BREAKING DOWN THE CROSLEY GREEN APPEAL REVERSAL

There are two things to know about the Crosley Green appeal reversal, 1) there was no Brady violation according to any legal standard, and nobody has produced anything material that was withheld from the defense in any general sense, where the lower court simply made an error, and 2) the conviction at jury trial was solid based on nothing more than the testimony of Kim Hallock, which no appeal ever came close to undermining. The simple fact is a girl pointing at a guy and saying I saw him do this, is sufficient and legally sufficient to convict someone. And her story was never disproved.

http://cops2prison.org/crosley_11_reversed.pdf

People have been trained to look at this case from the size of the dings and nicks, like from hitting a tree with an axe. But nobody ever looks at the size of the tree itself. Even if you stripped out all other evidence – the confession witnesses, the dog tracking – Kim Hallock’s testimony alone would have been sufficient to convict Crosley. So no appeal can succeed, which doesn’t say why the jury could not have fairly chosen to believe Kim Hallock, or did not have the leeway or freedom within the facts to believe Kim Hallock.

Nobody can show it was proved to the jury Kim Hallock was not credible and they ignored it, or it could be proved today that her story of Crosley’s guilt was not credible or not possible.

People attack Kim Hallock’s identification of Crosley based on one thing, Crosley’s picture was a little different from the other five (the reason being it was not a mugshot). But nobody has ever made any good argument as to why the quirks of the photo layout would make Kim more likely to pick Crosley, or to imagine she recognized him when she didn’t. Arguments that Kim could not have recognized Crosley because they did not spend enough time together, are worth nothing.

In fact, the jury probably figured out based on the testimony of one of the confession witnesses, that Crosley was in the park selling weed, Kim went there to buy weed from him, and Kim left that part out. The jury probably did believe Kim was hiding some things, and they guessed or suspected the things Kim was hiding and why. So the jury very likely figured out that Kim had more reason to recognize Crosley than she let on, specifically because he was her weed dealer. And it was a small community where Kim’s dad even coached baseball at the park where Crosley lurked all day.

The lineup alone was sufficient to convict and was never discredited. But there were additional things to corroborate the identification in the lineup, such as people who recognized the Crosley sketch. The new evidence of Crosley’s DNA being in the truck, and Tim Curtis saying Crosley could have been in the truck before Chip bought it, bolsters the identification as Crosley being someone in the community Kim would recognize, but hide it because the simple fact Kim was afraid of people finding out she was buying weed.

And again, I believe the jury guessed Kim was buying weed, and guessed that Kim was generally reluctant to give the full story of what happened that night for innocent reasons of privacy. And the jury found that Kim being private and shy did not discredit her story but actually fit with it or bolstered it. Her testimony was not flawless, it was human. But no appeal has ever attempted to take on Kim’s entire testimony and show how on balance it was discredited, or not believable at the discretion of a reasonable jury. You cannot say changing some small detail forces the jury to doubt Kim’s story, much less conclude Kim did it.

All of the physical evidence, and all of the things people point out as flaws in Kim’s story taken together, are not able to contradict or discredit Kim’s allegation in any fatal way, as I have documented in numerous videos and recreations on my website http://cops2prison.org/?crosley. But let’s suppose Kim alone was not quite enough, and the jury needed the three confession witnesses to validate or rehabilitate Kim’s story. First of all, the three confession witnesses appeared credible, one was Crosley’s sister. Second, no appeal has ever focused on arguing their credibility was misrepresented to the jury. Third, I agree with the appeals court that if a new trial was held today and the jury heard their new stories and had copies of their original sworn testimony read out, the jury would believe their original stories.

There is no reason to doubt that a new trial today consisting only of Kim Hallock reproducing her orignal testimony, a reading of the original sworn testimony of the confession witnesses, and a live delivery of the new stories of the confession witnesses (and even of the alibi witnesses), would convict Crosley Green. There is not even any reason to doubt a new trial consisting solely of Kim Hallock’s testimony, the physical evidence, and the lineup, would convict Crosley Green. Kim only needs to tell a believable story which she did and there is nothing to disprove it, and say “I recognized him”. No appeal has attacked that legal fact, with a long history of jury trials getting convictions just like that.

The new alibi witnesses basically said Crosley was in and out smoking crack and selling drugs all night. Crosley’s sister claims she was under pressure to lie, because she was facing a sentence for selling drugs. All this supports and corroborates that Crosley was in the park selling weed, the same park where Kim was smoking weed. It adds to the puzzle, it does not break the puzzle. The jury says oh I get it, Kim was in the park buying weed and the crack addict drug dealer robbed her. And she wants to hide that she was buying crack.

As to the Brady violation, there is no credible argument to support anything other than 1) Clarke and Rixey were low-level cops who never met Kim Hallock or investigated the case, 2) their opinion of guilt is not evidence, 3) their opinion of guilt could not have changed the investigation or trial strategy of the defense, because the defense argued Kim did it without needing to hear from an additional person who thought that was the case, and 4) all the information in the withheld notes was in their possession as sworn statements, except one tiny piece that was false hearsay, and would likely not be material if it were true.

Specifically, there is no record that Kim ever said she did tie the shoelace as claimed in the withheld notes. But the defense knew Kim said Crosley told her to tie the shoelace. And even if Kim did say she tied the shoelace but nobody ever wrote down who heard her say it and it was only available as inadmissible hearsay, it is not materially additional to her saying Crosley told her to tie the shoelace. People say Crosley’s lawyer was ineffective for not mentioning at trial, that Kim said Crosley told her to tie the shoelace. But Crosley’s lawyer made a strategic decision to instead say the shoelace seemed loose like it was tied for comfort, not security. His intention was to imply Kim tied it. He did not then want to undermine his own argument, by giving the excuse that Crosley told her to tie it.

So Crosley’s lawyer wanted the jury to believe Kim tied the shoelace not because Crosley told her to, but because Crosley was not even there. Of course the defense is not going to say that Crosley told her to tie the shoelace. Because introducing testimony that Kim said Crosley told her to do something, bolsters that Crosley was there and her story was true. You cannot impeach Kim’s testimony by introducing her statement that Crosley told her to tie the lace, because it relies on assuming or conceding Crosley was there and was coercing her.