AN APPEALS SYSTEM MELTDOWN: REPEATED APPEALS FAILED TO FREE AN INNOCENT MAN

And he's still in jail despite a Federal judge finally ruling that he should be freed

A federal judge in St. Louis last week overturned the first-degree murder conviction of Dale Helmig, who is serving life in prison for the murder of his mother, Norma Helmig. Dale Helmig says he did not kill his mother and has filed numerous appeals in state and federal courts contending he did not receive a fair trial.

In the summer of 2003, Mark Thomason, a second-year law student, interviewed many of the jurors who had found Dale Helmig guilty of murdering his mother, Norma Helmig, 10 years earlier. Thomason was an intern in the Kansas City law office of Sean O'Brien, an attorney known for his work in reversing criminal convictions of defendants later found to be innocent. O'Brien had taken on Helmig's appeal, believing he had not killed his mother and concluding he was woefully defended at his trial. No stranger to Helmig's predicament, Thomason had thought the case was "fishy" since he viewed a television program, "Was Justice Denied," produced in June 2000. The show raised questions such as whether Norma's husband, Ted Helmig, could have been the murderer. Ted has said he had nothing to do with his wife's death.

The show also challenged the performance of Chris Jordan, Dale Helmig's defense lawyer. And it examined the circumstances of how a new judge had been substituted at the last minute to preside over Helmig's trial.

These elements intrigued Thomason, who interviewed seven of the 12 jurors. He asked them about Jordan's conduct and whether they were influenced by television coverage that focused on Kenny Hulshof, the special prosecutor and candidate for Congress at the time of the trial in 1996.

Several jurors told Thomason that there was no comparison between what was done in Helmig's behalf and how the state presented its case. Thomason asked one juror if Jordan had done a bad job. "The juror responded, 'I wouldn't hire him to defend me if I was in trouble,'" Thomason said.

And while Thomason didn't know it at the time, it was the remark by Stanley Dahl, a farmer from New Haven, that would change the course of "State of Missouri v. Dale L. Helmig." Dahl told Thomason, almost in passing, that during deliberations jurors asked for a map, which they used to convince a holdout juror to vote to find Helmig guilty. The map had not been introduced into evidence. "More than likely, the map had a role in changing her vote," Dahl said later in court.

Usually the justice system works the way it should. The guilty are convicted; the innocent acquitted. The system is designed to give the benefit of the doubt to the extent that the guilty sometimes go free, too. Prosecutors are supposed to prove their case beyond a reasonable doubt. But the justice system is not perfect. Even a Missouri Supreme Court judge has acknowledged that innocent people are probably serving time in prison. Since the justice system is a human system, mistakes can be made and an innocent defendant can be convicted.

A system of state and federal appeals exists to screen cases to uncover those mistakes. And almost as soon as the jury found Helmig guilty in March 1996, he and his lawyer began filing appeals in the state system. Appeals courts are reluctant to reverse what happened at the trial court level and reticent to substitute a new judgment for what the judge on the scene did. When they do find errors, appeals judges often determine they were harmless and didn't affect the outcome of the trial. The Missouri Court of Appeals in St. Louis affirmed the conviction a year later and the state Supreme Court refused to hear the appeal.

O'Brien filed a new state appeal in 1998, challenging the conduct of the trial and Jordan's performance. Judge Jack Edwards, who heard that appeal and who had presided over the original trial, rejected those arguments. The Court of Appeals affirmed Edwards' decision in 2001.

By that time, Helmig's case had attracted the attention of Michael Betcherman, a Canadian filmmaker who was preparing a pilot program "Was Justice Denied" for the TNT cable channel. "It was a terrible miscarriage of justice," Betcherman said. Betcherman said one reason he did not believe Helmig murdered his mother was because he would have had to cross the flooding Missouri River twice. He would have had to cross the river to murder her and dispose of her body with no sure guarantee that floodwaters would not cut off his return trip. Norma Helmig lived at the end of a Gasconade River access road about 18 miles from the Osage River bridge where her body was found. She was last seen alive in the early morning hours of July 29, 1993.

High water on the Missouri River had stranded Helmig north of the river in Fulton, Mo., where he registered to spend the night in a motel. There were times when the Missouri River bridge was opened and other times when it was closed because water covered a bridge approach road.

Based on the theory of Osage County Sheriff Carl Fowler, who investigated the death, for Helmig to have murdered his mother, he would have had to drive 54 miles to her home. Then, he would have had to drive the 54 miles back to the motel in Fulton, as long as the Missouri River bridge was not closed by flooding. The sheriff said he did not know how Norma's body got to the Osage River. "Why leave the motel and cross the river not knowing he was going to get back?" Betcherman wondered.

And it was this relationship between the rivers and the roads and where Helmig stayed and where his mother's body was found that required an explanation and a map not in evidence to convince a holdout juror of Helmig's guilt.

On April 22, 2002, O'Brien filed a writ of habeas corpus on Helmig's behalf in U.S. District Court in St. Louis. Guaranteed by the U.S. Constitution, the writ is an extraordinary legal remedy that challenges the authority of the government to imprison a person.

The writ's use has been curtailed sharply in recent years. In 1996, Congress passed the Anti-terrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act, which substantially limited these kinds of federal appeals. More time limits were placed on when they can be filed and more restrictions were imposed on what types of issues can be raised.

O'Brien faced an uphill climb in reversing Helmig's conviction. Federal courts must defer to state courts unless their rulings are clearly unreasonable. And federal courts must review all evidence in the light most favorable to the prosecution. Showing that mistakes were made in state courts under these conditions is very difficult. "This is a case about innocence," was how O'Brien's appeal began. It said the playing field was not level in Helmig's trial, that his lawyer did not competently represent him, that evidence and witnesses that could have cast reasonable doubt on his guilt were not introduced and that publicity hurt his chances at getting a fair trial.

U.S. Magistrate David Noce rejected almost all of the claims. He said he did not find any new evidence showing Helmig was innocent. He pointed out that it is truly extraordinary for a federal judge to overturn the findings of a jury in a state court. And he said some of Helmig's claims could not be considered for technical reasons and that others were without merit.

But Noce did find one serious problem. And it was enough to overturn Helmig's conviction. The jury used a map provided by a court worker or sheriff's deputy that was not in evidence. And the map was crucial to swaying the opinion of a juror who was originally opposed to finding Helmig guilty. "The state map provided jurors with specific facts by which to adjudge relative locations, distances, travel routes, and terrain," Noce wrote. "When the evidence presented at trial did not convince one juror of the petitioner's (Helmig's) guilt, that juror's vote changed after viewing the map."

The judge found that the use of the map substantially affected Helmig's right to due process. He threw out Helmig's conviction and said he should be freed.

Attorney General Jay Nixon now must decide whether to appeal Noce's ruling to a federal appeals court. Another alternative is for Osage County Prosecuting Attorney Amanda Grellner to decide to retry Helmig. Until those decisions are made, Helmig remains incarcerated at the Crossroads Correctional Center in Cameron, Mo., where he clings to the hope that someday he'll be released. "I've got more hope of getting out of here than just about anybody here," he said. "Eventually, the right people will make the right decisions. I'm not going to give up. I do believe. I have faith. Eventually, the truth will come out and I'll walk out of here."

Asked whether he murdered his mother, Helmig said: "There is no way I would have hurt my mom. I never raised my hand to Mom in my entire life. I loved her very much and still do."

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