Man Freed After 24 Years and Numerous Legal Obstacles

Last Friday, a Missouri man was released after serving 24 years of a 50 year-prison sentence on a murder charge after a Cole County Judge overturned his conviction. Darryl Burton had been incarcerated at the Jefferson City Correctional Center following his conviction in a 1984 St. Louis gas-station killing, and his plight sheds light on many of the obstacles facing those wrongly convicted.

Cole County Judge Richard Calahan overturned the conviction based on constitutional grounds, finding that one of the two prosecution witnesses during the trial lied about his past convictions, violating Burton’s Due Process:

Callahan ruled that Burton’s 1985 murder trial was flawed. Prosecutors’ only evidence was the testimony of two men who claimed to have seen the crime. Callahan concluded the witnesses were unreliable.

The chief unreliable witness, Claudex Simmons, told the court under oath during the original trial that he had two prior felony convictions. However, the prosecutor at the time, current U.S. Attorney Tony Gonzalez, failed to file a record of the witness’s prior criminal history, which Burton and his attorneys later found out included seven felony convictions and five misdemeanors. This information became available in 2005 when Simmons was on trial for crashing into and killing Affton Fire Chief Gerald Beuhne, a case in which Simmons pleaded guilty to felony-murder.

Callahan wrote in his ruling:

“The concealment of Mr. Simmons’ extensive criminal history caused enormous prejudice to Mr. Burton, as Simmons was the main witness against him[.] . . . A complete disclosure of Mr. Simmons’ history would have shown that he was not just an occasional thief, but was an experienced criminal.”

The Post Dispatch, in an expanded article from today, noted that Federal appeals court documents show Simmons later recanted his testimony. At the time of the trial, neither the prosecution or defense raised questions about his past criminal record. While the order by Judge Callahan overturned Burton’s conviction, Burton has not been exonerated of the crime and couldn’t breathe a sigh of relief until Circuit Attorney Jennifer Joyce’s office chose not to retry the case last Friday, citing insufficient evidence (the other key prosecution witness from the case is dead). Joyce noted the impracticalities both the prosecution and defense were facing back when the case was tried:

Joyce said neither side realized at the time that witness Claudex Simmons lied, because his record was on scattered slips of paper. “They would have had to search through a cumbersome filing system of index cards…” she said. “Nowadays, something like this would not happen.”

In another article, Burton notes that he had sent 600 to 700 letters seeking help and also had filed numerous appeals, with nearly every attempt falling on deaf ears. The RFT also covered this story with an in-depth 2004 article, in which it is mentioned that many prisoners who have new evidence of their innocence are often unable to overcome statutory and court-created red tape. In fact, the article points out that in 2002 the 8th Circuit rejected a Burton appeal for a new trial, although the court clearly had its own doubts about Burton’s conviction when it noted:

“One cannot read the record in this case without developing a nagging suspicion that the wrong man may have been convicted of capital murder and armed criminal action in a Missouri courtroom . . . . [A] layperson would have little trouble concluding Burton should be permitted to present his evidence of innocence in some forum. Unfortunately, Burton’s claims and evidence run headlong into the thicket of impediments erected by courts and by Congress. Burton’s legal claims permit him no relief, even as the facts suggest he may well be innocent.”

Considering that the only piece of physical evidence presented at Burton’s two-day trial was the fatal bullet shot into the victim, it becomes clear how important it was for the jury to have the proper lens in which to view the prosecution’s witnesses. The RFT stated that the victim, James Ball, had been shot one year earlier in the arm and at the same gas station in which he was ultimately killed. Ball was a noted local gangster and, according to witnesses, the earlier attempt had come from a rival gangster, Jesse Watson, in the area around the Delmar and Goodfellow streets. The only other witness, besides Claudex Simmons, who positively identified Burton as the killer was Eddie Walker Jr., a man who was later described by both of his former wives as a bad alcoholic with poor eyesight.

The RFT article provides an excellent recount of the trial and the sketchy and inconsistent testimony from both Simmons and Walker, especially noting of Simmons:

Claudex Simmons took the witness stand and told the jury he’d come forward only after he’d “caught a case.” Charged with attempted robbery, he’d reached a plea agreement with the state: If he testified against Darryl Burton, he’d get only one year in prison on the robbery charge; if he didn’t testify, he’d get three years.

(What Simmons did not tell the jury was that he’d apparently worked a second deal with the state. About a month before Donald Ball’s murder, in April 1984, St. Louis County police had arrested Simmons for theft, a charge that for a persistent offender like him carried a fifteen-year sentence. Simmons never mentioned the case when he testified at Burton’s trial. But in June 1985, three months after Burton was convicted, the court suspended Simmons’ entire sentence and placed him on five years’ probation. State courts subsequently found that the proximity of the crimes and Simmons’ lenient sentence did not constitute evidence of a secret deal.)

Still, Simmons couldn’t keep his story straight. On the stand, he contradicted or repudiated virtually every assertion he’d made to the police.

Nonetheless, it only took the jury one hour to deliberate and convict Burton.

Soon after Burton was incarcerated following the conviction, he received a piece of mail from Simmons that included the following affidavit:

“I, Claudex Simmons did not witness Darryl Burton murder one Donald Ball,” reads the document, dated August 7, 1985. “I submitted perjury testimony to gain immunity, from the herein-mentioned murder of one Donald Ball.”

This case illustrates the difficulties so many prisoners face when new evidence comes to light, especially when that new evidence is not DNA evidence. While it is true that nearly every prisoner will likely plead their innocence even after their convictions, and most will be without merit, there have been too many cases overturned to ignore. The Midwest Innocence Project, based out of the University of Missouri-Kansas City Law School, notes that 75% of DNA-based overturned convictions involve witnesses misidentifying the defendant, while 15% of DNA-based overturned cases involve “snitch” testimony from a jail-house or other informant seeking a benefit in exchange for their testimony.

Burton, ultimately and after his many other failed attempts at a reversal, received a godsend in 2000 when Cheryl Pilate, from the Kansas City firm Morgan Pilate, LLC, took up his cause, along with the help of an investigator named Jim McCloskey, who was also the founder of Centurion Ministries. McCloskey unearthed a wealth of evidence pointing to Burton’s innocence, including two affidavits from close associates of Jesse Watson claiming that Watson told them he had killed Ball. Still, Burton was not able to pass the legal hurdles. First, the 1996 Anti-Terrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act (AEDPA) gave a writ of habeas corpus claim a nearly impossible standard to fulfill, ordering courts to only grant a habeas writ if the state court judge(s) ruling on the constitutional claim did not act reasonably:

The 1996 law was expressly intended by Congress to sharply curtail the right of state prison inmates, under federal habeas, to challenge their state convictions and sentences. A key section of AEDPA bars a federal court from granting any habeas writ on an issue that was raised in state court, unless the state court decision “was contrary to, or involved an unreasonable application, of clearly established federal law, as determined by the Supreme Court of the United States.” (That is 28 U.S.C. 2254-d-1.)

Furthermore, the AEDPA sped up the statutory requirements for appeals (largely to end long execution delays), and Burton had received many, if not most, of his new evidence and affidavits past the proper deadlines. Also, Burton did not have DNA evidence, an especially serious issue according to Burton’s attorney:

“The problem with DNA is that while it’s a wonderful thing in the cases where it exists, it’s become a sort of gold standard,” says Cheryl Pilate. “If you don’t have DNA, it’s really hard to show innocence, because people have come to expect some kind of iron-clad evidence that no one can dispute.”

Finally, Missouri only allows the introduction of new evidence after a trial if that new evidence “completely exonerates” the prisoner. Since most state courts had upheld lower court rulings against Burton, he was ultimately left with his final bite at the apple: by proving his actual innocence in a Federal court. However, he ultimately failed this seemingly last chance because the 8th Circuit, following the U.S. Supreme Court case of Herrera v. Collins, could only allow a capital prisoner’s conviction to be overturned based on new evidence if the constitution had been violated. Since the state courts could not be said to have acted unreasonably (per the AEDPA), the 8th Circuit’s hands were tied. It is important to note that in Herrara, Chief Justice Rehnquist held against the petitioner, holding that a violation of the constitution must be shown on top of new evidence. Furthermore, Rehnquist only rhetorically left open the possibility of a case with such overwhelming new evidence (and no state forum to hear the claim) that a federal court could overturn the conviction without a constitutional violation.

Thus, Burton’s attorneys had to refile in Cole County, hoping that a state court would re-evaluate the constitutional claim. Thanks to the strongly-worded 8th Circuit opinion and a Cole County judge, Burton was finally freed from prison last week. Still, the hurdles remain for other innocent inmates lacking the DNA evidence to have their convictions overturned. In a recent USA Today article, the California Innocence Project noted that almost 90% of its pending cases involve non-DNA situations. In those cases, such as the one involving Timothy Atkins, which the CIP had successfully gotten released from prison after nearly 20 years, the CIP has to hope old witnesses that lied can be found, or that some other crucial piece of evidence enters the picture. Atkins release came after a key witness admitted lying to the police as well as at the trial:

When Koen interviewed Powell one month later at a drug treatment facility, Powell said she had fabricated the story about Atkins’ confession because she wanted the long police interrogation to end. “The information just poured out of her,” Koen says of the videotaped interview.

Burton stated, during a press conference last week, that he wants to help out others in similar situations, noting, “I come to prison thinking that is an isolated incident, I’m the only person this has ever happened to,” Burton said. “I thought, justice just don’t goof up like this, not in American justice, or what I term American injustice. But it does happen in more cases than we know.”

~ by msalsbery on September 4, 2008.