-------- Original Message -------- Subject: [BRC-PP-POW] The Seamas Connection (or Shamus, if you like) Date: Sun, 16 Dec 2001 20:03:26 -0500 From: Vic Titious <jejonik at juno.com> To: jejonik at juno.com
Check it out...the familiar name of officer Ryan pops up AGAIN! ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Sunday Philadelphia Inquirer Dec 16 2001
Dying on death row, clinging to a last hope
A killer contends a corrupt Philadelphia policeman framed him. Prosecutors say there was no miscarriage of justice.
By Emilie Lounsberry INQUIRER STAFF WRITER
Like many of the 244 people on Pennsylvania's death row, Frederick A. Thomas says he didn't do it.
He contends that a crooked Philadelphia police officer framed him, that a key witness against him has recanted, and that a new witness has come forward to clear him in the killing of a Federal Express driver in December 1993.
But Thomas' request for a new day in court is unusual in one way: He is dying.
His lawyers want a speedy hearing. They say Thomas, 56, who has hepatitis and other illnesses, may soon die of liver failure.
"He hopes he lives long enough to see his claims litigated and to hear the witnesses come in and exonerate him," said James Moreno, one of four public defenders pressing the appeal.
Prosecutors say Thomas has "utterly failed to demonstrate any miscarriage of justice."
Some facts in Thomas' case go to the heart of the national debate about the fairness of the death penalty: No DNA, fingerprints, gun or other physical evidence tie him to the killing. Two witnesses testified of hearing a shot, and of having seen Thomas flee the scene tucking an object into his pants.
In May, one of the witnesses signed an affidavit for defense lawyers saying that Thomas was not involved. The other witness has died.
Thomas contends that the state's case was tainted by the officer who found the key witnesses: James Ryan, who was caught up in the 39th District police scandal of the 1990s, and who served 42 months in federal prison after admitting that he had faked evidence against drug suspects and robbed them.
The lawyers contend that Ryan may have wanted to protect a drug dealer from being implicated in the killing. Prosecutors reject that notion.
Thomas has a record: convictions for robbery in 1969, burglary in 1974, manslaughter in 1982 for stabbing a man in a drunken fight, and assault for shooting a man in a 1991 argument over a woman. He is serving a 71/2- to 15-year sentence for that.
His execution date has not been set. He was recently transferred to the infirmary at the state prison in Graterford so his family can visit him.
An alcoholic, he has diabetes and internal bleeding. A doctor determined that his condition "appears terminal."
Thomas' relatives and an anti-death penalty group held a news conference on Friday. His sister Mildred said she regretted causing fresh pain for the victim's family, but that if her brother got a hearing, perhaps he could die in peace.
"There's no more time for Fred," she said.
The killing of William "Skip" Moyer, 37, a father of four, stunned the city, and a parade of FedEx trucks rode in his funeral procession.
A FedEx driver for a decade, Moyer was shot in the face about 9:30 a.m. on Dec. 21, 1993, as he delivered a parcel near Ninth and Clearfield Streets in North Philadelphia, an area known as the Badlands because of drug activity. He was the first FedEx courier killed on duty.
Police said robbery appeared to be the motive, though nothing was taken from Moyer or his truck. At first they believed two assailants were involved, but they later concluded that Thomas had acted alone.
Thomas, then 48, turned himself in just before midnight on Christmas Eve, accompanied by relatives. Thomas said that night that police had the wrong man. "I didn't do it," he told reporters.
Two years later, he repeated that after his sentencing: "They found the wrong man guilty."
His lawyers have raised a number of issues, including these:
A man named James Wilkerson gave them a statement on Oct. 12 saying that he saw the killing, and that the shooter was not Thomas, but a resident of the area known as "Little Man."
The role of Ryan, who pleaded guilty in 1995 to corruption charges. His admissions and those of another 39th District officer that they faked statements resulted in dismissals of a string of drug cases. Ryan has sworn that his work in the murder case, when he was in the highway patrol unit, was proper.
Maria Fielding, who died in 1999, told police years ago that she saw the crime - and that the assailants were three men she recognized, all much younger than Thomas. The defense subpoenaed her in Thomas' trial, but she failed to appear.
Fielding's husband, Mitchell Fielding, gave the lawyers a statement last year saying Ryan had warned his wife that she could lose custody of her children if she testified for Thomas.
Thomas testified that he had walked near the scene that morning on his way to his nephew's home, where he drank and played cards for hours.
The nephew and another man testified that Thomas was with them until about 1 p.m.
Thomas' first trial ended with a hung jury. Ryan was one of the state's witnesses. The retrial, in which Ryan did not testify, ended with Thomas' conviction on Feb. 27, 1995. The jury sentenced him to death.
State courts have upheld his conviction, and the U.S. Supreme Court refused to hear his appeal in 1999. Thomas is bringing new challenges in local and federal court.
In court papers filed in May, Assistant District Attorney Andrew Gibson said Thomas' conviction "was entirely proper, based upon highly compelling evidence of his guilt."
Gibson questioned Maria Fielding's credibility, saying her account did not square with the crime scene. He also said she had used four aliases, and was arrested during the trial on an unrelated charge.
Christopher Diviny, chief of Gibson's unit, said the District Attorney's Office was investigating the account of Wilkerson, the witness who said Thomas was not the shooter. Diviny also said Ryan played only a bit part in the case.
During a 1996 deposition in an unrelated lawsuit, Ryan called Thomas' arrest an "outstanding" achievement.
"There was no homicide leads, no nothing," he said. "Myself and my partner went out and found two witnesses, and this led to the arrest."
Ryan declined to comment last week. His lawyer, Brian McMonagle, said Ryan "feels very strongly that justice was done."
The witnesses against Thomas, Charles Rowe and Willie Green, were standing on a corner that morning in 1993. Both testified that they saw Thomas near the FedEx truck, heard a shot, and saw him stuff something in his pants as he fled.
In his statement to the lawyers this year, Rowe said he saw Thomas walk in front of the truck, heard a bang, and three to five minutes later saw Thomas walk by and wave to him and Green.
The next day, Rowe said in the statement, Ryan and another officer took him in for questioning by a detective.
"I told him that I had not observed Fred Thomas do anything," Rowe stated.
He also said that authorities seemed sure of Thomas' guilt "no matter what I answered." He said the detective "told me that we were suspects and that our testimony could clear us."
Rowe stated: "I did not know what to do and just went along with it. . . . I saw him [Thomas] do nothing that morning except walk near the truck."
Thomas' appeal also includes a statement from defense investigator Joseph Thornton, saying that he talked to the other witness, Green, in March 2000 before Green's death from cancer.
In that interview, Thornton asserted, Green also told of having seen Thomas walk past the truck some five minutes before the shooting and again five minutes after, and waving.
The investigator also quoted Green as saying that Ryan, "in highway patrol boots, forced his way into [Green's] house that evening," and took him in for a night of questioning.
Thornton said Green admitted that his testimony had been wrong: He never saw Thomas run or conceal an object. Green felt "that his observations were twisted," the investigator wrote.
Diviny says the defense's new accounts are dubious at best. He said Rowe's account of who brought him in and questioned him that night was full of errors.
Thomas' lawyers contend that the murder may have been drug-related. They point to the city medical examiner's finding of cocaine traces in Moyer's body - and to Wilkerson's recent claims about Moyer.
"I know that Fred Thomas had not shot the FedEx driver," Wilkerson said in his Oct. 12 statement. "I saw 'Little Man' shoot the driver. It was known in the neighborhood that Moyer was dealing drugs."
Moreno declines to say more about Wilkerson - except that he wants to put him on the witness stand.
The lawyers contend that Ryan was known for shaking down dealers in the area - though Ryan was never charged with that.
One of the men Maria Fielding identified to police was a drug dealer, the lawyers contend. They argue that if he had been arrested in the killing, that "would have created the very real possibility" of his exposing corrupt acts by Ryan.
Diviny called that a predictable effort to smear the victim.
Moyer's father, William Sr., has no sympathy for Thomas. He said Thomas will likely die "in a hospital on clean sheets, and that's more than my son got."
------------------------------------------------------------------------- ------- Emilie Lounsberry's e-mail address is elounsberry at phillynews.com.
------------------------------------------------------------------------ BRC-PP-POW: Black Radical Congress - Political Prisoners/Prisoners of War ------------------------------------------------------------------------ Questions/Problems: send email to <brc-pp-pow-owner at egroups.com> ------------------------------------------------------------------------
Your use of Yahoo! Groups is subject to http://docs.yahoo.com/info/terms/