'The state cheated'

Having exhausted all his legal appeals, Campbell will get a clemency hearing some time this month. But he doesn't want his sentence commuted to life imprisonment; he's asking Gov. Bob Taft for a full pardon, nothing less. He still maintains his innocence.

"I will never apologize for something I didn't do, and if that means I'll die, then I die with my dignity intact," Campbell wrote Feb. 19.

Opponents of capital punishment are rallying to Campbell's defense as his death day nears. They point to a host of irregularities in the investigation of Turner's murder and the conduct of Campbell's trial. Put together, his attorneys say, the case includes the worst elements of the death penalty as it's practiced in the United States: a faulty eyewitness, jailhouse snitches and ineffective legal representation for a penniless defendant.

But worse still, the Ohio Public Defender's Office contends Hamilton County prosecutors withheld evidence about jailhouse informants, elicited prejudicial and inconsistent testimony from police and misled the jury about the blood stains on Campbell's gym shoes.

"Confidence in the result of this trial is undermined because the state of Ohio cheated in order to convict Campbell," says a June 2000 brief filed with the 6th Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals. "Campbell's due process right to a fair trial was infringed by the state's unfair tactics."

The closest thing prosecutors had to an eyewitness, Donna Roberts, didn't actually witness the crime. She only placed Campbell in the area. By itself, that wasn't even suspicious behavior, as pointed out by former U.S. Rep. Thomas Luken, one of the people campaigning to save Campbell.

"That's his own neighborhood," Luken says.

When police questioned Roberts on Dec. 24, she said that at 11 p.m. the night before she'd seen a person in the alley near Turner's door. She didn't know if the person were a male or female but said he or she wore white jogging pants.

Upon returning from a bar on Central Parkway about 1 a.m., Roberts said, she saw another person leaning against the vacant building next to Turner's -- a male, light skinned, with a sore or scar on his face. She said he had dark pants, a black jacket and a black hat. Roberts told the police she thought he used to live in Turner's building. She didn't know his name.

A note in the police investigation file that day says, "At this point, we are thinking this is our possible suspect in this case."

Five days later investigators returned to Roberts' apartment and showed her a picture of Campbell. In a pre-trial hearing April 18, 1989, Officer Jim Lawson testified that Roberts provided Campbell's name.

But Roberts testified that was untrue. She only later heard rumors that "Burnt Face did it," she said.

Furthermore, Lawson's testimony conflicted with testimony by Officer Ed Zieverink, who said the identification process took place downtown, in the Violent Crimes Division.

Campbell's attorneys tried to suppress Roberts' identification of Campbell because it was too suggestive.

"Our motion to suppress is based on the fact that the identification was improper and suggestive and has nothing to do with his actual whereabouts," Mark Krumbein said in a 1989 hearing. "The investigating officers themselves are, I believe, totally inconsistent."

Showing a photo of Campbell by himself was improper, Krumbein argued.

"I am saying that is as patently suggestive as one can be," he said. "Other than showing white guys and Jerome, that's highly suggestive. And for that reason I would suggest to the court that it is tainted, that it should not be admitted into evidence."

Jerome Campbell and his girlfriend, Estelle Roe, who testified she cut his finger, causing blood to drip on his shoe.  

Judge Nurre allowed the identification to stand as evidence. Roberts was now a witness on track to convict Campbell.

Studies have shown that one of the most common factors leading to wrongful convictions is mistaken identification. In 60 of the first 82 DNA exonerations handled by the Innocence Project, mistaken eyewitnesses played a major part. Using a single witness makes the situation particularly vulnerable.

But it would take more than a blood-spotted gym shoe and a sort-of eyewitness to convince the jury Campbell was a murderer. Prosecutors didn't have his fingerprints on the murder weapon or in the victim's apartment. They needed a confession. They brought in the most specious form of evidence, the jailhouse snitch.

"Jailhouse snitches are the favorite tool of Hamilton County prosecutors, as in the Campbell case," Luken says. "In this case, even the federal district judge noted 'a reasonable likelihood' that prejudicial-motivated testimony of snitches seeking leniency in exchange for testimony could have affected the judgment of the jury."

Prosecutors put two convicted felons on the witness stand. The star witnesses were Ronys Clardy (aka Ronny Claudy) and Angelo Roseman (aka Mark Zachery, aka Kendall King). The two men testified that, while at the Hamilton County Justice Center, Campbell confessed to murder.

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