following the hearing, joe felt good about his chances of getting a new trial. but the decision would not come quickly. two years. judge o malley took two years to rule. finally, in march 2006, the judge released her decision. she overturned my case. she granted me my retrial. what i wanted all along. i wanted my day in court. she said, look, no reasonable jury would have convicted him if it had heard this evidence. when that ruling finally comes out, i mean, such elation. and you know, the culmination of 15 years of pleading and searching for the truth. because joe always said, the evidence will prove that i didn t kill anthony klann. carmen marino, who retired in 2002, strongly disagreed with the decision. disappointment.
i d summarize it as cheating to win. get a conviction at all costs seemed to be the approach. and let the truth fall where it may. in fact, in the tony klann murder case, marino was cited by the ohio supreme court for prosecutorial misconduct in the trial of joe s co-defendant, mike keenan. i gave a good closing argument. and i ended by taking this big bowie knife and stabbing it in the evidence desk. that s the prosecutorial misconduct that was alleged. and my argument was, you re criticizing me for stabbing this knife in the desk when that was the knife that slashed this kid s throat when they murdered him. i said you think that s the balance that should overturn the case? well, it was. because of marino s antics, mike keenan received a new trial. but once again he was convicted and received a death sentence.
theory, joe s team would need to interview the alleged rape victim. but chris longenecker had vanished without a trace. the new discoveries in joe s case caught the attention of one of the most prominent law firms in town, jones day, which agreed to fight for joe on a pro bono basis. it was like night and day. it went from i have two appeals left and then they re going to murder me to now i have neil and all these resources from the world s third largest law firm backing me up. armed with the fact that prosecutor carmen marino had withheld information, joe s team submitted a sweeping discovery request to the federal district court. to me it just seemed like a logical question. what else is in there? meanwhile, the alleged rape victim, the only person who could corroborate what tony klann had witnessed, was finally located living in florida.
keenan and joe d ambrosio with aggravated murder. each would face the death penalty. joe s court-appointed lawyer convinced him to waive his right to a jury trial. i haven t a clue of the law. so whatever they said, i did. the prosecution was handled by a tough veteran litigator named carmen marino. on this case from my standpoint it was a job well done by the police officers. they investigated a good case and brought in good witnesses. there was nothing in this case that i had to do that the police didn t already do. and that s rare. at trial, the state s case hinged on eddie espinoza s eyewitness account of the murder and the testimony of stoney lewis. to defend himself, joe took the stand. but his only alibi was that he was home alone sleeping. the prosecutor just tore me apart. you know.
prosecutors had not told joe s defense team everything they knew about the murder of tony klann. i felt from the neck wound to the scene at the crime, it seemed like at every other turn there was more that was being discovered. neil was also shocked to learn that in 1988 ohio law did not require the state authorities to share all their evidence with defendants. what would happen back in those days is that the prosecutor would look at their files and they would determine what to hand over or to reveal to the defense attorneys and that s what they would get. the sixth amendment protects your right to an attorney. the right is no good if your attorney doesn t have the information. in addition to ohio s draconian discovery laws, neil would also learn that the prosecutor in joe s case, carmen marino, had his own controversial reputation. with carmen marino there are ten cases where he had been reprimanded by the courts.