Virginia ending the death penalty

[GMDino]

Just one, recent story of a bad prosecutor manufacturing a case and an innocent man paying the price.

Years in prison might as well have been a death sentence to him.  


https://www.kansascity.com/news/local/crime/article249417185.html

Quote:[color=var(--tc,#222)]Pete Coones, exonerated in Kansas City, Kansas, murder, dies after 108 days of freedom[/color]

BY LUKE NOZICKA
FEBRUARY 21, 2021 06:32 PM, 
UPDATED 2 HOURS 54 MINUTES AGO

Olin “Pete” Coones, was freed Nov. 5, 2020, after 12 years in prison. The Kansas City, Kansas man was exonerated in the 2008 double shooting of Kathleen and Carl Schroll that was actually a murder-suicide. Coones believes the prosecutor lied. 

Olin “Pete” Coones Jr., who spent more than 12 years in prison before he was exonerated of murder 108 days ago in Kansas City, Kansas, died Sunday, his attorneys said. He was 64.


Coones’ death comes three and a half months after his 2009 murder conviction was vacated by a Wyandotte County judge. While he was a free man, Coones was released “in a body that was broken,” his lawyers said in a statement.


“Though Pete was no longer imprisoned, his death — like his unjust conviction — is the result of continued state neglect and mistreatment,” said his attorneys at the Midwest Innocence Project and law firm Morgan Pilate. “The evidence suggests that he ultimately succumbed to health conditions that went undiagnosed and untreated during his time in prison.”

Coones for years pleaded his innocence to anyone who would listen. He was freed after his attorneys argued he was framed in the 2008 deaths of Kathleen and Carl Schroll. They asserted the shooting was actually a murder-suicide carried out by Kathleen.


After hearing that evidence during a days-long proceeding, Judge Bill Klapper determined Coones’ trial had been marred by prosecutorial misconduct. The Wyandotte County District Attorney’s Office then moved to drop the charges against him.

No physical evidence tied Coones to the crime. At trial, his daughter confirmed he was at home in the hours around the shooting.


Investigators had failed to find crucial physical evidence at the crime scene, and Wyandotte County prosecutors later turned to an unreliable jailhouse informant. They hid and “manufactured” evidence to convict Coones, his lawyers said Sunday.
“His life was stolen because his innocence did not matter,” they said.


After spending more than 12 years in prison for murder, Olin “Pete” Coones walked out of the Wyandotte County Courthouse and into the arms of his family Thursday evening. After more than 12 years behind bars, Coones left the courthouse a free man. The Wyandotte County District Attorney’s Office moved to drop the charges against Coones, now 63, after the judge found Coones received an unfair trial in the 2008 shooting deaths of Kathleen and Carl Schroll. 


Coones’ exoneration was the first innocence claim to go to court that began in District Attorney Mark Dupree’s conviction integrity unit — the first created in Kansas.