appellate lawyer. in this case, bob dudek. in my 22 or 23 years of being an appellate defense attorney, rick gagnon was one of only about two, possibly three people that i genuinely believed was innocent. that certainty would mean exactly nothing to an appeals judge. unless bob and rick could come up with new evidence. then, in 2009, a year after his verdict, rick had an encounter in prison with yet another inmate. and it was all excited about something. authorities in tennessee, the prisoner told rick, had just arrested someone for a home invasion there. he told me he said they identified the killer. that man s name was bruce hill. when fact tennessee authorities ran his dna through the database, they had a match to the mystery blood found at the
family feud duress? here s dennis murphy with the final chapter of the deed . jurors in rick gagnon s murder case deliberated for only a few hours. when they filed back into the courtroom, he read their faces and knew. they had found him guilty. two counts of murder. received two life sentences. it s called the pine box sentence . you re going to get out of the system in a pine box, when you re dead. bambi bennett said she didn t want to be in court for the verdict. her attorney jim irvin called her with the news. here i am thinking, oh my gosh, could he have done this? and then, i m going in the back of my head, there is no way he could ve did this. rick felt as though he had been sandbagged. i believed that if god saw fit to have me go home, i would go home. and that thought was about all he had left. faith in god and a good
parker crime scene. in 2011, a jury convicted hill of the murders of big charlie and diane. his motive for the crime was never firmly established. who is bruce hill? do you know that name? no. did you ever see him at the farm property? at the job sites? no. but rick s lawyer needed proof that there is no connection between the two men. so, he paid hill a visit. bruce hill was shown a picture of rick gagnon and his words were, yeah, i ve never seen that [bleep] before. bruce had been unambiguous and was very blunt that he did not know rick gagnon. bruce hill had to do now was admitted that in open court and gagnon might go free. hill flatly refused. once again, rick was out of luck, but not hope. it was the first piece of
state was heavy on fiction, light on facts. they had a puzzle, neat little pieces, but the pieces were not exactly right. the state was so desperate to prove this, that it clung to the word of a jailhouse snitch and career criminal. a fellow that is there to cut himself a deal, get some assistance in his own case, it s not likely to be credible. not only was the snitch not to be believed, the defense told the jurors, but the state was also trying to confuse them about the mystery blood found at the crime scene. the bottom line, said pratt, the dna from that blood cleared their client of the murders. the dna did not match. and we knew the dna was not going to match rick. she knew that, she said, because rick had an alibi for the night of the murders with bambi. he had been asleep in myrtle beach with his family. the most challenging part of the case was the blood on rick s shoe. to explain how it got there, rick took the stand.
snitch . he is a snitch, no question about it. but we learned from mullins that most is he had been given a fairly detailed account, by gagnon, of what occurred that evening, about the crime scene looked like. in fact, he said mullins was the first to tell police this piece of bombshell news. gagnon mentioned an accomplice in the killings. the only way he could have had that information, was from someone at the crime scene, who participated in the crime. and then, the prosecutor tried to spin an inconvenient fact in his favor. those mystery blood drops found at the murder scene had been tested. the dna was not a match to? rick, but to an unidentified male. that, said the prosecutor, actually supported what mullins said, that rick had an accomplice. humphries believed the evidence was enough to put the defendant away. he only wished he could make the same case against rick s old girlfriend. what about bambi? she was not being tried in this courtroom? no, i think it was a tra