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Location

Defendant(s)

Date of Alleged Crime

Clallam County, WA

John V. Carothers

Sept 3, 1971

Carothers was convicted of murdering Ronald and Wanda Buck.  The victims were killed during a robbery in their home west of Sequim.  Joseph Lalak, a friend of Carothers, was caught with a pistol stolen from the victims and with the murder weapon.  Lalak implicated Carothers as the shooter and made a deal to testify against him.  Following Carothers' arrest, police retrieved a sawed off shotgun and a rifle from his barn, weapons that Lalak admitted owning.  The prosecution claimed these weapons were stolen from a gun shop by Carothers and Lalak.  The prosecution never attempted to prove this claim. The weapons sat before Carothers' trial jury with no objections from defense attorneys.

Carothers had nearly a dozen alibi witnesses testify that he was 125 miles away when the Bucks were murdered.  The judge informed the jury that the burden of proof of the alibi was with Carothers even though that instruction had been ruled unconstitutional in 1955.  The judge also instructed the jury that they could find him guilty of aiding and abetting and of being an accomplice.  However, Carothers was the only person indicted for the murders, so it is not clear who Carothers could be aiding and abetting or what he could be an accomplice to.  The jury was even informed that Carothers did not need to be at the scene of the murders to be found guilty.  Carothers has affidavits from several jurors indicating that the trial judge's illegal instructions are what cinched their agreement to find Carothers guilty.  (JusticeDenied)  [5/08]

Daniel L. Sanders was convicted of child molestation. In late May and early June of 1997, Sanders stayed with his former girlfriend, Patti Kelley, to spend time with his 14-year-old son, Gabe. Kelley also lived with her three-year-old son, Tyler, who was not Sanders’ child. After Kelley accused Sanders of molesting Tyler, Sanders said she was retaliating against him for threatening to call Child Protective Services after Tyler had gotten got into Kelley’s stash of methamphetamine. Kelley had told police that Sanders had masturbated and ejaculated in Tyler’s face. During a preliminary hearing, Tyler stated, “My mom told me to say these things about [Sanders],” and he would not, or could not, identify Sanders in the courtroom. The judge found Tyler incompetent to testify.

Kelley said she had put Tyler’s clothes and the washcloth used to clean him in a bag for police, but no semen was found on any of the items. Tyler was examined the day after the alleged incident, and though Kelley said she had not bathed him, no semen was found on him.

Sanders identified numerous exculpatory witnesses, but his attorney, Thomas Ladouceur, refused to call or interview them. Sanders identified a neighbor who had witnessed his dispute with Kelley. Sanders claimed that Kelley had a history of threatening and making false charges. Sanders identified witnesses who would testify that Kelley, in the course of various disputes with Sanders, had frequently threatened to call the police and falsely report that he had committed crimes or violated his parole. Sanders had no prior conviction for sexual offenses. Sanders identified witnesses who would testify that Kelley had a history of coaching her children and forcing them to lie. Ladouceur, however, did not call or interview any of these witnesses.

Sanders claimed that Kelley had previously fabricated molestation charges against another man. According to Sanders, Kelley had a dispute in 1995 with a man nicknamed Grizzly about drug money. Kelley called the police and claimed that Grizzly had molested Gabe. Grizzly was convicted of the charges, but Gabe later told Sanders that Kelley had told him to make up the story. Sanders spoke with Grizzly and asked Ladouceur to interview him, but Ladouceur made no effort to investigate the incident involving Grizzly and Gabe.

Finally, Sanders identified a disinterested third-party witness, Dee Ann Wren, who could establish an alibi. After his dispute with Kelley, Sanders telephoned Wren, whom he had never met before, and discussed the possibility of moving into Wren’s house. During the time that Kelley claimed Sanders assaulted Tyler, Wren says that she and Sanders were on the telephone together. Wren had talked to Sanders at length, asking him questions to evaluate whether he would be a good tenant. After Sanders had been arrested, Wren contacted Ladouceur and offered to testify, but Ladouceur did not interview Wren or call her to testify.

Other than Sanders himself, Ladouceur did not seek or call any witnesses. Nor did he seek to introduce Tyler’s pretrial statement. The federal Ninth Circuit Court overturned Sanders’ conviction in Sept. 2003 based on Ladouceur’s failure to investigate and interview potentially exculpatory witnesses. Sanders also claimed that the prosecutor, who Sanders had worked for as an informant, was retaliating against him for failing to provide information satisfactory to the prosecutor. (Sanders v. Ryder) [2/08]

Gary Michael Benn was sentenced to death for the shooting murders of his half-brother, Jack Dethlefsen, and his half-brother's friend, Michael Nelson.  The shootings occurred in Dethlefsen’s house.  At trial Benn did not testify directly, but he made statements to a third party who testified to his version of events.  According to this version, the killings were in self-defense.  Benn’s version was reasonably corroborated by the position of the bodies relative to the guns in the house.  The killings were presumably not premeditated as Benn did not use his own gun, but had left it in his car.  Dethlefsen had a reputation for violence.

The prosecution presented another version of events through the testimony of Roy Patrick, a jailhouse informant, who shared a cell with Benn as he was awaiting trial.  According to Patrick, Benn had perpetrated two insurance scams together with Dethlefsen and Nelson involving the burglary and arson of Benn’s trailer.  Benn allegedly refused to share the proceeds of these scams with Dethlefsen and Nelson, and then killed them because they threatened to disclose the crimes to the police.  Benn did report a burglary on Oct. 12, 1987 and had a fire on Dec. 11, 1987.  There was some dubious evidence presented that these events occurred for insurance fraud purposes, but explanations for this evidence emerged after trial.

In 2002, the Federal Ninth District Court overturned Benn’s conviction because of multiple Brady violations, which were failures by the prosecution to turn over exculpatory evidence.  Patrick’s identity was not disclosed to the defense until the day before trial.  The prosecutor had told the defense that it could not disclose his identity because he was in the witness protection program.  However, Patrick was never in such a program.

The prosecution failed to inform the defense of extensive evidence that would have severely undermined Patrick’s credibility as a witness.  One example: a week before trial, Patrick received $150 from detectives in advance payment for a nonexistent videotape that Patrick said would show Benn committing one of the Green River serial killings.  The Court characterized Patrick as “completely unreliable, a liar for hire, [and] ready to perjure himself for whatever advantage he could squeeze out of the system.”  The prosecution also failed to turn over a fire investigator’s report that conclusively stated that the fire in Benn’s trailer was accidental and could not have resulted from arson.  Benn was scheduled for retrial in Sept. 2003.  (Benn v. Lambert)  [7/07]

Indle Gifford King, Jr. was convicted of murdering his 20-year-old mail order bride, Anastasia Solovieva, who was from Krygyzstan in the former Soviet Union.  King had met Anastasia through a magazine that advertised foreign women to prospective American men.  A boarder, Daniel Larson, who rented a room in King’s house, led police to her shallow grave.  At the time Larson had been arrested for sexually assaulting a Ukrainian immigrant teenager.  Larson said King had told him he murdered Anastasia and showed him where he buried her body.  Larson later claimed he murdered King’s wife under orders from King.  King had no criminal record while Larson had a history of violence, sexual assault, and mental illness.  In addition, Larson wrote a letter to a cult leader, Christopher Turgeon, in which he stated that he killed Anastasia alone.

The state had no evidence of motive on King’s part.  They made extreme assertions of jealousy on King’s part, but they were just assertions.  Evidence indicated that King allowed Anastasia to live a separate life.  King was happy to spend some quality time with her, which Anastasia willingly agreed to.  King had married a previous mail-order bride who left him after getting a green card, so there was no reason for him to be surprised if his trophy wife showed signs of straying from her marriage.

At the time of his wife’s disappearance, the couple had just returned from Krygyzstan.  King said he went out shopping, but when he returned, Larson told him she had left him.  King said the idea that she was murdered never crossed his mind.  When Anastasia was reported missing by her parents, King falsely told police she had left him during a stopover in Moscow.  He said he told that statement because he was embarrassed that she left him.  At trial, King testified on his own behalf and hurt his case by discrepancies in his testimony.

The only evidence of guilt the prosecution offered was Larson’s self-serving and changed testimony.  Larson’s past record as a predator and his knowledge of where Anastasia was buried makes it reasonable to believe that Larson may have killed Anastasia by himself.  Such a hypothesis creates reasonable doubt for King.  At trial, the prosecution focused on King’s discrepant statements as though the burden of proof was on him to prove himself innocent.  King’s false statements raise suspicion, but prove nothing since even innocent defendants will sometimes lie in an attempt to avoid conviction or for other unknown reasons.  (AJ)  [9/07]