Ex-Texas death row inmate freed; AG drops charges

Source: Associated Press

By JEFF CARLTON, Associated Press Writer Jeff Carlton, Associated Press Writer – 10 mins ago
DALLAS – An inmate once on death row in Texas was a free man Thursday, nine months after his conviction was overturned in the 1985 bombing deaths of three people on Thanksgiving.

The Texas attorney general's office dropped the charges against Michael Roy Toney, 43, on Wednesday and that night he was released from the Tarrant County Jail in Fort Worth, officials said. His release came a day before the attorney general had to declare whether the state would again seek the death penalty in the case.

<snip>

Toney's attorney Colleen Kennedy said in a statement that her client is "grateful ... that while the investigation is under way, the Attorney General's office has agreed to grant Mr. Toney his freedom."

"The extensive post-conviction investigations undertaken by Mr. Toney's defense team have produced overwhelming evidence that he was both wrongfully convicted and wrongly sentenced to death in this case," Kennedy said.

Susan Blount, whose husband and daughter were killed in the bombing, told the Fort Worth Star-Telegram that the attorney general's office notified her about Toney's release.

"They wanted to let me know so I wouldn't be surprised," she said. "They have indicated that it is still their intent to retry the case, but they needed more time to go over all the information and evidence."

The Associated Press could not locate a working phone number for her.

Toney was arrested in 1997 while already jailed on an unrelated charge after telling an inmate he committed the bombing. But Toney later testified that it was all a scam to get that inmate released, according to court records.

He said he learned about the bombing from another inmate who had lived with Angela Blount's former boyfriend, court records show.


Read more: http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20090903/ap_on_re_us/us_death_sentence_overturned

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Texas.

state to have executed a verifiabley innocent man. His kids were killed in a fire and he was convicted on evidence of arson. The evidence of arson was the only evidence they had to convict and execute him for murder. It was determined after his execution to be completely discredited science. Can you imagine? his kids were tragically killed in an accidental fire, and he was accused, convicted and EXECUTED for it. It's time to end Capital Punishment.

So when they guy in the uniform says he's guilty, he's guilty according a la gente de Anos del Diablo.

Don't you just love that broad brush?

Besides Kerry did not want to upset his Bones buddy Bush.

man. uggh. i'm wondering how he would feel about that if HE were the one sitting on death row for something he didn't do. there have been way too many people who have been convicted and sentenced to death only to be exonerated later.... if they were lucky, before they were murdered by the state.

But what he is usually getting at in most discussions of innocence is an objection to the states using the federal courts as a garbage disposal for wrongful convictions to avoid embarrassment by elected officials. If you have an innocent man in jail in your state the Governor should pardon the individual, not waste judicial resources and try to leave the dirty work to the federal courts so as to preserve your "tough on crime" cred.

and pardon someone.... especially in a state like Texas.

Pretty naive to think that would happen.

it isn't about the death penalty - it is about the states leaving their dirty work to the already stressed federal docket.

anyone who has really looked fairly at this issue comes to the same conclusion- that our justice system is subject to human error and not good enough to make life or death decisions. It favors the wealthy over the poor, white over black. It simply not ethical to put someone to death where their is such a disparity in justice and as you've mentioned so many people convicted of crimes that the are later exonerated for. It also does nothing for prevention of crime as some have suggested. There is simply no evidence the death penalty acts as a deterrent to crime.

I used to be pro-death penalty. I still would have no moral problem with it if one was 100% certain that the defendant was guilty. What changed my mind, believe it or not, was Mark Fuhrman's book on the death penalty in Oklahoma. Now, boy, there is no way I trust that we are even close to 100%. I guess I never really realized before the degree to which cops, prosecutors, and "forensic scientists" are willing to put people to death to advance their careers. Shame on me for taking so long to realize it.

http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2009/09/07/090907fa_fact_grann

Be prepared to feel the full range of human emotion, from disgust and anger to heartbreak and desperation, and then, unexpectedly, to gut recognition of what grace under pressure really means.

poor legal representation that believed he was guilty;
arson investigators using folklore instead of science;
evidence of a confession from an unreliable jail house snitch
eyewitnesses and character witnesses who changed their stories when confronted with his assumed guilt;
Prejudice from those who viewed his tattoo and skull and Led Zeppelin posters as evidence he was a "Psychopath"
"expert" testimony from the infamous paid hacks including "Dr Death";
and living in a state with cowboy justice and a fictional appeal boards.

Looks like they may finally enact reforms and admit they executed a legally and factually innocent man. This is a watershed moment on this issue, and fitting that it comes from the state with the record for most executions. He continued to confess his innocence till the moment he was murdered by the state and hoped someday his name would be cleared. Looks like he will get his final wish.

"In 2005, Texas established a government commission to investigate allegations of error and misconduct by forensic scientists. The first cases that are being reviewed by the commission are those of Willingham and Willis. In mid-August, the noted fire scientist Craig Beyler, who was hired by the commission, completed his investigation. In a scathing report, he concluded that investigators in the Willingham case had no scientific basis for claiming that the fire was arson, ignored evidence that contradicted their theory, had no comprehension of flashover and fire dynamics, relied on discredited folklore, and failed to eliminate potential accidental or alternative causes of the fire. He said that Vasquez’s approach seemed to deny “rational reasoning” and was more “characteristic of mystics or psychics.” What’s more, Beyler determined that the investigation violated, as he put it to me, “not only the standards of today but even of the time period.” The commission is reviewing his findings, and plans to release its own report next year. Some legal scholars believe that the commission may narrowly assess the reliability of the scientific evidence. There is a chance, however, that Texas could become the first state to acknowledge officially that, since the advent of the modern judicial system, it had carried out the “execution of a legally and factually innocent person.”

I wish I had the strength to read it. I am against the death penalty, although sometimes the crimes are so horrid that I almost agree, not as a deterrant, but as a punishment for extremely vile crimes. Mark is not my favorite, and I am surprised he would write anything against the systematic abuse of law enforcers.:dilemma:

Innocence is no bar to upholding a conviction according to he and his kind.

and guess that Mr. Toney is black.

link to a story with his photo.

http://www.rockymounttelegram.com/news/nation/ex-texas-death-row-inmate-freed-ag-drops-charges-813748.html

Let me guess, they only let him off because he's white?

Know the cases
Understand the causes
Fix the system.

"Texas can do no wrong" team..."

Which I imagine is as equally absurd as the "Texans don't believe in science..." team. A rather dogmatic six, and a rather dogmatic half dozen of the other.

You see, even in that Third World Texas you never tire of spewing about, they teach us how to spell properly.....