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Moore was convicted in 2002 and sentenced to death for the murder of Karen Tipton.  In 2003, Moore’s conviction was overturned due to the prosecution’s withholding of exculpatory evidence.  In 2005, the prosecution’s conduct was found to be so egregious that a retrial was barred under Double Jeopardy laws.  On hearing of this ruling, a juror declared, “I’m happy with it.  I felt that Daniel didn’t do it.”  Moore was released, but was reimprisoned four days later by the court hearing the state’s appeal.  In 2006, the appeals court reversed the trial court’s ruling and gave Moore the right to a retrial, but not a dismissal of charges.  In Feb. 2008, Moore was retried, but a mistrial was declared after jurors were unable to agree on a verdict after 6 days of deliberation.  (JD32 p18)  [12/06]

Denny Ross was tried in Akron for the murder of 18-year-old Hannah Hill.  Hill appeared to have been raped before she was severely beaten and then strangled.  Her body was found stuffed in the trunk of her Geo Prizm six days after her death.

At jury trial deliberations, in Oct. 2000, a juror stated that an alternative suspect, Brad O'Born, had passed a lie detector test, and that therefore Ross had to be guilty.  He then changed his position on Ross' guilt to agree with the group because he had a problem at home and needed to finish his jury service that day.  The judge considered the evidence of the juror's misconduct and consulted with the prosecution and the defense.  The prosecution agreed to a mistrial but the defense opposed it unless it was declared with prejudice, which the judge refused to do.  Knowing that the jury was likely to acquit, the judge then declared a mistrial without prejudice.  However, by the time of his ruling the jurors' had filled out verdict forms acquitting Ross of the three most serious charges he was facing, including murder.  A new judge then barred a retrial on double jeopardy grounds. That decision was subsequently reversed in late 2002 by a state appellate court.  In 2005, a federal judge reinstated the decision barring a retrial.  However, in 2008, a federal appeals court reversed his decision.  Ross' attorneys plan to appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court.  The case was featured on an American Justice episode entitled, Who Killed Hannah Hill?  (LVRJ)  [6/08]

Walter Ogrod was sentenced to death for the 1988 murder of four-year-old Barbara Jean Horn.  The murder occurred near her house at 7245 Rutland Street, close to Cottman Avenue.  Four witnesses had seen a man carrying a TV box in which Horn’s body was found.  One of the witnesses, David Schectman, told police he'd interacted with the box carrying man for 11 minutes on St. Vincent St.

Two days after Horn’s murder and again 11 days later, Schectman identified Raymond Sheehan from photo arrays as the man he saw carrying the box.  However, Schectman also identified another neighborhood man as the box carrier.  Sheehan had been suspected of the 1987 Frankford murder of 10-year-old Heather Coffin and would be convicted of it after DNA testing was done in 2003.  Sheehan denied involvement in the Horn murder and was never charged with it.

In 1992, Walter Ogrod, who had lived across the street from Horn, signed a confession to the murder.  However, by all accounts, Ogrod looked nothing like the man described by witnesses.  Afterward, Ogrod claimed police coerced his confession.  Schectman had described a man who was 5 to 8 inches shorter than Ogrod.  He also knew Ogrod by sight, if not by name, before the murder, and never mentioned him to police.

At trial in 1993, the jury agreed to acquit Ogrod, believing his confession was coerced.  However, just before the verdict was read, one juror stood up and said he did not agree with it.  The judge declared a mistrial.  Horn’s stepfather, who believed Ogrod was guilty, knocked aside a bailiff and managed to punch Ogrod.  The stepfather later said that the judge had told him that had the trial been a non-jury bench trial, the verdict would have been guilty.  One could argue that the judge declared a mistrial because he did not agree with the jury's verdict.  At a minimum he could have forced further jury deliberations at which the objecting juror would likely succumb again to pressure from other jurors.

Two years later, after an appeals court rejected double jeopardy claims barring a retrial, Ogrod crossed paths with John Hall, a notorious jailhouse informant.  Hall was known as “The Monsignor,” because he heard more confessions than a priest.  With Hall’s help, Ogrod was convicted in 1996 and sentenced to death.  In 1997, a Daily News reporter raised serious questions about Hall based purely on the sheer number of cases Hall had been involved in.  However, it had only been proven that Hall had lied in one 1995 case.

In 2003, Hall wrote a series of private letters, never intended for publication, explaining how he got Ogrod convicted.  Hall did not actually testify at Ogrod’s trial as his past informant testimony and criminal convictions undermined his credibility.  Instead he got fellow inmate Jay Wolchansky to testify and told him what to say.  During trial Wolchansky was allowed to testify under the alias Jason Banachowski.

At the time Hall was facing a 25 to 50 year mandatory minimum sentence on various charges.  Instead he got 9 to 18 months after several detectives who had worked with him on the Horn case and other cases showed up to testify for him.  Wolchansky also got consideration for his testimony.  As Hall put it, "Everyone made out."  Except, of course, Ogrod.  On June 7, 2005, Governor Rendell signed Ogrod's death warrant, scheduling his execution for Aug. 2, 2005.  The execution has since been stayed.  (City Paper)  [3/08]

Robert Angleton, also known as Bob, was a bookie who took bets on sporting events.  He was charged with murdering his 46-year-old wife, Doris.  Following the murder, Bob told police that he suspected his brother Roger was the killer.  Despite Roger’s checkered past, Bob had employed him in 1989.  He fired him less than a year later.  After being fired, Roger felt Bob owed him $200,000 and even tried to rob him of it at gunpoint.  Roger then threatened to put Bob out of business, by reporting him to the IRS.  Bob ignored him, but Roger started making phone calls to customers, posing as an IRS agent.

After realizing that Roger could ruin his bookmaking business, Bob started paying him $2500 a month.  While the payoffs worked for a while, in 1997 Roger demanded even more money.  Bob says he received a letter from Roger saying if he didn’t get the money, "I will hurt you in a way that will be with you for the rest of your life."  Bob ignored the letter, but six weeks later Doris was killed.

Roger had fled following the murder, but was arrested two months later in Las Vegas.  He had with him audiotapes of two men planning the murder.  Prosecutors believed the two men were Roger and Bob.  Roger claimed he was hired by Bob to murder Doris.  Prosecutors also learned that Doris had filed for divorce two months earlier.  Doris had an online lover that Bob said he was unaware of.  Prosecutors believe that Doris could have threatened to expose Bob’s bookmaking business in order to obtain a larger divorce settlement.

Shortly before a prosecutor was about to offer Roger a deal to testify against Bob in exchange for getting out of jail, Roger committed suicide in his cell.  Roger left a note stating that he had killed Doris on his own as an act of revenge, and that Bob was not involved.  The prosecutor convinced a judge that Roger’s note was unreliable hearsay, and therefore inadmissible.  The prosecutor hired an audio expert who had once worked for the FBI to analyze Roger’s tapes.  Contrary to the prosecutor’s hopes, the expert reported that he was “very confident” that Bob’s voice was not on the tapes.  After listening to the tapes, the jury thought the voices on it were too muffled to identify Bob’s voice.  They acquitted him.

While Roger was imprisoned, aspiring crime writer Vanessa Leggett visited him and made 50 hours of audiotapes of her interviews with Roger.  On them Roger pointed a finger at Bob and claimed that Roger had agreed to pay him $100,000 a year for ten years in exchange for killing Doris.  Roger claimed he taped his conversations with Bob as insurance in case Bob failed to pay up.  Armed with this new evidence, prosecutors planned to try Bob again, this time in federal court, three and a half years after his acquittal in state court.  Roger’s “dying declaration” suicide note would still be inadmissible, but his taped statements to Leggett would be admissible, even though Bob would be denied his constitutional right to confront Roger regarding their truthfulness.

Four days before his second trial was to begin, Bob, out on bail, boarded a plane and flew to Amsterdam.  He did not want to face the possibility of a conviction.  He carried with him $135,000 and a fake passport.  Dutch officials spotted the fake passport and took Bob into custody.  After the U.S. began extradition proceedings against him, Bob’s Dutch lawyers argued that international treaty protects against double jeopardy and prohibits the Dutch government from sending Bob back to face murder charges a second time.  Not only did a Dutch court agree, but so did the prosecutor.

Dutch courts eventually agreed to extradite Bob, but only after the U.S. filed new charges against Bob of passport and tax fraud and also agreed not prosecute him for murder.  Bob pleaded guilty to the new charges in 2004 and will be released from prison in 2014.  Bob’s two daughters have stood with him and have never believed he killed their mother.  The U.S. government says it has found a way to prosecute Bob again for murder upon his release from prison.  Leggett has written a pro-prosecution book about the case, entitled Murder by the Book.  It is expected to be released in 2007.  (48 Hours)  [2/07]

Army Capt. MacDonald, wife Collette, 26, and two daughters, ages 5 and 2, were attacked by intruders to their home.  MacDonald survived with wounds including a collapsed lung.  MacDonald was acquitted of the murders at a Ft. Bragg Army hearing and probably would not have been tried again had he not angered the prosecution by criticizing them during interviews on national TV.  MacDonald's Army acquittal meant that he could not be court-martialed, but he could still be tried in federal court and he was.  Before his federal trial MacDonald invited author Joe McGinniss on his defense team to write a book and hopefully help to establish his factual innocence.  At that trial MacDonald was unfortunately convicted.

Author McGinniss, who prior to publication acted like he was MacDonald's best friend and biggest supporter, revealed his personal morality by writing a best-seller Fatal Vision in which he portrayed MacDonald as a monster.  MacDonald sued McGinniss.  At the lawsuit trial McGinniss had famous authors like Joseph Wambaugh and William F. Buckley defending journalists right to lie or tell "untruths" to people in order to obtain information that they would not get if they behaved honestly.  Jurors, uneducated in such rationalizations, were appalled.  McGinniss ended up paying the imprisoned MacDonald, $325,000 to dismiss the suit.

Two of the intruders to MacDonald's home are known but the Army refused to investigate them because one is the daughter of a retired Army colonel.  She is also a known drug user and an informant for the Ft. Bragg military police.  MacDonald's in-laws were overwhelmed by the tragedy and wanted him to visit the graves every day.  Some time after the Army hearing, MacDonald was offered a job in California, which his in-laws insisted he not take.  They threatened him in front of witnesses, "If you move you'll live to regret it."  When MacDonald moved, his father-in-law turned against him and said he became convinced of MacDonald's guilt.  MacDonald is pursuing DNA tests and hopes that such tests will exonerate him.

Proceedings prior to MacDonald's trial and the trial itself were a mockery of justice in the suppression of evidence favorable to the defense.  At trial, the prosecution argued that there was no evidence of intruders in the MacDonald household, but it was later shown that there was plenty of evidence.  A second book was written about the case, which is pro-defense, entitled Fatal Justice.  (Crime Library) (www.themacdonaldcase.org) (48 Hours)  [7/05]