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Unable to identify gloria as the woman who came to the door. and i think she finally said, well, it could be. despite these struggles, cleland did not call joanne masse to implicate gloria. joann was now suspected of committing similar robberies with her husband. so the case came down to cleland s star witness, gary masse. gloria is almost relieved. they re not going to take the word of a career criminal over me. that would make no sense. the jurors are instructed, they don t have to believe gary masse. and they listened and they found him to be credible. masse testified that he met gloria at niva snyder s house and she recruited him to rob the davies. gary masse says, we went here, we went there, and i did it with gloria killian. and masse was hard to cross-examine. because it was a conspiracy case, they didn t have to prove anything, gloria actually did ....
Must do more than cast doubt on the prosecution s case. you ve got to present an alternative explanation about how this could have occurred if gloria wasn t involved. cleland had argued that gloria pried information from coin shop operator virgil fletcher and used it to orchestrate the heist. they were able to make it seem as if gloria was the link between virgil fletcher and gary masse. and if it wasn t her, how else was this going to happen? well, gary lee smith was the missing piece. the people i dealt with, a few other folks and that sort of thing. small time sacramento criminal gary lee smith was recruited first to rob the davies. an individual approached me, had some information about the value of the things in the davies house. he told me where the gold and silver would be located. but smith wondered whether davies would resist. what happens if this guy doesn t agree to this? ....
It seemed like gary was being nudged into things. but in order to get a new trial for gloria, carlson would need clear evidence that cleland had struck a deal and he deceived the jury. it took a long time. they were closing doors and he had to make enemies in the sacramento courts before that letter showed up. what carlson found was a letter that had been sealed from the public, a letter to masse s sentencing judge. when i saw that, my jaw dropped. ....
the make or break witness. if you have reason not to believe him, then you have some lack of confidence in the jury verdict. the testimony of a thoroughly discredited perjuror, that s what they said. we would say he is a [ bleep ] liar. cleveland also should have disclosed his deal with masse. gary masse should have been confronted with the fact that he really did have a deal with the prosecution. in a fair proceeding, a jury should hear it all. together, hawkins wrote, these errors were devastating to confidence in the process. still, prosecutor cleland fought the ruling all the way to the supreme court without success. six months later, gloria was freed. in a rare step, the state bar eventually admonished cleland for hiding evidence. the state of california finally stood up and said, this is not right. ....
People generally believe if a person is in prison, she deserves to be there. that s not necessarily the case. joyce sent private investigator darryl carlson to visit gloria. she said i don t want you doing this. she said, i ve had enough of this for the last few years. i don t want it anymore. i can t handle it. i think she didn t want to get her hopes up needlessly. and she didn t want to see me waste my money. i did have some inheritance money from my father which i went through rather quickly. i just thought it was worth the expense. over gloria s objections, joyce hired carlson who soon found a note in the case files revealing cleland s unorthodox relationship with his star witness, gary masse. you don t take a suspect in a murder case home for conjugal visits and chicken and dumpling dinners without handcuffs. ....