Lonzetta Taylor screamed into the phone when she heard her son, George Allen Jr., 56, – who has served more than 30 years in prison for a murder and rape he did not commit – could be home in less than a week.
On Friday, a Missouri judge finally threw out Allen’s conviction, siding with new evidence that showed Allen could not have committed the crime.
Attorneys at the New-York-based Innocence Project and local Bryan Cave lawyers together uncovered evidence that police withheld from the court in 1982, and they also obtained numerous rounds of new DNA testing on crime-scene evidence – all of which has excluded Allen as the killer.
“I called everyone who I could think of who had been supporting us,” said Taylor. “It’s good to let people know their prayers are answered.”
Cole County Circuit Judge Daniel Green ordered that Allen be released from prison within 10 days unless St. Louis Circuit Attorney Jennifer Joyce decides to retry him.
“I do not intend to retry Mr. Allen,” Joyce told The American.
Congressman Wm. Lacy Clay, who has been a vocal advocate for Allen’s release, said, “I urge the circuit attorney to allow Mr. Allen to be released without further delay so that he can be reunited with his family.”
In Allen’s trial, prosecutors produced no physical evidence or eye witnesses that connected Allen with the stabbing of Mary Bell, 31, in her apartment in the LaSalle Park neighborhood on Feb. 4, 1982.
In his ruling, Judge Green stated that police violated Allen’s rights when they failed to disclose physical evidence that could have impacted the jury’s decision.
“The constitutional violations of due process resulting from failure to disclose evidence, along with the newly discovered exculpatory evidence, conclusively demonstrate that the prosecution of Mr. Allen has resulted in a miscarriage of justice,” Judge Green ruled.
Daniel Harvath, associate at Bryan Cave LLP, said, “We’re just hopeful that this nightmare will end soon for Mr. Allen and his mother, who has supported him all these years.”
Coerced confession
On March 14, 1982, the police picked up Allen several blocks from the victim’s house, mistakenly thinking he was a known sex offender, Kirk Eaton, whose brother lived in the same apartment complex as the victim. Although St. Louis Police Detective Herbert Riley eventually realized the mistake, he still decided to interrogate Allen.
Allen, a diagnosed schizophrenic who had been admitted to psychiatric wards several times, eventually ended up making a recorded confession. Later in a deposition, one of the detectives Ron Scraggs said regarding Allen’s confession, “I remember when it first happened, we were – we were iffy about it.”
Scraggs said Riley used a number of flawed techniques in the interrogation. On the recording, Allen also told officers that he is under the influence of alcohol.
While many people find it hard to believe that someone would falsely confess to a crime, it happens in more than 25 percent of the wrongful convictions overturned by DNA evidence, said Olga Akselrod, Innocence Project staff attorney.
“People with mental disabilities like Mr. Allen are particularly vulnerable to falsely confessing,” she said, “and tragically, the police knew that there were problems with his confession, yet allowed him to be wrongly convicted while the real perpetrator was allowed to go free to commit other crimes.”
In April of this year, Missouri Attorney General Chris Koster refused to retry the case after Allen’s lawyers asked him to review the new information. Koster argued that despite the critical undisclosed evidence, Allen confessed – and the jury could convict him on his confession alone, Green stated in the ruling.
“But the fact that a jury – at least the second jury that heard the case – found the confession sufficient to convict does not mean that it is sufficient to overcome the prejudice inured by the failure to disclose exculpatory evidence,” Judge Green wrote.
The murder occurred during one of the heaviest snowstorms in St. Louis history, and Allen didn’t drive or have access to a car. To commit the crime, Allen would have had to walk 10 miles from his University City home in 20 inches of snow and walk back because public transportation was not available that snowy day.
In his ruling, Green said Allen’s confession did not include any explanation of how he got to Bell’s apartment that day.
Undisclosed evidence
In 2010, lawyers with the Innocence Project took up Allen’s case after a volunteer prison minister, Tom Block, brought the case to their attention. While digging through the Circuit Attorney’s files, the lawyers found a blue folder that contained evidence they had never seen, according to the ruling.
Among these documents was a handwritten lab worksheet that had certain sections crossed out about the antigens found on the victim’s robe. These crossed-out sections excluded George Allen as a suspect, Green wrote.
In January and April 2012, the police also produced undisclosed fingerprints records collected in the investigation. Green said the fingerprints were useable, and none pointed to Allen.
In Allen’s interrogation, he was asked to draw the victim’s apartment and his rendition did not match her apartment. This was also withheld from Allen’s defense team.
Finally, the prosecutor’s key witness, Pamela Richardson, testified to an important detail at the trial. However, police did not tell the court that she had undergone a police-organized hypnosis session before her testimony at the trial.
“The undisclosed evidence considered together points unavoidable to the conclusion that police – and Detective Riley, in particular – ignored and hid evidence pointing to someone else as the perpetrator in their zealous pursuit of Allen’s conviction,” Judge Green wrote.
In a September 2011 press conference, Taylor said she and her family have been waiting a very long time to see justice for her son.
She said, “I know that nothing can replace the many years that he has lost, but it is my greatest wish that I see the day when he walks out of prison.”
