Location

Defendant(s)

Date of Alleged Crime

Daniel Wade 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.  In May 2009, Moore was acquitted at his third trial.  (JD32 p18) (WHNT 19)  [12/06]

(Federal Case)  Army Captain Jeffrey MacDonald was convicted of the murder of his wife Collette, 26, and the murders of two daughters, Kimberly, 5, and Kristen, 2.  According to MacDonald, he and his family were attacked by intruders to their home at 544 Castle Drive in Fort Bragg, a U.S. military base.  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.

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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 subsequently changed his position on Ross's 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's 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.

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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.

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Govinda Mainali, a Nepalese migrant worker, was convicted of the rape and murder of a Tokyo woman.  The victim, though a prostitute by night, was a respected economist for the Tokyo Electric Power Co.  Although Mainali initially denied knowing the victim, he later admitted to investigators that he twice paid her to have sex with him.  Mainali said he had not seen the victim for days prior to her murder.  There were no witnesses to dispute his statement.  A condom found at the scene of the crime contained Mainali's semen.  After reviewing an expert's analysis of the semen, the trial judge ruled that the semen found was too old to have been produced on the day of the murder.  The judge then stated there was no evidence of Mainali's guilt and acquitted him.

Following Mainali's acquittal, he was held in detention for over eight months while prosecutors sought a court more receptive to their case. In Dec. 2000, the Tokyo High Court reversed Mainali's acquittal and sentenced him to life in prison. The presiding judge, Toshio Takaki, was the same judge who had granted the prosecution's request to keep Mainali imprisoned pending appeal.  After a few brief hearings that introduced no new evidence, he wrote that the record from the Mainali's first trial left no doubt of his guilt.  (Japan Times) (Legal Affairs)  [8/09]