When six convictions in the 1985 murder of a Beatrice widow unraveled late last year, the investigators in charge said they just did their jobs and let the jury decide.
Now five of the six people exonerated of killing Helen Wilson have filed federal lawsuits against the former prosecutor, sheriff’s investigators and others. If the cases go to trial, juries will decide whether authorities engaged in lies, conspiracy and professional negligence to get convictions they knew were unjust.“This is just a very unique and tragic case in terms of how it affected six lives,” said attorney Robert Bartle of Lincoln.Joseph White, JoAnn Taylor, Thomas Winslow and Kathy Gonzalez have filed a federal lawsuit in U.S. District Court in Lincoln, Nebraska. Although they filed their lawsuits separately, all four are represented by Bartle and Doug Stratton of Norfolk James Dean, who filed a similar lawsuit Tuesday, is represented by Lincoln lawyer Herb Friedman. Debra Shelden, the sixth former defendant, is not involved in any of the claims.
The six served a combined 70 years in prison and were the first in Nebraska to have their convictions wiped out by DNA testing. No other wrongful conviction nationally has involved so many defendants. The federal lawsuits claim the defendants suffered from multiple violations of their civil rights. Named in the lawsuits are former Gage County Attorney Richard Smith and former Sheriff Jerry DeWitt. Also named are five deputies, including Burdette Searcey, the lead investigator, and Wayne Price, a psychologist who did not remove himself from the investigation, despite the fact that three of the defendants had sought treatment at the clinic he oversaw.
The federal complaints accuse authorities of seeking convictions in the Wilson case with a reckless disregard for the truth. “Defendants, individually and acting in concert … solicited, fabricated, manufactured and coerced evidence they knew was false, fraudulent and profoundly lacking in reliability,” White alleged in his complaint. “Defendants filed false affidavits with the courts, prepared false investigative reports, repeatedly lied about the evidence during the course of all interrogations, and threatened everyone with life imprisonment or execution in the electric chair if they did not cooperate and recite defendants’ false narrative of the Wilson homicide.”
Hearing the above statement Wednesday left the former prosecutor momentarily speechless. “The record doesn’t go along with those accusations,” Smith said before withholding additional comment until he has read the lawsuits.
In prior interviews, Searcey has stood firmly behind an investigation that ended with six convictions. When reached Wednesday, Searcey would only say he had not yet been served with the lawsuits.
The civil complaints also name Gage County, including the current county attorney’s and sheriff’s offices. Gage County Attorney Randy Ritnour said Wednesday it was unclear who will defend whom or what role he will have. The question is even more complicated by Ritnour’s service on a law enforcement task force last year that used DNA tests to identify the true killer.
Back in the dawn of forensic DNA, the six were convicted of the murder of Wilson, a 68-year-old woman who was suffocated in her downtown apartment after having been severely beaten and raped. The case remained unsolved for four years until authorities arrested the six in 1989. White was the only defendant to maintain his innocence. The others pleaded guilty to lesser charges after agreeing to cooperate with the prosecution. Testimony from Taylor, Dean and Shelden played a major role in the conviction of White, who was later sentenced to a life term.
In 2007, White finally won the right to have DNA tests run on fluids preserved from Wilson’s apartment. Last year, the tests identified Bruce Allan Smith as the lone killer. Smith died in Oklahoma City in 1992.
White, Taylor and Winslow were released from prison late last year, after serving nearly 19 years each. Dean, Shelden and Gonzalez completed their prison terms in 1994. After the DNA tests, the five who took plea bargains said they admitted to a crime they didn’t commit to avoid the death penalty. All five received pardons from the State of Nebraska earlier this year. The assertions in White’s federal lawsuit showed his legal team believes the errors in the Wilson investigation were not random or the result of overzealousness. In particular, they emphasized how virtually none of the story produced by the prosecution witnesses could be verified with physical evidence from the apartment — now or then.
One example:
Investigators found only two blood types in Wilson’s apartment — type O and type B. The investigation remained open until the arrest of someone with type B blood, who was Kathy Gonzalez. Yet investigators deliberately ignored the fact that Gonzalez’s blood and the crime scene blood had a differing enzyme, White’s lawsuit stated. White’s complaint also criticized the investigators for exploiting suspects who had low intelligence, mental health histories or drug habits. “Defendants used their knowledge of such mental conditions to overbear their will and coerce false testimony,” the complaint stated. Prompted by the Beatrice case, the Nebraska Legislature this year passed a law to compensate wrongfully convicted people for each year they spend in prison. Bartle said his four clients intend to pursue compensation through the state law when it takes effect in September.
More to follow on this case.....
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