What the Judge Ate for Breakfast

The law clinic at the Washburn University filed a petition today asking Gov. Sam Brownback to grant clemency for Ronnie Rhodes in his 1981 murder conviction.

Washburn is asking Brownback to review the case, after a Prison Review Board denied Rhodes parole last summer. The law clinic points to evidence that “strongly suggests that Mr. Rhodes was wrongfully convicted of the murder of Cleother Burrell,” the petition says.

Rhodes has maintained his innocence for 30 years, and his case caught the attention of students studying wrongful convictions at Washburn, after DNA evidence that once existed in his case couldn’t be located.

“Consequently, the failsafe of executive clemency is the only remedy available for the miscarriage of justice in this case,” adjunct professor Rebecca Woodman and legal intern Michael Hinkin wrote in the petition.

The petition asks Brownback either to grant full clemency for Rhodes’ conviction, or to commute his sentence to the time he’s already served. The pleading first goes to the Prison Review Board, which will then send a report to Brownback.

Read the next post in this series.

See all posts in this series.

Destroying evidence in Ronnie Rhodes‘ case might have been against Wichita Police Department policy — if it had one.

“We have no policy in our very thick policy and procedural manual that states how long evidence will be kept,” said Tom Stolz, deputy chief of the WPD investigations division. “We go into great detail about how to collect it and where it goes and how to preserve it. But we have no policy that talks about how long you have to keep it.”

The Sedgwick County Sheriff’s office, meanwhile, has a detailed written policy for retaining evidence, based on a state law requiring a court order.

Such discrepancies between agencies illustrate why 33 states have passed laws mandating how long evidence should be kept.

Kansas isn’t one of them.

“Preservation laws seek to provide uniform guidance to all agencies charged with the retention of biological evidence, said Rebecca Brown, senior policy advocate for state affairs at The Innocence Project in New York.

Stolz said Wichita police follow “unwritten rules” on how long to keep evidience, which may have changed over time.

Rhodes went to prison in 1981 for Wichita murder he maintains he didn’t commit. His case came to light again after he asked for DNA testing of evidence, and it couldn’t be located. DNA testing wasn’t available during his original trial.

Students at the Washburn School of Law have since questioned the strength of the evidence that convicted Rhodes, the adequacy of his legal representation and the reasoning behind appeal and parole decisions that have kept him incarcerated.

While working with the law class, the Eagle learned most — if not all — of the physical evidence in the stabbing death of Cleother Burrell had been destroyed, despite the apparent absence of a required court order

No one currently at the WPD worked on the Rhodes case, and Stolz said the department has kept evidence from even older convictions.

“We’ve got homicide stuff from the ‘50s,’ Stolz said. “We’ve kept that essentially forever.”

While Stolz doesn’t know what the practice was in the 1980s, he said evidence in some cases was destroyed after the prosecution had been completed and the appeals exhausted.

“We had no clue at that time that DNA was going to become as viable as it has for evidence,” Stolz said. “So now … maybe we should keep stuff longer, because you never know in 20 years what the science is going to be. And once you destroy it, it’s gone forever.”

In 1989, two U.S. men were exonerated by DNA evidence. By 1992, the genetic testing of old biological material had shown 10 men were innocent of the crimes that sent them to prison.

“In the early 1990s, … people in prison, 20, 25, 30 years, we’re resurrecting DNA evidence and their appeal becomes viable. So now, we keep everything.”

Stolz said he’s assigned Lt. Ken Landwehr, head of the homicide unit, to study what other cities do and to come up with a policy for how long to retain evidence. Stoltz said the department is considering keeping biological evidence in murder cases for the life of the defendant.

More than 250 people have been found not guilty through DNA evidence, after being locked up, on average more than a dozen years. Criminologists say they have no way of knowing how many others remain in prison for crimes they didn’t commit, because evidence no longer exists.

Brandon Garrett, a University of Virginia law professor who has studied the reasons behind wrongful convictions says its not uncommon to see policies differ between law enforcement agencies.

The Sedgwick County Sheriff’s office has “a considerable written policy” on keeping and destroying evidence, said Capt. Terry Parham.

“We don’t destroy evidence unless we have a valid court order that has been reviewed by both the county attorney’s office and the district attorneys office,” said Parham, commander of the sheriff’s support services division.

That does not include evidence in homicide cases, which Parham said is never destroyed.

Ann Swegle, deputy district attorney for Sedgwick County, said that office supports keeping evidence in serious cases, such as rapes and murders, for “as long as they have evidentiary value, even after appeals are exhausted.”

Swegle said most of the time, she’s found Wichita police practices effective.

“They almost always keep evidence until they have a proper court order to destroy it,” she said.

No court orders have turned up in concerning purging of evidence in the Rhodes case.

Stolz said he doesn’t know why Rhodes’ evidence was destroyed.

“Why would you ever in a homicide case destroy anything? It’s a good question,” he said.

“We surely don’t want to convict wrong people,” Stolz added. “Nobody is in the business of doing that.”

Read the next post in this series.

See all posts in this series.

Bruce Elliott remains one of most perplexing parts in the murder conviction of Ronnie Rhodes.

Elliott, then 40, was the eye-witness who police claimed could identify Rhodes as the killer of Cleother Burrell, but who never really did. Not to the police. Not in court (video link). Yet he was the prosecution’s star witness and one of the key elements in convicting Rhodes of murder in 1981.

Since receiving copies of court and police records, I’ve spent a lot of time in the Eagle’s old library, which reporters used to refer to as “the morgue.”

It’s the place where old research material and clips were kept away in the days before Google and digital files.

Eagle morgue

Bruce Elliott is nowhere to be found. Not in the 1980 or 1981 City Directory, which lists residents and businesses in the city. He’s also not in the cross-directory of telephone listings. Web searches of the social security number he gave police have not turned up anyone named Bruce Elliott.

Also, court files show that Elliott had a misdemeanor theft conviction in Wichita Municipal Court. But a search of old Municipal Court records did not turn up his name.

Elliott literally had blood on his hands the night police interviewed him. He had blood on his shirt, his shoes and his coat the night Burrell was stabbed 20 times. Burrell had been staying with Elliott in Apt. 14 at 630 N. Topeka.

We’ve obtained copies of transcripts of police interviews with Elliott. In the first interview, Elliott said he got blood on himself in his work at Trinity Marketing Service, then located at 2340 N. Broadway. Elliott said he got blood on him, because he helped grind up cattle bones for dog food.

Police never tested his clothes, or took samples from the blood on his hands to see if it was cattle blood or human blood.

In court, on cross examination from Rhodes’ lawyer, Elliott also admitted he lied to police about the blood. He then changed his story to say he’d gotten blood on himself after he took sheets off his bed, which were drenched in Burrell’s blood.

Elliott, 40, at the time, also testified that after police told him they considered him the killer, he suddenly said he’d seen the stabbing and identified a picture of Rhodes as the killer.

On the stand, Elliott admitted being drunk in court. He was also drunk the night police interviewed him.

That identification took place between taped interviews. The lineup process was never recorded and the line-up pictures were never shown to the jury.

In court, Elliott repeatedly denied that Rhodes was the man he saw stab Burrell. But Detective Mike Jones later told the jury Elliott had identified the picture of Rhodes as the killer. Jones testified he wasn’t present when other detectives showed Elliott the lineup.

After a day’s deliberations, jurors came back with a verdict of “guilty.”

Read the next post in this series

See all posts in this series