A man who has been on Tennessee’s death row since 1983 for the killing of a St. Elmo woman has convinced a special judge to review the case for possible police misconduct.
Attorney Mary Ann Green, who is representing defendant Edward Jerome Harbison, said at a brief court hearing last week that Mr. Harbison’s previous but unsuccessful appeals all had been made because “he doesn’t want to die.”
Ms. Green then set out a new case for police misconduct during the investigation of Edith Russell’s slaying, convincing special Hamilton County Judge Jon Kerry Blackwood to at least analyze what the defense now claims went wrong.
If Judge Blackwood agrees their arguments have merits, a full-scale hearing with the presentation of new evidence could be ordered.
The judge is expected to issue his ruling in the coming weeks, more than three years after Mr. Harbison began complaining in 2007 that the circumstances surrounding a simple arrest warrant might have reversed his luck at trial.
After being arrested, Mr. Harbison confessed to bashing Mrs. Russell’s head in.
On Jan 15, 1983, authorities say Mr. Harbison and an accomplice were ransacking the St. Elmo home of Frank and Edith Russell when Mrs. Russell surprised them by arriving home early. Mr. Harbison told authorities he “panicked,” hitting Mrs. Russell so hard over the head with a marble vase that blood and brain matter splattered all over the walls.
The case drew significant media attention, especially toward the end of 1983 when jurors made the decision to sentence Mr. Harbison to death. But the attention also came because of the connection between the assailant and the victim: Mr. Harbison’s parents were trusted contractors who had been working on renovations of the Russell “dream home” at 113 Ochs Highway.
Mr. Russell testified at trial that they knew the Harbisons well and thought they were good people.
Despite the confession, Ms. Green argues that the case, absent forensic evidence, came down to a “battle between (Mr. Harbison’s) credibility and the credibility of the arresting police officers.”
Ms. Green told Judge Blackwood that the police officers in fact had no arrest warrant against Mr. Harbison at the time they took him into custody.
“Had it been known there was no arrest warrant, it would have impeached the credibility of the officers,” Ms. Green stated in the hearing. That might have caused jurors to contemplate a different verdict or, at the very least, a punishment less harsh than death, she suggested.
Ms. Green also pointed out that the lack of an arrest warrant would have been legitimate grounds for suppressing Mr. Harbison’s confession, the key piece of evidence in the case.
Executive Assistant District Attorney Neal Pinkston, who did not prosecute the case in 1983, said the lack of an arrest warrant would not have affected the outcome of the trial.
Ms. Green admitted that case precedent since 1983 has de-emphasized the importance of the arrest warrant, a document that allows authorities to take people into custody on probable cause.