THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1994, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SUNDAY, June 26, 1994 TAG: 9406270034
SECTION: FRONT PAGE: A15 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: BY JUNE ARNEY, STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: 940626 LENGTH: Medium
It started with something small - something not revealed in court. Bloody shoe prints found at the murder scene were not Giarra-tano's.
{REST} ``When I found out my boots could not have made the shoe prints, that shattered my belief that I did this,'' said the 36-year-old inmate, granted conditional clemency in 1991. ``I said, `Wait a minute. This whole six or seven years has been a lie.' It made me doubt everything I ever thought I knew.''
Giarratano was convicted in 1979 and sentenced to die after he pleaded not guilty to capital murder and rape by reason of insanity in the deaths of Barbara Kline and her daughter Michelle in Norfolk in February of that year.
Since before his trial, a state expert who tested the soles of Giarratano's boots had known that they showed no trace of blood, but it took years for that information and its full implications to reach his defense team.
Once he and his lawyers started doubting the state evidence, they found many inconsistencies. Someone else's driver's license was found in the victim's apartment. Most of the hairs and fingerprints there were not his. There were contradictions in his five confessions - different dates and times, the sequence and location of the murders.
Giarratano's drug-altered state of mind at the time of the murders made him unsure of what happened.
Defense lawyers accidentally stumbled onto four of the five statements in records at Central State Hospital in 1985 or '86, six or seven years after his conviction, Giarratano said.
``The contradictions concerning the most basic facts of the crime within Mr. Giarratano's confessions seemed to trouble no one,'' court papers said. ``All the participants in the trial assumed that Mr. Giarratano was guilty even if he was unable to get the details straight.''
Authorities had secured an arrest warrant for another man, but they never gave the name to defense lawyers, said Marie Deans, former director of the Virginia Coalition on Jails and Prisons. Police denied this.
Police found 21 distinct fingerprints at the murder scene. Only one belonged to Giarratano, and it was found on a closet door in a bedroom unconnected to the crime. Giarratano had been living in the apartment.
The identity of the other fingerprints was either never discovered or never revealed. But this did not come out in court.
For years, Giarratano's lawyers documented inconsistencies and said that favorable evidence such as the boot print and inconsistent confessions were suppressed. Finally, then-Gov. L. Douglas Wilder ordered conditional clemency.
By that time, the case already was an international cause celebre.
``In highly celebrated death cases like the Giarratano case, the passions of the moment and the politics spill over into the process, and you have prosecutors so convinced that they have the right guy that they make the decision themselves instead of letting the system work for itself,'' said Stephen B. Bright, director of the Southern Center for Human Rights in Atlanta.
Yet Albert D. Alberi, who represented Giarratano at trial, said he does not think any evidence was kept from him.
``They pretty much laid it all out for me,'' Alberi said. ``So much has been written over time that fact and fiction are no longer distinguished by a bright line. At no time in 16 years did anything get printed where I said `Whoops, I didn't know about that.' ''
Giarratano now serves a life term in Augusta Correctional Center in Craigsville, hoping for a new trial and the chance to prove his innocence. His first possible parole date is in 2004.
But former Norfolk homicide detectives Ralph J. Mears and Richard D. Whitt, who worked the case, believe that Giarratano would be convicted again if he were granted a new trial and the evidence of 16 years ago could be presented intact. They also recall no inconsistencies between the crime scene and Giarratano's statement to them.
``There was no smoke and mirrors,'' Whitt said. ``He had a good attorney. We presented all the evidence that we had. He was convicted. The conviction was held up through the entire appeals process. In law enforcement, you can't do any better than that.''
Without a new trial, Giarratano says an answer can never be known.
``We want perfect punishments, but we're too fallible for that,'' he said. ``The system doesn't like to admit that mistakes have been made.''
{KEYWORDS} DEATH ROW VIRGINIA
by CNB