Not sure why this tweet from yesterday is so popular, but I want to tell you a little more about the behavior of the Kentucky AG's office and, in general, the investigative and prosecutorial practices that went into this case.
This case has all the tropes: lurid Satanism claims, dodgy courtroom expert witnesses, likely perjured testimony from a jailhouse informant, and an angry, vindictive prosecution.
To begin, the crime: it's 1992; a 19 year-old woman walks away from her house around midnight and disappears. Her body is found a few days later (and fifty miles away) stabbed eleven times.
The distraught victim's mother tells the police that her dead daughter and her daughter's boyfriend Hardin and his friend Clark were interested in Satanism. The investigation settles on Hardin and Clark as their primary suspects.
The physical evidence used to tie Hardin to the murder was a single hair found on the victim's body. Prosecutors had an expert testify that the hair was "microscopically similar" to Hardin's. This was before DNA testing.
One of the victim's fingerprints is also found in the back seat of Hardin's car. But remember, she and Hardin were dating at the time.
To tie Clark to the crime, the prosecution uses a jailhouse informant who claims Clark confessed. But it would later turn out the informant tried to get a second snitch to falsely make the confession claim, that the prosecution knew this had happened, and didn't disclose it.
Tire marks at the crime scene do not match Hardin or Clark's cars; and the knife wounds on the victim's body do not match any of their knives. Two other hairs found on the body do not microscopically match Hardin, Clark, or the victim.
Hardin and Clark insist that they are innocent and had been in another county at the time of the killing. In other words, they serve as each other's only alibi.
The prosecution's theory of the case is that this was a ritual Satanic killing. The jury buys it, despite the prosecution's own Satanism "expert" testifying that the crime scene did not have characteristics of a ritual killing.
Hardin and Clark go to prison and spend the next several years fighting their way through the appeals process. The Kentucky Supreme Court eventually rejects their appeal based on the dodgy expert and the likely perjury from the snitch.
Fast forward a few more years, Hardin and Clark maintain their innocence, but to even apply for parole in Kentucky inmates have to sign statements admitting their offenses. Both Hardin and Clark seek parole and sign.
During this time the Kentucky Innocence Project gets interested in the case. They seek to have the hair (remember, it is the sole physical evidence the prosecution used to tie Hardin and Clark to the murder) tested for DNA.
The Kentucky AG's office via assistant AG Perry Ryan, who has been connected to the case for 20 years, fiercely opposes the DNA test. The case goes all the way back to the state supreme court, which orders the DNA testing.
The hair turns out to be not Hardin's or Clark's. A trial judge then throws out their murder convictions. But we're not done yet. Rather than dismiss the case, the assistant AG goes looking for a new way to keep Hardin and Clark behind bars.
Robbed of his murder convictions, the assistant AG files perjury charges against Hardin and Clark. They had signed their parole applications, which had admitted their offenses. And yet, they also maintain their innocence.
At this point, Hardin and Clark have been behind bars for half their lifetimes.
These new perjury charges are thrown out last month by a judge who specifically chastised assistant AG Perry Ryan by name. "Vindictive conduct by persons with the awesome powers of prosecutors is unacceptable," she wrote.
The judge concluded that assistant AG Ryan was trying to punish Hardin and Clark for successfully exercising their legal rights. So finally, this week, the prosecution officially dropped the case. That's the news story I initially linked to yesterday.
In case you were wondering, assistant AG Ryan has been AAG since 1988. He has his own Wikipedia page. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Perry_T._…
