:00 PM, a rally will be held outside of the death house in Huntsville with speakers and poetry as well as statements from death row prisoners. The Walls Unit is at 815 12th Street at Avenue I in Huntsville, east of Interstate 45’s exit # 116.
Featured speakers in Huntsville include Puerto Rican rapper Capital X, who recently completed a “Walk 4 Life” from New Jersey to Texas to protest capital punishment, and Hannaleah Lyon, also from New Jersey, who is a leader in the Howard Guidry Justice Committee fighting to save an innocent Guidry from execution. New Jersey recently took capital punishment off their books.

“For eight months Texas had not executed anyone and what has happened? Nothing unusual. Crime did not rise. The sky did not fall. And business has gone on as usual,” said Njeri Shakur, an organizer with the Texas Death Penalty Abolition Movement based in Houston.

“Despite the U.S. Supreme Court’s ruling that the lethal injection protocol is constitutional, we say there is no right way to do the wrong thing. The whole system is broken and executions must stop now. With reports being released regularly about the racism involved in capital cases, including a report about Harris County to be released in the fall in the Houston Law Review, and with the Houston Crime Lab still operating under questionable circumstances, the system is not working.”

“Since 1973, 129 people in 26 states have been released from death row with evidence of their innocence. A few days ago, DNA has proven that death row prisoner Michael Blair is not guilty of the 1993 murder and rape of Ashley Estell, a case which prompted new, tough sex offender laws called “Ashley’s Laws,” Shakur concluded.

Protest will also take place in over a dozen cities around the state, including one in Austin at the state capital.

Clemency denied to inmate set to die Wednesday

By RHONDA COOK
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Published on: 06/02/08

The State Board of Pardons and Paroles refused Monday to grant
clemency to double murderer Curtis Osborne, who is scheduled to die
by lethal injection Wednesday.
Osborne's advocates argued that he should not die because his trial
attorney, the late Johnny Mostiler, was a racist and did not try to
persuade a Spalding County jury to sentence Osborne to life because
of his mental illness, drug addiction and dysfunctional family history.
The five-member board apparently rejected pleas for a commutation
made by former President Jimmy Carter, former U.S. Attorney General
Griffin Bell and former deputy U.S. Attorney General Larry Thompson.
The board also was not swayed by the arguments of former Georgia
Supreme Court Chief Justice Norman Fletcher, who said that, because
of court rules, he was unable on three occasions to rule in favor of
Osborne when valid appeals were before the high court.
Osborne was sentenced to death in Spalding County for fatally
shooting Arthur Jones and Linda Lisa Seaborne on Aug. 7, 1990.
Osborne allegedly killed Jones because Osborne didn't want to give
him the $400 he got for selling Jones' motorcycle. Seaborne was
killed because she was there.
Osborne is black while his trial attorney, Mostiler, was white.
The board's decision came 11 days after it commuted the death
sentence of Samuel David Crowe little more than two hours before he
was to have been executed for a murder he admitted committing.
The board did not give a reason for that decision.
If Osborne is executed, he would be the second Georgia death row
inmate put to death this year. On May 6, William Earl Lynd was
executed for the 1988 slaying of his live-in girlfriend, Ginger Moore.

Stand on principle to stop executions

Gov. Martin O'Malley moved on May 22 toward ending Maryland's moratorium
on executions ("O'Malley OK's step toward executions," May 23).

Like me, Mr. O' Malley opposes the death penalty.

Our two previous governors favored the death penalty; together they
executed 4 men.

Were I in Mr. O'Malley's position, and asked to issue a death warrant, I
would resign.

Nothing has more dignity than standing on one's principles.

No job or career is worth killing one human being.

Gerald Ben Shargel ---- Baltimore

(source: Letter to the Editor, Baltimore Sun)

Death penalty: 2008 'banner' year?

While capital punishment opponents still hope to find a way to ban it,
death by lethal injection could be in more frequent use in Mississippi.

After the state's execution of Earl Wesley Berry on May 21, Attorney
General Jim Hood and Corrections Commissioner Chris Epps said Mississippi
could executive three more inmates during 2008. One of those could come by
the end of the summer, according to The Associated Press.

Last month, when the nation's highest court upheld lethal injection,
Berry's execution was allowed to be rescheduled. He had been set to die
Oct. 30, 2007, but the court stayed it with only 19 minutes to go. The
deliberation over the constitutionality of lethal injection in a Kentucky
case stopped executions nationwide.

After 7 months, Berry became the second person in the United States to be
executed following the U.S. Supreme Court decision. He also became the 5th
Mississippi death-row inmate to die by lethal injection.

Berry's execution went smoothly and by the book, Epps said. The high court
denied appeals by Berry's attorneys that he should have been spared
because he was mentally retarded and that Mississippi's lethal injection
process is unconstitutionally cruel.

Some of the 35 states that use lethal injection will be carrying out their
death sentences now, too.

For families of victims, like those of Berry's victim, the cost of
awaiting closure is high. Berry confessed to abducting Mary Bounds back in
1987 as she left church choir practice in Houston, then beating her to
death and dumping her body on a rural road.

Following the execution, Bounds' widower, Charles Bounds, said: "I just
think it took too long. I have had this on my mind for 20 years."

Though Berry had confessed, Epps said he never expressed remorse for the
crime.

There are plenty more awaiting appeals where Berry came from: 64 inmates
remain on Mississippi's death row - 3 women, 61 men, the AP reports. 31
are white, 32 black and 1 is Asian. The youngest is Terry Pitchford, 21,
convicted in Grenada County; the oldest, Gerald James Holland, 70,
convicted in Harrison County. The longest-serving death row inmate,
Richard Jordan, 61, was convicted in Jackson County 30 years ago.

Mississippi's last previous execution was Oct. 18, 2006, when Bobby Glen
Wilcher was put to death.

Some might say it's a crass way of looking at it, but for the state's
taxpayers, executions are cost efficient.

Epps said it costs $14,000 to execute an inmate, including staff overtime
and preparing the death chamber at the Mississippi State Penitentiary at
Parchman. By contrast, he said, it costs more than $350,000 to incarcerate
Berry for 20 years.

With this impediment to imposition of the ultimate penalty, the death row
numbers could start to shift.

Let justice be done.

(source: Jackson Clarion-Ledger)

Texas set to resume executions this week

The nation's busiest death chamber reopens this week after a nearly
9-month hiatus with the scheduled lethal injection of a former part-time
car-wash worker for killing a suburban Houston woman and her young son 17
years ago.

The execution Tuesday of Derrick Sonnier, 40, would make him the fourth
prisoner put to death in the nation since the U.S. Supreme Court in April
upheld lethal injection as a proper method of capital punishment but the
first in Texas since last Sept. 25. That's when convicted killer Michael
Richard was executed in Huntsville the same day the high court decided to
consider a challenge from 2 condemned inmates in Kentucky who contended
lethal injection was unconstitutionally cruel.

The Kentucky case effectively stalled all executions around the nation.
For Texas, where 405 convicted killers have received lethal injection
since the state resumed carrying out capital punishment in 1982, the
execution lull has been the lengthiest in 2 decades.

"I pretty much figured ... it was just a delay," said convicted murderer
Karl Chamberlain, set to die a week after Sonnier for a slaying in Dallas
County. "So after they (the Supreme Court) made that ruling, I was
expecting a date any time."

"It's going to be a bloodbath with the state of Texas, like old day
lynchings," said Kevin Watts, who has an execution date of Oct. 16 for a
triple killing in San Antonio.

He and Sonnier are among at least 14 Texas inmates with execution dates as
Texas is poised to quickly reassume its notoriety as the country's most
active state in carrying out the death penalty. Of the 42 executions in
the United States last year, 26 were in Texas. The next busiest states
were Alabama and Oklahoma, each with 3.

Statistics kept by the Death Penalty Information Center list only 9 other
inmates from elsewhere in the nation with active execution dates. Sonnier
is the 1st of 3 Texas prisoners scheduled to be taken to the death chamber
over 14 days in June.

Sonnier, taken to court in Houston to hear a state district judge deliver
the news, declined to speak with reporters in the weeks preceding his
death date.

The U.S. Supreme Court last October refused to review Sonnier's case and
his attorney had no plans to raise additional appeals.

"There's just not a lot to work with," lawyer Jani Maselli said. "It's
horribly frustrating."

Sonnier, born in Sulphur, La., and raised in Houston, was condemned for
the slayings of a neighbor, Melody Flowers, 27, and her 2-year-old son,
Patrick, at their apartment in Humble, a northeast Houston suburb. Flowers
had been stabbed, beaten with a hammer until the tool's handle broke, and
strangled. Her child was stabbed 8 times. Both victims were found floating
in a bathtub.

Evidence showed he had been obsessed with the woman and had stalked her.
Witnesses testified how they repeatedly chased him away from her place
where he peered through her windows and even hid in her apartment.

Sonnier's defense was that someone else was responsible for the murders.
Neighbors pointed him out to police shortly after the bodies were
discovered. Flowers' blouse and a towel belonging to her were found in a
trash can in Sonnier's apartment and his DNA was identified on hair and
blood found in her apartment.

"To this day, it still hurts," Sebrina Flowers, 23, who was 7 when her
mother was killed, told the Houston Chronicle. She and an older sister and
younger brother returned from school to find their home a crime scene.

Sonnier initially was scheduled to die in February. His execution date,
however, was withdrawn by Harris County prosecutors because of the Supreme
Court's pending review of lethal injection procedures, subsequently upheld
by the justices in a 7-2 vote.

Chamberlain is set to die on June 11 for the rape-slaying of a Dallas
woman, Felicia Prechtl, at the apartment complex where they both lived.
Her death occurred in August 1991, 1 month before Sonnier's crime.
Chamberlain acknowledges the killing, blaming drugs and alcohol for his
violence.

Then the following week, Charles Hood is to die June 17 for a double
slaying in the Dallas suburb of Plano in 1989. He insists he is innocent
of the deaths of Ronald Williamson and Traci Lynn Wallace.

At least 3 executions already are on the Texas schedule for July, 4 more
for August, three for September and Watts in October.

Among the inmates with dates is Michael Rodriguez, who has ordered his
appeals dropped and is volunteering to die for his role in the murder of a
suburban Dallas police officer on Christmas Eve 2000. Rodriguez was one of
the infamous "Texas 7" convicts who escaped from a prison south of San
Antonio and were caught five weeks later in Colorado, but not before
fatally shooting Irving police officer Aubrey Hawkins during the robbery
of a sporting goods store. His date is Aug. 14.

On the Net: Derrick Sonnier http://www.deathrow-usa.us/TXfriendsneeded.htm

Texas Department of Criminal Justice execution schedule
http://www.tdcj.state.tx.us/stat/scheduledexecutions.htm

(source: Associated Press) **********************************

Off death row, killer seeks less jail time

A convicted killer whose death sentence was overturned by a county judge who found him mentally retarded has appealed the judge's decision to resentence him to life in prison without parole.

By filing the appeal, Raymond Smith, convicted in the 1994 murder of police informant Ronald Lally, isn't risking Rothgery's finding that he's retarded, a decision that means the state cant execute him, said his attorney Alan Rossman.

Rossman said Rothgery needs to set a sentencing hearing and decide if Smith should receive a sentence of 20 years to life or 30 years to life.

Those are the only potential sentences that Smith could receive, he said, because life without parole wasn't a possible sentence in 1994.

"We're challenging what we believe to be an improper sentence," he said.

County Prosecutor Dennis Will said he believes that life without parole was a possible sentence when Lally was killed, but he needs to review the old law and Smith's appeal before deciding what to do.

Rossman said the appeal doesn't pertain to Rothgery's finding that Smith had an IQ of 69, 1 point below the threshold that would allow him to be executed.

The U.S. Supreme Court has ruled that executing the mentally retarded is unconstitutional.

But Will said Smith's appeal could open up that to review from a higher
court as well.

Smith's appeal was filed Friday, just days after Stanley Jalowiec, also convicted and sentenced to death in Lally's murder, filed a motion for a new trial.

Jalowiec's appeal argues evidence withheld by police and prosecutors would have led to him being cleared by a jury if his attorneys had access to the information during his original trial.

Daniel Smith, Raymond Smiths son, was cleared by a jury of involvement in the killing.

Rossman said Smith, 68, is happy to be off death row, where he was
confined to a cell for 23 hours a day.

Smith is now at Trumbull Correctional Institution.

"It's quite a change from death row. I think he's enjoying his time,"
he said. "He's thankful to be off the row.

(source: The Chronicle-Telegram)

***************

Inmates in 2 Fort Worth murders lose at Supreme Court

By MICHAEL GRACZYK / Associated Press


A convicted rapist paroled from Ohio and then condemned for the robbery and strangulation of his 64-year-old stepmother in Texas lost an appeal Tuesday before the U.S. Supreme Court, moving him closer to execution.

The high court refused to review the case of Reginald Perkins, 53, sent to death row for the slaying of Gertie Mae Perkins in Fort Worth 7 1/2 years ago. The woman's body was found in the trunk of her car in a parking garage.

A Tarrant County jury took just 30 minutes in 2002 to decide Reginald Perkins should be put to death. Shortly after the jury's verdict was read in court, Perkins proclaimed his innocence in a written letter read by his lawyer.

In November, a federal appeals court rejected claims he was mentally retarded and ineligible for the death penatly, that his legal help earlier had been ineffective, that the Texas sentencing statute was unconstitutional and that he was innocent of the murder. It's that appeal the Supreme Court refused to review Tuesday.

Evidence at his trial showed he pawned his stepmother's wedding ring and wrote fraudulent checks from the account of the family trucking business in Fort Worth. When Gertie Perkins showed up missing, police summoned to her home found a carpet removed, a phone cord disconnected and sheets missing from a bed.

He became a suspect after detectives learned of his previous convictions in Ohio for rape and attempted rape and that he had been a suspect in two killings in Cleveland in the 1980s. When arrested, he directed his father and police to the body.

Perkins also acknowledged the slaying to a fellow inmate while awaiting trial and said his motive was robbery.

At the punishment phase of his trial, jurors heard testimony that he pleaded guilty to rape and attempted rape of two 12-year-old girls in 1982 and that he had been implicated in the strangulation of two women. One of them was the mother of the girl he raped. The other was the sister of his ex-wife.

In 1986, he had been paroled from Ohio after receiving a life prison term for the rape conviction. He was returned from parole eight years later but released again in February 2000. His stepmother's murder occurred 10 months later.

Perkins does not have an execution date.

In a second Texas death row case Tuesday, Elkie Taylor, convicted in another Fort Worth case, lost his bid for a rehearing before the justices.

In March, the court refused to review Taylor's conviction and sentence for strangling a 65-year-old Fort Worth man with two wire coat hangers and then leading police on a four-hour chase in a stolen 18-wheeler.

Like Perkins, Taylor also had been contending in appeals he shouldn't have been condemned because he is mentally retarded. He was sentenced to die for the 1993 robbery and murder of Otis Flake at Flake's Fort Worth home. Authorities said it was the second killing linked to Taylor over an 11-day period. The Milwaukee native had been on parole for about three months at the time of the slayings, freed after serving less than nine months of an eight-year sentence for burglary.

In 2003, two days before he was set to be executed, he won a reprieve from the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals because state prison records showed he may be mentally retarded and ineligible for execution under Supreme Court guidelines.

The Texas appeals court later lifted its reprieve. Lower federal courts also have denied his subsequent appeals.

Taylor, who does not yet have an execution date, climbed in the cab of the stolen truck and led police on a chase from Fort Worth to Waco that ended when a state trooper shot out the truck's tires. In the chase, he tried to ram police cars and run over two troopers standing on the side of a road.

Authorities contended Taylor and an accomplice took cash and items from Flake's house so they could be sold to buy crack cocaine. His accomplice, Darryl Birdow, was sentenced in 1994 to life in prison. Authorities said Taylor admitted involvement in a similar slaying of an 87-year-old Fort Worth man 11 days earlier but blamed the killing on a partner.

FAMILY SEEKS CLOSURE

By Tim Yovich

Murderer took more than life of young mom

The brother says the man who killed his sister is ‘animal’ and wants to watch him die.

HUBBARD — Tom Heiss stands quietly beside his sister’s grave at Union Cemetery, asking why her murderer hasn’t been put to death.

“I want to see my sister rest in peace,” Heiss said. “It’s about time to get this over with.”

Heiss, 40, who lives on Youngstown’s West Side, is the brother of Tami Engstrom, who was murdered Feb. 8, 1991, near the Brookfield Township home of her murderer, Kenneth Biros.

An autopsy showed that she had suffered 91 injuries before she died. She was beaten, sexually mutilated and dismembered, her body parts being found in two Pennsylvania communities — a 180-mile radius — and in the trunk of Biros’ car.

Her ring was found in Biros’ basement.

One of the few ways she could be identified was by a small tattoo of an ice cream cone on her shoulder.

“I couldn’t imagine doing that to an animal,” Heiss said with emotion. “He is an animal.”

Execution of Biros has been postponed because of constant appeals.

Dennis Watkins, Trumbull County prosecutor, has asked the Ohio Supreme Court to set an execution date for Biros, a motion that is being opposed by his attorney.

The U.S. Supreme Court ruled Sept. 25, 2007, that the “three-drug cocktail” used in executions is not cruel and unusual punishment, making way for Watkins to seek an execution date from the Ohio Supreme Court.

Attys. Timothy Sweeney and John Parker, both of Cleveland, who represent Biros, have filed a memorandum opposing setting a date.

They claim that delaying his execution doesn’t harm the state and would be a rush to judgment.

They also contend that Biros was not convicted of capital aggravated murder, thus is not eligible for the death penalty.

Biros did confess killing the young woman.

Engstrom, 22 at the time, had gone to the Nickelodeon Lounge in Masury to visit her uncle, a regular patron of the tavern. She had been socializing.

Biros, whom she didn’t know, was to drive her home.

She never made it back to her husband, Andrew, and their son, Casey.

Debi Heiss says her sister drank two draft beers and a shot of a weak liqueur but not enough to cause her to pass out. Her blood-alcohol was 0.11, slightly above the 0.08 legal limit. Debi Heiss believes Biros slipped something into her sister’s drink.

Her brother won’t discuss that aspect of the case.

But he has nothing good to say about Biros, who initially said that Engstrom had jumped from his vehicle.

“He’s a liar,” Heiss said, calling attention to shortly after she turned up missing. Biros claimed to be helping police with the investigation. Heiss’ two uncles had driven Biros around to find the area where she jumped from his vehicle, but there was no sign of her while Biros knew where her body parts were located.

Over the years, Heiss has said very little publicly about his sister’s death.

“You can hold something in for so long,” he said.

Biros was convicted and sentenced to death later in 1991 and he has remained on death row because of the multiple appeals.

At Union Cemetery, Engstrom’s headstone is between those of her husband’s grave and that of her father-in-law, Charles Engstrom.

Her husband died of a heart attack, her father-in-law of cancer.

“They both died of broken hearts,” Tom Heiss lamented. “It tears your heart out.” Her husband just couldn’t take the totality of the events of his wife’s death anymore, he said.

“If this crime doesn’t deserve the death sentence, I want to know what does,” Heiss said.

Lethal injection is the manner of execution in Ohio. Heiss pointed out that it’s only a pinch in the arm, compared with the pain his sister suffered.

He believes that an execution shouldn’t be painless because it’s meant to punish.

“I don’t know how many years this has taken off my life,” Heiss said, noting he constantly thinks of his sister. He continues to have nightmares about what she suffered.

Heiss, his sister and mother, Mary Jane Heiss, want to watch the execution.

Time is working against his mother because she is frail from illness and weighs less than 100 pounds.

“He destroyed a lot of lives, not just mine,” Heiss commented.

He said he could better cope with his sister’s death if she had died in an accident or from a disease such as cancer but can’t bring himself to understand this type of death.

It also nags Heiss that Biros is treated “like a king” on death row. If he needs medical attention, he gets it at taxpayers’ expense.

On March 20, 2007, Biros was scheduled for execution in Lucasville, but it was halted because of a last-minute appeal. Heiss, his sister and their mother were at the prison then and plan to return when he is again scheduled to die.

yovich@vindy.com

At The Death House Door. (Video)

At the Death House Door is a personal and intimate look at the death penalty in Texas

through the eyes of Pastor Carroll Pickett, who served 15 years as the death house chaplain to the infamous "Walls" prison unit in Huntsville.

During Pickett's remarkable career journey, he presided over 95 executions, including the world’s first lethal injection. After each execution, Pickett recorded an audiotape account of his trip to the death chamber.

The film also focuses on the story of Carlos De Luna, a convict Pickett counseled and whose execution troubled Pickett more than any other. He firmly believed De Luna was innocent, and the film tracks the investigative efforts of a team of Chicago Tribune reporters who have turned up evidence that strongly suggests he was.

From award-winning directors Steve James ("Hoop Dreams") and Peter Gilbert ("Vietnam: Long Time Coming").

Winner, Inspiration Award at Full Frame Documentary Film Festival and Best Documentary Feature at Atlanta Film Festival

http://www.ifc.com/video/On-IFC/Documentaries/At-The-Death-House-Door/1466826041

Va. Executes Man, Ending De Facto Moratorium

Killer of Store Owner Is First to Die Since Supreme Court Put Cases on Hold
By Jerry Markon
Washington Post Staff Writer
Wednesday, May 28, 2008; B01

Convicted killer Kevin Green was put to death by lethal injection
last night after a federal judge rejected a last-minute request to
stop the execution. He became the first inmate to die by lethal
injection in Virginia since 2006.

The execution, which was scheduled to take place at 9 p.m. last
night, was delayed for about an hour when Green's defense attorneys
filed a request for a temporary restraining order blocking the
execution in federal court in Richmond. It was rejected by U.S.
District Judge James R. Spencer in Richmond at 9:40 p.m., according
to the Virginia attorney general's office.

Officials said Kaine then instructed authorities at the Greensville
Correctional Center in Jarrett to proceed with the execution, and
Green's attorneys decided against pursuing an appeal to the U.S.
Court of Appeals.

At 10:05 p.m., Virginia officials said Green, who killed a
southeastern Virginia convenience store owner 10 years ago, became
the first person executed in the state since 2006, as the U.S.
Supreme Court considered the constitutionality of death by lethal
injection.

But it was the first time in recent memory that last-minute legal
maneuvering had caused such a dramatic delay.

"The Vaughan family suffered a horrible loss as a result of Mr.
Green's crime," said Timothy M. Richardson, an attorney for Green.
"Nevertheless, we just executed a man with the IQ of an 11-year-old
child."

The U.S. Supreme Court rejected a stay of execution for Green
yesterday, although Justices John Paul Stevens and Ruth Bader
Ginsburg said they would have granted the stay. Kaine denied a
petition for clemency, saying he had carefully reviewed the case but
found "no compelling reason to set aside the sentence that was
recommended by the jury."

Green's attorneys had argued to the governor that he could not be
constitutionally put to death because, with an IQ of 65, he is
mentally retarded. The Supreme Court outlawed the execution of
mentally disabled people in 2002, but left it up to states to define
mental retardation.

Although the Supreme Court upheld the constitutionality of lethal
injection last month, a federal appeals court in Richmond is weighing
a challenge to the three-drug method of lethal injection used to put
Green to death last night. Attorneys for convicted killer Christopher
S. Emmett are arguing that Virginia's protocol is unconstitutional,
saying that prisoners are not fully anesthetized before being
administered drugs that can cause excruciating pain.

The execution would signal the resumption of capital punishment in
the state after it was effectively put on hold in the fall because
the U.S. Supreme Court was debating the constitutionality of lethal
injection. Kaine also twice delayed the execution of another inmate
in 2006.

Virginia has executed 99 people since the U.S. Supreme Court
reinstated capital punishment in 1976, second only to Texas, which
has executed 405. The last inmate executed in Virginia was John
Yancey Schmitt, who died by lethal injection in November 2006.

State lawyers say Virginia's lethal injection protocol is "virtually
identical" to the procedures in Kentucky that the Supreme Court upheld.

Green was convicted in the killing of Patricia L. Vaughan, who along
with her husband owned a small grocery store in Brunswick County.

Staff writer Robert Barnes contributed to this report.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/05/27/
AR2008052702257.html?nav=rss_nation

DNA testing may exonerate 3 more Dallas County inmates

The Dallas County District Attorney's office has approved 3 additional post-conviction DNA tests for inmates seeking exoneration, prosecutor Mike Ware said Friday.

This brings the total of approved tests to 20 for those who were denied
under previous district attorney Bill Hill. Of those: 2 men have been
exonerated, 2 men were confirmed as the perpetrators and the other
cases are in various stages of testing or waiting to be tested.

Mr. Ware, who oversees the conviction integrity unit, declined to name
the inmates the DA's office agreed to test.

The review of about 350 inmates' previously denied tests is part of a
partnership between District Attorney Craig Watkins and the Innocence
Project of Texas. About 175 requests have now been reviewed.

Testing is typically denied if there is no evidence to test for DNA or
if testing does not prove guilt or innocence.

The 3 inmates, as well as others approved for testing, will not be
tested until the county finds out next month if it received an $800,000 grant,
which would be used by the conviction integrity unit.

Dallas County's 17 exonerations from genetic evidence is more than any
other county in the nation since the state passed a law in 2001
allowing post-conviction testing.

Collin County DA admits Michael Blair should not be on death row

Months after DNA evidence proved that a hair used to connect Michael
Blair to Ashley Estell did not belong to either person, the Collin County DA
has finally admitted that Michael Blair's conviction cannot stand. On death
row, he is case number 999122, but he won't be there for long.


Don't worry, though. Because this man has confessed to other brutal
sexual assaults, he won't be freed. Ever. But a Texas DA, a Texas jury and
several appeals courts almost had the blood of an innocent man (in this
case) on their hands. He was convicted because he was a known child
molestor who showed an interest in the case. If the process moved as
quickly as death penalty proponents wished it did, he'd be dead by now.

John Roach released this statement today:

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE:

JOHN R. ROACH

Criminal District Attorney

COLLIN COUNTY COURTHOUSE

2100 BLOOMDALE RD., SUITE 20004

McKINNEY, TEXAS 75071

www.collincountyda.com

May 23, 2008

In November 2006, in light of the pending appellate litigation and the
potential outcome from that, I assembled a select group of
investigators and prosecutors from my office and assigned them the task of
re-investigating the Michael Blair capital murder case. Since then, the
Team has expended over 5,000 hours, interviewed more than 50 witnesses
and spent over $47,000 on its investigation. They exhaustively reviewed
records, files and evidence related to the case as well as tracking down
new leads and information. DNA testing was performed on a number of
items of evidence that had never before been DNA tested. The result: the Team
discovered no new evidence connecting Mr. Blair to Ashley Estell as well as no new evidence demonstrating Mr. Blair's guilt.

However, through its work, the Team identified at least one other person of interest. This person not only exhibited suspicious activity after the murder, much as Mr. Blair did, but this person cannot be scientifically excluded as a contributor to a piece of DNA evidence in the case.
Unfortunately, despite strenuous efforts, the Team has been unable to eliminate or conclusively connect this person to the offense.

At this time, the expert hair comparison testimony in trial that connected
Ashley Estell and Mr. Blair has been disproved by DNA testing of a type
that was not available at the time of the trial in 1994. None of the
hairs belong to either Ashley Estell or Mr. Blair. No other credible,
individualized forensic evidence connects Ashley Estell and Mr. Blair.

Although Mr. Blair has not been exonerated, I believe the evidence as
it now stands meets the criteria for relief under the law. There is no
good faith argument to support the current conviction in light of the facts
and the law as they now exist. Therefore, under my duty to not only uphold
the law but to see that justice is done, the State is joining today with
the defense team in its request for relief.

This case remains in litigation and under investigation. Accordingly, this office cannot comment further on the matter at this time.

John R. Roach

Criminal District Attorney

Tim Wyatt

Collin County Public Information

210 S. McDonald St., Suite 626,

McKinney, Texas 75069

http://www.co.collin.tx.us

Cleared by DNA, man tries to reclaim his life

This is the first of two stories on DNA exonerations in Dallas, Texas.


James Woodard finds it hard to get a driver's license after 27 years in prison.

1 of 3 DALLAS, Texas (CNN) -- James Woodard is slowly returning to life. He is starting over after spending 27 years behind bars. He was wrongly imprisoned and cleared by DNA.

Routine chores are a test of endurance when the only identification card in his wallet is issued by the Texas prison system.

With his new friend, Clay Graham of the Innocence Project of Texas, serving as his guide and driver, Woodard is on the hunt for the basics of everyday life.

When he went off to prison, Ronald Reagan was president, gas was cheap, AIDS was barely on the radar and no one had a cell phone or a personal computer.

"It's sort of like waking up from a dream," Woodard said, walking through the corridors of Dallas City Hall, trying to track down his birth certificate. "When you first wake up you are first kind of groggy and then as time passes you get more coherent."

He may be free, but he doesn't have his life back yet -- or even proof of his life. He crisscrosses the city looking for the birth certificate. Watch Woodard make the rounds

He can't open a bank account with a prison-issued I.D. He can't get a state I.D. card without a birth certificate or Social Security card. It's not easy starting over. Woodard calls it an "adventure."

Woodard was convicted of raping and murdering his girlfriend in 1981 and sentenced to life in prison. He was released on April 29, the 17th Dallas County inmate to be exonerated by DNA testing.

In one aspect at least, Woodard and the 16 others are lucky; the evidence that freed them was preserved even after their appeals were exhausted and the courts finalized their convictions. If they had been tried in a county or city that has no preservation laws, the DNA to clear them would have been destroyed long ago.

But more and more counties and states are passing laws for evidence preservation, according to the Innocence Project, practicing what Dallas County has long been doing.


Innocence Project of Texas
The Innocence Project is a national litigation and public policy organization, based in New York, dedicated to exonerating wrongfully convicted people through DNA testing. Its Texas branch has been instrumental in handling the Dallas cases.

Since 2001, Dallas County has had more DNA exonerations than any other county in the nation.

For years, Woodard wrote letters to the prosecutors from his prison cell begging and pleading for help. Woodard says he never gave up hope. Read some of Woodard's letters »

"A man gives up hope, he gives up his life. You can't never give up hope," Woodard said.

But bad luck -- or maybe even bad faith -- put Woodard in prison in the first place. Woodard's attorney says prosecutors in the Dallas County district attorney's office sat on information that could have kept Woodard out of prison.

The jury believed Woodard was the last person seen with the victim. But according to court records, there were two other men that were with her. Police never followed up on the lead and prosecutors never shared the information with defense attorneys, even though they were legally obligated to do so.

Dallas District Attorney Craig Watkins is on a mission to right the wrongs of the past. He's suggesting that it's time to start prosecuting the prosecutors to keep innocent people like James Woodard from going to prison. Learn about others exonerated by DNA evidence »

"When individuals intend to cause a person to be convicted for a crime they did not commit, that's an embarrassment for our profession," Watkins said during an interview at his office inside the Dallas courthouse.

Watkins says the prosecutor who handled Woodard's case deserves prison time. CNN made several attempts to reach the prosecutor involved. He did not return our calls.

Because it's unlikely that any of the prosecutors would face prison time under existing law, Watkins said, he wants to make it a crime from now on for prosecutors to knowingly hide or suppress evidence that could help a defendant.

"In order for us to have credibility with people and jurors and citizens I believe we had to take on this fight," he said.

Watkins' comments are sending shock waves through the Dallas legal community. Many of the prosecutors who handled the exonerated criminal cases have moved on to lucrative careers in private practice.

But many former prosecutors say the idea of criminalizing prosecutors' mistakes will have a chilling effect on the justice system.

"You need to be careful before you start saying 'Let's throw them in jail,'" said Robert Rogers, a former Dallas prosecutor.

Critics of Watkins' idea say the threat of criminal charges will drive people away from becoming prosecutors because they'd be afraid an honest mistake could cost them their careers, or even jail. But James Woodard thinks that kind of fear would make prosecutors think twice.


The only time James Woodard sounds angry about his experience, spending half of his life in prison, is when he talks about the man who prosecuted him. Watch why he has no time for anger »

"I think he should pay a penalty. I paid 27 years," Woodard said. "He took my life away from me. What's the difference if it's by a gun, by words or by lies. What's gone is gone."

DNA cleared them, but they'll never feel free

This is the second of two stories about DNA exonerations in Dallas,Texas.


After his release from prison, Wiley Fountain surfaced for this mug shot, then fell off the radar.

1 of 3 DALLAS, Texas (CNN) -- Wiley Fountain is homeless just five years after he walked out of prison an innocent man. He is one of the 17 men wrongfully convicted in Dallas County, Texas, then cleared by DNA evidence.

He was one of the lucky few to receive financial compensation from the state, but the $190,000 or so that made it into his pocket is long gone.

For awhile, Fountain wandered the streets of Dallas, looking for aluminum cans to trade in for cash. He earned the occasional meal by cleaning the parking lot of a restaurant. At night he had nowhere to go.

Now he's nowhere to be found. Just as the headlines of his release vanished from the front pages of the newspaper, Fountain, 51, has disappeared. And so have his hopes for a fresh start after spending 15 years in prison for an aggravated sexual assault he did not commit.

Clay Graham, a policy director with the Innocence Project of Texas, spends many days worrying about Fountain. In March, he received a phone call with the news that Fountain had been arrested on a theft charge and was sitting in the Dallas County jail. Graham rushed over to talk with him.

"He said being homeless ain't so bad," Graham recalled. "That's when I thought something horrible must have happened to him in prison."

A few weeks later, Fountain was released from jail and disappeared.

Fountain's story doesn't come as a shock to Jeff Blackburn, one of the lead attorneys with the Innocence Project of Texas, who represents many of the exonerated former convicts. See how the others fared »

Blackburn said these wrongly convicted men get "a double-whammy screw job." He said there's little help from the government to transition back into society and they're still viewed as criminals once they're out of prison.

"They don't have any services available to them, not even $100 and a cheap suit," Blackburn said.

What happens to these men in the months and years after their release is an often overlooked story. These men find themselves starting life at middle age. CNN recently interviewed 15 of the 17 men who have been exonerated by DNA evidence in Dallas County since 2001.

Their stories are vastly different, but they do share common themes. There is little talk of bitterness and anger. But there is great mistrust of the world around them and immense frustration.

Some men have married and had children. Eugene Henton married a woman who worked in the jail commissary. "I don't know what I would have done without her. She makes me human," Henton said.

Others came out of prison so jaded and changed that it ruined marriages and relationships. A few have had repeated troubles with the law.

And almost all of them talk about how the ghost of their past follows them wherever they go. Watch a newly released man start over »

James Waller decided the only way to escape is to leave the place where the injustice happened. After 10 years in prison, Waller is selling his house and plans to move closer to his family in northern Louisiana. "I'll feel free when I kiss Texas goodbye," he said.

Very few of the men have managed to find steady, full-time employment. They say their wrongful convictions routinely appear in criminal background checks.

Entre Nax Karage, a 37-year-old Cambodian immigrant, was wrongfully convicted of murdering his girlfriend and spent seven years in prison. Karage is married now and has a 3-year-old daughter and the family is expecting a second child next month.

He finds occasional work as a security guard.

"I go and apply for a job and it keeps popping up on my record," said Karage. "It's pretty frustrating. I didn't even do it."

The long prison sentences left many scars on the personalities of the exonerated men. Greg Wallis spent 17 years in prison, and said he's lucky to have made it out alive. There were countless fights with other inmates that left him battered, bloodied and bruised.

Wallis now lives in Lubbock, Texas, with his girlfriend --but relationships aren't easy for him. "She has a hard time understanding my ways," Wallis said. "You do all that time in prison and it rubs off, you still act that way."

Wallis doesn't want to be around people. He doesn't have a job and is seeing a psychologist.

"I don't like being around people," he said. "If I could do it I'd move into the woods and live off the land."

David Shawn Pope, a self-described "artistic Southern boy," left Dallas and moved in with his mother in Northern California after he was released.


Seven years out of prison, Pope is still looking for full-time employment. He spends a lot of time playing guitar and writing songs. But he hasn't written anything about his time in prison.

"I haven't been able to put it together probably because it was so painful." Pope said.