Thirty-four years ago, a 17-year-old drug dealer was found shot to death inside an abandoned SUV behind a Jacksonville middle school. There were no witnesses. There was no DNA. Few fingerprints.
Primarily on the say-so of a single drug-addicted serial arrestee, the Jacksonville Sheriff’s Office arrested Kenneth Hartley and two other men. At trial, Hartley was convicted and Circuit Judge R. Hudson Olliff, Jacksonville’s pistol-packing “Hanging Judge,” sentenced him to death.
Close the book.
Except… Nichole Manna wasn’t satisfied. A reporter for The Tributary, a nonprofit investigative startup in Jacksonville, Manna began digging up and organizing a vast array of records from the dusty archives and interviewing all who would talk. She found chilling evidence of an injustice.
Sifting through the records, she learned that the star witness was a known liar – not only was he a confidential police informant who had been “blackballed” by the sheriff’s department, but he had been convicted of perjury for lying on the witness stand in a prior murder trial. The conviction was later overturned on a technicality.
The jurors and defense team were told none of that.
Then there were the three jailhouse informants who testified that Hartley had – separately — confessed in their presence. In the years since the trial, these informants’ cellmates have revealed that the witnesses were fed information by investigators, the type of facts-only-the-murderer-would-know details that can bolster a fake confession. The jury knew none of that. What’s more, jurors were clearly misled about the sweet incentives afforded the three informants by prosecutor George Bateh. None served a day in prison despite crimes that would have netted them up to 30 years.
Yet another witness told an absurd story about identifying one of the three defendants in a car driving in the opposite direction — on a dark road, in the middle of the night.
A couple of historical patterns by way of context:
Although it has not yet acted, the state attorney’s Conviction Integrity Unit has taken note of Manna’s reporting. Additionally, advocates for Hartley, who is still on Death Row, (unlike his two co-defendants, both serving life) are pushing for a rare and potentially very significant evidentiary hearing. One is expected to occur, although its scope is to be determined.
There is no question that murderers should be brought to justice. But The Tributary’s recent series, “Cold Blooded”, shows what can happen when prosecutors, in pursuit of justice, commit injustices of their own.
