Many death row inmates proclaim their innocence, but Roy "Hog" Roberts, a big man, loud and profane, was adamant. He was so convinced of his innocence that in the waning days before his 1999 execution for the murder of a prison guard, he demanded a polygraph test. Attorney Bruce Livingston looked at the results and walked into Roberts' small gray cell at Missouri's Potosi Correctional Center and told him the news: He passed. The test indicated Roberts was telling the truth when he said he did not hold down guard Tom Jackson while the other inmates stabbed him.
Tears rolled down the big man's cheeks. His voice grew unusually quiet. "When do I get out of here?" he asked.
Livingston remembers the heartbreak of explaining the polygraph was of no value unless it swayed the governor. It didn't. A few days later, Roberts was put to death.
Roberts' case is back in the spotlight amid heightened scrutiny of the death penalty in Missouri -- and a new investigation in a separate case into whether the state executed an innocent man.
In 2000, the anti-death penalty group Equal Justice USA released a national report citing 16 potential cases of wrongful executions. Both Missouri cases are among them.
"I think if I had to list all 16 I would put him [Roberts] first," said Claudia Whitman, who wrote the report. "There was really nothing there to convict him."
Death penalty opponents are discussing the Roberts case now that prosecutors are trying to determine if Larry Griffin, executed in 1995 for a drive-by killing in another case, was innocent. So far, no one has asked the state to re-open the Roberts case. Whitman said it simply was not exhaustive enough to merit asking for a re-examination.
Griffin was the immediate suspect in the drive-by killing of 19-year-old drug dealer Quintin Moss, who was shot 13 times. Revenge was the suspected motive in the 1980 slaying: Weeks earlier, Moss was believed to have killed Griffin's older brother. The only eyewitness testimony at Griffin's trial came from Robert Fitzgerald, a career criminal from Boston who was in St. Louis under the Federal Witness Protection Program.
Michigan Law School professor Sam Gross, who spent a year investigating the case, said in his report that Fitzgerald "developed a reputation as a snitch who couldn't produce convictions because Boston juries wouldn't believe him." Fitzgerald died last year.
Gross cited two other factors that shed doubt on Griffin's guilt: The first police officer at the scene now says the story told by Fitzgerald was false. And a second shooting victim, who did not testify at trial, now says Fitzgerald was not present at the shooting.
Gordon Ankney, who prosecuted the case, believed Fitzgerald's testimony. He also noted that an off-duty officer saw Griffin get in the 1968 Chevy Impala used in the shooting the day of the murder.
Still, Gross' report offered enough new information that even members of the Moss family asked to reopen the case.
Missouri has executed 64 men since the death penalty was reinstated in 1989. By the mid-1990s, executions had become so common they drew few protesters.
But the Roberts case came at a time of renewed interest. During a 1999 visit to St. Louis, Pope John Paul II asked Governor Mel Carnahan to spare the life of convicted killer Darrell Mease, who was days away from execution. Carnahan, a Baptist Democrat, commuted the sentence to life in prison, citing "the extraordinary circumstances of the pope's request."
Roberts' execution was set a few weeks later. Livingston suggested the decision to execute him was partly political, noting the governor was preparing to run for the Senate in 2000.
"Carnahan was still taking serious flack for the Mease case," Livingston said. "It was Roy's bad luck to be next up."
Friends of Roberts say bad timing was part of his life. He was once convicted of a restaurant robbery to which another man later confessed.
A fire caused by a burst gas pipe yesterday spread to several homes and sent a fireball soaring into the sky outside Malaysia’s largest city, injuring more than 100 people. The towering inferno near a gas station in Putra Heights outside Kuala Lumpur was visible for kilometers and lasted for several hours. It happened during a public holiday as Muslims, who are the majority in Malaysia, celebrate the second day of Eid al-Fitr. National oil company Petronas said the fire started at one of its gas pipelines at 8:10am and the affected pipeline was later isolated. Disaster management officials said shutting the
US Vice President J.D. Vance on Friday accused Denmark of not having done enough to protect Greenland, when he visited the strategically placed and resource-rich Danish territory coveted by US President Donald Trump. Vance made his comment during a trip to the Pituffik Space Base in northwestern Greenland, a visit viewed by Copenhagen and Nuuk as a provocation. “Our message to Denmark is very simple: You have not done a good job by the people of Greenland,” Vance told a news conference. “You have under-invested in the people of Greenland, and you have under-invested in the security architecture of this
UNREST: The authorities in Turkey arrested 13 Turkish journalists in five days, deported a BBC correspondent and on Thursday arrested a reporter from Sweden Waving flags and chanting slogans, many hundreds of thousands of anti-government demonstrators on Saturday rallied in Istanbul, Turkey, in defence of democracy after the arrest of Istanbul Mayor Ekrem Imamoglu which sparked Turkey’s worst street unrest in more than a decade. Under a cloudless blue sky, vast crowds gathered in Maltepe on the Asian side of Turkey’s biggest city on the eve of the Eid al-Fitr celebration which started yesterday, marking the end of Ramadan. Ozgur Ozel, chairman of the main opposition Republican People’s Party (CHP), which organized the rally, said there were 2.2 million people in the crowd, but
JOINT EFFORTS: The three countries have been strengthening an alliance and pressing efforts to bolster deterrence against Beijing’s assertiveness in the South China Sea The US, Japan and the Philippines on Friday staged joint naval drills to boost crisis readiness off a disputed South China Sea shoal as a Chinese military ship kept watch from a distance. The Chinese frigate attempted to get closer to the waters, where the warships and aircraft from the three allied countries were undertaking maneuvers off the Scarborough Shoal — also known as Huangyan Island (黃岩島) and claimed by Taiwan and China — in an unsettling moment but it was warned by a Philippine frigate by radio and kept away. “There was a time when they attempted to maneuver
RSS