A Georgia Superior Court over­turned the mur­der con­vic­tion of death row inmate Willie Palmer after find­ing that pros­e­cu­tors hid a $500 pay­off to the state’s key tri­al wit­ness, an act the judge said was ​“in defi­ance of (the state’s) legal and eth­i­cal duties.” The judge also threw out Palmer’s death sen­tence on the grounds that his tri­al lawyer failed to inves­ti­gate and present evi­dence of Palmer’s men­tal retar­da­tion.

In his opin­ion, the judge not­ed that pros­e­cu­tors ​“inten­tion­al­ly hid” a deal made with the a state wit­ness, and that pros­e­cu­tors ​“aggres­sive­ly resist­ed” the deal’s dis­clo­sure until a hear­ing that took place 6 years after Palmer’s 1997 tri­al. ​“It appears log­i­cal­ly inescapable that the state knew, only too well, how extreme­ly mate­r­i­al this evi­dence was in this case. It is dif­fi­cult, if not impos­si­ble, to con­ceive of how this sup­pres­sion could have been done in good faith.… Without the jury being informed that the state has pro­vid­ed an impor­tant wit­ness a pecu­niary moti­va­tion to tes­ti­fy, the tri­al trans­forms into a basi­cal­ly cor­rupt process in which the jury is deprived of a major key to seek­ing and decid­ing the truth — and deter­min­ing a man’s fate,” the judge wrote in order­ing a new tri­al for Palmer. The State Attorney General’s Office is appeal­ing the ruling.

(Atlanta Journal-Constitution, April 4, 2005). See Prosecutorial Misconduct, Representation and Mental Retardation.

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