Baltimore man wins writ of actual innocence in ’91 murder

An eyewitness who recanted his testimony and police interviews that were never turned over to the defense helped a Baltimore man win a writ of actual innocence in a 1991 murder for which he served 25 years in prison.

A city judge granted the writ and ordered a new trial for the man, Anthony G. Hall, who is now 60 years old. The Baltimore City State’s Attorney’s Office subsequently dropped the case against Hall last month, though it did not support his petition for a writ of actual innocence.

“The petitioner has produced significant evidence that he was wrongfully identified as the perpetrator and further that he affirmatively was not the perpetrator,” Judge Charles J. Peters wrote in his order.

Hall presented several pieces of “newly discovered evidence” of his innocence, which is required for a writ of actual innocence. Among them were several exculpatory police interviews that were never turned over to the defense for Hall’s original trial in 1992.

A key eyewitness also recanted his testimony and claimed that he only identified Hall as the shooter under pressure from Baltimore police detectives.

Police accused Hall of fatally shooting Gerard Dorsey in the 500 block of Brice Street on the night of July 13, 1991. At trial, prosecutors presented evidence from two eyewitnesses who identified Hall as the shooter. There was no physical evidence tying Hall to the killing.

One of the witnesses, who has since died, said she caught a glimpse of the shooter when he knocked down one of her five children while he ran past.

Another eyewitness, Gerald Patterson, also said he had seen Hall holding a gun. The two statements appeared to corroborate each other, and Hall was convicted of second-degree murder and using a handgun in the commission of a felony. He was sentenced to 50 years in prison and ultimately paroled after 25 years.

Defense lawyers for Hall didn’t know, however, that Patterson had told police several times that he did not see the shooting and only identified Hall during his fourth interview.

At a hearing on Hall’s petition in March, Patterson testified that he repeatedly told officers he hadn’t witnessed the shooting and only arrived at the scene a few minutes later. A few weeks later, Patterson said, police pushed him to identify Hall as the shooter and suggested Patterson could escape drug charges if he cooperated.

“We need for you to put these initials on these statements or you’re going to go to jail for drugs,” Patterson recalled the officers saying.

“I was sitting there high as a kite,” Patterson testified. “They said, ‘Just initial this.'”

Hall had representation from the Mid-Atlantic Innocence Project, which investigated the case and uncovered the new evidence. Shawn Armbrust, the organization’s executive director, said Patterson’s testimony shows a pattern in which police officers disregarded truthful information from witnesses and then prosecutors failed to turn over exculpatory information to defense lawyers.

“You had a flawed investigation, and that flawed investigation was reinforced by the failure to make sure the defense could expose that flawed investigation at trial,” Armbrust said.

A spokesperson for the Baltimore Police Department could not immediately be reached for comment late Wednesday afternoon.

Another witness to the shooting said definitively that he knew Hall and that Hall was not the shooter; others gave descriptions that did not match Hall. None of those statements were provided to Hall’s defense, according to his petition for a writ of actual innocence.

At the March hearing, a city prosecutor agreed that a jury would have discounted Patterson’s testimony given the new information discovered by Hall’s lawyers. The State’s Attorney’s Office did not concede on Hall’s petition for a writ of actual innocence, though it dropped the case against Hall for insufficient evidence last month, a spokesperson said.

Hall was represented by Margaret E. Abernethy, of the Mid-Atlantic Innocence Project, Reyhan Watson, of Kramer Levin Naftalis & Frankel LLP, and  Barry J. Pollack, a lawyer at Harris St. Laurent & Wechsler LLP.

“While the court’s recognition of Anthony’s innocence comes three decades too late, it is gratifying that the world now knows that he was innocent all along,” Pollack said.