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Title: Appeals court backs MacDonald on review of new evidence Subject of best seller, 'Fatal Vision')
Source:
fayobserver.com
URL Source: http://fayobserver.com/articles/2011/04/19/1088025?sac=Mil
Published: Apr 20, 2011
Author: Drew Brooks
Post Date: 2011-04-20 08:08:43 by Ferret Mike
Keywords: None
Views: 8652
Comments: 16
A federal appeals court has sided with convicted killer Jeffrey MacDonald, ordering a second review of his claims of newly discovered evidence. MacDonald, a former Army surgeon at Fort Bragg who is serving three life sentences for killing his pregnant wife and their 5-year-old and 2-year-old daughters in 1970, is seeking relief based on evidence that he says exonerates him. In an opinion filed Tuesday, the 4th Circuit Court of Appeals vacated an earlier opinion by a U.S. District Court and ordered that court to reconsider the evidence. MacDonald's lawyers have argued that their client should receive a new trial based on two pieces of evidence that were not available during his 1979 trial. The first is testimony from a retired U.S. marshal that said a prosecutor coerced and threatened a witness to make her lie in the original case. That marshal has since died. The second is DNA testing ordered in 1997 that MacDonald's lawyers say absolves him because it shows he was not the source of hairs found at the murder scene, including those taken from under the fingernails of one of his daughters. U.S. Attorney George E.B. Holding said the opinion would be studied by government lawyers in Raleigh and Washington before his office decides how to proceed. "Our office remains committed to defending the unanimous guilty verdict reached by the trial jury after a seven week trial in 1979, which has withstood numerous previous legal challenges by MacDonald," he said. MacDonald has always maintained his innocence and has appealed his convictions several times. He has repeatedly said a group of hippies killed his family in their home on Fort Bragg. He has been in federal prison since 1982, after an appeal he won was overturned. MacDonald, who was 26 when his family died, is now 67. The MacDonald case was the basis for a best-selling book and television miniseries, "Fatal Vision." No opinion expressed In granting the additional review in U.S. District Court, the appeals court said it did so "without expressing any view on the proper ultimate disposition of either claim." The appeal had been before the court since 2008, when the U.S. District Court dismissed MacDonald's case after determining it did not have the jurisdiction to consider the DNA evidence. In their opposition to MacDonald's appeal, lawyers for the U.S. government argued that the evidence listed by MacDonald actually reinforces his conviction. In a court filing from July 2010, lawyers said the testimony from the former marshal was unreliable and that the DNA evidence had no value. Government lawyers said the hairs were found with numerous threads from MacDonald's pajama top and his own hair and on a bedspread contaminated with dog hair. "MacDonald's DNA claim does not call into question any forensic evidence introduced by the government at trial," the government argued. "Moreover, the DNA test results do not in any way impugn the compelling forensic evidence that demonstrated the falsity of MacDonald's version of events on the night of the murders and showed that he was the only possible criminal agent." Staff writer Drew Brooks can be reached at brooksd@fayobserver.com or 486-3567.
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#1. To: A K A Stone (#0)
Could you make this in the title look like this: (Subject of best seller, 'Fatal Vision') Just a small typo, but that should be separate from the title. Thanks.
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