MISSOURI JUSTICE: FRAMED FOR MURDER BUT THAT'S OK?

Incredible reasoning. Cops are within their rights to suborn witnesses??

A judge has dismissed an exonerated prisoner's claim that investigators and a prosecutor violated his civil rights by framing him in a murder for which he spent 17 years on death row.

Joseph Amrine accused a prosecutor, two investigators and a deputy sheriff of violating his civil rights, conspiracy and malicious prosecution for the investigation that led to his 1986 conviction for the stabbing death of another inmate at Missouri State Penitentiary. He had been serving a sentence for robbery, burglary and forgery when the stabbing occurred.

Amrine was freed in July 2003 after the Missouri Supreme Court overturned his conviction and death sentence, finding that no credible evidence remained from the trial to support the conviction.

In his 2004 lawsuit, Amrine alleged that three former inmates were promised "significant benefits" by investigators if they testified against Amrine, and were threatened if they did not.

In her dismissal order on Tuesday, U.S. District Judge Nanette Laughrey wrote that she found parts of the murder investigation against Amrine irregular and troubling, but he had no grounds to sue.

"Even if the police had conducted as thorough an investigation as Amrine alleges they should have, there still would have been probable cause for his prosecution," Laughrey wrote. "His trial was not rendered fundamentally unfair by any recklessness in the investigation."


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