Was the wrong man executed?

By Terry Ganey
Copyright (c) 2005, St. Louis Post-Dispatch
Monday, Jul. 11 2005

Up to the moment that lethal injection took his life in the early morning hours of June 21, 1995, Larry Griffin insisted he was innocent of a drive-by  murder in St. Louis.

Now new testimony has emerged to support his claim, and St. Louis Circuit Attorney Jennifer Joyce has reopened an investigation of the case.

A man wounded in the same drive-by shooting says Griffin was not involved. And the first police officer on the scene has given a new account that undermines the trial testimony of the only witness who identified Griffin as a killer.

A year-long investigation financed by the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund unearthed the disclosures. The project's lawyers and investigators believe Griffin was innocent of the crime for which he was executed: the murder of 19-year-old Quintin Moss.

Joyce has assigned two top lawyers to investigate the case as if it had just happened. Moss, a drug dealer, was murdered 25 years ago this summer.

The NAACP project's lawyers and investigators believe Griffin should be exonerated. In addition, they have supplied Joyce with the names of three men they suspect were responsible for Moss's murder.

Samuel Gross, a University of Michigan law professor who supervised the investigation, said Griffin's case was the strongest demonstration yet of an execution of an innocent man. If true, it would give more credence to death penalty opponents who contend that because human beings make mistakes, the capital punishment system could produce deadly errors.

"There is no real doubt that we have an innocent person," Gross said. "If we could go to trial on this case, if there was a forum where we could take this to trial, we would win hands down."

The report comes at a time when Congress is considering legislation to streamline federal appeals of state-imposed death sentences. Joshua Marquis, a prosecutor and board member of the National District Attorneys Association, has told a House panel considering the legislation that death penalty opponents cannot point to a single case in which a demonstrably innocent person has been executed in the modern history of American capital punishment.

Gordon Ankney, who prosecuted Griffin for Moss's murder in 1981, does not believe Griffin's case will change that. Ankney does not believe the new report and says its authors have an agenda.

"They want a result and wrote a report that fitted the result they wanted," said Ankney, a lawyer in private practice in St. Louis. "I think the truth of the matter is what was presented in the courtroom under oath."

Joyce said her office will conduct a comprehensive investigation over the next few months.

"We can't be reluctant to go back and look at things that have happened in the past and to see if perhaps they were done correctly because we are in the business of pursuing justice," Joyce said.

A new witness

Moss, a 19-year-old drug dealer, was shot 13 times by men firing a handgun and a rifle from a slow moving 1968 Chevrolet Impala as he stood near the corner of Olive Street and Sarah Avenue on the afternoon of June 26, 1980.

Neat rows of newly constructed townhouses now flank the corner of Sarah and Olive. But 25 years ago, the area was known as "the stroll," where drug deals and prostitution took place among vacant lots and boarded up buildings.

While Moss was dealing drugs there, another man, Wallace Conners, was there to buy them. Conners, now 52, was hit by a stray bullet and still carries a slug in his right buttock.

When police interviewed Conners in a hospital shortly after the shooting, he could not pick out a photo of Griffin as a shooter, police reports said.

Conners left St. Louis soon after and was never called as a witness at either Griffin's trial or at later hearings that challenged his death sentence.

Last summer, Josiah Thompson, an investigator for the project, located Conners in Los Angeles.

Thompson said Conners was shocked to learn that Griffin had been executed for the Moss murder. In an interview with the Post-Dispatch, Conners said that he knew Larry Griffin and Griffin was not one of those who fired at Moss.

"If it would have been somebody who I knew or something, I would have recognized them because I did get a look," Conners said. "Larry Griffin wasn't there."

Conners said the state's chief witness, a man named Robert Fitzgerald, was not on the scene either.

At Griffin's trial, Fitzgerald was the state's star witness. He testified that his car broke down at the intersection of Sarah and Olive earlier that afternoon. Fitzgerald would have stood out at the intersection. He is white and everyone else there was African-American.

Fitzgerald said he was giving a ride to a black man and his 4-year-old  daughter when his car overheated. Fitzgerald, a convicted felon from Boston, said his passenger was trying to fix the car when the drive-by shooting took place.

Fitzgerald said he was 20 feet away from the assailants' car when the shots were fired and he was able to identify Griffin as one of three men in the car.  Fitzgerald also testified that he was able to protect the little girl from being hit by bullets while at the same time memorizing the car's license number, JPP 203.

Conners said Fitzgerald wasn't there and if his broken-down car was that  close, Conners would have taken refuge behind it when the shooting began.

"He wasn't there when it happened," Conners said. "If he had been, he would have been shot just like everybody else."

Fitzgerald, then 36, was living in a St. Louis motel. He had been placed here under the Justice Department's witness protection program, waiting to testify against a former criminal associate in the murder of a Boston police officer.

Fitzgerald had been convicted of heroin possession, auto theft, armed robbery and possession of burglary tools and was facing charges of four counts of credit card fraud in St. Louis County. The day Griffin was convicted, Fitzgerald was released by St. Louis County authorities for time served.  Five months later, Fitzgerald testified for the prosecution in the Boston killing. That jury rejected Fitzgerald's testimony and acquitted the defendant. Fitzgerald died in Florida last year before an investigator for the project could interview him.

Contradictions

Recent statements made by Michael Ruggeri, the first officer to respond to the shooting, also undermine Fitzgerald's claim that he was nearby. In interviews with investigators and the Post-Dispatch, Ruggeri, who is now retired, said he saw no one else with the wounded Conners and the dying Moss when he arrived minutes after the shooting.

Ruggeri was just leaving the police garage on Laclede near Sarah when he was dispatched to the shooting four blocks away. He said he cannot remember anyone being with Moss or Conners when he arrived. Seeing that Moss was dying, Ruggeri got a description of the shooters' car from Conners and broadcast an alert about the vehicle. He said he didn't notice Fitzgerald's presence until three or four minutes after arriving.

Asked if Fitzgerald was close enough to witness the shooting, Ruggeri said, "He might have been down the block. He might have been across the street. He may have been, you know, I don't know where he was, but he wasn't there."

Ruggeri also didn't recall Fitzgerald's broken down car at the scene.

The statement contradicts what Ruggeri said at Griffin's trial in 1981. He testified then that Fitzgerald was attempting to give medical attention to Moss when the policeman arrived. Ruggeri cannot explain why his current memory of the event differs from his testimony at Griffin's trial a year later.

"I don't remember actually sitting in the stand," Ruggeri said. "I don't remember a whole lot of the actual testimony."

No doubts

Ankney, the original prosecutor who now is a partner in the Thompson Coburn law firm in St. Louis, has no doubts that Larry Griffin was guilty.

"Reading the report doesn't change my mind in any way," Ankney said in an interview. "I never saw any indication that what he (Fitzgerald) said wasn't true. It was consistent with other facts we knew. I don't know how in the world he would know those things if he wasn't there and didn't see those things. He held up well under my scrutiny and under the scrutiny of the trial."

Ankney said the report fails to give enough weight to the fact that there had been an earlier attempt on Moss's life and that Larry Griffin and his nephew Reggie were suspected of being involved.

Ankney also said the report discounts the testimony of a police detective, Andre Jones, who said he saw three men, one he believed to be Larry Griffin, about 30 minutes before the shooting. One of the men had what appeared to Jones to be a shotgun. Jones said he didn't know Griffin's first name at the time, but later learned of it by looking at police photographs.

As for Conners' testimony, Ankney said he wasn't surprised Conners had left town shortly after the shooting.

"I was told or I participated in an interview of him in which he said it was one of the Griffins," Ankney said. "And he wasn't sticking around. He wouldn't say that in public. That's what I heard. Everybody knew the Griffins were dangerous at the time."

At the time of the trial, Ankney told the judge that Conners had left the state and could not be located. Records show that Conners was being held by police in Texas. On the day Griffin's trial began in St. Louis, Texas authorities issued a subpoena to St. Louis police seeking records concerning Conners.

Police reports showed that when the shooters' car was later recovered, there were two separate receipts made out to Reggie Griffin, Larry Griffin's nephew, and Ricky Thomas, also known as Ronnie Thomas.

Ankney said he remembers not feeling comfortable enough with the evidence to prosecute Reggie Griffin and Thomas.

"We didn't have a witness to identify them," Ankney said. "That's what makes no sense about the report. If someone is manufacturing an eyewitness, why not identify Reggie Griffin and the driver?"

The new report names as suspects in Moss's murder Reggie Griffin, 44, Thomas, 50, and Ronnie Parker, 54. Both Griffin and Parker are serving life sentences for murder without parole for 50 years. Thomas is serving a life sentence for murder.

While naming the three suspects, the report says a more thorough investigation by authorities is needed to prove their guilt beyond a reasonable doubt.

Ankney writes off Ruggeri's changes to memory troubles.

"I find it hard to believe that a police officer 20 years later will have a better recollection now than what he said at trial," Ankney said. "Police officers have so many cases. They have to recall which case is which case. It's just a natural issue with the memory when you have lots of cases."

Painful memories

For the Moss and Griffin families, the new report dredges up sad events they believed they had put behind them. Walter Moss, Quintin's oldest brother, said most family members would have preferred to let the case alone. He said he will reserve judgment about whether Larry Griffin was guilty until after Joyce's reinvestigation is complete.

"We are looking for the truth of what actually happened to him and who did it," Walter Moss said.

Sherry Moss, a sister of Quintin and Walter Moss, said she had always doubted Larry Griffin's guilt because she had met Griffin and he didn't seem to be one who could commit a drive-by murder.

"I always felt there was more to the story," she said.

Suspicion fell on Larry Griffin for the Moss murder because six months before, Griffin's older brother, Dennis, had been shot to death. Quintin Moss was a prime suspect in that killing, police said, but was never charged.

Moss got death threats after that, and an attempt was made on his life at the same street corner a few weeks before he was killed. After the first attempt, police chased down a car occupied by Larry and Reggie Griffin. No weapons were found in the car and they were released.

Sherry Moss said her brother knew there was a contract out on him and that he told her he would probably be killed. Both Sherry and Walter Moss had warned their brother to get out of St. Louis.

Sherry Moss said her brother carried large amounts of money in a satchel and that he told her she didn't want to know how he got it. Although he was seen with the satchel on the day he was killed, when police found his bullet-ridden body, he had 11 cents in his pocket. The satchel was gone.

Margurette Hollinshed, Larry Griffin's sister, said Griffin had made mistakes in his life.

"He committed crimes, but the crime he died for he did not commit," Hollinshed said. "There were some crimes that Larry did and he said he did them."

In fact, Griffin had pleaded guilty to second-degree murder charge in a separate case.

Hollinshed said while the new report could be welcomed for absolving Larry Griffin, some family members will be troubled by it since it implicates his nephew.

Larry Griffin lost appeals before the Missouri Supreme Court, federal appeals courts and the state Board of Probation and Parole. Gov. Mel Carnahan turned down his clemency appeal.

One of the last letters Griffin wrote was to a Post-Dispatch columnist. It said, "I suspect my life will end soon, if the state should have its way. I am no angel, but nor do I deserve to lose my life for a murder I did not commit."

Reporter Terry Ganey
E-mail: tganey@post-dispatch.com
Phone: 573-635-6178