NEAR-TRAGIC PROSECUTORIAL COVERUP

A man who has spent 11 years on North Carolina's death row and came within hours of execution deserves a new trial because police failed to turn over files that could have helped clear him of a murder charge, according to a judge. Greensboro officers violated the constitutional rights of Charles Walker by not releasing the evidence, Superior Court Judge John O. Craig III said in an e-mail sent to lawyers in the case this weekend, the News & Record reported Tuesday. He told them to draft an order for a new trial, which he will review and sign.

Walker's appeals lawyer, Jonathan Megerian of Asheboro, visited his client in Raleigh's Central Prison to give him the news. "He's very relieved and I guess he's very happy that justice prevailed," Megerian said Tuesday.

Walker, 40, of Brooklyn, N.Y., was condemned for the 1992 drug-related killing of Tito Davidson, who prosecutors said was trying to interfere with Walker's illegal drug business at a Greensboro public housing complex. Co-defendants testified that Walker participated in shooting Davidson several times, then slashing his throat in an apartment. Davidson's body was never found, and no blood, DNA or other evidence was located in the apartment, which co-defendants said they thoroughly cleaned.

Walker was hours away from dying by injection -- and, insisting he was innocent, had refused to order a last meal -- when the state Supreme Court upheld a stay of execution on Dec. 2, 2004. Craig issued the stay four days earlier, saying he wanted to hear further argument from defense lawyers who said Walker was convicted solely on the basis of unreliable testimony by co-defendants and others who could have been charged in the case. He later dismissed those claims, but ordered the state last year to hand over two police investigative files that had been withheld from the defense.

At a hearing this month, retired investigators D. M. Minner and Lee Walker Jr. testified that no one told them to conceal or withhold the investigative files, but neither could say why the defense didn't receive the files. Walker's lawyers argued that information in the files could have been used to undermine the credibility of a key prosecution witness, and possibly identify another person as the killer. "I want to avoid finger-pointing as to why the Greensboro Police didn't turn over these portions of their files, and whether it was wrong," Craig wrote in the e-mail sent Saturday to the lawyers. "I think my obligation is to merely find that it occurred ... and the law requires me to rectify the omission."

Megerian said he expects to have a draft order ready by the end of the week for review by state attorneys and Craig, meaning a final order will probably not be issued before the start of next week. "The sooner the better, from our point of view," he said. A spokesman for Attorney General Roy Cooper said the state's legal team won't decide whether to appeal until Craig issues his formal ruling. Megerian called the case and the brush with execution "a terrifying experience" for his client. "This guy was just a few hours away (from execution). They were asking what he wanted for his last meal when the Supreme Court granted the stay," he said. "He came so close to such an incredible miscarriage of justice."

Report here


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