The Briefing Room
State Chapters => Texas => Topic started by: Elderberry on May 30, 2020, 02:40:08 pm
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Grits for Breakfast 5/28/2020
Imagine prosecutors cultivating a "ring" of jailhouse snitches to give false testimony in cases where there otherwise was insufficient evidence to convict the defendant. Well guess what? You don't have to imagine.
A recent Houston Chronicle article by Julian Gill (https://www.houstonchronicle.com/news/houston-texas/houston/article/Federal-judge-orders-new-proceedings-for-Texas-15284710.php) described remarkable allegations against former Harris County prosecutor turned TV star (https://www.oxygen.com/cold-justice) Kelly Siegler, with a federal district judge claiming that she concealed information about the recruitment of an informant from federal prison on Beaumont to convict Jeffrey Prible of capital murder in 2002. Judge Keith Ellison ordered a new trial for Prible, declaring he must be released in six months if the DA doesn't re-try him.
But reading the judge's 88-page order (https://files.deathpenaltyinfo.org/documents/Prible-Ronald-SD-Tx-Order-Granting-Habeas-Relief-2020-05-20.pdf), the details are even more startling. The judge described a "ring of informants" in the federal prison - at least five or six, maybe as many as ten - who would essentially testify to whatever prosecutors needed them to say.
The leaders of this "ring" first tried to convince another man, Carl Walker, to testify against Prible before Mike Beckom agreed to do it. Walker said the ring's leaders were “'always on the phone' with Siegler,†one of them “almost on a daily basis†regarding the case. Walker said the ringleaders “directed him to 'write a letter' to be sent to Siegler describing 'details about [Prible’s] case'†that the others had fed to him. Walker claimed that “'common sense' told him that 'someone high on the food chain was feeding these guys the information because [Prible] wasn’t telling' Walker facts about the crime. '[T]he whole plot was made out before it was actually executed.'â€
"To Walker’s knowledge, however, Prible never actually confessed." Indeed, "Walker did not think that Prible had committed the murders." "Overall," the judge observed, "Walker described a ring of 'five or six' informants who were trying to incriminate inmates like Prible."
That same ring, Walker explained, was “simultaneously involved in setting up another inmate, Hermilo Herrero, for another cold case murder. According to Walker, 'this is how you have [the] miraculous coincidence that the same group of guys . . . have been confessed to by two different people on two different murders, totally different murders.'â€
More: https://gritsforbreakfast.blogspot.com/2020/05/prosecutor-turned-tv-star-cultivated.html (https://gritsforbreakfast.blogspot.com/2020/05/prosecutor-turned-tv-star-cultivated.html)