Wisconsin Innocence Project Files Motion for New Trial in Michigan Man's Murder Conviction
Posted: 2009.11.5
The Wisconsin
Innocence Project, a program at the UW Law School’s FrankJ.RemingtonCenter,
has filed a motion for a new trial based on powerful new evidence of a Michigan
man’s innocence. Scott Baldwin was convicted in 2001 of first degree murder
after investigators re-opened a 12 year-old investigation into the 1988 murder
of Kalamazoo bicycle shop owner
Earl O’Byrne. The main evidence against Baldwin was a
statement from a jilted ex-girlfriend who failed a polygraph and was dismissed
as not credible during the initial investigation. When Cold Case investigators
re-opened the case 12 years later, the girlfriend’s statement grew from 3 pages
to 42 pages, and her testimony led to Baldwin’s
convictions. But Baldwin’s new attorneys believe that
dramatic new evidence requires a new trial, or, at the very least, DNA
testing that could conclusively prove whether Baldwin or an alternate suspect
committed the crime.
The new evidence stems from anonymous tips recently released
pursuant to the Freedom of Information Act. While only one tip implicated Baldwin
(the tip from his ex-girlfriend), numerous tips implicate a different man, who
unlike Baldwin has a history of violent criminal
behavior. Baldwin was denied access to the tips before
trial, but since obtaining them in 2007 private investigators have been able to
interview the daughter of the alternate suspect, who provided a dramatic taped
statement in 2008. In the statement, she explains how her father confessed in
shocking detail to breaking into the victim’s shop and robbing and murdering
him. Several other new witnesses assert that the alternate suspect and his
girlfriend confessed to them as well. Additionally, important Prosecution
witnesses have provided new information further weakening the Prosecution’s
case. Baldwin’s attorneys believe that the new evidence, combined with the lack
of any physical evidence connecting Baldwin to the murder, requires a new
trial, or at least DNA testing that could
prove whether Baldwin or the alternate suspect committed the crime.
“Scott has maintained his innocence from the start, and now
new evidence confirms that he’s been telling the truth all along, and that
someone else committed the crime,” said Amanda Riek, one of the current Wisconsin
Innocence Project students working on the case. “We are hopeful that the truth
will finally come to light.”
The Wisconsin Innocence Project has freed 12 people since the
project’s inception in 1998. Nationwide, hundreds of inmates have been freed by
post-conviction DNA testing proving
innocence; hundreds more have been freed by new non-DNA
evidence.
Michigan investigators Bonnie Riley and Denise Posey
discovered the new evidence of Baldwin’s innocence. Michigan State Journalism Professor Lori
Anne Dickerson assisted in coordinating the investigation. Kalamazoo attorney Kathleen Brickley is serving as co-counsel
with the Wisconsin Innocence Project. Numerous law students have worked on the
case over the years, including Amanda Riek, Adam Finley, Claire Taylor, Yesha
Sutaria, Dylan Buffum, Nicole Moody, Andrew Meehan, Andrew Twietmeyer and
others.
