Daniel Wade Moore was acquit­ted of all charges by a jury in Alabama on May 14. Moore was orig­i­nal­ly found guilty of the mur­der and sex­u­al assault of Karen Tipton in 2002. The judge over­ruled the jury’s rec­om­men­da­tion of a life sen­tence and instead sen­tenced him to death in January 2003, call­ing the mur­der one of the worst ever in the coun­ty. A new tri­al was ordered in 2003 because of evi­dence with­held by the pros­e­cu­tion. A sec­ond tri­al in 2008 end­ed in a mis­tri­al with the jury dead­locked at 8 – 4 for acquit­tal. (Moore is the 133rd per­son to be exon­er­at­ed and freed from death row since 1973, accord­ing to DPIC’s record of exonerations.)

Judge Glenn Thompson, who orig­i­nal­ly sen­tenced Moore to death, ordered a retri­al upon dis­cov­ery that the pros­e­cu­tion had with­held impor­tant evi­dence. ​“Orders were entered in any cap­i­tal case, that what­ev­er the state has, what­ev­er the pros­e­cu­tor has, what­ev­er the inves­ti­ga­tion has they should pro­vide that to the defen­dant,” said Judge Thompson. The evi­dence miss­ing was a 256-page F.B.I. report. ​“The pros­e­cu­tion, Mr. Valeska specif­i­cal­ly, looked me in the eye and said, quote, ​‘there ain’t no such thing as an F.B.I. report.’ Well, there prob­a­bly was­n’t a report, but there were 256 pages of infor­ma­tion col­lect­ed by Decatur police offi­cers that were sent to the F.B.I.,” said Judge Thompson. According to Judge Thompson, Assistant Attorney General Don Valeska lat­er came to him con­fess­ing there was with­held infor­ma­tion. ​“Mr. Valeska came for­ward with the infor­ma­tion after the con­vic­tion,” said Judge Thompson. ​“Clearly, the only rem­e­dy was to grant him a new tri­al and I did,” he said. ​“It frus­trat­ed and angered me that he would be will­ing to lie to the court,” he con­tin­ued. Meanwhile, the Alabama Court of Criminal Appeals ordered Judge Thompson to stand down from the tri­al and con­tin­ued to let Valeska pros­e­cute Moore.

Upon hear­ing the jury’s not guilty ver­dict, Judge Thompson respond­ed, ​“I felt like it was the only con­clu­sion that a jury could reach if they actu­al­ly fol­lowed the law.” Thompson also said that the prob­lems with the pros­e­cu­tion with­hold­ing evi­dence con­tin­ued through­out the 10 years of the case. Just days before the cur­rent tri­al start­ed, the pros­e­cu­tion called the defense say­ing they had just found new evi­dence from the vic­tim’s home com­put­er.

(A Stuart, ​“Judge in Moore’s first tri­al dis­cuss­es case,” WHNT (Alabama), May 18, 2009). See Innocence. Since 1973, 132 oth­er inmates have been exon­er­at­ed and freed from death row. This is the third exon­er­a­tion in 2009 in the U.S. There have now been six exon­er­a­tions in Alabama. Troy Davis, an inmate on death row in Georgia, is fac­ing an exe­cu­tion date despite new excul­pa­to­ry evi­dence in his case. He is ask­ing the U.S. Supreme Court to review his new evi­dence. Read more about Troy Davis in an updat­ed Amnesty International Report.

Citation Guide