A guard’s belated "recollection" led to the execution of Roy Michael Roberts
Roy Michael Roberts, a 46-year-old laborer from south St. Louis, was executed at Missouri’s Potosi Correctional Center at 12:07 a.m. on March 10, 1999, for the murder of a prison guard 16 years earlier — a crime Roberts insisted he did not commit. His last words were, "You’re killing an innocent man."
Perverse juxtaposition
In the weeks preceding Roberts’s execution, Missouri Governor Mel Carnahan had been the focus of an intense controversy because, in response to a personal plea from Pope John Paul II, he had granted clemency to Darrell Mease, a confessed triple murderer. Mease had been scheduled to die by lethal injection during a January papal visit to St. Louis.
The Reverend Larry Rice, founder of the New Life Evangelic Center in St. Louis and one of Missouri’s leading death penalty abolitionists, contends the Mease clemency thrust the politically ambitious Carnahan into a defensive posture that probably sealed Roy Roberts’s fate even before his clemency petition landed on the governor’s desk. (After the execution, Rice suggested a campaign slogan for Carnahan, who had recently announced his candidacy for the U.S. Senate in 2000: "I’ll kill for this job.")
The Mease-Roberts life-death juxtaposition was perverse: Due to the coincidental timing of John Paul’s Missouri trip, a killer whose multiple victims included a paraplegic, is alive. Yet a man who had unwaveringly professed innocence, who had passed a lie-detector test, who had earned two college degrees in prison, who had been condemned on the testimony of dubious witnesses — prison guards who were contradicted by a fellow guard and a parade of defense witnesses — is dead.
The crime
The crime for which Roberts died was the 1983 murder of a guard at a medium security prison in Moberly, Missouri, where Roberts was serving the final months of a sentence for a 1978 armed robbery. The victim, 62-year-old Thomas G. Jackson, Jr, was stabbed to death during a melee involving drunken prisoners.
During the initial investigation, which included searches of cells for evidence
and interviews with every guard and prisoner in any proximity to the killing,
no evidence was found that in any way appeared to implicate Roberts. Not
a single witness, guard or prisoner, ascribed any role whatsoever to Roberts.
Blood-stained clothing and shanks were seized from two other prisoners, Rodney Carr and Robert Driscoll, who wound up as Roberts’s co-defendants, but Roberts was not identified as a participant until two weeks after the fact. The belated allegation against Roberts came from Denver Hawley, a guard Roberts claimed bore him grudge stemming from his refusal to work in the prison laundry. Hawley denied any such grudge, but somehow never could explain why, in two previous reports on the riot, he had neglected to mention Roberts.
The trial
At trial, Hawley’s testimony was corroborated by two other guards, both of whom also initially had not implicated Roberts. However, a fourth guard testified that Roberts was at the other end of the tier when Jackson was murdered; thus, he could not have been guilty. A prisoner who corroborated Hawley at trial subsequently recanted, saying he had been coerced by prison officials to falsely implicate Roberts.
Although Roberts’s co-defendants did not testify at his trial (they were awaiting trial themselves at the time) both later said Roberts was not involved. One co-defendant, Rodney Carr, the only one, ironically, against whom prosecutors had a solid case, received only a life sentence. The other, Robert Driscoll, was sentenced to death, but won a new trial in a federal habeas corpus proceeding after showing that Dr. Kwei Lee Su, chief forensic serologist for the Missouri State Police, withheld evidence that blood on a shank found in his cell could not have been Jackson’s.
Driscoll was again convicted and again sentenced to death for the crime in December of 1999, but that conviction was overturned by the Missouri Supreme Court in September of 2001. By then Driscoll was 60 and already serving life on other charges, and he was not retried.
Polygraph test
On February 19, 1999, against his lawyer’s advice, Roy Roberts took a polygraph examination administered by a recently retired Kansas City Police Department polygraph examiner. Asked whether he had been involved in the slaying of Thomas Jackson, Roberts answered he had not, truthfully in the examiner’s opinion.
Despite all the doubts about Roberts’s guilt, Carnahan summarily denied his clemency petition.
In addition to the questions about Roberts’s involvement in the Jackson slaying, there is another perplexing aspect of the case — the very real possibility that at the time of the Jackson murder Roberts was in prison for a crime he did not commit. Another man, Carl Harris, told the St. Louis Post-Dispatch that he committed the 1978 armed robbery for which Roberts was doing time. (Other than the armed robbery and the Jackson murder, Roberts’s only other conviction had been for the theft of a radio in 1977.)
Missouri authorities contended that Harris’s confession lacked credibility because it was not made until 21 years after the crime, long after the statute of limitations had run on the armed robbery and because Harris and Roberts had been roommates in 1978. Since Harris could not be prosecuted, the authorities contended, he might have been lying to help his former roommate. But the equally plausible theory is that Harris is telling the truth.
The robber wore a mask, and the victims identified Roberts by his stature and voice. Harris and Roberts apparently looked and sounded a lot alike in those days. The victims easily might have mistaken one for the other. Since there was no physical evidence linking Roberts to the crime, that makes Roberts's guilt any more likely than Harris's.
In any event, there was nothing in the Jackson murder case to make Roberts's guilt appear more likely than his innocence. Rather, it seems to be the other way around.
The foregoing summary was prepared by Center on Wrongful Convictions Executive Director Rob Warden. The summary may be reprinted, quoted, or posted on other web sites with appropriate attribution.
Case data:
Jurisdiction: Marion County, Missouri
Date of birth: NA
Date of crime: July 3, 1983
Age at time of crime: 30
Date of arrest: NA
Gender: Male
Race: Caucasian
Trial counsel: Tom Marshall (court-appointed)
Convicted of: Capital murder (prison guard)
Prior adult felony conviction record: Armed robbery (of which Roberts may
have been innocent) 1978; theft, 1977
Trial judge: Ronald R. McKenzie
Key Prosecutor(s):
No. of victims: 1
Age of victim: 62
Gender of victim: Male
Race of victim: Caucasian
Relationship of victim to defendant: Prison guard where Roberts was incarcerated
Evidence used to obtain conviction: Testimony of prison guard, who belatedly
identified Roberts, and informant testimony
Major issues on appeal: Accomplice liability, sufficiency of the evidence
Evidence suggesting innocence: Statement of co-defendant that Roberts was
not involved.
Date of execution: March 10, 1999
Time lapse crime to execution: 5,936 days
Final appellate counsel(s): Bruce D. Livingston, Moscow, Idaho, and Leonard
J. Frankel, Clayton, Missouri
