U.S. Court of Appeals Throws Out Virginian’s Death Sentence and Conviction

On August 16, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit affirmed a low­er court rul­ing vacat­ing Justin Wolfe​’s (pic­tured) con­vic­tion and death sen­tence for a drug-con­spir­a­cy mur­der in Virginia in 2001. His con­vic­tion was based pri­mar­i­ly on the tes­ti­mo­ny of the actu­al shoot­er, Owen Barber, who claimed that Wolfe hired him to kill Daniel Petrole because of an out­stand­ing drug debt. In 2010, Barber tes­ti­fied in open court that his tes­ti­mo­ny at Wolfe’s tri­al was false, and that Wolfe had noth­ing to do with Petrole’s death. Barber also admit­ted he agreed to impli­cate Wolfe in order to avoid the death penal­ty. The 4^th Circuit threw out all of Wolfe’s con­vic­tions because the state had with­held cru­cial evi­dence show­ing that it was the police who intro­duced Barber to the idea of Wolfe’s part in the con­spir­a­cy, and imply­ing that Barber could avoid the death penal­ty if he so tes­ti­fied. (Referring to the Newsome report). The court crit­i­cized the pros­e­cu­tion for inten­tion­al­ly with­hold­ing vital mate­ri­als from the defense: “[W]e feel com­pelled to acknowl­edge that the Commonwealth’s sup­pres­sion of the Newsome report, as well as oth­er appar­ent Brady mate­ri­als, was entire­ly inten­tion­al,” the court wrote.

The low­er fed­er­al District Court con­clud­ed that Wolfe had demon­strat­ed actu­al inno­cence, sat­is­fy­ing the Supreme Court’s require­ment for a review of his con­sti­tu­tion­al claims. The court described the prosecution’s case against Wolfe as ten­u­ous at best: ​“A review of the tri­al pro­ceed­ings unveiled wit­ness tes­ti­mo­ny replete with hearsay and spec­u­la­tion. The phys­i­cal evi­dence that did exist … was cir­cum­stan­tial.” The Court ordered the state to either free Wolfe or re-try him. The state could first request a re-hear­ing en banc or peti­tion the U.S. Supreme Court for review. UPDATE: The state’s oppor­tu­ni­ty to request an en banc re-hear­ing has passed. They may still appeal to the Supreme Court. (Aug. 30, 2012).

(DPIC Posted, August 16, 2012). Read DPIC’s Press Release. For more infor­ma­tion, vis­it DPIC’s resource page on Justin Wolfe. See Innocence. Listen to our pod­cast on Innocence.