An "expert witness" who frequently testified for the prosecution in capital punishment cases has caused another death sentence to be overturned in Texas.Given recent court rulings regarding testimony he "should have known" was false, one wonders what sort of training Mr. Merillat provides for TDCAA, not to mention whether the guidance he provided changed after the Court of Criminal Appeals ruled he gave false testimony in 2010? But since most of their training sessions are "open only to licensed prosecutors," that's impossible to say. Grits is a bit dumbfounded that TDCAA would continue to use this fellow as a trainer after the Court of Criminal Appeals cited him for false testimony in 2010, much less honor him with an award. Merillat has been a go-to expert for prosecutors in the sentencing phase of capital trials for years - his schtick is to help prove up "future dangerousness" of those locked up with life sentences - and there's no telling in how many cases he's provided similarly wrong testimony. And of course, he's not the only "expert" Texas courts have found to have given bogus testimony on "future dangerousness" in capital trials.
The Texas Court of Criminal Appeals on Wednesday justly threw out the death sentence for Manuel Velez of Brownsville, convicted of killing his girlfriend's infant son in 2005, because of false evidence given during the punishment phase of the trial.
A.P. Merillat, who testified for the state as an expert on prisoner security classification, told the jury during the punishment phase that if sentenced to life in prison, Velez would eventually be given lenient privileges allowing him to work outside the prison fence line. In other words, he would continue to be a threat to society.
The appeals court, in overturning the sentence (still upholding the conviction), said the Cameron County district attorney's office and the witness should have known the testimony was false.
The court in 2010 threw out the death sentence of a San Antonio man because of similar testimony from Merillat.
In an April 2010 article for the Bar Association, Merillat described his future dangerousness testimony and suggested that "A benefit to you readers who are on the defense bar [from reading his article] is that you can examine and dissect this information, put your heads together, and come up with ways to rebut my testimony and convince jurors that I am a crackpot." Two months later, the Court of Criminal Appeals ruled Merillat gave false testimony when he claimed, as he did in that article, that "Capital murderers are not singled-out for special precautionary custody while in prison" That's a pretty short turnaround from issuing challenges to the defense bar to having his testimony discredited by the state's highest criminal court.
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35 comments:
Ironically, Mr. Merillat is a "future danger" to criminal defendants.
Well he's a helluva lot more credible than most of the so-called "mitigation" experts utilized by defense experts in capital cases. Talk about a bunch of prostitutes! Of course, when your sole objective is to convince a jury to keep some killer alive, the truth really knows no bounds, does it?
Incidentally, speaking of prevarication, you're guilty of another little transgression here, Grits. TDCAA, I'm certain, does not prevent defense attorneys from attending their training. Nor is any portion of their website restricted. You must be thinking of TCDLA--the defense lawyers association--which does limit access to their programs. If you're going to criticize others for making factual errors, you might want to at least make sure you yourself are accurate.
Perjury charges appropriate? Just asking.
if this goes on in death sentences, just imagine how prevelant and accepted it is in everyday practice!
The problem with Merillat is that he can't read. Here is how LWOP (Life without parole) inmates serve their time in TDCJ.
http://www.tdcj.state.tx.us/connections/JanFeb2006/agency2_v13no3.html
Poor Dudley Sharp must be in a tizzy. One less execution for him to have an orgasm over....
I'm sure he simply misremembered the truth just like you did, Scott, when Austin PD stopped you with your grandchild. Hey, come on! It was just a mistake of recollection, right? Are you really in any position to slam anyone for giving false testimony?
False testimony can be given intentionally, unintentionally, or both. There's a big difference between an intentional lie and being incorrect in an assertion. Was this a mistake of fact or intentional deception?
2:06, Everybody makes mistakes, but mine you refer to wasn't made in support of an effort to kill somebody. Anyway, perhaps you'll grant that there's a difference between a mistake in a blog post recollecting an unexpected 13-minute police encounter (in which the police chief disputed three words out of a 3,000 word essay) and somebody who actively prepared expert testimony about the subject of their job under oath. I did not file any false report, accused no one of misconduct, and corrected the error as soon as I was made aware of it. By contrast, Merillat had lots of time to study and prepare his testimony to make sure he got it right, and testified to the same false information in multiple trials. If you can't understand the difference, it says more about you than me.
2:13, you can't see inside somebody's head; I find a lot of the tuff-on-crime, kill-em-all types engage in a great deal of self-deception and take as a given many highly questionable assumptions and/or iterpretations, so it may not be a black and white thing.
Amazing that he is still employed at the Special Prosecution Unit after the first case got overturned because of his inaccurate testimony - my prediction: ultimately "AP" is going to have cost the state hundreds of thousands of dollars because prosecutors went on using this guy knowing that he's a problem child. GREAT use of public money in straitened times ...
Prosecutor of the year honors to Jack Skeen, Charles Sebesta, among others; honors to this guy. What does that say about prosecutors that they repeatedly and routinely honor people like this?
Exactly, 8:44. Why IS this guy still drawing a state paycheck after such a rebuttal by the high court? It just adds confusion as to why "Justice" remains in the title "Texas Department of Criminal Justice". Their record of actual justice , along with that of Texas prosecutors, has taken some huge hits of late. They do not seem to care.
Anonymous 2:06- Get over it. As usual, reactionaries latch on to any misstep by someone they oppose and run with it till the cows come home. It smells of desperation, really. Pathetic.
Things just like this where people set themselves up as God, and get paid for it,are some of the reasons I can not trust our so called justice system.
You want to criticize grits for a mistake to which he admitted and corrected promptly. So, why is it prosecutors are never willing to admit their mistakes and frequently go to great lengths to cover them up and prolong the injustices they cause?
Not only do prosecutors typically refuse to admit their mistakes, but they are also slow learners. There have been problems with this "future dangerousness" stuff for years. Remember Dr. Grigson (aka Dr. Death). Several death sentences were reversed because of his "future dangerousness" testimony, including Kerry Max Cook's. In Kerry's case, Grigson testified that he would definitely kill someone in prison. But, guess what, Kerry had never killed anyone in the first place. Some expert, huh? This "future dangerous" crap is just someone trying to predict the future. Might as well just give the jury a crystal ball.
This is similar to the dog scent lineup crap. Prosecutors still tried to justify that quackery for years after it was shown to be worthless. I just recently saw a case where a prosecutor still tried to argue it was valid.
Are prosecutors really this stupid (I realize most of them graduated in the bottom of their law school classes), or is this willful blindness?
Good grief. That's just another SOB whose arrogance exceeded his competence, confounded by America's rote-conditioning to worship coat & tie "experts" who should be in prison.
And let me guess, they'll give him some kind of immunity--that's why they all give each other protection. Who's going to oversee them? Who can stop them? Electronic voting machines? No way. OF COURSE they keep using him; they're in cahoots. No one in power will step down without force.
Egregious. Massive waste of taxpayer funds. It's all sickening, and can't we all hardly wait until WE are maimed by these tyrants.
(Woof: captcha!!)
And I guess the poor child who was murdered in this case is just a figment of everyone's imagination, right? If Merrilat testified in the punishment phase of the trial on future dangerousness, then his testimony didn't have squat to do with the jury's decision as to guilt. Get that? This dude is still G U I L T Y of murdering a child! What do you want to bet that there was plenty other evidence of "future dangerousness" besides Merrilat's testimony? If truth be told, I'd bet his testimony on inmate security restrictions had little, if anything, to do with the jury's death sentence. But hey, it won't hurt anything to have a "do over," right?
So Merrilat is an investigator for the prison prosecution unit? Well that explains a lot. He helps investigate crimes committed by inmates in prison. It seems that most of the people who comment on here are either convicted felons or their family members (and maybe a few lovelorn European women). It's no wonder that GFB and his sycophants are acting so pius and sanctimonious over Merrilat's mistake.
4:45 - Merillat's testimony concerned sentencing, not guilt. And please place yourself in the position of a juror faced with the awesome decision of whether to impose death or not - a juror who subsequently discovers that their decision was based on false testimony. Imagine being put through that difficult process and then discovering that this man, a state employee receiving a salary and benefits for supposedly doing a responsible job was the one that misled you. And that he's done it before. Support the death penalty, if you must, but those who have to make that difficult decision in reality deserve better than the garbage that Merillat, Grigson and Coons have dispensed over the years. Shouldn't there be truth in sentencing?
Okay 4:45, it may very well be that this man deserved the death penalty for the crime he committed. So, the prosecutors should have simply told the jury that and trusted them to do the right thing.
This sort of thing seems to happen a lot. By this sort of thing I mean prosecutors overreaching to the point that they do something stupid that ultimately results in getting a conviction overturned when, if they had just done the right thing to start with, they could have secured a conviction that would be upheld. Part of the reason for this may stem from the CCA pro-prosecution bias that has led prosecutors to believe that just about whatever they do will pass CCA scrutiny. Had the prosecutors in this case simply argued that this man deserved death for his crime, he probably would have still received the death sentence and there would be no basis to overturn it, at least not on this issue. But, prosecutors are so afraid that they might not get the death penalty that they overreach and present unreliable testimony and ask the jurors to predict the future. The blame for this sentence being overturned lies squarely on the shoulders of the prosecutors.
I don't believe it is appropriate to sentence someone based on what they "might" do in the future. First, no one can predict the future and courts should simply not allow this testimony. Sentence them based on the crime they commmitted. Second, I believe that God can change even the worst murderer. After all, many of the people that he used in the Bible had bad things, including murder, in their pasts. I don't know that the defendant in this case would have found God, but these supposed experts in "future dangerous" don't know that they won't. So, why do we ask jurors to predict the future. Sentence them for the crime they committed. In this case, death was probably an appropriate sentence for the crime, so why screw up the case by introducing problematic testimony that you don't need. Again, no one to blame here but the prosecutors.
As if it isn't frightening enough that Prosecutor's have god complexes, they perpetuate false fear to drive votes.
The door should be opened for victims of malicious prosecution to sue the shit out of prosecutors.
And the number one source of penalty should be the DA and law enforcement seizure money... down to the last penny.
As if it isn't frightening enough that Prosecutor's have god complexes, they perpetuate false fear to drive votes.
The door should be opened for victims of malicious prosecution to sue the shit out of prosecutors.
And the number one source of penalty should be the DA and law enforcement seizure money... down to the last penny.
And yet, I'm sure the pro-criminal crowd on here would have no problem whatsoever with some of the crap espoused in death penalty cases by the charletons otherwise known as "mitigation experts" that criminal defense lawyers routinely call to the witness stand. You people are the biggest bunch of liberal hypocrites as there are. All you care about is getting guilty criminals off or preventing them from being punished. You are completely in denial, or just don't care, about the reality of crime in society. You care litltle or nothing for the rights of victims and their suffering. Your criticism of the police and prosecutors is becoming pretty transparent. All you want is to make it harder for criminals to be brought to justice.
It always seems, 6:36, that when you can't hold your own in a discussion you start throwing out labels ("pro-criminal"). At the same time you also, always, start whining about how the defense does this or that. You are simply too predictable. This is indicative of a lack of intellectual ability. Let me guess, you were near the very bottom of your law school class - assuming you even went; I'm assuming you are a prosecutor, maybe you aren't. I'm not excusing everything defense attorneys do but there is a difference in the burden and responsibilities of defense attorneys and prosecutors. The fact that you have repeatedly demonstrated your failure to grasp something so basic to our system causing me to hope you are not a prosecutor - the thought that you might be is truly disturbing.
As far as your comment about making it harder for criminals to be brought to justice - I suppose we could make it really easy by just doing away with the Constitution. Who needs all this due process, fairness, etc. If the police say they are guilty, they are guily. Why do we waste time with trials - what a waste of money and resources. Lets just make it simple - you get arrested you automatically get the death penalty. Is that they type of syste you want?
Oh, geez. Hey Scott, why not ask when AP quit beating his wife, too?
I guess the reason bloggers aren't reporters is that reporters don't just ask questions, they try to answer them.
Obviously, after the fault with this line of testimony was discovered, AP corrected it for the future. He did NOT knowingly give false testimony, as he explained years ago on our user forum: http://tdcaa.infopop.net/eve/forums/a/tpc/f/157098965/m/3011023702?r.
Considering what a big fan you are of our user forum, I'm surprised you didn't do the rudimentary homework necessary to back up your spurious claims. But that would have ruined your fun at taking cheap shots at someone else's expense, wouldn't it?
Again, this is what separates a blogger/advocate from a real reporter: one throws mud while the other is supposed to dig through the mud to find the truth. Personally, I happen to find the mud-throwers more entertaining, but I'm sad to see Grits indulge in it. I thought you were better than that, man.
Shannon asks, "why not ask when AP quit beating his wife, too"
Because to my knowledge no court ever said he beat his wife. And even if they had, AP's personal life is not my concern. To the issue at hand, however, the court has twice said AP gave false testimony under oath to secure the death penalty. It might have happened more often than that, we just don't know. Perhaps you can tell us if anyone has comprehensively reviewed his old testimony to discover how often it's happened? Or do we just not ask those questions?
And fwiw, I did search your user forum but must not have used the right keywords to find that string. That's how I found your press release honoring him after the court criticized his false testimony.
But let's pause for a moment to separate your own spurious red herring, Shannon, from the actual content of the post. I did NOT say AP "knowingly" gave false testimony, I just repeated the court's assessment that he "should have known" it was false, pointed out that now two death sentences have been overturned as a result, and that y'all continued to use him as a trainer and even recently gave him an award. Perhaps you think the Court of Criminal Appeals' concerns are "spurious," too?
So the fact that he made a couple of mistakes (that you can't even say he did knowingly) is relevant to the issue of him receiving a TDCAA award in what respect? Or is that just a gratuitous cheap shot at Merrilat and the prosecutors' association? Have you even bothered to look into the rest of Merrilat's professional accomplishments over the course of his lengthy career? It must be nice to have acheived such a rarified level of personal perfection that you can disparage others with such impunity.
I did not file any false report, accused no one of misconduct, and corrected the error as soon as I was made aware of it.
Well, that's basically the same thing AP Merillat did. Why pat yourself on the back for acting appropriately when your error was brought to your attention but throw him under the bus for doing the same thing? I assumed that after your recent unpleasantness, you might be less likely to impugn others without knowing the full story. I guess I should never assume.
BTW, that's also why he continues to train others on the facts regarding prison violence and inmate classification. When discovered, he fulfilled his duty to correct his error and notify others of any cases in which it might have occurred, and his mea culpa during his presentations gets students' attention. It's what we in the adult education biz call "a teachable moment," and he is to be commended for manning up and making an example out of himself. A lesser person wouldn't do have the intestinal fortitude required for that.
If you want to see it in action, I'll invite you to come to his next talk. Contrary to your inaccurate original post, almost all of our trainings are open to the paying public. But then, you already know that because you've paid to come to several of my talks over the years. I'm not sure why you'd claim otherwise, but again, that's the difference between throwing mud and digging through it.
(Oops, I left an extraneous "do" in that last post. Sorry. -SE)
Any licensed attorney can attend the prosecutor's trainings because they are government funded. They are unable to restrict attendance only to prosecutors. Attorneys, perhaps, but any licensed attorney can attend the Texas prosecutor association trainings put on by Kepler and Edmonds and co.
Scott,
Your post sounds like he got busted by the first court, kept testifying falsely, then got busted again. Thats not the sequence of events as i read the links.
Anonymous 6/17/2012 04:45:00 PM said:
"And I guess the poor child who was murdered in this case is just a figment of everyone's imagination, right?"
My reply:
I'm not exactly sure what you mean by that, but what IF the defendant did NOT murder the child? What if the child was murdered by someone else?
Anonymous 6/17/2012 04:45:00 PM said:
"This dude is still G U I L T Y of murdering a child!?
And what is your "proof" that he murdered the child - that a jury said the he did?
My reply:
Consider this: Velez has already filed an appeal of his conviction
and the two lawyers who are defending him uncovered evidence that injuries to the baby were sustained before Velez lived with him and while Velez was out of the state plus the fact that the court also found that Velez’s girlfriend had given misleading testimony at the trial. What neither the appeals court nor the jury knew was that abundant medical evidence shows the child had suffered substantial head trauma before the two-week period he lived with Velez, including a subdural hematoma that was inflicted (according to the state's own neuropathologist) at least 18 days before the child's death, at a time when Mr. Velez was in Tennessee. Additionally, the child's medical records, which were available to the prosecution and defense counsel but not presented to the jury, established that he had suffered serious head trauma much earlier, which caused a documented increase in head circumference that was not mentioned by the doctor who testified (inaccurately) that he was perfectly healthy before living with Velez. This new evidence has been presented in a motion to set aside Velez’s conviction, but until then he sits behind bars, hoping to one day be counted among the hundreds of known innocents who spent years locked up, often because of the false testimony of witnesses or experts. Until then, at least we can celebrate that he has avoided the fate of many who have been executed despite considerable doubt of their guilt.
Shannon Edmonds said: "I guess the reason bloggers aren't reporters is that reporters don't just ask questions, they try to answer them".
Living in a post journalistic era is certainly going to bring to the forefront some stark differences between so called "amateur bloggers" and syndicated news reporters working for large metropolitan news organizations. So Shannon...for just a few moments, wrap the blinding cloth around your eyes (no peaking) and hold up the scales...on one end of the scales deposit your notion of what you think a "good reporter" is supposed to be... and on the other end of the scales, deposit your assertions of what you think
constitutes being a "good blogger" (assuming you are capable of conceptualizing the existence of a "good blogger"). Okay...take off the blinder and what do you see? Did you find that you give more credence to the concept of a good reporter much more so than you
did a good blogger? I thought so! Reporters are much easier to "lean on" when it comes to reporting "facts" in the daily rags in the way that the DA's office and the DA association would like the "facts" to be reported. Reporters can be influenced...and bought...and paid for...reporters who "report news" like to be able to keep their jobs
and feed their families and thus do not like to displease their editors...editors who try awfully hard to maintain good working relationships with the local and state DA cabal networks... And then there are those pesky bloggers, who, bless their hearts, just don't have to "toe the line" and "sing the company song" when it comes to asking the kinds of
right questions which just don't seem to get asked...much less answered...by the main
stream media and their corporate sponsors and powerful lobbyists (AKA: TDAA) which leads
me into the sharp edge of my counterpoint to Shannon's postings:
Scott...and all the friends and allies of GFB...all I can say is THANK GOD for your blessed existence and courage to stand up to these awful tyrants and their ilk. Yes, they control the money in the state and yes they have their hands on all the levers of
power and are holding all the trump cards...but take comfort in the fact that one day these people WILL stand in front of their creator...as we all will...and they will finally be held accountable for their corrupt and vile ways. They are so entrenched in their beliefs that they are untouchable that they have given little or no thought that their crimes against humanity are so serious and so heinious that one of the Ten Commandments in the Bible was created to address the criminal mind which actuates
and perpetuates that which so often drives their zealousness to falsely accuse and ultimately wrongfully convict the innocent...it is found in the ninth commandment:
"You shall not bear false witness against your neighbor".
Enjoy your earthly pursuits and pleasures for the season that has been appointed to you, Shannon; you and all of your anonymous supporters; your day of reckoning is coming and neither the TDAA, nor the governor's office nor any other temporal institution will save you from the fate that you have earned according to wickedness that you have done under the guise of doing good deeds all in the name of "blind justice".
Scott, keep up the great work...the fact that Shannon and his ilk are in here observing your blog and commenting on and trying to discredit the many truths that you have spoken day in and day out is proof enough that they are indeed shaken by the awful self-knowledge of the absolute certainty that their collective evil...much of it
done in the name of justice - will have to be accounted for and that there is nothing that they can do to delay, much less prevent - the fate which awaits them.
God is not mocked!
I think something needs to be clarified. Merillat testifies - or has testified - concerning the details of the TDCJ Classification Plan and other documents that set out the security conditions to which inmates will be subject - which depends on their offense, their behavior and other factors. Twice now he has got it wrong. In most cases, he has been qualified as an "expert" by the courts in order to testify in this area. Now it turns out that he is an expert whose expertise is questionable. This would be unacceptable in any type of expert testimony. And while the TDCJ protocol documents are complicated, they're not rocket science. Still he has got it wrong, twice. The reason prosecutors really want him, even though he screws up on the facts, is because they can get him to do a big song-and-dance number about prison violence and gangs, etc. which scares the bejeesus out of jurors. Even when it has nothing to do with the defendant in question, who sometimes has no record of prison violence or gang membership. Merillat's been a cheap trick for prosecutors to pull on jurors for years. They should simply save public money and forego his services in future. Maybe they should just call a TDCJ classification employee instead? Ah, but they might actually just stick to the facts and not tell the jury that all inmates are scary bogeymen ...
I have to disagree on the perception that it was false testimony. As an appellate prosecutor, the CCA interpreted the testimony in the way the defense presented it and not how it was argued by the State. Before you all get mob mentality read not only the opinion but the briefs and the record. Incredible how the truth exists only on the side of the argument you wish to present. The benefit of the doubt should rightfully go to a person facing the death penalty; however, to accuse an individual of purposefully testifying falsely is ridiculous and did not occur in this case. At worst the court found the testimony misleading based upon how it was presented which is as much the trial attorney's fault. Get off your high horses.
The TDCAA is a joke. Look at their past award recipients.
Background:
Manuel Velez's capital murder trial: Velez was convicted of killing his girlfriend's son, Angel Moreno, a day before the boy's first birthday in February 2005 at their Brownsville home. Evidence showed he either hit the boy's head on a surface or struck him in the head with an undetermined object.
In the second case, Guy Stephen Alexander, was arrested for killing Wilma Jewel Wofford, 75, of Houston, during a January 1989 robbery. Wofford was beaten with a brick and strangled. Alexander, a 29-year-old mechanic at the time, fled to Mississippi, where he was found driving Wofford's car and arrested. He later gave police a written confession, and evidence at the scene of the killing was linked to him.
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