Gregory Freeman: State Owes Apology To Woman Set Up In Murder Case. PD 8/8/1999

Headline: STATE OWES APOLOGY TO WOMAN SET UP IN MURDER CASE
Reporter: By Gregory Freeman

Publication: ST. LOUIS POST-DISPATCH
Last Printed: Sun., Aug 8, 1999
Section: METRO, Page: C3, Edition: FIVE STAR LIFT

Ellen Reasonover's trial

Ellen Reasonover should be an angry woman today.
Her youth robbed from her by the state of Missouri, she walked out of prison last week after U.S. District Judge Jean C. Hamilton ordered authorities to release her. Reasonover served more than 16 years in prison for a murder she maintains she did not commit.

Hamilton called the flimsy case that prosecutors had built against her "fundamentally unfair."
In effect, the entire case upon Reasonover seemed to be built on secret deals with jailhouse snitches, the misleading of a jury and what smacks of a cover-up by prosecutors.
Reasonover was sentenced to 50 years in prison without the possibility of parole in 1983, after a jury found her guilty of killing a 19-year-old gas station attendant during a robbery. No witnesses placed her at the scene. Police found no fingerprints and no murder weapon. Prosecutors said her motive was robbery, but no money was taken from the cash register and about $3,000 was left in an unlocked safe.

The day after the murder, Reasonover was watching the news and learned of the robbery. It caught her eye because she had been washing at a laundromat around the corner the night before, and had gone to the gas station to get change. What was unusual, she said, was that she had knocked on the window and a man inside looked at her, went inside a room and never came out.
After telling her mother what she had seen, Reasonover's mother encouraged her to tell the police.
It was at that point that things went horribly wrong. After she was unable to identify any suspects, police began to suspect her. Within months, she was convicted of a crime she said she never committed.

It's difficult to imagine the horror of how she must have felt, finding herself behind bars.
   It's even more frightening to imagine how she appeared to be set up.
   The jury relied almost entirely on the testimony of two inmates, Rose Joliff and Mary Ellen Lyner. Both testified that Reasonover had confessed to them. But the jury was not told that both prisoners had long criminal records, histories of drug addiction and - most telling of all - benefited from their testimony.
   In addition, a tape recording of a conversation between Joliff and Reasonover, in which Reasonover repeatedly professed her innocence, was withheld. Steven Goldman, who was the chief prosecutor and is now a St. Louis County judge, denied ever hearing or seeing the tape before.
   In her ruling, Hamilton wrote that "had the tape been disclosed, it would have ... had a devastating impact on Jolliff's credibility at trial."
   Hamilton, in her ruling, criticized prosecutors for withholding evidence that could have proved Reasonover's innocence. "The prosecution's failure to turn over evidence favorable to the defense rendered (Reasonover's) trial fundamentally unfair and deprived (her) of her rights under the due process clause, " Hamilton wrote.

So after nearly two decades behind bars, Reasonover is a free woman today. Her daughter, who was 2 years old when she went to prison, is 18 now. Reasonover's youth has been lost. She now must try to rebuild her life, and she'll never be able to fully recapture her years wasted behind bars.
Reasonover is better than most people. Most would be angry and bitter after what happened. Reasonover says she's not. Her faith in God has kept her from being angry with anyone, she says. But that doesn't make what happened to Reasonover any less horrible.

Reasonover clearly deserves an apology from the state of Missouri.
   The state shouldn't tolerate policies that allow defendants to be set up. Some sort of punishment should be put in place for that sort of behavior.
   And all Missourians deserve a significant review of the policies of prosecutors to make sure that the phrase "innocent until proven guilty" has real meaning in our justice system.
   After all, if this kind of judicial nightmare could happen to Reasonover, what's to prevent it from happening to anyone else?

Daniel Schesch - Webweaver

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