WITNESS: Investigator told grand jury opinion on defendant's guilt.
By JAMES HALPIN
jhalpin@adn.com
Published: May 17th, 2010 08:49 PM
Last Modified: May 17th, 2010 08:49 PM
Murder charges against an Anchorage man accused of his wife's death have been thrown out because an investigator told the grand jury who he thought was to blame, according to court documents.
James Wease, 66, remains in custody at the Anchorage jail following the May 13 decision, though he will be freed Sunday if prosecutors don't indict him again, state Superior Court Judge Philip Volland ordered.
A grand jury indicted Wease last October on charges of first- and second-degree murder and three counts of evidence tampering in the death of Dana Sena-Wease, 43, who was stabbed to death in November 2007.
She was reported missing by her family Nov. 16, 2007, after she didn't show up for work. A man checking a trapline two weeks later found her body in a ravine near Ingram Creek where the Seward Highway turns up toward Turnagain Pass.
Wease sought to have the case thrown out on several grounds, including prosecutorial misconduct, improper instructions to the grand jury and failure of the prosecution to present exculpatory evidence.
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Volland, in his ruling, rejected all but one argument -- that an investigator presented his opinion to the grand jury and in doing so tainted the jury's findings.
"I commend the judge for recognizing the improper testimony before the grand jury," said one of Wease's lawyers, Phillip Weidner. "We are confident the evidence shows he's not guilty."
Prosecutors, however, intend to seek another indictment, Anchorage District Attorney Adrienne Bachman said.
"The flaws in the presentation to the grand jury are flaws that we can remedy and will remedy," she said.
The ruling focuses on an exchange in front of the grand jury between Assistant District Attorney Sharon Marshall and William Gifford, a cold-case investigator whom Anchorage police consulted.
"Do you have an opinion as to who killed Dana Wease?" Marshall asked.
"Yes," Gifford said.
"And what is that opinion?"
"That James Wease killed Dana Wease somewhere around -- somewhere after 11 o'clock ..."
The prosecution closed its case to the grand jury with Gifford's opinion that Wease killed his wife, Volland wrote.
In his ruling, Volland cited the recently won appeal by Mechele Linehan, who was convicted in 2007 of murdering Kent Leppink. In that case, the state Court of Appeals concluded Volland, who was the trial judge, should not have allowed as evidence a letter Leppink wrote to his family before his death fingering Linehan as his killer.
Gifford's testimony that Wease is guilty is more convincing than Leppink's letter, Volland wrote. And though both cases are circumstantial, the case against Linehan is stronger than the case against Wease, the judge wrote.
"Because of this, this court can only conclude that Gifford's improper opinion testimony most likely was a decisive factor in the grand jury's decision to indict, and therefore should result in a dismissal of the indictment," Volland wrote.
The judge denied Wease's requests to bar Gifford from testifying again before another grand jury.
Wease was convicted in 1978 of second-degree murder of a New Jersey man.
Find James Halpin online at adn.com/contact/jhalpin or call him at 257-4589.
Read more: http://www.adn.com/2010/05/17/1282173/murder-charge-against-anchorage.html#ixzz0oK3FzYPj
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