© AP Photo/Statesman.com, Ricardo BrazziellKen Anderson
Williamson County, Texas - A corrupt former prosecutor will face a rare penalty for intentionally withholding evidence in a trial that sent an man to prison 25 years ago. For robbing an innocent man of decades of his life, the ex-D.A. will spend now have to spend 10 days in jail.
The case takes us back more than two decades. On the morning of August 13, 1986, the body of Christine Morton was found beaten to death with a wooden object in her bed. Her sheets were stained with blood and semen, and her credit card was missing. Her husband, Texas grocery store manager Michael Morton had not been home since 5:30 a.m., but was seized as the prime suspect. He had no arrests, convictions, or history of violence against anyone at that time. He was charged and put on trial for his wife's murder.
The prosecution, led by district attorney Ken Anderson, presented no physical evidence or witnesses that tied Michael Morton to the crime. They hypothesized that Morton had beaten his wife to death before going to work because she refused to have sex with him on his birthday. The prosecution claimed that Morton arranged the scene to look like a burglary, and that he masturbated on his wife's corpse.
These charges came while Anderson was sitting on evidence that could have redeemed Michael Morton. The Mortons' 3-year-old son, Eric, had been present during the murder. According to Eric, the murderer was not his daddy, but a "
monster." Young Eric had described the crime scene and murder in great detail, and specifically told investigators that his "Daddy" was "not home" when it happened.
Additionally withheld was the fact that Mortons' neighbors told investigators that a man had repeatedly parked a green van on the street behind the crime scene and walked off into a nearby wooded area, days before the murder. Then there was the inconvenient fact (for the prosecution) that the victim's missing credit card had been used at a San Antonio jewelry store.
None of this evidence was released during the trial. On February 17, 1987, Michael Morton was convicted of murder and given a life sentence.
Comment: The plaintiff is obviously shooting himself in the foot, but note that this first for internet censorship comes to us courtesy of France, a country with an extraordinary fear of the Internet.