W.J. writing from New York
“The same witness that got on the stand and testified [against me but also said] that the police had threatened him, that he didn’t see me shoot my cousin, has admitted to the killing of my cousin... one week after my arrest.”
Location
Columbia County, NY
Crime of Conviction
First degree murder
Year of Conviction
1998
W.J. was sentenced to life without the possibility of parole at age 22 after a trial for the murder of his first cousin. W.J. was initially indicted for a capital offense, but prosecutors declined to seek the death penalty. W.J. has now maintained his innocence for over 25 years. W.J. claims that multiple witnesses placed him at a friend's party on the night of the murder and that he was intoxicated. W.J. claims various violations in his case: improper testimony of a jailhouse snitch, a public defender who brought a tape recorder to legal visits to get him to confess, ineffective assistance of counsel at trial, and witness tampering. W.J. further claims that state witnesses gave inconsistent and contradicting statements, that there was no physical evidence, and that the key eyewitness who testified against him admitted on the record that he was coerced by law enforcement into signing a statement and that he did not actually see the alleged shooting. According to a letter from W.J.'s aunt in 2019, the same key witness had also claimed to the family one week after the murder that he had committed the murder.
Procedural issues
Ineffective assistance of counsel, prosecutorial misconduct, actual innocence, coercion of witnesses
Counsel
No