Seven men who sought to have a judge overturn their convictions for
the high-profile 1984 murder of a Northeast D.C. woman failed to prove
their innocence during a series of hearings that reexamined the case
earlier this year, a judge ruled Monday.
The ruling by D.C. Superior Court Judge Frederick H. Weisberg
means that six of the men — Kelvin Smith, Levy Rouse, Clifton
Yarborough, Timothy Catlett, Russell Overton and Charles Turner — will
serve out their sentences from their 1985 convictions on charges of
felony murder in the beating death of Catherine Fuller. A seventh man
already has been released from prison.
The ruling formally ends a process that began in the spring. During
three weeks of hearings in April, prosecutors squared off against
defense attorneys, who argued that authorities, pressured by city
residents and elected officials, rushed their investigation and arrested
the wrong men; purposely withheld important evidence that hurt the
defendants’ case; and threatened witnesses into lying. Prosecutors
maintained that the seven men were responsible for the killing.
Weisberg ruled that the defense attorneys had failed to produce evidence that their clients were innocent.
“After
considering all of the evidence, both at trial and at the hearings, the
court concludes that petitioners have not come close to demonstrating
actual innocence,” Weisberg wrote in his ruling.
Attorneys for the seven men said they plan to appeal.
“We
are disappointed that the fight to clear the names of these defendants
will have to continue, but we continue to believe that there is
overwhelming evidence that Catherine Fuller was not murdered by these
defendants,” Barry J. Pollack, one of the lead attorneys for the men,
said in an interview Monday.
In 1985, a jury found eight
neighborhood friends — then between 16 and 21 years old — guilty of
first-degree murder in connection with Fuller’s death. The men were
sentenced to 35 years to life in prison. One of them, Steven L. Webb,
died in prison after a brief illness. Another, Charles Turner’s brother
Christopher, was paroled in 2010 after more than 25 years behind bars.
Prosecutors
outlined a horrific scenario during the 1985 trial: Fuller, 48, a
cleaning woman, wife and mother of six, left her K Street NE home on a
rainy afternoon to fill a prescription. The suspects were smoking
marijuana and listening to go-go music at a nearby park.
A group
of about 30 people confronted Fuller, prosecutors said. She was grabbed
from behind and pushed into an alley, where she was beaten; a
12-inch-long metal pole was shoved into her rectum. Her liver was
shattered, a lung was punctured and four of her ribs were broken,
according to authorities. Her body was found in a garage in the same
alley that evening.
In all, 17 people were charged in the murder.
Five indictments were dismissed, two defendants pleaded guilty to
second-degree murder and two others were acquitted.
During the
April hearings, defense attorneys presented four witnesses who told
Weisberg that detectives had forced them to lie about seeing the men in
the alley when Fuller was killed. In his ruling, Weisberg said there was
no evidence that the witnesses made up their accounts and called the
recantations “incredible.”
Weisberg also highlighted the failed testimony of Melvin Montgomery.
Defense attorneys had expected Montgomery, 45, to testify that he had
been pressured into lying when he said he saw the men in the alley at
the time Fuller was killed.
Instead, in a surprise turn that sent
defense attorneys scrambling, Montgomery took the stand and told
Weisberg that he had been truthful during his 1985 testimony.
Weisberg
called Montgomery’s testimony a “bad turn of events. Whatever else can
be said of Mr. Montgomery’s ‘recantation,’ it certainly cannot be said
that his testimony helps petitioners to meet their burden of proving
actual innocence,” the judge wrote.
In the hearings, defense
attorneys also argued that prosecutors during the trial had withheld key
evidence, including information about other possible suspects. For
example, several witnesses told authorities they had seen another man,
James McMillan, in the alley at the time of the attack. McMillan, 46,
whose house was located on the alley where Fuller was killed, is serving
a life sentence in a Virginia prison for a deadly attack on another
woman.
Weisberg agreed that prosecutors should have disclosed the
information about other possible suspects, but ruled that even if
McMillan had been in the alley, it did not mean the other men were not
there. McMillan, Weisberg said, “could have been a participant” in the
attack.
After a 2001 Washington Post article, attorneys from the Mid-Atlantic Innocence Project and nearly a dozen volunteers began petitioning for a new trial.
Weisberg
had ordered a retrial in another case in 2009, ruling that a prosecutor
deliberately withheld information in a murder trial. On Monday, he
declined to do the same for the seven men convicted in the Fuller
killing.
“Unquestionably, they have not proved by clear and
convincing evidence that they are actually innocent, and just as surely
they have not established their innocence by a preponderance of the
evidence,” Weisberg wrote.
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