In a rul­ing that crit­i­cized the state for con­ceal­ing a $500 pay­off to a key state wit­ness in a 1997 death penal­ty case, the Georgia Supreme Court unan­i­mous­ly upheld a low­er court deci­sion order­ing a new tri­al for Willie Palmer.

During Palmer’s orig­i­nal tri­al, his attor­neys had asked pros­e­cu­tors to dis­close any deals with state wit­ness­es. At that time, they were only told about a plea bar­gain with Palmer’s nephew, who had tes­ti­fied dur­ing the tri­al that he assist­ed his uncle in the killings of Palmer’s wife and her daugh­ter. This tes­ti­mo­ny was lat­er cor­rob­o­rat­ed by Randy Waltower, a paid drug infor­mant whose pay­off was not dis­closed. After Palmer’s con­vic­tion was upheld on direct appeal, his new lawyers again sought details of any oth­er deals or pay­offs made in the case. The state con­tin­ued to resist all efforts to reveal con­fi­den­tial infor­mant files in the case, includ­ing four doc­u­ments that showed the state paid $500 to Waltower five days after Palmer’s arrest. In spring 2005, a Superior Court judge request­ed the files out­lin­ing the Waltower pay­off and deter­mined that the state inten­tion­al­ly hid the pay­off from Palmer’s defense team ​“in defi­ance of its legal and eth­i­cal duties.” This rul­ing prompt­ed Georgia inves­ti­ga­tors to change their pro­cee­dures by order­ing inves­ti­ga­tors to write down on case files whether con­fi­den­tial infor­mants were used and paid so pros­e­cu­tors will know it.

The Georgia Supreme Court not­ed: ​“We can­not coun­te­nance the delib­er­ate sup­pres­sion by the state of a pay­ment to a key wit­ness, and its atten­dant cor­rup­tion of the truth-seek­ing process, in any case, and espe­cial­ly in a death-penal­ty case.” The Court said that the state’s deci­sion to con­ceal the pay­off vio­lates the pri­ma­ry tenet of the 1973 U.S. Supreme Court deci­sion Brady v. Maryland, which stat­ed, ​“Society wins not only when the guilty are con­vict­ed but when crim­i­nal tri­als are fair.” The state may retry Palmer for the mur­ders. (Atlanta Journal-Constitution, November 7, 2005). See Innocence.

DPIC’s lat­est report, Blind Justice: Juries Deciding Life and Death With Only Half the Truth, address­es the scope of offi­cial mis­con­duct in cap­i­tal cas­es. Since 2000, 37 peo­ple have been released from death row. In 23 (62%) of these cas­es, state mis­con­duct played a sig­nif­i­cant role in the faulty orig­i­nal tri­als. Read the report.

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