August 8 FLORIDA: A QUESTION OF JUSTICE----20 years after a man's execution, doubts over his guilt haunt case; Some legal experts say that since the death penalty's return in the 1970s, at least 38 executions have occurred despite indications of innocence or strong doubt of guilt. James Adams' is one such case. Edgar Brown, the deceased, and James Adams, the executed, were raised in distant worlds until their lives collided in Case No. 73-284 in St. Lucie County Circuit Court. Adams, the black, illiterate son of a Tennessee sharecropper, was executed for killing Brown, a wealthy, white rancher beaten to death with a fireplace poker on a crisp fall morning in 1973. Yet, 20 years after 2,000 volts of electricity took Adams' life, questions about his guilt still linger, long after the deaths of many witnesses from old age and assorted maladies, and years after crucial evidence was destroyed or lost. >From the start, his case was clouded with accusations of flawed evidence- gathering and racial inequity. At trial, he was represented by a rookie assistant public defender busy juggling other cases while assigned to a major murder case. At the Brown family's request, in contrast, the state was aided by "special prosecutor" Raymond Ford, then among Florida's top lawyers. There were no fingerprints taken from key items stolen from the victim's home, no eyewitnesses to the killing and no questions asked at trial about certain conflicting facts. Hair believed by appeal lawyers to belong to the killer was tested after the murder. It came from a black person. It wasn't from Adams. Justice came swiftly. Adams was tried, convicted and sentenced to death a mere 4 months after the murder inside the rancher's family estate. At best, a Herald examination found, State vs. Adams was built on circumstantial evidence. Today, it would likely take much more to secure a murder conviction and carry out an execution in such a case. But DNA evidence, the foremost forensic arbiter in today's justice system, was not in play when Adams' fate was sealed. For every piece of circumstantial evidence pointing to Adams' guilt, countering circumstantial evidence argued for his innocence. 'He said, 'I didn't do this, but I'm going to die for this,'" Adams' widow, Daisy Mae Carswell, said recently from her modest Fort Pierce house, the same house she lived in 31 years ago. "It's something I really believed in my heart." The prosecution, to this day, is sure it got the killer. "I felt like the evidence, although circumstantial, was very strong," said case prosecutor R.N. Koblegard III, now in private practice in Fort Pierce. THE MAIN CHARACTERS A LEADING TOWN FIGURE AND A LOWLY LABORER Edgar Rollins Brown, cowboy hat atop his head, cigar in mouth, was a sturdy fixture in this aged Treasure Coast community. In the late 1940s and early 1950s, he was chief sheriff's deputy while his brother, the late B.A. Brown, ruled as county sheriff, according to archives of The Fort Pierce News Tribune. A lifelong resident active in both church and lodge, Brown was known to carry $1,000 to $1,500 in his left trouser pocket. He became a "well-known rancher," horse breeder and president of the St. Lucie County Cattlemen's Association. Few here knew James Adams. He was born in Covington, Tenn., in 1936, and his father was an uneducated farmer who was felled by a heart attack in 1951 at age 48. Adams' housewife mother bore 10 children, according to a family history compiled by Florida's Department of Corrections. The family was poor. Adams "did not know what a restaurant was until he was 20 years of age," the DOC report says. Like his father, his education came at the farm, not the schoolhouse. He began picking cotton at age 5. When his father died, Adams became head of the household. Soon, he ran into trouble with the law and got locked up. He fled Tennessee, landed in Fort Pierce, married and took work as a pipe layer. Months after Adams' arrival, Brown died his brutal death. THE ATTACK TAKES PLACE SUSPECT PASSES LINEUP, IS IMPLICATED OTHERWISE On the day of the murder, Nov. 12, 1973, on the poor side of town, Adams joined others in a card game at the squat apartment of a pregnant 15-year- old named Vivian Nickerson. He skipped his $2.50-an-hour construction job that day. About 10:30 that morning, 12.2 miles away, Edgar Brown returned home to get a jacket. A brown Rambler was parked in the driveway. When he went inside, an intruder was ransacking the house. The robber grabbed a large fireplace poker and beat Brown as he desperately tried to fend off blows. Foy Hortman, owner of a fertilizer company working at the estate that day, was close to the house at the time of struggle. A month before trial, Hortman was asked to describe the voice he heard coming from inside. "Well, it sounded kind of strained, more like a woman's voice," he testified, according to a deposition. "It didn't sound like Mr. Brown." Hortman saw someone about 30 to 35 years old and 6 feet tall, wearing blue jeans, leave. The person was looking "right straight at me," Hortman said. He had no idea what had just happened inside. A day later, Hortman was summoned to view a lineup. "Do I recall correctly that you couldn't identify anyone in the lineup as the man?" he was asked under oath. "Right." Adams was in the lineup. Hortman, one of many witnesses who have since died, also described the man as cleanshaven. Adams had a mustache. He was 5 feet 9, not 6 feet. Adams did own a Rambler. He had bought it months earlier from Vivian Nickerson's mother. Truck driver Willie Orange testified that he was "positive" he saw Adams driving the Rambler away that day, the clearest description linking him to the crime. Another witness, a caretaker at a ranch down the road, was pretty sure it was Adams who waved at him as the car passed. Several others saw the car but not the driver. When Brown's nephew arrived at the house later, he found his badly battered uncle. An ambulance rushed Brown to the hospital, his wife by his side. He died the next day, Nov. 13, at Martin Memorial Hospital. When a bulletin went out for the Rambler, deputies found it at Sammy Knight's Auto Body Shop on MLK Jr. Boulevard, awaiting a full paint job -- a damning detail for Adams. Adams was later found driving his wife's Oldsmobile. Not known to carry much money, he had $185 in his jacket pocket, including a bloodstained $20. He said the blood came from a cut on his finger, but the explanation didn't wash: The blood type matched Brown's. Worse, in the trunk of his wife's car, police found a pair of glasses and jewelry belonging to Brown. They also found bloodstained clothing, which prosecutors alleged, but didn't prove, belonged to Adams. The blood type matched Brown's. Adams was indicted on a charge of murder in the commission of a robbery. ALIBI CLAIM COLLAPSES TEEN ALTERS HER STORY, BADLY HURTING DEFENSE As the case neared trial in 1974, Vivian Nickerson gave a deposition that appeared to support Adams' alibi that he had been nowhere near the Brown estate. She said Adams was at her apartment by 10:30 that morning and stayed until 4:30. "No, he didn't leave," she testified. That places Adams at her apartment -- 12 miles and 15-20 minutes from the murder scene -- before, during and after the killing. Nickerson testified that she borrowed Adams' car for "5 or 10 minutes" the day of murder to go to a neighborhood store to buy cards. "Do you recall about what time you went to get the cards. . . . Before 10:30?" she was asked. "Yes," was her reply. Nickerson said she had the car around the time of the murder. At trial, Adams said Nickerson was gone about 35-40 minutes. Another person at the apartment that morning, teenager Kenneth Crowell, said he left as Nickerson did, though they went separate ways. Adams stayed behind, he said. Crowell, now 46, is serving three years in a Raiford prison. He declined to be interviewed unless The Herald paid him $50. The paper did not respond. Yet the sheriff's office and state attorney were focused squarely on Adams. "Ms. Nickerson didn't have her car repainted. Ms. Nickerson didn't have the bloody items on her," prosecutor Koblegard said. The woman's voice could have been the victim screaming for his life at a high pitch, he reasoned, as Hortman also heard the voice say, ``In the name of God, don't do it!" Koblegard said cloudy weather that day could have obscured Hortman's view. Though Hortman couldn't identify the killer in a lineup the day after the murder and was positive then that Adams wasn't at the ranch, at trial he said the person may or may not have been Adams. Even then, asked if he could definitively say the defendant was the man he saw the day of murder, he said, "No." At trial, Adams' public defender tried to shift suspicion to Nickerson, described at the time as Adams' girlfriend. Lawyer N. Richard Schopp said she had possession of Adams' car. Special prosecutor Ford kept hammering that a man was seen outside the house. He and Koblegard made widow Josephine Brown their 1st witness March 12, 1974. She told jurors of the pain of seeing her beaten husband and her efforts to save him. When Nickerson took the stand as a witness for the defense, her testimony contradicted her earlier deposition and damned Adams. She said he didn't arrive at her apartment until after 11 a.m., a serious blow to his alibi, since the murder had occurred more than a half hour earlier. She said he was moody that day, with a "faraway look" in his eyes. In a few brief answers, the teenager -- who said she hadn't looked at a watch or clock that morning -- hurt Adams' case badly. In closing arguments, Schopp tried to shift the focus, noting that authorities lifted multiple fingerprints from the Brown estate but linked none to Adams. Prosecutors countered with the evidence against him and contended that the paint shop listed a different last name for Adams that day, implying that he had something to hide. After 4 days of trial, the verdict was unanimous: Guilty. At sentencing, the defense put no witnesses on the stand. "We have no evidence," Schopp said. He then delivered a 1-minute plea that jurors spare Adams' life "for no other reason than that he is a man." Koblegard had a lot to say: "He was only out of jail . . . less than 1 year before he chose to come to our county to kill Edgar Brown, a longtime resident here, a man that had been married for 40 years, an ex-chief deputy, a prominent man. . . . This man came here from Tennessee to do this to one of our people." Circuit Judge Wallace Sample ordered Adams put to death, heeding the advice of most of the jurors, who deliberated just 10 minutes. At his sentencing on March 15, 1974, Adams had a brief message for the court: "Mr. Brown's murderer is still out there. I didn't do it." FIGHTING THE SENTENCE LAWYERS LOOK TO HAIR TO SAVE CLIENT'S LIFE For the next decade, a team of appeals lawyers would fight to save his life and raise evidence questions that, The Herald found, challenged the state's contention that Adams was the killer. Perhaps their key focus: hair found in the ambulance that ferried Brown to the hospital. Deputy Richard Browning, the lead investigator on the case, gathered the hair and wrote: "Hair removed from Mr. Brown's hand, by his wife, while in the ambulance in route to the hospital. This hair was thrown on the floor of the ambulance, the ambulance was cleaned out and the hair thrown in the trash can. If possible, we would like you to check for comparison with . . . known hair of Adams." Defense attorneys theorize that the hair had been in Brown's clutches as a result of his struggle with the killer. Tests found that the hair was from a black person. "The state Crime Laboratory determined that the hair could not have come from Mr. Adams," the defense noted. "To me it was pretty strong stuff that somebody else had done this," Richard Greene, one of Adams' lawyers, said recently from the West Palm Beach Public Defender's Office. "And if it's not his hair, whose hair is it?" Yet the lab report was issued 3 days after Adams was convicted. The appeals team had only stumbled across it. "We didn't go to the sheriff's office looking for the hair, we just went to see what was there. And lo and behold, here it was: a police report saying this was hair from the victim's hand, and a lab report saying it wasn't from James Adams," said defense lawyer Richard Burr. "In light of all this evidence, he should not have been put to death," Burr said. When the lawyers tried to make the hair a major issue on appeal, they were defeated by circumstance: Browning, the detective, had died years earlier. The state argued that the evidence was not significant because it could have come from someone else -- maybe a family maid, who was with Brown's widow after his body was found. "There's no telling whose hair it could have been," Koblegard, once a public defender, said recently. "I just think it's too far removed from the scene to be any real value." Burr, now in practice in Oklahoma, said the defense team "had no way to rebut that, because the officer was dead." At trial, Schopp had briefly asked Browning whether he received hair from the ambulance and submitted it for testing. But Schopp's questioning stopped there. 30 years later, Schopp didn't "remember specifically that much about it." The hair evidence has since been destroyed. WHO WAS THE KILLER? A NEW THEORY EMERGES: A WOMAN IS CONSIDERED The defense looked not only at evidence but at witnesses -- witnesses such as truck driver Willie] Orange, who said at the trial he was positive he saw Adams drive from the rancher's house after the murder. "That is him," he exclaimed. Defense investigators would learn that Orange carried a heavy grudge against Adams. He suspected that Adams was having an affair with his wife. At trial years earlier, Schopp briefly told jurors Orange thought Adams was seeing his wife, but didn't pursue the issue. The appeals lawyers did. 'He asked me if I was messing around with James Adams and I said no. My husband said, 'Well, he'll get what he deserves, anyway,'" Orange's former wife, Cleo, told the appeals team, according to a clemency filing. She did not reply to interview requests. Willie Orange is dead. Leon Wright, a Philadelphia detective turned defense investigator who interviewed Cleo Orange, said he took his assignment skeptical of the innocence claim. "I started out being a firm believer in the death penalty," Wright said. "Over the years, my belief totally changed. There's no rhyme or reason who gets put to death and who doesn't." He became convinced Adams was not the killer. Echoing court papers filed by the defense, he points instead to Nickerson. The suspicion is triggered by several factors. Among them: She had the Rambler that morning, the witness outside the house heard a "woman's voice" but didn't pick Adams as the six-foot suspect, and her own words before trial placed Adams at her apartment at the time of murder. 'Had the jury been told about Vivian Nickerson's sworn testimony less than 2 months before James Adams' trial, which unequivocally corroborated Mr. Adams' testimony that he was continuously at Ms. Nickerson's house from before the homicide until well after the homicide, the jury would have been more likely to suspect Vivian Nickerson as the perpetrator," the appeals team wrote then-Gov. Bob Graham. Nickerson is black and is now 6 feet 1 inch and 301 pounds. Authorities never tested whether her hair matched that found in the ambulance, The Herald found. Nor did they put her in the lineup. Prosecutors say they had no reason to suspect her. One, the evidence pointed to Adams. Two, Nickerson is a woman. The witness saw a man. Yet appeals lawyers said she has "a strikingly masculine appearance" and :met many of the features of [the witness] description, including height and size and complexion.: Said Wright: "When we were talking to her, I was trying to figure out a way to get some of her hair." In an unrelated 1992 grand theft arrest in Fort Pierce, in fact, the police report notes: "Witness advised that the subject was very large and looked a lot like a man." Nickerson, arrested more than 30 times since the killing, has long denied involvement and repeated that denial to The Herald after her recent release from prison, saying she "didn't know anything" about the murder. The defense's suspicion of Nickerson was built on circumstantial evidence -- as was the state's case against Adams. Yet in a trial where guilt must be proved beyond reasonable doubt, the appeals lawyers argued that doubt not only existed, but was plentiful. EXPLORING WEAKNESSES SOME OF STATE'S POINTS OPEN TO INTERPRETATION They challenged other circumstantial evidence and said: - That Adams had planned earlier to get his car painted. Adams testified at trial -- and the body shop owner, now dead, confirmed under oath -- that Adams had taken the Rambler to the same shop a month before the murder and got a $490.67 estimate to do paint and repair work on the car's back end, The Herald found.' - That the bloody $20 found on Adams proved little, since 45 % of the population had the same blood type. - That Brown family items found in the trunk of Adams' wife's car -- a watch and 2 rings -- were not tested for prints. The defense said someone else could have put them there. They said Adams had been staying with a friend temporarily around the time of the murder and that when he returned home, he moved belongings from his Rambler and his friend's apartment to the trunk of his wife's car. Thus, he may have moved items from the Rambler that someone else had put there. The friend, like so many witnesses, is dead. Adams' widow, Daisy Mae Carswell, recalled recently that sheriff's investigators swarmed her house after Adams' arrest searching for cash stolen from the wealthy victim. "They looked everywhere," she said. "In drawers, under bed mattresses, everywhere." "If he did it, he would have had the money," said Adams' stepdaughter, Vivian Carswell. To Brown's family, the conviction was just. "It's about as strong a circumstantial case as one could conceive," Edgar "Al" Brown, the victim's son, said recently. "I do feel very strongly that he committed the crime." CONVICT LOSES THE FIGHT 'AN INNOCENT MAN WAS KILLED,' LAWYER SAYS On Death Row, as the appeals wound their way to finality, Adams learned to read and write. But his fight was lost with a 5-4 vote at the U.S. Supreme Court. "An innocent man was killed by the state of Florida," assistant public defender Greene told reporters on execution day, May 10, 1984. "He was killed -- found guilty -- because he was black and poor." 20 years later, Greene said: "It was such a horrible thing to watch that. I can close my eyes and see it right now." (source: Miami Herald) ***************** Sheriff: Suspects In Deltona Mass Murder Should Get Death Penalty Johnsons Says They Have 'Proven That They Are Not Fit For Society' The men charged in connection with the beating deaths of 6 people in Deltona, Fla., should be put to death, according to the Volusia County sheriff. 3 teens and a 27-year-old were charged charged with 1st-degree murder and armed burglary in apparent revenge killings over a missing Xbox and clothes. Robert Cannon, 18, of Orange City; Jerone Hunter, 18, of Deltona; and Michael Salas, 18, of Deltona were arrested early Sunday along with Troy Victorino. "All 4 of these people deserve the death penalty in my opinion," Johnson said Sunday. "They are a danger to society. They've proven that they are not fit to be in society." Johnson said this is a case where the death penalty should be immediate. I'm just a big believer that this is a classic case that the death penalty should be swift. It's a shame it is not done faster than what it it is." The sheriff's office identified the victims Saturday as Michelle Ann Nathan, 19; Anthony Vega, 34; Roberto "Tito" Gonzalez, 28, of New York; Francisco Ayo Roman, 30; and Jonathan Gleason, 18. Authorities had not yet positively identified the 6th victim because her face was unrecognizable. They (suspects) have left victims in their path -- not only the ones who are dead but also the family members," Johnson said. "These families will never get over this." (source: Associated Press) CALIFORNIA: To save money, end the death penalty Regarding the California Performance Review report that was prepared for Governor Schwarzenegger (Page 1A, July 31), there is at least 1 other change that should be considered: the death penalty. Termination of the death penalty would add immeasurably to the $32 billion in savings projected if all of the recommendations in the review are adopted. According to the Death Penalty Information Center, "The death penalty is escaping the decisive cost-benefit analysis to which every other program is being put in times of austerity." The center asserts further that "the death penalty is much more expensive than its closest alternative -- life imprisonment with no parole. Capital trials are longer and more expensive at every step than other murder trials." The Board of Supervisors of Santa Clara County has wisely adopted a resolution recommending a moratorium and study of the death penalty in California. This is a step in the right direction. (source: Opinion, San Jose Mercury News) OHIO: Death Penalty documentary profiles Cleveland case In Cleveland, a former police officer-turned lawyer tells his client to start praying the night before he goes on trial for his life. The private conversation, recorded in the back room of the Cuyahoga County Justice Center, will air on network television as a scene in a 6-episode series, "In the Jury Room," which chronicles 6 murder trials in 3 states. Executive producer Michael Bicks said this is the second time in American history that cameras were allowed in a jury room for a death penalty case. Bicks wants to emphasize that the show is not "reality TV" but a product of ABC news. The 1st show, shot in Cleveland, records prosecutors, defense attorneys and 47-year-old Mark Ducic, a Euclid man charged with killing 2 people with drug overdoses. A Cuyahoga County Common Pleas jury recommended against the death penalty for Ducic, who was sentenced in June to life without parole. The Ohio Supreme Court granted ABC permission to film the deliberations and backroom preparations. Some witnesses faces are obscured and potential jurors who didn't like the idea were excused. Although three remote-controlled cameras captured the courtroom proceedings, legal scholars, lawyers and judges say they are far more interested with the cameras in the jury room. Lead prosecutor Dan Kasaris said TV crews had no impact on the trial itself, but he believes it will be useful reference for legal proceedings. "I think it'll be a great educational experience and a tool to see how the jury considered the evidence, how we carried ourselves in the courtroom and how we tried our case," he said. "It will help us become better prosecutors." (source: Associated Press) USA: Doing the Death Penalty The Right Way Our esteemed colleague here at Useless Knowledge, Michael John McCrae, has mentioned on a couple of occasions here that all the states of our Union should have the death penalty, and that murder, in particular, calls out for this specific brand of justice. In some conversations that weve had off the board, hes laid out to me his case for that call, citing the Scriptures themselves to proof his point. Not to anyones surprise, I countered with some Scripture of my own to indicate that what were doing is akin to denying Jesuss blood shed at Calvary. But after much reflection, prayer, and thought, I think Michael may have a valid point. And if were going to have the death penalty in this country, we need to do it right. That will mean doing the following things: 1) Each state would be required to rewrite their criminal codes to authorize the death penalty for 1st-degree murder, murder in the commission of a 2nd felony (like armed robbery), adultery, fornication, disobedience to parents, rape, blasphemy and perjury (or bearing false witness against a neighbor), among other crimes. That includes abolitionist states like Michigan and North Dakota, states that are abolitionist-in-fact like Kansas and Montana, and death-penalty core states like Florida and South Carolina. US territories including Guam and Puerto Rico would also be held to this standard, as would the Justice Department (for federal offenses, including treason) and the Defense Department (for military offenses). 2) Executions would take place within the boundaries of individual cities, or cities closest to unincorporated areas. That means that an execution could take place anytime, anywhere, without having to transport the condemned to a central, state-run facility. The federal government and the military would also be able to conduct an execution in any location it saw fit. 3) Each jurisdiction would be responsible for conducting capital trials, and the judgments rendered in those courts would be final. That means that there would be no appellate courts at the state or federal level. Executions would be carried out no later than 72 hours after the passage of sentence. Executions on holidays and/or Sundays would be considered acceptable, in the interest of justice. And to ensure due process, the courts could delay any execution to consider any evidence that may exonerate the condemned, but only if that evidence is delivered prior to the execution. 4) Each jurisdiction would be responsible for choosing between stoning and hanging as its primary method of execution. Modern methods of execution, including electrocution, firing squad, lethal injection and lethal gas would be outlawed. 5) All executions would be opened to the general public. There would be some distinct advantages to this system: 1) The costs of capital trials would go way down. Even if the trial went on for a while, there wouldnt be a lengthy appeals process afterward, so billions of dollars would be saved. 2) The victims of capital crimes would get closure a few days after the trial ended, instead of having to wait through years of appeals and stays. 3) The death penalty would become less of a political football and more of the deterrent to crime that it should be. Of course, theres one major risk involved. It is possible that innocent people would be stoned or hung accidentally. But to keep the wheels of justice turning and adhere to a death-penalty system worthy of the Bible, that kind of risk is inevitable. Those responsible for stoning or hanging those innocents would have to bear up to the unenviable task of explaining their errors to God, not to anyone else. So, if we can get everyone on the same pages, the United States would have a workable, judicially-sound death penalty. How could we go wrong, when we put our full faith in Gods Word to lead us? Lets not beat around the bush any longer. Lets put it in play and bring justice back to America. (source: About the author: If the death penalty worked like it should, Claxton Graham would support it. Until it does, though, he'll have to put up with with being branded as a liberal because he'll continue to voice his opposition to it; Useless-Knowledge.com) MARYLAND: Prosecutor ends 3rd death penalty bid for killer of 2 Anne Arundel County's top prosecutor has ended his 3rd bid to get a death sentence for a former National Security Agency cryptologist convicted of killing 2 women more than 10 years ago. The prosecutor's decision comes after relatives of the victims pleaded for a stop to the emotionally draining court proceedings. Anne Arundel State's Attorney Frank R. Weathersbee said his office had hoped to once again seek death for Darris A. Ware, whose two prior death sentences were voided. But the families of victims Betina "Kristi" Gentry, 18, and Cynthia V. Allen, 22, convinced him that it was time to give the case a sense of finality. Mr. Weathersbee said prosecutors will instead ask for life without parole at Ware's sentencing hearing, which he said he hoped could be scheduled for this month. "They've been through so much. I can't look them in the eye and say, 'Nah, you have to relive it again.' I can't do that," Mr. Weathersbee told the Baltimore Sun. Miss Gentry's oldest brother, Keith Gentry, said the route to execution in Maryland is a torturous one for families. He described it as a repetitive process of trials, appeals and overturned sentences. With the 3rd sentencing looming nearly 11 years after his sister's death, Keith Gentry, a retired state trooper, said he proposed to other family members that they advocate for a sentence that would put Ware behind bars for life. Mr. Weathersbee's decision comes two years after an Anne Arundel Circuit judge vacated Ware's death sentence, saying his two attorneys were ill- prepared to argue against death before a jury in 1999. It also comes nearly two months after the execution of Steven H. Oken, whose death was eagerly sought for 17 years by the families of the women he killed. Seven inmates are on death row awaiting execution. Ware's attorney, Arcangelo M. Tuminelli, called Mr. Weathersbee's decision "somewhat out of the ordinary." But he also noted that Baltimore County Circuit Judge Dana M. Levitz chose a life sentence over death for an inmate last year out of concern for what the judge called "the devastating effect that this unending litigation has on the innocent families of the victims." Ware, who had a top-level security clearance, was first convicted of 2 counts of 1st-degree murder and sentenced to death in 1995 by a Howard County jury for the shooting deaths of Miss Gentry, his former fiance, and Miss Allen, her friend, in Miss Gentry's Severn home on Dec. 30, 1993. The case was moved to Howard after Ware's attorneys argued that their client could not get a fair trial in Anne Arundel because of pretrial publicity. But Maryland's highest court threw out the conviction and the death sentence 2 years later, citing prosecutors' failure to reveal information about a key prosecution witness who was in jail and hoping to trim his prison term. Prosecutors tried Ware again in 1999 this time in Anne Arundel County and again won a conviction and death sentence. But although both were later affirmed by the Court of Appeals, Anne Arundel Circuit Judge Robert H. Heller Jr. voided the sentence in 2002, citing deficiencies in preparation by Ware's attorneys. (source: Associated Press)
