Witness says Dallas County prosecutor coached him to ID man as killer

[struggle4progress]

11:42 PM CST on Monday, January 25, 2010

By JENNIFER EMILY / The Dallas Morning News
[e-mail]

The sole eyewitness who testified at a 1995 trial that Richard Miles was a murderer now says the Dallas County prosecutor in the case coached him to do so, according to an affidavit obtained by The Dallas Morning News.

In a sworn statement taken in January, the witness, Marcus Thurman, testified that he had doubts about whether Miles was the man he saw firing a gun several times into a car, killing one man and wounding another. But he said the prosecutor, Tom D'Amore, told him where the defendant would sit and that he needed to point him out to the jury.

"I did not recognize him. He did not look like the shooter," Thurman, now a police officer in Oklahoma, swore in the affidavit. "When I was asked if I could point out the shooter, I did as I was instructed" ...

http://www.dallasnews.com/sharedcontent/dws/dn/latestnews/stories/012610dnmetcoachedwitness.3ec9421.html

[varkam]

1. Wow. Coaching *and* exculpatory evidence that wasn't turned over. A two-fer.

I recently watched Errol Morris' documentary about a murder conviction in Dallas called The Thin Blue Line. There were hints and outright accusations of all manner of prosecutorial misconduct. At one point in the movie, they were talking about a Dallas DA who had never lost a case. The idea was that he apparently was especially proud of his performance in the courtroom if he won a conviction even despite his own personal doubts about the guilt of the defendant.

Prosecutors are ethically obliged to see that justice is done. Presumably, sometimes that means dropping charges once you believe that the evidence is insufficient to convict. Presumably, anyway.