Throughout the process of charging and prosecuting Gerald Eugene Stano, several people connected to law enforcement supposedly questioned the legality of Stano's confession and his level of culpability in any of the murders. Some came to believe that Gerald was a serial confessor and not the killer he'd been made out to be.
Gerald's final statement prior to execution in Florida's electric chair in 1998 proclaimed his innocence and cast blame on then Detective Sergeant Paul B. Crow, who took down the majority of Stano's murder confessions. Detective Sergeant Crow later became Daytona Beach Police Chief, but in 1995 was removed from office by a Grand Jury for corruption.
Detective James Gadberry, Stano's arresting officer, challenged the acceptance of Gerald's first confessions, believing they were not valid. He signed a legal affidavit in 1986 to the effect that Sergeant Paul Crow had spoon-fed the intimate details of unsolved homicides to the suspect. Several other homicide officers also signed detailed statements asserting that they had witnessed Crow helping Gerald confess to crimes he knew nothing about.
The transcripts of these interviews, however, indicate something completely different. In fact, Detective Sergeant Crow's procedure appears to be typical of securing an accurate and detailed confession from a suspect who willingly and spontaneously supplies his own knowledge of the crimes he has committed.
Some brought out the fact that Stano was only tried for one murder when he had openly confessed to 41. There was a lack of physical evidence to corroborate the confessions or even lead to other potential suspects which some believe renders the entire procedure suspect. With this lack of evidence, it was impossible for any jurisdiction in Florida to prosecute anyone for any of these crimes. All of Stano's previous convictions were a result of his guilty pleas alone.
This is a skewing of the facts typically used by people opposed to the death penalty or those who have a general dislike of law enforcement and our justice system. In truth, this happens quite a bit in cases of serial murder. Obtaining closure for all of a killer's victims takes priority over the need to have 40 trials when the perpetrator is willing to provide accurate confessions. In the case of Gary Ridgway, for example, confessions were secured for the murders of 48 women. Many of these would not likely have been prosecuted as the physical evidence was never strong enough in many cases to tie an individual victim to the Green River Killer. However, the cases were known to be perpetrated by the same killer because of the factors taken into account on serial murder cases: unique motive driven by a highly individualized fantasy, signature present at the scene of each crime, and victimology. It was no different in this case.
In the trial against Gerald for the murder of Cathy Lee Scharf, the initial result was a hung jury. He was finally convicted of the murder on the testimony of Clarence Zacke, a jail house informant, who was later discredited. It was discovered that two county prosecutors had helped him fabricate testimony for several trials in exchange for incentives. One man had served 22 years for rape on testimony offered by Zacke that was identical to the testimony he gave against Gerald Stano.
The use of jail house informants is not a procedure I agree with in the least. I believe that this is irresponsible on the part of law enforcement for the credibility issues alone. However, to say that a case hinged solely on the testimony of this type of informant is equally irresponsible, in my humble opinion. The initial hung jury would suggest it was a tough case to prosecute, but in the end a jury did convict and sentence Stano to the death penalty, which is not as easy a feat as some would make it sound.
As if coerced confessions, planted witnesses, and corrupt detectives weren't enough to skew the case, there was also an issue with a very key piece of physical evidence. Unidentified pubic hairs of Caucasian origin were recovered from Cathy Lee Scharf's body. At the time, the FBI had produced a lab report concluding that Stano could not have been the source of the pubic hairs. This report was never presented as evidence by Gerald's public defender and, in fact, did not resurface until 2007, nearly a decade following Stano's execution. Additionally, even though the source of the hairs was never identified, or even sought out, they were all destroyed in 1998, shortly after Gerald's death.
To my mind, this is the most disturbing of the questions raised in the argument of this case. Extant physical evidence with no link to the suspect is always a problem for law enforcement, especially in a death penalty case. Many times this is because police become nervous that the evidence may screw things up for them or complicate a case that seems to be so cut-and-dried. In all likelihood, however, the pubic hairs belonged to a boyfriend or acquaintance that the victim had intercourse with at some point preceding the murder. These were not hairs found in other cases, just this one. The chances of these belonging to the killer are slim and this evidence ought to have been traced to its origin in order to keep the case clean.
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5/29/2012 07:07:17 pm
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