Debra Brown ruled innocent, brings to mind other suspicious convictions

by Rich LaRocco
May 2, 2011

Just a few minutes ago a radio news report indicated that Debra Brown had been exonerated of the 1993 murder of her landlord, Lael Brown, in his Logan, Utah, home.

Her murder conviction was one of three that I publicly questioned during the time I was living in Cache Valley.

During the 25 years I lived there probably six to eight murders occurred, and there were several convictions. But these three seemed suspect.

I did not attend the trials, basing my doubts on the evidence (or lack thereof) that had been presented in the local newspaper. Two of those convictions have now been shown to have been incorrect. The third one probably will never be overturned even though I the evidence is scant and unconvincing.

Case No. 1: Steven Roy James. Details. I thought all along that this was probably a negligent homicide rather than a murder. If James had admitted initially what really happened, he probably would have been convicted of manslaughter. However, in similar cases the defendant has been charged with first degree murder by zealous prosecutors and angry jurors who think that anybody who kills a child should himself be killed.

James would not have been the first person to concoct an elaborate scheme to avoid responsibility for a crime out of fear of being convicted of an even more serious crime.

Case No. 2: Debra Brown. Details. When Brown was convicted, I told friends that Brown very well might have been guilty, but the circumstantial evidence simply wasn't enough to convince me that she was the killer. If I had been on the jury I would have voted "not guilty" unless more persuasive evidence had been presented. When I was selling real estate in Logan, the victim's house was listed, and I showed it to three or four buyers, all of whom declined to buy a home in which a murder had taken place.

Case No. 3: David Moosman. Details. This murder conviction did not pass the smell test for me. As a natural skeptic I tend to question an expert witness's level of expertise. I'm not saying Moosman did not commit the murder, but some of the claims the prosecution made seemed suspicious to me. How big a PVC pipe would you need to hammer somebody to death? Can tire marks or lack of marks on the road really be used to prove that a man purposefully drove off the road?

I've always said that an accused killer would want me on his jury because I would refuse to convict unless enough evidence existed to establish guilt beyond a reasonable doubt.

Juries often convict based on their best guess. My suspicion is that jurors would rather convict a suspect who might possibly be innocent when there is no more likely suspect to be found, even if there are doubts that a reasonable person would have.

The advent of DNA analysis has proved that wrongly convicted persons do live in prison, including some of them on death row. Even when DNA evidence that tends to exonerate a convict has come to light, some prosecutors continue to fight to keep the wrongly accused person behind bars.

Just a week or so ago, a "48 Hours" show highlighted Anthony Graves, who was sentenced to death for a murder that he did not commit, a murder that occurred when he was miles away. There was no physical evidence, just the testimony of a known liar who admitted to being at the scene of the murder. Even after the true killer recanted his testimony, Graves spent years in prison until some college students researched the case and presented evidence to the attorneys who were trying to free their client. Fortunately, the prosecutor had retired, and the new prosecutor, after reviewing the evidence, said Graves was a victim of a travesty of justice.