COLORADO SPRINGS—On Tuesday, Todd Newmiller’s family filed a Coverdell allegation of negligence or misconduct against the Colorado Bureau of Investigation’s Pueblo laboratory and the El Paso County Sheriff’s Office. Both agencies are implicated
in mishandling a knife alleged to have been the murder weapon in a 2004 Colorado Springs stabbing.
The allegation, filed with state forensic oversight agencies—the Attorney General, the 4th Judicial District Attorney, and the Colorado Springs Police Department— mandates an investigation under the Justice for All Act of 2004 because the mishandling occurred in forensic facilities that have received more than $500,000 under the Paul Coverdell Forensic Science Improvement Grant Program.
“Somebody did something wrong,” said 4th Judicial District Judge Gil Martinez of the evidence, which prosecutor Jeff Lindsey called “crucial” to a 2006 murder trial that resulted in the conviction of Todd Newmiller.
In a pre-trial hearing, Judge Martinez said, “this knife should have been taken down to the CBI in the same condition as this photograph and apparently it wasn't, so somebody somewhere dropped the ball.”
Since the trial, the Attorney General’s Office acknowledged state responsibility for mishandling the evidence. When detectives first inspected the folding knife, they noted a deposit on it of various forms of debris, but they noted no blood on the knife.
Six months later, after having been misplaced in the El Paso County Sheriff’s evidence room, the knife was delivered to the CBI lab in Pueblo no longer bearing the deposit noted earlier. Instead, it bore a small amount of blood from the victim.
More information is available at http://BearingFalseWitness.com. The allegation text is at http://BearingFalseWitness.com/CoverdellAllegation.pdf.
Technorati Tags: wrongful conviction, prison, innocence, todd newmiller, crime, law
in mishandling a knife alleged to have been the murder weapon in a 2004 Colorado Springs stabbing.
The allegation, filed with state forensic oversight agencies—the Attorney General, the 4th Judicial District Attorney, and the Colorado Springs Police Department— mandates an investigation under the Justice for All Act of 2004 because the mishandling occurred in forensic facilities that have received more than $500,000 under the Paul Coverdell Forensic Science Improvement Grant Program.
“Somebody did something wrong,” said 4th Judicial District Judge Gil Martinez of the evidence, which prosecutor Jeff Lindsey called “crucial” to a 2006 murder trial that resulted in the conviction of Todd Newmiller.
In a pre-trial hearing, Judge Martinez said, “this knife should have been taken down to the CBI in the same condition as this photograph and apparently it wasn't, so somebody somewhere dropped the ball.”
Since the trial, the Attorney General’s Office acknowledged state responsibility for mishandling the evidence. When detectives first inspected the folding knife, they noted a deposit on it of various forms of debris, but they noted no blood on the knife.
Six months later, after having been misplaced in the El Paso County Sheriff’s evidence room, the knife was delivered to the CBI lab in Pueblo no longer bearing the deposit noted earlier. Instead, it bore a small amount of blood from the victim.
More information is available at http://BearingFalseWitness.com. The allegation text is at http://BearingFalseWitness.com/CoverdellAllegation.pdf.
Technorati Tags: wrongful conviction, prison, innocence, todd newmiller, crime, law
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