An Ohio appeals court heard argu­ment on June 6 on whether to grant a new tri­al to for­mer death-row pris­on­er Kevin Keith (pic­tured), whose death sen­tence was com­mut­ed to life with­out parole by Ohio Governor Ted Strickland in 2010 amid con­cerns that he may be inno­cent. Keith, who has con­sis­tent­ly main­tained his inno­cence of the three 1994 mur­ders for which he was sen­tenced to death, pre­sent­ed argu­ment to the Ohio Court of Appeals for the 3rd District based on new­ly dis­cov­ered evi­dence that the state foren­sic ana­lyst whose con­tro­ver­sial tire-track analy­sis linked him to the crimes had an undis­closed record of mis­con­duct. Forensic ana­lyst G. Michele Yezzo tes­ti­fied at Keith’s tri­al that a license plate imprint of the num­bers 043 left in a snow bank at the crime scene matched Keith’s girl­friend’s car, and that, by look­ing at a tire brochure, she could con­clude that tire tracks also matched the car. No oth­er foren­sic evi­dence linked Keith to the crime. In addi­tion, a sev­en-year-old sur­vivor who was shown a pho­to array of sus­pects exclud­ed Keith’s pho­to and told the police that it was her ​“Daddy’s friend, Bruce” who shot them, and sev­er­al ali­bi wit­ness­es tes­ti­fied that Keith was more than 30 min­utes away when the shoot­ings took place. An alter­nate sus­pect who drove a car fit­ting eye­wit­ness descrip­tions of the get­away car and that had a 043 in its license plate num­ber also had a broth­er named Bruce. During the June 6 argu­ment, Keith’s lawyer, Rachel Troutman, told the Court of Appeals, ​“That expert [Yezzo] was known to the state — though not to Mr. Keith — as some­one who will stretch the truth to sat­is­fy a depart­ment. Since the tri­al her foren­sic con­clu­sions have proven faulty.” Yezzo’s per­son­nel file said her analy­sis was untrust­wor­thy, co-work­ers thought she suf­fered from a ​“severe men­tal imbal­ance,” she used racial slurs in describ­ing a minor­i­ty co-work­er, and super­vi­sors and col­leagues not­ed her ​“find­ings and con­clu­sions regard­ing the truth may be sus­pect.” Prosecutors said they expect­ed the court’s deci­sion, which can be appealed to the Ohio Supreme Court, to be issued with­in a peri­od of sev­er­al weeks to several months.

(J. Flom, ​“Prosecutors have a duty to cor­rect Kevin Keith’s wrong­ful mur­der con­vic­tion: Jason Flom (Opinion),” Cleveland​.com, June 2, 2017; Z. Tuggle, ​“Oral argu­ments in Kevin Keith appeal pre­sent­ed,” Telegraph-Forum, June 6, 2017.) See Innocence.

Citation Guide