he came to me with pieces of the case that he felt were questionable. kuz interviewed dozens of witnesses and discovered pieces of evidence that joe s defense didn t have at trial. i got in touch with the two detectives who first responded to this case and confirmed my instinct that there was more to the story than had previously been told. the human body holds eight to ten pints of blood. when tony s body was found, he had two pints of blood left. yet there was no blood or forensic evidence of any kind along the river bank. based in part on that, the two detectives were adamant that tony klann had been murdered elsewhere, not at the river bank as eddie espinoza had claimed. if the location of the murder is different from what the key prosecution witness is claiming, that s a pretty big discrepancy. but the lead detective on the case, leo allen, did not visit the river bank until four or
by 2001, joe d ambrosio had been on death row for over 12 years. his state appeals had all been rejected. his execution could come at any time. our legal system is just designed to make it very, very difficult to prove that someone didn t commit a crime after they ve already been convicted. you re talking the most uphill of uphill battles. father neil was desperate to help prove joe s innocence. but in order to get a new trial they had to find new evidence. so neil took a new approach. i thought, one of the things i need to do to get help is media attention. one of the first media outlets that i got was the cleveland scene magazine. neil kookoothe came into the office a couple weeks after i joined the staff. neil didn t oversell what he believed to be joe s case of actual innocence.
prosecutors done the same? the prosecutor of joe s case was carmen marino. and it turned out that the prosecutor of the rape case was carmen marino. at the same time. so it doesn t take too much to ask that you put two and two together. yeah, i didn t see any connection. who would murder him? for what reason? contrary to what you may hear, it is truly extraordinary that someone would murder another witness to keep them from testifying. but to joe d ambrosio s defense team it seemed very connected. tony klann was the only eyewitness that was called by either side for that trial. the only eyewitness suddenly ends up killed and the case goes away. to us, that was a far better motive and opportunity than the prosecution had theorized. in order to prove their
they turned over a stack of paper like a foot and a half thick. it was the first major judgment to go joe s way since he d been convicted. the way to get a new trial was to show a constitutional violation had occurred. in other words, the failure to turn over exculpatory evidence, evidence that tended to prove he was innocent, would have mattered to a jury. i took every page and i went through line by line. some of the most compelling evidence concerns stoney lewis, including police reports about suspicious activity at stoney s apartment the morning tony klann was killed. the lady that lived next door to stoney heard a loud, violent argument on, get this, saturday morning. she called the police. they hid that from us. there s witness statements again in police and prosecutor files.
presieve a conviction, which is typical of many prosecutor s offices. no matter what evidence you give them to the contrary, they re going to do everything to protect that conviction. in february 2009 pretrial hearings began, presided over by judge joan synenberg. by the time the case landed in my courtroom, someone had been sitting on death row for over two decades. this is very serious. because of mistakes that were made, a process was flawed. all i wanted to do was make sure that the process was fair. but just days before the trial was to begin, prosecutors disclosed they had found additional evidence in their files. despite having a federal court order, in fact, there was physical evidence that had not been turned over to joe s trial council. not only in 1988, but in this particular proceeding itself. it was a circus. and i m sitting out there watching it in total disbelief, total disbelief. the sudden release of new evidence would delay joe s retrial even more. so joe