Editorial
Nightmare
Another frame-up?
INCREDIBLY, a U.S. magistrate has
found that a West Virginia state trooper deliberately lied on the witness
stand to send an innocent man to prison for 12 years.
Incredibly, a top state lawyer defends
the trooper, calling him "a valuable and trusted employee."
Good grief - will the Fred Zain
nightmare never end? How many more innocent people were wrongly imprisoned?
How many more millions must West Virginia taxpayers shell out as compensation
for these outrages?
The newest case involves Wilbert
Thomas, a former Chicago man who moved his family to Huntington in the
1980s so his wife could begin nurse training at Marshall University. He
was jailed in 1987, accused of breaking into a woman's apartment and raping
her.
Trooper Howard Myers, a specialist
in the State Police crime lab then headed by Zain, testified that a "Lewis
test" had fingered Thomas as the rapist. Two trials ended in mistrials,
and a third brought a conviction.
Although Thomas protested his innocence,
he was given a 15-to-25-year prison term. His wife eventually divorced
him. His sister told reporter Larry Messina that the man's twin sons have
grown up without him, and the family has been crushed by the case.
Now, according to U.S. Magistrate
Jerry Hogg, new DNA testing has proved that Thomas wasn't the rapist, after
all. Further, Hogg says, Trooper Myers admits that he lied on the witness
stand.
Hogg recommended that Thomas be
released from prison, and his record erased. The magistrate's report said
Trooper Myers confessed that he "falsely testified about nonexistent serology
test results supposedly linking petitioner to the crime." Hogg continued:
"Trooper Myers admitted ... that,
as a matter of policy established by Fred Zain, the serology division reported
Lewis test results even when they had not done Lewis testing."
Astounding. In the long-running
Zain scandal, we always assumed that Zain alone fabricated evidence to
help obtain convictions. We didn't suspect that other officers may have
joined in the perjury.
So far, at least six prison inmates
have been freed, on grounds that their convictions were obtained through
Zain falsehoods. State taxpayers have paid millions in damages for wrongful
imprisonment. Attempts to prosecute Zain have fizzled, so far.
Meanwhile, State Police leaders
say Magistrate Hogg misunderstood some evidence in the case, and Myers
remains an honest trooper. They will appeal the magistrate's ruling. Representing
the state force, Deputy Managing Attorney General Barbara Allen said: "Trooper
Myers is considered a valuable and trusted employee."
We don't know how this case eventually
will turn out - but we know that West Virginians need clear answers. Trooper
Myers and everyone else associated with the crime lab should be interrogated
at a public hearing. Was there a "policy" of giving fake testimony to obtain
convictions? If so, how many officers did so, in how many cases?
The State Police force has been
tainted by the Zain scandal. If officers are to be believed in the future,
they must show their integrity by rooting out every trace of the old perjury.
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