The lying detective
Ryan Widmer can tell you that the State doesn't have to
prove motive to convict you of a crime.
He was convicted of murdering his wife Sarah, and nobody has any idea of
why he did it.
Widmer and Sarah had been married less than four months when
the 911 operator received a call from him, claiming that he'd just come
upstairs and found his wife lying face down in the bathtub. Police
and EMT's arrived shortly thereafter, but attempts to revive Sarah were
unsuccessful. The coroner ruled the
death a homicide, and Widmer was charged with her murder. His first trial resulted in a conviction
which was vacated for jury misconduct, the second in a hung jury, but the third
time proved a charm. For the state,
anyway: Widmer was convicted of murder
and sentenced to 15 to life. During all
three trials, no one testified that they'd seen the Widmers having any marital
difficulties whatsoever; they appeared to be just like any other newlywed
couple.
To be sure, there was evidence against Widmer. There were some inconsistencies in his
testimony, and the coroner and other medical experts testified that injuries to
Sarah's neck and head were sustained before her death and weren't consistent
with injuries commonly resulting from attempts at CPR. (Widmer presented experts who testified that the
cause of the injuries was inconclusive.)
There was also testimony by a fingerprint expert who claimed to have
found marks consistent with the theory that Widmer had drowned Sarah in the
tub.
But Widmer's attempts to get his conviction thrown out raise
several interesting issues.
It's an old defense strategy to put someone else on trial,
and that someone else in Widmer's case was the chief investigating detective, Jeff
Braley. While preparing for the second
trial, Widmer's lawyers found some inconsistencies in Braley's application and
resume, and subpoenaed his employment records, both with the police department
and his prior employers. In a hearing on
a motion to quash the subpoenas, Braley admitted that he didn't have a master's
degree, that he'd never worked as an engineer for GE, and that instead of
working as a postal inspector for two years, as the application stated, he'd
worked as a clerk at the post office for six weeks. The mistakes weren't his, though, he
contended; he said the signature on the application looked similar to his, but
he didn't recall signing it, and didn't "recall at all" filling it out. Before the third trial, the defense got a forensic
analysis report from BCI indicating that the handwriting on the application might
have been Braley's.
What's this got to do with anything? you might be saying, and
so was the judge: he quashed the
subpoenas before the second trial, and denied a motion to reopen the matter
before the third trial, finding that while there might be some issue with
Braley's credibility, allowing extended questioning on that would create a "mini-trial"
and confuse the jury.
Back in 1995, in Kyles
v. Whitley, the Supreme Court reversed a murder conviction because the
state had failed to disclose Brady material,
including inconsistent eyewitness statements.
The Court held that the withheld evidence could have not only been used
to impeach the witnesses, but could have raised questions about the "thoroughness
and even good faith of the investigation"; the failure to disclose robbed the
defense of the ability to "undermine
the ostensible integrity of the investigation" and "lay the foundation for
a vigorous argument that the police had been guilty of negligence."
That's
what Widmer tried to hang his hat on in both the appeal and his petition for
post-conviction relief: Braley was a
liar, he was in charge of the investigation, and therefore his credibility was
an issue with regard to the collection of evidence, the coroner's conclusion of
homicide (Braley had attended the autopsy, and, the defense argued, pressured
the coroner to conclude that the death was a homicide), and the decision to
charge Widmer.
That
went nowhere on the direct appeal, and fared even worse on the appeal from the
denial of the petition for post-conviction relief. While
the 12th District in the former
decision dismissed the Kyles claim
in a paragraph, the latter
decision earlier this year dealt with it far more extensively.
As
the court explains, there are actually two arguments here. While Brady
requires the state to disclose exculpatory evidence (and later extended
that to evidence affecting a state witness' credibility), four years earlier,
in Napue v. Illinois, the Court held
that a state violated due process in presenting knowingly false testimony. There's a critical distinction in how those
two violations are weighed, specifically with regard to materiality. Under Brady,
undisclosed evidence is material (and failure to disclose it a violation) "only
if there is a reasonable probability that, had the evidence been disclosed to
the defense, the result of the proceeding would have been different. A 'reasonable probability' is a probability
sufficient to undermine confidence in the outcome." Under Napue,
though, the use of perjured testimony is deemed material "if there is any
reasonable likelihood that the false testimony could have affected the
judgment of the jury."
Regardless of the standard, the court in Widmer II highlights the issue: "One of the most significant problems Widmer
has had on this appeal was his lack of ability to connect the relationship
between Braley's alleged misrepresentations and the reliability, weight, or
quality of the evidence collected." That
statement comes in footnote 7, where we also learn that the 12th District
apparently tapes its oral arguments, because it notes that it specifically
asked the defense counsel about, and quotes the answer she gave, which the
court found "almost crosses the line from permissible appellate advocacy to
impermissible hyperbole that so distorts the evidence that it borders upon the
absurd," and "cautions" her "in the future when making such representations of the
facts as an officer of the court."
Widmer had one more arrow in his quiver. He'd also requested DNA testing of Sarah's
remains to determine if she had a congenital heart defect called Long QT
syndrome. Widmer's theory at trial had
been that Sarah fell asleep and drowned in the tub, buttressed by testimony
from friends and co-workers that Sarah often fell asleep at odd times, such as
while tailgating at a football game or "sitting at a table with a bunch of
talking women." <Your joke
here>. His DNA request was based on a
doctor's affidavit stating there is a "curious association between drowning and
the Long QT syndrome." That request, though, ran afoul of the
statute, which permits DNA testing only to compare the offender's DNA to
evidence found on the scene, so as to exclude him as the possible perpetrator;
here, Widmer was requesting the victim's DNA be tested, for the existence of a
potential birth defect.
Widmer II rejects
this as well, and there's an argument that due process requires the statute to
be read more broadly than the panel was willing to do. That argument will have to be made in Federal
court, though, either on appeal to the Supreme Court or in habeas; in February
the Ohio Supreme Court turned down Widmer's direct appeal, and last week it
denied jurisdiction in the appeal from his post-conviction relief petition.
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