St. Louis Man Freed From Wrongful Conviction After 24 Years
Out of the blue, ... [Darryl] Burton (age 22) was fingered by two individuals claiming to be witnesses. There was no physical evidence linking him to the murder; a slug was found at the murder scene, but no weapon was ever recovered. A jealousy motive for Burton regarding a girlfriend was investigated by police, but not presented at trial. Prosecutor Anthony Gonzales presented no motive at all.
A witness who testified in exchange for a reduced sentence lied about his criminal record. That witness' testimony varied drastically from the story he told the police. New evidence shows that the other witness "was a chronic liar who was not at the crime scene at the time of the shooting and had vision so poor that he could not have seen the shooting from where he claimed to be sitting had he in fact been sitting there."
Other witnesses identified Jesse Watson as the shooter, a likely suspect given that Watson took a shot at the same victim at the same location a year earlier. The police didn't bother to investigate Watson. [more ...]
Even without the new evidence, the case against Burton was weak, leaving one to wonder whether the jurors were in a hurry to catch a Cardinals game and didn't feel it necessary to review and discuss the evidence in any detail.
In spite of witnesses’ unreliability, conflicting testimonies and departures from previous statements, the jury took less than an hour to reach their guilty verdict. In March 1985, Circuit Judge Jack L. Koerhr sentenced Burton to life without parole for 50 years for capital murder, and 25 consecutive years for armed criminal action.“I got death by incarceration instead of death by lethal injection,” Burton said.
A few months after Burton was sentenced, one of the witnesses recanted. He provided Burton with an affidavit admitting that he lied to help himself. (The witness had nothing to lose by revealing the truth, having in the meantime earned a life sentence for felony murder.)
Earlier this year, a judge ruled that “the failure to disclose Simmons’ [criminal] background rendered Mr. Burton’s trial fundamentally unfair.”
The ruling further stated that the “plausible and persuasive evidence” would have proven his innocence.
Burton served 24 years before his release in August. Nearly a quarter century. His father and grandmother died while he was behind bars. He has cause for bitterness, but the linked story says Burton "doesn’t have time to wallow in bitterness or self-pity." He's made it his mission "to make sure that society knows there are hundreds of innocent men and women imprisoned in Missouri."
Despite all the evidence, despite knowing that a prosecution witness testified falsely about his criminal record and that the prosecutor did nothing to correct his perjury, a current St. Louis prosecutor, Ed Postawko, thinks the jury got it right. If you choose to comment upon Mr. Postawko's unrepentant attitude concerning his office's misconduct and its impact on Darryl Burton's life, please censor or disguise your profanity to avoid the law firm filters that might keep some of our readers from enjoying TalkLeft at work.
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