Articles Posted in Criminal Appeals

In 2013, Martin MacNeill was convicted of killing his wife by dosing his wife with drugs and leaving her to drown in the bathtub. According to news reports, MacNeill, who is 59 years old, attempted to “off” his wife, Michele MacNeill, by giving her drugs prescribed following a cosmetic surgery she had so that he could begin a new life with his alleged mistress, Gypsy Willis. Michele MacNeill was found dead in the bathtub in 2007.

The murder came as a shock to the Mormon community of Pleasant Grove in Utah, where MacNeill was a father of eight, former bishop in his local congregation of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, and a doctor and lawyer.

In February of 2013, Justin A. Marshall was found guilty of first-degree murder after he allegedly shot John Versypt, a landlord at the Broadway Condominium Complex in southeastern Iowa City, during an attempted robbery. Police claim that Marshall shot Versypt in the head and hand as he attempted to rob the landlord. On Wednesday June 11, the Iowa Court of Appeals overturned the first-degree murder conviction, finding in their opinion that Marshall should have been allowed to prevent the jury from hearing the testimony of a jail informant who was working for prosecutors in the case.

Prosecutors said at trial that Marshall admitted to three Muscaline County Jail inmates that he had shot the landlord in a robbery gone wrong. Prosecutors also said there were other witnesses who confirmed facts the defendant had admitted to while incarcerated.

Carl Johnson, one of the witnesses, was in jail in 2011 on federal drug charges when Marshall was brought to Iowa from Texas to stand trial for the landlord’s death. According to a news report at The Gazette, the appeals court’s opinion states that in exchange for the possibility of a lighter prison sentence, Johnson signed a deal with federal prosecutors to provide information on other suspects. Johnson was asked by Iowa City police to provide information regarding Justin Marshall and two other individuals. When outside his jail cell, he had conversations with Marshall in which the defendant allegedly told him his intention was to rob Versypt, but that the robbery went wrong and the landlord got shot.

On May 18, a Massachusetts man who had been imprisoned for 21 years after being convicted of murder was released after a judge granted him a new trial. Now, prosecutors in the case say they aren’t sure whether they will request a new trial for Angel Echavarria, but they have decided not to appeal the judge’s decision.

Echavarria, who has maintained his innocence in the 1994 slaying of Daniel Rodriguez in Lynn, said that he knew this day would come. Echavarria, who is now 48 years old, was freed after a judge overturned his conviction on April 30 of this year. The judge made his decision largely due to questions raised by a decade-long project by the Schuster Institute for Investigative Journalism at Brandeis University.

The courtroom erupted into cheers as a court officer took the handcuffs off Echavarria, who always believed he would be freed, saying that he was not responsible for the murder of Daniel Rodriguez inside a Lynn apartment where Rodriguez and his brother lived. The two men were met by two armed men as they went into the apartment, according to a news report at the Boston Globe. The apartment was reportedly known for drug activity. Daniel’s brother, Isidoro, had his hands bound and was taken into a bedroom where he was ordered to lie on the floor, however he freed himself and found Daniel with his feet and hands tied; he had been shot twice in the head.

According to a CNN new article published on May 19, Adnan Syed, convicted of killing ex-girlfriend Hae Min Lee in 2000, may now get a big break after the Maryland Court of Appeals agreed to send his case back to lower court. Syed’s case is covered extensively in the highly popular podcast “Serial,” a 12-episode series.

Raised in the podcast were questions regarding Asia McClain, a witness who gives Syed a potential alibi for the time period in which Lee disappeared. In January of 1999, Hae Min Lee and Adnan Syed were both seniors at Woodlawn High School. Lee disappeared; her body was discovered several weeks later in a city forest in Baltimore County. McClain claims that at the time of the killing, Syed was with her in the library, a piece of evidence that never made it to Syed’s trial.

The “Serial” podcast dug into one of the puzzles of the case, leaving questions regarding why McClain’s account of Syed’s whereabouts never made it into the defense case. McClain claims that her efforts to provide this evidence to Syed’s attorney “fell on deaf ears.” Whether or not Syed is granted a retrial in the Baltimore City Circuit Court may hinge on McClain’s testimony and version of the events.

In July of 2012, Melvin Morse, a 61-year-old former pediatrician, was charged with endangerment and assault after the daughter of his girlfriend ran away, accusing Morse of water boarding and other abuse. He was found guilty of the charges against him in February 2014, and sentenced to three years in prison. Now Morse, who has appeared on The Oprah Winfrey Show and Larry King Live, is appealing his conviction according to news reports at NBC News and U.S. News & World Report.

At the time of the alleged water boarding incident, Morse was 58 years old. In all, Morse was convicted of felony reckless endangerment and five misdemeanors. On Wednesday, May 6 it was announced that Morse would appeal his conviction on several grounds. One issue, according to Morse’s defense attorney Joseph Hurley, was the fact that a judge in the case allowed jurors to review videotapes of statements given by the alleged victim and her younger sister during deliberations – statements that were unsworn. Hurley claims that a prosecutor in the case encouraged jurors during her closing arguments to request permission from the judge to review the tapes if jurors felt it would help them in deliberations. However, the evidence challenging statements made by the girls in the videotapes the defense had in its possession was never made available to jurors.

Hurley also argued to the three-justice panel at the Delaware Supreme Court that the judge in the case erred when he allowed jurors to consider evidence of additional “bad acts” for which his client was not charged. Ultimately, Hurley felt that jurors were inflamed and Morse unfairly prejudiced because of the cumulative evidence.

On Wednesday, April 22, Barry Bonds only conviction in a performance-enhancing drug case going back to 2003 was overturned by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit in San Francisco, according to a recent news article at the New York Times. Bonds was convicted of obstruction of justice in 2011 after he gave what was called a “rambling, non-responsive answer to a simple question” during a grand jury proceeding. The point in question was whether Bonds had used performance-enhancing drugs during his baseball career, an allegation that has been made against several athletes including Roger Clemens, Alex Rodriguez, and Mark McGwire.

According to the article, Bonds was put at the center of baseball’s doping debate because of his involvement in the Bay Area Laboratory Co-Operative scandal. While he never failed a performance-enhancing drug test for the use of steroids administered by Major League Baseball since the testing began in 2003, he was thought to be guilty by a large majority of the public. This public opinion was spurred mostly by books and news media reports that made “strong cases” that Bonds had used steroid drugs to enhance his performance on the field, although he has never admitted to it.

Ultimately, all efforts to link Bonds legally to the sports’ doping saga have failed. The opinion of the appeals court stated that “Because there is insufficient evidence that Statement C (the “rambling, non-responsive answer” mentioned above) was material, defendant’s conviction for obstruction of justice in violation of 18 U.S.C. 1503 is not supported by the record. Whatever section 1503’s scope may be in other circumstances, defendant’s conviction here must be reversed.”

In October of 2012, Steven Lawayne Nelson was found guilty of killing Rev. Clint Dobson at North Pointe Baptist Church in Arlington in March of 2011. Nelson testified at trial in his own defense, and denied killing Dobson, saying that he was outside the church when two friends went inside and committed the murder. A church secretary was also badly beaten in the incident.

Judy Elliot, the brutally beaten secretary, had her 2007 Mitsubishi Galant stolen in the incident; a computer was also stolen from the church. Security camera footage captured the stolen vehicle on the afternoon of the crime. A witness told jurors in the case that he purchased Clint Dobson’s stolen computer unknowingly when he met Nelson at a tire shop in Arlington. Nelson was captured on video a short time later that same afternoon making a purchase at a convenience store, thought to be made using money from the sale of the computer. Nelson was ultimately found guilty of capital murder, and sentenced to death.

Yesterday it was announced that Nelson’s appeal of his conviction and death sentence had been denied by Texas’ top criminal appeals court. The court upheld Nelson’s conviction, rejecting the arguments brought forth by Nelson’s attorneys that the evidence to convict him was insufficient, that evidence involving text messages was improperly allowed, and that there were problems with both jury selection and instruction.

Recently, Darrell Brooks, a Gulfport, MS resident, lost his appeal of his murder conviction for the fatal shooting of 29-year-old David Shivers Jr. in December of 2009. Brooks was convicted in 2011 for the shooting of Shivers, who died in his home. He was sentenced to life in prison without parole.

Brooks appealed his conviction and requested a new trial based on the argument that in his initial trial, there were no eyewitnesses that could link him to the fatal shooting, and no physical evidence supporting the allegations against him. At the time of Shivers’ murder, his mother, brother, and brother’s girlfriend were in the home, but none of the three actually saw the shooting although they did hear a gunshot. The presence of glass from a kitchen window led investigators to believe that Shivers was shot through the window.

The state Court of Appeals said on Tuesday, March 31, that there was evidence that Brooks, whose estranged wife was dating Shivers at the time, followed her; the appeals court also said evidence existed that Brooks had threatened to kill Shivers. In addition, Brooks attempted to secure a gun from two people according to the appeals court, and two witnesses testified at trial that Brooks had requested of them to use them as an alibi for the night in question when Shivers was fatally shot in his Gulfport home. The Court of Appeals denied Brooks’ request for a new trial.

In December of last year, Daniel Harmon-Wright’s appeal of a conviction on voluntary manslaughter charges in the shooting death of Patricia Cook was struck down by the Court of Appeals in Virginia. Following the rejection, Harmon-Wright and his attorney, Daniel Hawes, took the appeal to the state’s Supreme Court, who just this week refused to hear the case.

Harmon-Wright, who is 35-years-old, is a former Culpeper police officer who was found guilty of voluntary manslaughter after he shot a woman, allegedly in self-defense, while responding to a report of a suspicious vehicle in a church parking lot. According to news articles, the incident took place in February of 2012. Harmon-Wright responded to the call, finding 54-year-old Patricia Cook in the parking lot of the church. He maintains that the woman tried to drive away while his arm was caught in the window of her vehicle, and that he shot in self-defense.

Hawes appealed his client’s conviction on two counts, invoking the “double jeopardy” protection in state and federal law. Under the law, an individual cannot be found guilty for the same offense twice. Hawes maintains that Harmon-Wright was convicted of both unlawful shooting into an occupied vehicle, and unlawful shooting into an occupied vehicle resulting in death. In addition, Hawes argued the evidence against his client was insufficient to support his conviction.

In February, former Virginia first lady Maureen McDonnell, wife of Governor Bob McDonnell, was sentenced at a federal court after she was convicted on corruption charges. Now, according to news reports, she is appealing the conviction.

McDonnell was sentenced to one year and one day in prison, while the former Governor was sentenced to 24 months in prison for the corruption scandal in which the two allegedly promoted health products for businessman Jonnie Williams Sr. in exchange for $177,000 in loans, gifts, and vacations.

According to the Washington Times, former Gov. Bob McDonnell appealed his conviction to the 4th U.S. Court of Appeals in Richmond, the same court his wife is now appealing her conviction in. Oral arguments in the former governor’s case are scheduled for the week of May 12.