The demand for a new trial filed last week on behalf of a man wrongfully convicted of murder poses serious questions for Baltimore prosecutors and police: Who failed to disclose key evidence in the case, and how did evidence mysteriously surface four years after the homicide?
Detectives blame the state's attorney's office. Prosecutors blame the police. But so far, few answers have been provided about who is responsible for keeping the evidence from Antoine Jerome Pettiford.
"If ever there was a case which cried out for the mercy of the court, this is the case," Pettiford's attorney, Michelle M. Martz, wrote in the motion for a new trial filed Friday.
Martz's motion alleges that critical documents that could have helped clear Pettiford were not turned over. The information, which surfaced last month when The Sun examined Pettiford's case, is the latest in a series of revelations about evidence that was withheld from Pettiford. Martz successfully argued in July 1998 that evidence violations meant her client's first-degree murder conviction should be erased.
Martz is seeking to have a manslaughter conviction stricken from Pettiford's record -- a plea bargain he accepted so prosecutors would release him from jail.
If a new trial is granted, it could go a long way toward determining why the evidence was kept from the defense and who is to blame.
Officials at the state's attorney's office won't say what investigation they have done into the case, which was prosecuted by Nancy Pollack. Last month, while The Sun was questioning the state's attorney's office about the Pettiford case and preparing to publish its report, Pollack was forced to resign, say sources within the office. State's Attorney Patricia C. Jessamy, saying that personnel matters are confidential, said only that Pollack is no longer with the office.
Pollack had told her supervisors that she never saw one of the key documents that a judge said should have been turned over to the defense.
Baltimore police say they questioned the detective who investigated the Pettiford case, Bobby Patton, and they believe his contention that he turned over the information.
So what happened?
The case began on April 30, 1994, when Oscar Edward Lewis Jr. was shot and killed on an East Baltimore street corner. The next day, Lewis' best friend, Dante Lamont Todd, provided homicide detectives with a detailed statement about the circumstances leading to the murder.
Todd told Detective Patton on May 1, 1994, that a man nicknamed "Meat" had threatened to kill him over missing drug money and that Lewis, while serving as Todd's bodyguard, was murdered as an act of revenge.
Todd returned twice to the homicide division with information. On July 7 and July 16, 1994, in interviews with detectives, Todd provided an address for "Meat," along with the names of other suspected gunmen in the shooting.
None of the information Todd provided was disclosed to Pettiford's first attorney, Walter Balint, before the trial, and it appears that the leads were not seriously investigated. Pettiford was convicted in June 1995 of first-degree murder and sentenced to life in prison.
The case began to unravel in 1996 when federal agents broke a cocaine and heroin ring in Baltimore. Two of the men arrested told the agents and federal prosecutors that they knew who killed Lewis -- Demetrius Smith, a man known on the streets as "Meat."
In May 1996, Smith pleaded guilty in federal court to arranging Lewis' murder. While refusing to name the men who helped him, Smith insisted that Pettiford had had nothing to do with the slaying.
Armed with the revelations from the federal case, Pettiford's new attorney, Michelle M. Martz, filed an appeal. She asked to see the police file under Maryland's public records act.
The city's legal department, which represents the Baltimore Police Department, agreed to disclose portions of the file to Martz.
The file provided to Martz included several previously undisclosed police reports, but it did not contain Todd's May 1, 1994, statement or notes that detectives took during the July 1994 interviews -- items that city lawyers say are routinely disclosed to fulfill public records requests in criminal cases on appeal.
During the appellate hearing last summer in Baltimore Circuit Court, Patton disclosed that Todd had given him a statement on
May 1, 1994, the day after the murder. He also said he provided the statement to Pollack, the prosecutor assigned to the case.
Martz said she was shocked by the news of Todd's statement. She told Judge Ellen M. Heller, who was presiding over the hearing, that she never knew of its existence until Patton testified.
Patton later insisted in an interview with The Sun that he had turned the statement over to Pollack and assumed that it had been given to Martz. Pollack told her supervisors that she never saw it.
There are several possible explanations, including: Patton did not tell the truth under oath and kept the statement secret from the state's attorney's office; Pollack received the statement or hid it from the defense; Patton and Pollack failed to communicate; or both Patton and Pollack had the statement and decided not to disclose it. There is another unresolved question: Why wasn't the May statement given to Martz two years later when she received the police file from the city legal department? Assistant City Solicitor Sara E. Angeletti, who handled Martz's public records request, said that witness statements are customarily disclosed.
After the appellate hearing, supervisors at the state's attorney's office quickly arranged a deal with Pettiford to settle the case. Prosecutors conceded that evidence was not disclosed, that Pettiford deserved a new trial and that the first-degree murder conviction should be erased. They said that if Pettiford accepted a manslaughter conviction, they would free him from prison.
Pettiford accepted the offer and was released Aug. 21, 1998.
After the hearings, the judge ordered prosecutors and police to show Martz the remainder of the witness statements that could have aided in Pettiford's defense. Martz alleged in her motion for a new trial that Patton gave her a stack of statements last August, but refused to let her see the rest of the police file.
During an examination of the case by The Sun this summer, more evidence materialized. The Sun reviewed the homicide file, which had been sent to the court's basement archives after the appellate hearing, and found Patton's notes of the interviews with Todd on July 7 and July 16, 1994 -- more than two months after the murder. In those two statements, Todd gave Patton an accurate home address for Demetrius Smith and the names of other suspects in the slaying.
Patton's notes from the interviews were never turned over to Pettiford's lawyers for the trial in 1995, and Martz said they were not provided to her when she received the homicide file from the city legal department in 1997. Martz also said they were not disclosed during her meeting with prosecutors and Patton to review witness statements after the hearing in 1998.
Angeletti, who testified at the hearing, said she gave the judge everything she had in the police file.
"Everything that was in my possession, I gave to her," she said. Asked why the records were not turned over to Martz, Angeletti said: "I don't know. I can't answer that."
The July 1994 police interview notes, however, were in the court file earlier this year. That raises other serious questions: How and when did they get there?
There are several possibilities. Martz could have been mistaken when she said she wasn't given the July interview notes or she might not have been allowed to see them; Angeletti could have been mistaken and withheld the statements before providiing the file to Martz. Or someone placed the statements in the file after the appellate hearing.
Though the mystery might never be solved, Martz is determined to have Pettiford's conviction erased.
"There is no reason to continue to spend countless hours and countless dollars to keep an innocent man convicted of a crime he
didn't commit and let two other people go," Martz said.
Pub Date: 08/23/99