Junk science and jail house snitches sent Boots and Proctor to prison for life
Convicted of the 1983 murder of a store clerk in Lane County, Oregon, Christopher B. Boots and Eric A. Proctor were exonerated in 1995 after a tip from an informant led to the identity of the real killer.
On June 7, 1983, Boots, 19, and Proctor, 18, stopped at a 7-Eleven in Springfield, Oregon. Finding no clerk in the store, they left. After dropping Proctor off at home, Boots returned to the store, where in a walk-in cooler he found the body of Raymond Oliver, the clerk, who had been bound with tape and shot. Boots immediately dialed 911, and soon discovered that he and Proctor were the prime suspects in the murder. They were arrested several weeks later, but released after Lane County District Attorney J. Pat Horton concluded that there was not sufficient evidence to pursue indictments. In January 1984, Boots filed a notice of intention to sue the city of Springfield for false arrest.
In 1986, Horton’s successor, Douglass Harcleroad, reopened the case and obtained indictments against Boots and Proctor based on statements that jail inmates claimed the two had made while in custody. At trial, however, the prosecution case rested primarily on more persuasive evidence — “high velocity blood spatter” from the victim allegedly found on the clothes of both men. At separate trials in 1986 and in 1987, Boots and Proctor were convicted by juries and sentenced to life in prison.
Eight years later, in 1994, an unnamed informant told police that the crime had been committed not by Boots and Proctor but by a man named Ricky Kuppens. Moreover, DNA testing obtained by Elden M. Rosenthal, an attorney for the convicted men, determined that the blood splatter had not come from Oliver. In a reinvestigation, police recovered the weapon used in the crime and Kuppens’s fingerprints were found on tape used to bind the victim. Finally, police used informants to tape Kuppens admitting that he committed the murder. — Researched by Jessica Wash
