Announcer: SJC-12907
Commonwealth Clifton R. Caldwell.
-: Thank you.
Attorney Kavanaugh.
We don't quite have everyone.
Just hold on for a just a second,
let's see if we can get him on board.
(curtains drawing)
Okay. Great. It looks like we're all set.
Attorney Kavanaugh.
-: Good morning, Your Honors.
Lisa kavanaugh with the CPCS Innocence Program.
It is my privilege to appear before this court
on behalf of Clifton Caldwell.
The injustice of Mr. Caldwell's conviction hinges
on evidence that the jury never heard,
that the motion judge committed clear error in analyzing
and that no
appellate court has ever before considered
about the single most important witness
in the Commonwealth's case, George Thompson.
The Commonwealth built their entire case against
Clifton Caldwell on the worst of the worst kind of evidence,
a jailhouse snitch, who was not a percipient witness,
had no basis to know what really happened,
and yet claimed to have the most powerful evidence of all,
a direct confession. -: Let's stop for a minute.
Why do you characterize the jailhouse snitches
more as a stronger witness than the victim?
-: Because every single court that has ever examined
this case and the prosecution himself during his closing
argument acknowledged as much. I would point-
-: Let me ask you a few questions about the judge's decision.
-: Yes.
-: What standard of review do we apply when we review this?
-: The standard of review, because,
well, first of all, she was not the trial judge
in this matter and so she's not entitled to the special
defendant in the trial.
-: There were some evidentiary hearings though,
weren't there?
-: There were evidentiary hearings, however,
the majority of her decision actually turns on her
interpretation of written records.
And in that regard, this court is in as good as position
as she was to evaluate the significance
of those written records.
And so I would suggest that applying
what I've highlighted and what I will direct my comments
to today are the examples of clear ever in her analysis
of those records, but that this court is in as good
a position as she is to examine the records,
in particular all of those relating to George Thomson's
extensive criminal record to the evidence
that he had done this before in the Rancourt case.
-: That was 15 years past, right?
-: I apologize. I didn't hear, Your Honor.
-: That was 15 years before that trial, the second trial.
I mean, before the Clifton trial.
-: Yes, it was.
In a prior case, he had testified
he had obtained a confession under strikingly similar
circumstances, and he had testified against that defendant
and then gotten a benefit after testifying.
-: So based on that, is there any evidence
of any additional jailhouse confessions
in between those 15 years?
-: No, it's not our contention that Mr. Thompson
repeatedly served as a jailhouse snitch.
What we're suggesting is the jury would have looked
at him quite differently had they understood
that he had done this exact thing before on even one prior
occasion, because it fundamentally contradicted
the way that he talked about himself.
And more importantly, it's critical as the judge failed
to do, to analyze the importance of Mr. Thompson's past role
as a snitch in the context of all of the other evidence
that we presented bearing on his credibility,
which includes the fact that he directly lied to the jury
about the extent of his own criminal record,
telling them he'd been to jail maybe three times
when in fact this was a man who had 63 convictions
who had been to jail in 10 different cases
he'd received committed time.
-: I thought that the judge found that there was an error,
it was four times, not three times, is she wrong?
-: If I refer the court to the chart that I included
in the record appendix (mumbles)
because that chart lays out that he received committed time
and 10 separate cases.
I don't actually know because she doesn't explain
where she comes up with four, as opposed to three,
it may be that she's looking at
the fact that there were concurrent sentences,
but the bottom line is that the jury never learned
that he had 10 convictions for which he himself-
-: How many did they learn he had? Five, four?
-: The sum total of what they learned about his criminal
record was that he had been to jail maybe three times
for motor vehicle offenses, when in fact he had been to jail
many, many more times than that, or at least been sentenced
to committed many, many more times than that,
convicted of over 60 crimes
and had received-
-: These 60 convictions were before he testified
in this case?
-: The full Corey and
I don't have the exact numbers before me.
The full Corey appears at page RA 456.
-: So you don't know whether the 60 convictions
were before the trial?
-: The vast majority of them were.
-: But we don't know the number until I go through
and count them. Okay.
-: Right.
-: Then the next question I have, and it says,
I'm just really interested in the standard,
you say we are in as good position as the judge
to review the documentary evidence.
So looking at her findings,
where do you say she aired?
-: I think she aired fundamentally in her overarching legal
analysis.
I think there may be individual factual
errors that she committed, but the fundamental problem
with her decision is that she fails and there's really
two overarching errors.
One of them is that she fails.
She again and again, substitutes her own evaluation
of the evidence for that of the jury.
So in other words,
it's abundantly clear under the case law,
that the judge is required in the context of evaluating
either materiality or prejudice to assess the probable
effect of new evidence on the jury's decision-making.
This court recently reiterated that in the Ts Lopez
case decided earlier this year,
but that's a principle that's been well established
in the case law.
And instead what she does again and again, is to say,
essentially this doesn't persuade me because the way
I look at it, it's only relevant for this one little thing.
And she never once looks at how a jury might have actually
viewed this evidence differently.
And I can give the court some examples
of what I'm talking about.
-: I would like that.
-: The first is that, when she's looking at the period
of time.
So one of the areas of focus in this case was,
what kind of exposure was George Thompson facing
when he first decided to talk to the police?
And then in that sort of period of time leading up
to the trial, and then what was he facing
when he actually testified?
And so when she looks at that period,
and she does consider it,
then it appears in our agenda at page 73.
She reasons that (clears throat)
that the dispositions of his cases
in the interim between when he came forward
to talk to the police and when he testified at trial,
that they weren't credibly related to his cooperation
and therefore
wouldn't have made a difference to the jury.
And this doesn't consider that what the jury,
all the jury knew about his exposure at all,
at any point during this time,
from when he met the Caldwells until he testified.
All they knew was that according to him,
when he sat down and met with detective Hayes,
he was serving a six month sentence,
so he had nothing pending, which was not true.
He had multiple cases still pending.
So he lied.
-: And again, we don't know how many.
-: We do. He had three cases pending. That is very clear.
And the chart- -: Is that where
she gets the four?
-: Sorry, the three versus four is a different issue.
-: Okay. -: So when she's speaking
of the three versus four, she's talking about the number
of times that he was committed to jail.
What I'm referring to is, how much criminal exposure
did he have when he talked to detective Hayes,
when he first decided I'm gonna get myself into this case,
for whatever reason.
And at that point in time, what the jury was told is,
he was serving his sentence, he had nothing to gain.
That was not true, he had three pending cases at the time
he talked to detective Hayes
in addition to the one he was serving time for.
But the court doesn't think about or analyze how that might
have changed the jury's calculation of what was motivating
Mr. Thompson.
-: One thing that's interesting about this particular case
is we have two previous motions,
both in front of the trial judge, where the trial judge
concluded that,
and he seems to make reference
to what the jury did hear and didn't hear.
So how do we factor in any of the previous trial judge's
conclusions in those previous motions?
Or are they all just irrelevant?
-: Well, they're not irrelevant,
but I think there's two points about that.
One is that, the trial judge committed the same exact error
that the motion judge did which is that he substituted
his judgment about whether that information affected
his view of George Thompson's credibility.
So if you look at his decision, he's saying again and again,
"I found him to be incredible,"
which isn't the standard, the standard is,
did the jury find him credible or would this information
have changed their calculus?
The second point I wanna make about the trial judge
is that he did not know this information.
So if you look at, and I think fundamentally,
this is where this combination of new evidence
and ineffective assistance gets really muddled
and you have to pull back and focus on what actual
information do we now know that the jury didn't know,
because in the litigation of the new trial motion
that focused on trial counsel's ineffectiveness,
which as an aside was egregious in many respect.
If one were to reread the trial transcripts,
it is abundantly clear how ill-prepared
this trial lawyer was.
But putting that aside, the motion judge doesn't receive
any of the information that I presented to, sorry,
the trial judge doesn't receive any of the information
that I presented to the motion judge.
He doesn't get the charts, he doesn't get the close analysis
of what kind of exposure did he have throughout
this time period.
How might his motivations have been altered
by that exposure?
And most importantly, he doesn't get the information
about what's in the DA note.
So fundamentally we're talking about the prosecutor
has known from the moment he talked to George Thompson
before putting him on the stand.
He knew that George Thompson said,
"I've done this before and then I called someone named
Todd Cambra and and that's how I got involved in this case."
And that information was known to the prosecutor
from the moment he put George Thompson on the stand
and yet not disclosed.
-: Right. So assuming that that should have been disclosed,
where the standard then is prejudice? Isn't it?
-: Yes. And I think regardless of how,
because I think there is a confluence of
what better prepared council could have accomplished,
especially when it comes to analyzing and presenting
his criminal record and the information that's contained
in the Rancourt note.
The judge essentially finds that trial counsel
could have found out information about Rancourt.
Now, I have to say having prepared many trial,
I'm not sure I've ever done a West law search of a witness.
-: No? -: So I'm not sure I agree
that trial counsel necessarily would have stumbled upon it,
but he didn't have to and he shouldn't have had to
because the prosecutor knew it.
-: Well, before we go further,
just for my benefit to refresh my memory.
I think you basically you've got, is it correct?
I know you've got three different theories,
but there also three basic pieces of evidence
or areas of evidence that we're talking about here.
-: Yes. With respect to George Thompson,
there's really three areas.
There's the one is that he had done this before
and gotten a benefit for it.
The other is that in that case, there's evidence that
SJC affirms that he had this relationship with the State
Police over several years and we're not contending
because we couldn't frankly, because by the time we learned
this information, any records that might've substantiated
his ongoing relationship were gone.
And I think that's abundantly clear from the way that-
-: Well, do we know if they're gone or do we know that,
or do we just don't know?
Do we know that documents existed and now they're gone?
Or do we just not know if there were documents?
-: We know that the DA's office in Bristol County destroyed
their file in the Rancourt case in 2011.
-: That we don't know what was in it?
-: No. I mean, we have no way of knowing.
And the reason that the defendant is deprived
of this information is because of the Brady violation.
-: Right.
-: But back to the three categories.
-: Yes. -: So we have,
that he'd done this before, that he had this past
relationship.
And I think that it's important to keep in mind,
yes, the Rancourt case was many years earlier,
but we know that that relationship with the State Police
was maintained because he told the prosecutor,
"I called Todd Cambra."
And that information maybe in the vacuum wouldn't have made
a lot of sense, but we were able to determine by looking
at his department of records that Todd Cambra
was a state trooper who went to meet with him
weeks before he met with the detective in this case.
So in other words, we have Thompson himself essentially
telling the prosecutor that the State Police were ill
conduit for his connection to this case.
-: Is this part of one categories?
-: That's court number two. -: Okay, that's two,
case number two. Okay. -: Yes. And then number
three is that he lied to the jury directly
about the extent of his criminal record and about the extent
of his exposure leading up to and during the trial.
And I just wanna, if I have a moment, I wanna-
-: Before you, just factually one question.
-: Yes. -: How does he get in the cell?
Is there any suggestion that the Commonwealth
put him in the cell?
-: There isn't then, I think that's an important distinction
between the facts of this case and the facts of Rancourt,
because there really was a focus in Rancourt on whether
he'd acted as an agent of the Commonwealth.
And there's no evidence that that was the case here.
It's also significant that in Rancourt,
there was a written confession.
And here there is no such written confession
because we contend he made a confession.
But it's very clear
that in that respect there's no evidence that he was placed
in that cell by the police.
What there is evidence of is that he had a whole lot more
riding on sort of hanging over his head at the moment
when he met the Caldwells at the arraignment
and then ended up in custody with them.
He had much more riding on hanging over his head
than he led on to the jury.
-: Ms. Kavanaugh.
Cypher: Oh, go ahead.
-: Go ahead, Justice Cypher, please.
-: No, I was just wanting to follow up on that because
the motion,
so he says, he's like
that she was impeached to trial with evidence
that he'd been in jail for about six months
and he had been in jail maybe three times
for motor vehicle offenses. Right?
-: Yes. Yes.
-: And I had thought that the difference was actually
that he had actually been incarcerated four times. Right?
-: Well, that's only part of it, right?
I mean, he clearly, the way it's presented to the jury
is that's the sum total of his criminal record.
As far as they know, he'd not only only been to jail
three times, but he only had three convictions.
I mean, that's how it comes across to the jury.
-: But why didn't the defense attorney,
and you're saying the defense attorney should have
found all those other convictions.
-: Absolutely. And you can see how-
-: And they all existed at that time.
-: How poorly prepared he was from the fact that he didn't
have a single certified criminal conviction
so that he wasn't even able, he was not entitled to a jury
instruction on impeachment with prior convictions,
because he hadn't gotten any, he hadn't brought,
he hadn't followed the steps that are needed
to impeach someone with a prior conviction.
But I think it's important just to note that,
why didn't the jury learn this information,
these three categories of evidence?
They didn't learn it because even though we do have some
safeguards in place, right?
We have a discovery process so the Commonwealth
has obligations to turn over the information that they have.
We have defense investigation which ordinarily would serve
some protection, we've got the tools of cross-examination
which a well-prepared lawyer might use to protect
against unreliable evidence and there's jury instructions.
Here, every single one of those safeguards failed,
Mr. Caldwell.
The prosecutor didn't disclose the information,
trial counsel didn't learn it on his own,
he didn't confront Thompson with it
and the jury instructions did nothing
to equip the jury to evaluate his testimony.
And I think- -: Ms Kavanaugh,
as you list those, isn't the strongest argument
you have by far when we look at standards of review,
the failure to turn over exculpatory evidence
if there was a specific request,
as opposed to going right into the brunt of our case law
on what it takes to get a reversal for something lacking
in impeachment.
Isn't the strongest place to go,
the failure to turn over a sculptor
and that it was a specific request?
-: I certainly think that's a very strong claim
and it's significant that the judge literally
did not address that at all in her decision.
She did not speak one word to the Brady standard or review
or the basis for granting relief.
-: But that's your best standard of review. Isn't it?
-: I apologize. I miss the part.
-: That's your best standard of review on it
if we're dealing with a specific request, isn't it?
-: I think that's true.
And I also think that there was a moment and Commonwealth
contends that there wasn't a specific request, but in fact,
I'm not sure how much more specific you can be
than to ask for information
about promises, rewards, or inducements.
Like how would one ask more specifically,
has this person been an informant before?
Why would you even think-
-: That sounds like a good way to ask.
-: No. I mean, presumably the Commonwealth had the duty,
regardless of whether there was a specific request, right?
Talk about the needle in the haystack.
But on the issue of whether that's the strongest ground,
I also think it's important to note that although
the general case law on overturning convictions based on
(coughs) impeachment evidence
is not helpful.
Here, we're dealing with a case that where
the impeachment evidence goes to the centerpiece
of the Commonwealth's case.
And I think it's really important to go back
to what the Commonwealth said in closing argument,
because they literally start their closing argument
by quoting George Thompson,
"All I did was hold her down,
his words from his mouth to your ears."
So they literally put Clifton Caldwell in the witness stand
through the mouth of George Thompson
and that is their case against Mr. Caldwell.
And again and again-
-: Also the victim testified, right?
-: She did, but at the trial of the brothers,
two weeks later, they were acquitted.
So there's no doubt that George Thompson absolutely
made or broke their case.
And that if the jury had had the information
that we now have and had looked at it in the totality
in the way that the motion judge failed to do,
that that information would unquestionably
have influenced their deliberations
in a case that absolutely turned on this one witness.
And this one witness who was the Amicus Brif points out
is the most dangerous of all categories of informants,
the jailhouse informant is the most dangerous of all.
And I did want to point out that,
unlike all of the other categories of evidence
that we know contribute to wrongful-
-: Ms Kavanaugh, I'm sorry, I'm gonna have to cut you off.
That's in your brief, right?
That last point you're about to make.
-: Yeah, I would just direct the court to the Amicus Brif
at page 15. Thank you.
-: Okay. Thank you so much.
Attorney Burbine.
-: Yes, Ma'am. Please the court.
Carolyn Burbine for the Commonwealth.
We did not build our whole case on George Thompson.
We also built it on the victim's testimony,
as well as testimony from her mother and her sister
who corroborated much of what she said about her family.
-: What did they corroborate?
I'll be honest, I can't figure out how the brother
didn't get convicted
'cause all of that corroborates with the brother
was in the bathtub naked with an erection, right?
But
it doesn't provide much for this guy.
I mean, again,
it's sort of shocking that the other person's acquitted,
but I'm now presented with this much more complicated case
that clearly turns on
Thompson
because the witness'
really discredited, particularly in regard to Ricky
and sort of the brother's role.
So I'm confused how we don't think this Thompson testimony
is hugely significant.
-: Well, I'm not saying it's not significant,
but I'm saying that we didn't build our whole case on it
as a Defense Counsel has posited.
And as a matter of fact, we relied heavily on the victim
as well and
the defense is trying to paint her as having false memories,
inaccurate memories and a lot of what her family,
sorry.
-: We've got the fact that
she falsely testifies against Ricky on this other episode,
right? Even though she knows it's not Ricky.
Yeah. I mean,
if this were the brother, I'm totally with you
'cause I've got independent corroboration
of his sexual exploitation of this child,
but this is really difficult with this defendant. Isn't it?
-: Well, what I think is striking here
is the fact that his, the George Thompson's version
of what the defendant told him
is so close to what the victim testified to.
Where else could he have gotten that information?
I think that gets lost here in all of this.
-: This isn't the argument that he's got this relationship
with these police officers
and
he's got an incentive
to be helpful, a huge incentive.
And why does he need the why about all this stuff
to the jury if he doesn't?
-: Well, I don't think he did.
I mean, the judge here and Judge Connolly before her
found that he had testified at the trial
that he was incarcerated three times.
Judge Kelly found actually that he was mistaken,
it was four.
-: So how many times-
But Ms. Burbine, how many?
I mean, I haven't looked at Ms. Cavanaugh's chart yet,
but is it actually 10 times?
And is it not for motor vehicle, but for breaking
and entering and all kinds of more serious offenses?
-: He had more of a record than his original trial counsel
realized, but what's not being acknowledged here,
Judge Connolly and his findings and Judge Kelly
and hers noting Judge Connolly's findings.
Judge Connolly went through that record and he looked at it
and he determined that much of it would not have been
admissible because many of those convictions
were from misdemeanors and/or crimes that
you couldn't
impeach him on. They didn't-
I'm disputing - (mumbles)
-: I'm confused about that.
He's not a defendant. They can't go through his all record.
-: I'm sorry. Well, but they were talking about,
what could you impeach him on?
And Judge Connolly went through that record and determined
that much of it
and trial counsel did as well.
-: Even if he lies? He lies about his record.
When he goes and says, "I got three offenses,"
they can't literally go,
"You're a liar, you've got hundred offenses."
They can't go through every single one of them?
-: The question wasn't offenses,
it was how many times have you done jail time?
So and Judge Kelly went through that record that
Defense Counsel presented on this motion
and she found four jail terms.
So I dispute...
-: This is a record issue. -: That's a record.
-: We're gonna do this ourselves and I take it.
Is Ms. Cavanaugh's chart all wrong? If it is, let us know.
But is it?
-: I'll go through it, Your Honor.
-: I don't want you to go through it now.
-: No, no, not now, I wouldn't do it now. No, it's huge.
But I'd also like to point out,
at the beginning of the argument,
we talked about the standard of review
and the standard review is, did the judge make an error
of law or other abusive discretion?
And it's our position she made no such errors.
And then in terms of her findings of fact,
for findings of fact have to be accepted
if they're supported by the record
and our position is they are
contrary to what my sister has said.
-: She says there are three areas
and it seems to me like all three areas
are problems for you.
And then you've got the fourth area, which Justice Lowy
is emphasized, which is we don't turn over
the (mumbles) stuff.
So that's a big deal too. Right?
-: It's Rancourt. -: The Rancourt.
Right. Well, I dispute that the defense
actually made,
established that he was a police informant.
I mean, they're trying to make out that he's a career police
informant. What did he do?
He
potentially was involved in Rancourt.
-: He's got a cop spending a thousand dollars
to bail him out of jail.
-: But he testified in that second
hearing that he and Lapriore were friends
and the judge here completely discredited everything
that Selevitch gathered from Lapriore.
She explicitly discredited because there was no
corroboration, we had no affidavit from Lapriore.
-: Lapriore's dead at this point, right?
-: Yes, he's dead.
-: Get an affidavit from a dead guy.
-: Well, he talked to him
and I think two months, or three months later, he died.
That should have given him time to get an affidavit.
And also the investigator himself acknowledged
that he wasn't able to verify anything that Lapriore
told him, there was no corroboration of what Lapriore says.
And the judge explicitly said, "I don't credit."
-: Excuse me, Counsel, was there an affidavit from Selevitch
to the other investigators?
-: Yes, there's an affidavit Selevitch and he can testify
at the hearing and he was questioned and cross-examined
on this and the prosecution at the hearing was able to poke
big holes in his version, for example, Lapriore,
he wrote to Lapriore told him that he bailed
Thompson out of jail in Pennsylvania.
So he looked into that, he couldn't find any record of it.
And indeed, when you look at the triple I,
and the Sheriff's office records,
there's no record of any kind of arrest in Pennsylvania
and when you go through the cross-examined motion
of Selevitch on what Lapriore told him,
none of it could be corroborated except for one jail slip.
And that was the one that
where Lapriore bailed out Thompson
but Thompson had testified at the second motion
for new trial that he had been friends with Lapriore
for 20 years.
That's not the same as, "I am a snitch for him
and I rat people out for him with regularity
and he's my handler."
I also think that
meaning of the note
has been,
I mean, I don't think that we can tell for certain
that that note means that it was George Thompson
who called Cambra.
It says George Thompson at the top,
then it says met all three implements hold.
Then it says, Todd Cambra called.
I mean, did the prosecutor called Todd Cambra?
Did George Thompson called Todd Cambra?
That doesn't say George Thompson said,
he called Todd Cambra.
Now it's true that there was a meeting,
but then Todd Cambra said,
when Selevitch the investigator contacted him,
said he didn't recall even meeting with Thompson
and Selevitch was asked, "Did you have any indication
that Cambra was Thompson's handler in 1999?"
Selevitch answered, "No. I've don't have that."
So I think the note
has been interpreted by the defense, but I'm not sure that
is this smoking gun that they want it to be.
(multiple speakers)
I'm sorry.
-: Well, just assume for the sake of argument
that it is exculpatory in this Burbine,
was there a specific request?
-: It's our position that there was not,
that there was a general request.
-: And can you explain why you don't think
it's specific, please?
-: I would have to look back,
I didn't write the brief in the case, Your Honor.
-: All right. Well, with chief permission, maybe you could...
With chief permission, maybe you could submit a 16.
-: I will do that.
-: You agree, Ms. Burbine that this is the sort of
impeachment evidence that takes us out of the limitation
of a cumulativeness.
Typically we'll look at a motion for neutral and say,
well, this is impeachment evidence is usually cumulative
and so it's usually not going to generate a new trial.
Do you agree that this is of a different nature?
-: I do not.
Because as a defendant's trial counsel testified,
he was aware that George Thompson
had
been involved with the police in the past.
So he did look into his record and he did look into,
he had an informant that,
I'm sorry, I lost my place,
that he had had some involvement with the police
in the past, so he knew enough to look and see
if he'd been informant
and try to impeach him on whether he'd ever-
-: Isn't there a big difference though,
between having a police involvement in the past
and actually having a situation where
he had informed the police in the past about
something another defendant did and then as a result
received a benefit for it?
-: Well, I disagree that in Rancourt, he received a benefit
because in that case, it explicitly says that
while his sentence was cut short by two and a half months,
that was for his protection because he testified
against another inmate.
It was not a reward for his test-
-: But I mean, he did get out. Right?
And so that might be something he was hoping
would happen again.
My only point is that it does appear to be something
that a defense attorney would want to be able
to look into inquire on-cross.
-: But he was asked about that and that's important to know.
He was asked repeatedly and aggressively on-cross,
whether he had received any promises, inducements
or rewards and he was adamant that he had not.
-: Oh, no, no, you're missing. I'm sorry.
I'm not being clear. He wasn't asked about Rancourt
'cause he didn't know about Rancourt.
-: No, but he was asked generally
about that because he had told Detective Hayes
that he had helped the police in the past
and that what it did put his trial attorney did say
that did put me on notice,
although he didn't know about Rancourt.
But the whole thing with Rancourt, if Rancourt had come in,
let's say they did know about Rancourt
and they impeached him about it, our point is that
Rancourt would have helped us in terms of his credibility
because he had testified,
"Well, I have a bias against rapists."
So the jury heard that and they had heard
that he detested him and that was why he told on Rancourt,
"Well, that's what he said in our case, the same thing."
He had said in Rancourt that he was not promised anything
in exchange.
And that's what he said in this case.
So the jury here is that in the past he testified 15 years
ago against a rapist and that he did so.
He was saying now that he did it because
he just a rapist.
Well, any presumably did it for that reason as well.
There was a credibility battle between Rancourt
and Thompson, and Rancourt trial where Rancourt said that
Thompson had coerced him and threatened his girlfriend
and that was why he gave him the confession
and Thompson denied that in the court.
The trial judge held that it was Thompson
who told the truth, not Rancourt.
I don't see how it would help the defense in this case
to hear that was the result of Rancourt that the SJC
had held the trial judge's decision,
that it was Thompson who was credible.
So I think that's important to note.
-: Do you wanna address the sort of point made in the map
of grief that are
the way we handle these sort of tit for tats
is unrealistic
that in these type of confidential informants
there are no promises made until afterwards,
so that it's deliberately avoided.
Do you wanna address the fact that our jurisprudence
on this is unrealistic and it doesn't really reflect
sort of the way this is done out there in the real world,
which is why you don't make the promises because Defense
Counsel is gonna ask this particular question,
but rather you provide the benefits after the trial,
as they've done here in another cases.
Do you wanna address that point?
-: Well, here, he didn't get any bad effect.
He testified at that trial and he had to serve
his six month sentence on his probation revocation.
He did not get any benefit, whatsoever-
-: Talking about the larger, but we'll, again,
we'll dig into that, whether that's accurate or not.
But I'm telling you about the larger point they're making,
which is our jurisprudence doesn't accurately reflect
how these deals are really struck.
-: I don't know that it's true,
that with regularity prosecutors are making deals
and then hiding them from Defense Counsel because-
-: They're not, no they're saying,
everyone's smarter than that.
-: I don't handle informants for this office,
but I can't believe that that's the normal practice
in the DA's office, isn't it?
-: They do provide a lot of
sort of war review type of stuff. You don't address it.
I'm just giving you that opportunity.
I take it, you're saying it doesn't happen out there,
so we don't have to worry about it.
-: I wanna say that I haven't looked into it,
but I don't believe that-
-: Was any of this race below.
Was any of this race below in front of the motion judge?
-: As far as I know, Your Honor,
there's nothing in the record on that.
So I don't have anything to comment.
I can't really comment on it.
I've never done any surveys or studies,
but I would kind of find it hard to believe
that that's how our offices all operate.
It's offensive to me.
-: All right. Does anyone have any further questions?
Very well. Thank you, Counsel.
And that will conclude our hearing for today.
Burbine: Thank you.
Cypher: Thank you.