MLM Counties News. Notices. Need-to-know Information.
George Allen Jr. is a free man after being locked up for 30 years for the rape and murder of a St. Louis woman. Cole County Circuit Judge Daniel R. Green overturned Allen’s conviction on Nov. 2, finding that St. Louis police failed to disclose evidence pointing to
his innocence. When Green signed Allen’s release Wednesday morning, Allen’s supporters burst into applause. (KSDK-TV, the pool photographer in the courtroom, caught the moment on video.)
Allen, now 56 and gray, was released on his own recognizance, but he has not yet been fully exonerated. Whether that happens will be up to the Missouri Court of Appeals Western District.
Ameer Gado, a Bryan Cave attorney who worked with the Innocence Project on Allen’s case, said his client is pleased to be reunited with his 80-year-old mother, Lonzetta Taylor.
“While it’s unfortunate that he will have to endure yet another appeal, we are confident that he will ultimately be fully exonerated,” Gado said in a statement.
The victim, Mary Bell, who lived in the LaSalle Park neighborhood in St. Louis, was raped, sodomized and murdered in her apartment on Feb. 4, 1982, as the area was blanketed under 20 inches of snow. Allen was convicted of the crimes, as well as first-degree burglary, in a 1983 trial. He was sentenced to 95 years in prison.
During the penalty phase of the trial, one of the jurors had to be excused due to a family emergency, which forced the state to waive the death penalty, according to information provided by the Innocence Project, which fought for Allen’s freedom.
“It’s sobering to think what might have happened if Mr. Allen had received a death sentence,” Olga Akselrod, staff attorney with the Innocence Project, said in a statement “It took years and multiple rounds of DNA testing to finally get to the bottom of this case. That’s time Mr. Allen wouldn’t have had if he had received a death sentence.”
Allen, a diagnosed schizophrenic, was initially arrested because police mistook him for another man. Before his trial, the St. Louis Metropolitan Police Department failed to disclose to the prosecution and the defense several critical pieces of evidence, Green found.
That evidence was:
• The presence of semen or other biological fluids on Bell’s robe that could not have been deposited by Allen; by Bell’s live-in boyfriend, attorney Russell Watters; or by her estranged husband, John Bell.
• Internal police documents showing the lab reported the exculpatory evidence to the police investigating the case.
• Documents showing fingerprints found at the crime scene were usable and excluded Allen.
• A drawing Allen made of the crime scene to test his knowledge of the facts and determine whether his confession was credible was not consistent with the layout of the scene.
• Evidence that a key state witness had to be hypnotized to provide the evidence she offered.
“Considered separately or together, this information constitutes favorable, material evidence that the State withheld at trial in violation of its clearly delineated constitutional obligations under Brady/Kyles,” Green wrote in his Nov. 2 order. The U.S. Supreme Court decided Brady v. Maryland in 1963 and Kyles v Whitley in 1995.
The undisclosed evidence would have given the defense affirmative proof that someone else raped and killed Bell, Green said. In addition, the judge said, it would have given the defense “powerful weapons to attack the reliability of the confession,” including Detective Herb Riley’s “deeply flawed interrogation” of Allen. The evidence shows that Riley ignored and hid evidence pointing to another perpetrator and that he fed Allen facts about the crime, threatened him and coerced him into giving a false confession, Green found.
The judge found that there was no prosecutorial misconduct.
Missouri Attorney General Chris Koster announced last week that his office would appeal Green’s decision to the Missouri Court of Appeals Western District.
Barry Scheck, co-director of the Innocence Project, which is affiliated with Cardozo School of Law, said in a statement that it’s disappointing that Koster “has filed a meritless appeal.”
“This case has uncovered serious misconduct by the lead detective and by the serologist who testified against Mr. Allen even though there was compelling evidence of his innocence,” Scheck said. “Instead of wasting resources on an appeal, the state should conduct an independent audit of all the cases handled by the detective and the serologist to ensure that others weren’t wrongly convicted for crimes they didn’t commit.”
Deputy Attorney General Joe Dandurand pointed out that Green is the “first and only person” to find the withheld evidence prejudiced Allen at his trial.
“The appellate process provides a system of checks and balances on our state’s trial court decisions,” he said in a statement. “The criticisms of this office by those representing Mr. Allen are a bit perplexing. We are confident that, had the Court ruled against Mr. Allen, Mr. Allen’s attorney and the Innocence Project would have availed themselves of the same appeals process.”
Dandurand said the AG’s office will defer to the appellate court’s decision in this matter.
The AG’s decision to appeal came on the same day that St. Louis Circuit Attorney Jennifer Joyce announced she would not retry Allen.
According to a statement on the circuit attorney’s website, prosecutors have determined that a conviction would be unlikely.
A key piece of evidence was Allen’s recorded confession to Detective Herb Riley, who died in December 1996. Riley’s death means prosecutors couldn’t “effectively use the taped confession” in a new trial, according to the statement.
The case is In re: George Allen Jr. v. David Dormire, 11AC-CC00634.
