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On October 13, 1997, Julie Rea-Harper's 10-year old son, Joel, was
brutally stabbed to death in the middle of the night by an intruder.
The crime shocked the small town of Lawrenceville, Illinois. She
was a Ph. D. student at Indiana University. For three years, the
case remained unsolved.
Though there was no motive or evidence that she had killed her only
child, Julie was indicted by a special prosecutor who was appointed
after the elected State's Attorney declined to press charges, citing
a lack of evidence.
Bill Clutter advised her attorney to investigate Sells: In June
of 2000, Julie's privately retained attorney was referred to private
investigator Bill Clutter. Clutter was informed that that the attorney's
client was facing indictment on capital murder charges. Hearing
Julieís description of the assailant, and the details of
the crime, Clutter suggested investigating whether Tommy Lynn Sells
committed the murder. The description of the intruder; and the modis
operandi, said Clutter, fit the description of a confessed child
serial killer, Tommy Lynn Sells. On New Years Eve of 1999, Sells
broke into the home of a Del Rio, Texas family at 4:30 a.m. and
brutally stabbed to death 13 year-old Kaylene Harris while the rest
of the family slept through the attack. Another child, 10 year-old
Krystal Surles had her throat slashed, but survived the attack and
provided police a description of the assailant, leading to the arrest
of Sells, who is now serving a death sentence in Texas for that
crime.
Clutter suggested that a defense investigation should look at Sells
as a possible suspect in the murder of Joel Kirkpatrick.
Prosecutors prevent access to reforms designed to protect innocent
people from execution: On Oct. 12, 2000, Julie was charged with
capital murder. Having exhausted her life savings on private counsel,
Julie filed a pro se petition requesting the appointment of two
capital qualified attorneys to defend her, seeking the protection
of Supreme Court reforms that were to take effect in March of 2001,
requiring the appointment of two qualified attorneys to defend a
person facing the death penalty.
Prosecutors prevented Julie from receiving the benefit of those
reforms, by announcing they no longer intended to seek the death
penalty. Those reform só including access to the Capital
Litigation Trust Fund, which funds the appointment of investigators,
lawyers, and experts were put in place in January of 2000, after
Anthony Porter, 48 hours away from execution was exonerated by a
private investigator Paul Ciolino, working with a Northwestern University
journalism professor, Dave Protess.
The prosecutor's decision to back away from seeking the death penalty
deprived Julie of the reforms that were designed to guard against
an innocent person being wrongly convicted.
Prosecutors used emotionally charged evidence in their zeal to convict:
Prosecutors improperly elicited testimony from Julie's ex-husband
that she once considering having an abortion when she became pregnant
with Joel. Julie, raised in a deeply religious family, adamantly
denied this. The case, tried in Wayne County, Illinois, in deep
Southern Illinois, was in a conservative rural county where abortion
is fiercely opposed by an overwhelming majority. The prejudicial
impact of this emotionally charged testimony becomes even clearer
when one looks at the 2004 election for the US Senate between Barack
Obama, and Alan Keys, two black candidates who had distinctly opposing
positions on the abortion issue. Keys based his campaign entirely
on his pro-life views on abortion. Though Obama won 70% of the vote
statewide in an overwhelming landslide, Keys commanded 72% of the
popular vote in Wayne County where the case was tried.
Defended by a lone, public defender and outmatched by three opposing
prosecutors, Julie was convicted on March 4, 2002, and sentenced
to serve 65 years in prison.
On May 31, 2002, just weeks after Julie was sentenced, ABC 20/20
aired her story. Diane Fanning, a true crime author on serial killer
Tommy Lynn Sells, watched the program. She corresponded with Sells.
Without providing him when this crime occurred, Sells wrote back
and asked her if this murder happened two days before his Springfield,
MO murder. On Oct. 15, two days after Joel's murder, Sells abducted
and killed 13 year-old Stephanie Mahaney. He was indicted for that
murder by a grand jury after he gave details that only the killer
would know.
Investigation by Bill Clutter, Director of Investigations at the
Downstate Illinois Investigating Innocence at the University of Illinois
at Springfield resulted in eyewitness testimony from Alan Berkshire
who saw Sells in Lawrenceville the weekend Joel was killed; and
the testimony of Sandra Wirth, who reported selling a bus ticket
to Winnemucca, Nevada, two days after Joel as killed to a man who
matched the suspect Julie described to police. Winnemucca is significant
because Texas Rangers can place Sells there after Joel was killed.
Texas Ranger John Allen reviewed the evidence gathered by UIS. This
evidence convinced Ranger Allen that Sells' confession to the murder
of Joel Kirkpatrick is genuine.
UIS presents exonerating evidence to the Prisoner Review Board:On
Oct. 24, 2003, the Downstate Illinois Investigating Innocence presented
compelling evidence corroborating the confession of Tommy Lynn Sells.
Diane Fanning testified as to the circumstances of how Sells confessed
to the murder of Joel Kirkpatrick.
Former state police crime scene investigator Alva Busch pointed
out inaccuracies in the interpretation of crime scene evidence of
one of the State's experts at the first trial that contributed to
Julieís wrongful conviction.
Bill Clutter, director of investigations for the Downstate Illinois
Investigating Innocence presented a summary of the evidence corroborating
Sell's confession.
At the urging of the Prisoner Review Board, prosecutor David Rands
and Sgt. Pea of the Illinois State Police traveled to Texas on Nov.
6, 2003, and conducted an audio recorded interview of Sells. Sells
gave details that only the killer would know. Sells told prosecutors
that during the struggle the woman clung to his leg as he drug her
inside the house. Six years earlier, Julie had described this event,
grabbing the intruder's leg and being dragged on the carpet. A nurse
who treated Julie observed what appeared to be rug burns on her
leg.
Despite 53 points of corroboration to Sell's confession to the murder
of Joel Kirkpatrick, prosecutors continued to insist they disbelieved
the confession based on the few facts Sells got wrong, taking the
same position prosecutors in DuPage County took in the Nicarico
case when they were presented the confession of serial killer Brian
Dugan in 1985.
UIS discovers evidence of police perjury: The media coverage of
the Prisoner Review Board hearing prompted the former mayor of Lawrenceville
and the former chief of police to contact the Downstate Innocence
Project with evidence suggesting that a Lawrence County Sheriff
deputy testified falsely at the first trial regarding his search
of the back yard looking for footprints in the dew covered grass
in the back yard. Whether reports indicate that there was no dew
on the ground. On the morning of the crime, the former Lawrenceville
police chief conducted an audio interview of the deputy who discovered
Joel's body. The deputy described going into the house upon discovering
broken glass and blood at the back door. At trial, however, the
deputy testified before going inside the house "I shined the
yard with my light. It was heavy dew. I seen no fresh track in the
yard." The deputy did not document this activity in his report.
Yet, his testimony was used by prosecutors as evidence that there
was no intruder.This audio tape was never provided to the defense
during Julie's first trial.
Appellate court vacates conviction.On June 24, 2004, the appellate
court vacated Julie's conviction and ordered her immediate release.
As she was set to take her first step out of prison, prosecutors
re-arrested Julie, ignoring overwhelming evidence that she is innocent.
Supporters quickly rallied and raised $75,000 in less than a week's
time to secure her release on bond. Instead of seeking justice,
as new Supreme Court rules require, prosecutors sought to convict
her again.
Jury acquits Julie: On July 26, 2006, a jury in Carlyle found Julie
not guilty of killing her son. She was represented by the Bluhm
Legal Clinic at Northwestern University Law School. Lead attorney,
Ron Safer, a former federal prosecutor and partner at the Chicago
law firm of Schiff, Hardin, donated his time to Julie's legal defense.
He was assisted by Jeff Urdangen, a staff attorney at Northwestern.
Other staff attorneys Karen Daniel, Judith Royal and law students
at Northwestern University assisted the defense team.
The UIS Investigating Innocence is working to educate lawmakers on the
need for further reforms: Legislation is needed to provide for independent
prosecutors who can fairly review cases involving actual innocence.
Despite death penalty reforms that were put in place to guard against
an innocent person being wrongly convicted, the case of Julie Rea-Harper
exposes serious flaws that still exist in our criminal justice system.
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On Sept. 6, 2007, Justice Thomas Appleton, writing
a unanimous opinion, ordered the conviction of Herbert Whitlock
vacated. The Rule 23 opinion found that prosecutors improperly withheld
exculpatory evidence from the defendant, consisting of crime lab
notes of an Illinois State Police forensic scientist Debra Helton:
According to Clutter’s report, Helton received a telephone
call from [ISP Agent Jack] Eckerty on October 6, 1986, the date
she began screening the items of evidence for human blood. As Helton
explained to Clutter, much of the evidence had blood on it, and
she wanted to know if anyone other than the [victims] had shed blood
at the crime scene and, if so, what was the injury. Helton wrote
down Eckerty’s response to that question: “Informant cut
on hand—cut not bad. Not sure if anyone else cut. Says other
two had a lot of blood on them.”. . .
To confirm Herrington’s statement to Eckerty that he sustained
a cut at the crime scene, Helton needed Herrington’s blood
standard. Clutter’s report states: “Helton agreed that
as a scientist, in order for her to prove or disprove the informant’s
statement to Agent Eckerty that he cut himself at the crime scene,
she would need to have had his blood standard.” Helton never
received Herrington’s blood standard.
***
The State violated Brady by failing to disclose (1) the fact that
Herrington originally identified Jim and Ed statement as the perpetrators
of the crime; (2) Helton’s notes, containing information that
Herrington had a cut on his hand; and (3) that the police provided
alcohol to Herrington. When we examine these errors cumulatively,
the trial court’s conclusion that (1) no probability exists
that the verdict would have been different but for these errors
do not undermine confidence in the verdict is manifestly erroneous.”
***
Clutter’s report states: “Helton agreed that as a scientist,
in order to prove or disprove the informant’s statement to
Agent Eckerty that he cut himself at the crime scene, she would
need to have had his blood standard.” (Emphasis added.) Arguably,
this information raises the possibility that Herrington’s testimony
at trial diverges significantly from what really happened at the
Rhoads house and that he was a hands-on participant in the murders.
If [defense trial counsel] Tulin had known that Herrington told
Eckerty he had got cut at the crime scene, Tulin could have cross-examined
Herrington about it, impeaching him further and implying that Herrington,
rather than defendant, committed the crime-a theory Tulin argued
at trial.
***
For the foregoing reasons, we reverse the trial court’s judgement
on the second amended petition for post conviction relief, vacate
the conviction, and remand this case for a new trial on the charge
of first-degree murder of Karen Rhoads.
(Slip opinion pp. at 15, 47, 52 53)
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