Ken Anderson Court Case Analysis
“Even though I asked to be transferred here for the master’s program, coming here was a shock,” Michael Morton wrote on January 22, 2002, from his cell in the Ramsey I prison unit, south of Houston. He was replying to a letter he had recently received from Mario Garcia, a former co-worker at the Safeway in Austin where he had worked before being sent to prison fifteen years earlier. Besides his parents and his younger sister—who made the five-hundred-mile round-trip from East Texas to visit when they could—Garcia was the only person from Michael’s previous life who had stayed in contact with him. Virtually everyone else believed that he was guilty. Throughout the fall and winter of 1986, his case had been splashed across the front pages of
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While he puzzled over what the prosecutor might have meant, he thought back to an argument he’d had with Davis’s boss, Williamson County district attorney Ken Anderson, who had led the prosecution’s effort. During two pretrial hearings, the lawyers had clashed over what evidence the state should, or should not, have to turn over. As Allison remembered it, state district judge William Lott had ordered Anderson to provide him with all of Wood’s reports and notes before the trial so he could determine whether they contained any “Brady material.” (The term refers to the landmark 1963 U.S. Supreme Court ruling in Brady v. Maryland, which holds that prosecutors are required to turn over any evidence that is favorable to the accused. Failure to do so is considered to be a “Brady violation,” or a breach of a defendant’s constitutional right to due process.)
Judge Lott had examined everything Anderson had given him and ruled that no Brady material was present. Afterward, as is the protocol in such a situation, the judge had placed the papers in a sealed file that could be opened only by the appellate courts to review at a later date. Thinking back on that series of events, Allison had a terrible thought: What if Anderson had not, in fact, given Lott all of Wood’s reports and
While he puzzled over what the prosecutor might have meant, he thought back to an argument he’d had with Davis’s boss, Williamson County district attorney Ken Anderson, who had led the prosecution’s effort. During two pretrial hearings, the lawyers had clashed over what evidence the state should, or should not, have to turn over. As Allison remembered it, state district judge William Lott had ordered Anderson to provide him with all of Wood’s reports and notes before the trial so he could determine whether they contained any “Brady material.” (The term refers to the landmark 1963 U.S. Supreme Court ruling in Brady v. Maryland, which holds that prosecutors are required to turn over any evidence that is favorable to the accused. Failure to do so is considered to be a “Brady violation,” or a breach of a defendant’s constitutional right to due process.)
Judge Lott had examined everything Anderson had given him and ruled that no Brady material was present. Afterward, as is the protocol in such a situation, the judge had placed the papers in a sealed file that could be opened only by the appellate courts to review at a later date. Thinking back on that series of events, Allison had a terrible thought: What if Anderson had not, in fact, given Lott all of Wood’s reports and