A judge on Thursday granted a new trial to three Cleveland men serving 18-year sentences for a 1995 murder, saying prosecutors concealed evidence that could have exonerated them.
Cuyahoga County prosecutors plan to appeal Judge Nancy Margaret Russo’s decision to retry the three, spokesman Joseph Frolick said.
Derrick Wheat, Laurese Glover and Eugene Johnson were teenagers when they were charged with murdering Clifton Hudson in East Cleveland and spent 18 years in prison.
Prosecutors in the case relied heavily on the testimony of a 14-year-old witness, Tamika Harris, who told police she saw the person who shot Hudson get into and exit the Chevrolet Blazer the teenagers were riding in.
Harris identified Johnson as the gunman at trial but said years later that he did not see the gunman get out of the truck or even see his face.
In 1998, Wheat’s lawyers requested police records from the city of East Cleveland that contained evidence that might contradict Harris’s testimony.
Lawyers for the Ohio Innocence Project, which represents Wheat and Glover, said Carmen Marino, who was an assistant county attorney at the time, instructed the city to turn the file over to the prosecutor’s office rather than to lawyers.
Russo said Marino’s actions amounted to a deliberate distortion of a criminal case and prosecutorial misconduct.
“I have no doubt whatsoever that Carmen Marino was fully aware of all of this concealed evidence and was consistently and brazenly involved in its concealment,” Russo said.
Marino said in a phone interview Thursday that he was not the prosecutor in the case and did not recall writing a letter to police about the evidence.
He said that in the past, prosecutors had a great deal of discretion over how much information to share with defense attorneys.
“If there was any written evidence from me, it was based on office policy and office policy was not to make it public,” Marino said.
Russo set bail for each defendant at $50,000 with electronic monitoring, but prosecutors are seeking to increase bail, Frolick said.
Reuters: Reporting by Kim Palmer; Editing by David Bailey and Bill Trott
Breaking News – March 27th