Judge dismisses murder case against 3 men over prosecutorial misconduct, says they can't be retried
Three defendants in a “horrible” murder, torture and robbery case are by no means Boy Scouts, a Philadelphia judge said Thursday.
But, explaining that constitutional rights apply to the guilty as well as the innocent, Common Pleas Judge Benjamin Lerner dismissed murder charges against Aquil Bond, Jawayne K. Brown, and Richard Brown, over prosecutorial misconduct during their 2006 trial, according to the Philadelphia Daily News and the Philadelphia Inquirer.
Two of the three are currently serving life prison terms in other murder cases. However, Jawayne Brown will be released if the district attorney’s office does not succeed in a planned appeal of Lerner’s ruling.
In 2012, a state superior court appellate panel vacated the convictions of all three. Lerner’s ruling this week concerned whether the DA could retry the defendants.
The defense argued, and the judge agreed, that the state constitution’s double jeopardy clause bars retrial in a case in which prosecutorial misconduct caused an earlier conviction to be vacated.
At issue was bolstering of testimony by a government witness during trial by veteran assistant district attorney Edward Cameron. He called the DA’s homicide chief to corroborate the witness’s testimony and himself argued, during closing arguments, that the witness had helped solve seven homicides, the articles explain.
That argument was improper, the appellate panel said, because it was not supported by evidence at trial.
The appellate panel also expressed concern about the cumulative impact of “serial improper questioning and argument” that resulted in 20 motions for a mistrial by defense lawyers, the Inquirer reports. Given the repeated conduct, curative instructions to the jury may not have been sufficient, the appellate panel said.
