Posted on 04/15/2015 3:47:08 PM PDT by cripplecreek
DETROIT (AP) - An imprisoned hit man has signed a chilling affidavit taking responsibility for four murders at a Detroit drug house in a renewed effort to free a young man who pleaded guilty to the same killings at age 15, attorneys said Wednesday.
Davontae Sanford was just 14, illiterate and blind in one eye when he walked up to police at the murder scene in 2007 and immediately became a suspect. He eventually pleaded guilty to second-degree murder and was sent to prison, but a new legal team from two law schools wants the conviction thrown out.
The affidavit from Vincent "Vito" Smothers, who has long expressed a willingness to help Sanford, goes into extraordinary detail about the Runyon Street murders, noting the victims were watching a football game on television when he fired an AK-47. He said he scouted the house for weeks, even playing catch one day with a buddy so he could get a feel for the neighborhood.
Smothers expressed deep frustration that prosecutors refuse to acknowledge that the wrong man is behind bars.
"I have nothing to gain from testifying about my commission of the Runyon murders," said Smothers, who is serving 52 years in prison for killing eight other people, including the wife of a Detroit police officer.
"I only want to tell the truth in order to prevent an innocent kid from serving time for crimes that I committed," he wrote in the in 26-page affidavit. "I hope to have the opportunity to testify in court to provide details and drawings of the crime scene that could only be known by the person who committed the crime: me."
(Excerpt) Read more at jsonline.com ...
You don't expect innocent men to confess to murders but that same logic could be applied to both. Plus we know that some already convicted men do confess to more murders they did and didn't commit.
I also don't trust activist attorneys.
Yeah, some cons serving life or very long sentences will confess to murders just to help other cons out. That isn’t too uncommon.
However, if he has genuine “inside knowledge” of the murders that isn’t public, it probably merits investigation.
You would be surprised at how well inmates can communicate information within a prison or even from 1 prison to another.
I do remember enough about the story to know that Sanford was already well known to police at 14 years old.
Smothers says he confessed at the time and I have trouble believing the prosecutor wouldn’t have taken the easy conviction of Smothers if there was any doubt about Sanford’s guilt.
Prosecutors don’t seem to care WHO is in jail for a crime as long as it is SOMEONE! ... :-) ...
“You would be surprised at how well inmates can communicate information within a prison or even from 1 prison to another.”
Yeah, I’ve heard some crazy stories about that. The leader of the Aryan Brotherhood, locked up in a federal supermax prison, in 23 hour a day solitary, with no unsupervised contact or correspondence, still managed to personally authorize every single hit the AB members around the country were committing. They found a way to secretly pass coded communications to him under the censors’ noses.
Human ingenuity to find a way to do something usually puts us one step ahead of the people trying to stop us from doing something. I guess that’s why we are the top of the food chain, but it also makes it impossible to ever achieve absolute security, when humans are involved. That’s why you can never say a network or computer system is 100% secure either, because the hackers have likely figured out a vulnerability or two that nobody else knows about yet.
The article says the kid pled guilty it didn't say he confessed. There is a difference. It also says his lawyer didn't fight for him which probably means he told the kid to plead out to a lesser charge and/or sentence than the DA was aiming for.
Is his nickname 'Lucky'?
The story isn’t as simple as the activist attorneys present. Sanford didn’t just break down and confess. He told a whole story about casing the place ahead of time and physical evidence was found in his home.
It should also be noted that smothers has made the claim of Sanford’s innocence in the past only to retract it.
http://www.examiner.com/article/the-runyon-street-murders
My computer is acting up so I can’t read the whole article but I am wondering if there is any other evidence other than a confession? IMHO, a 14 year old (illiterate and blind in one eye) could have been interrogated and promised if he signed a confession.. he could go home. IMHO, if a convicted inmate (already serving multiple homicide charges) says he has inside knowledge of the crime... it is definitely worth a true investigation. We do read cases where someone serves years and years and are exonerated when DNA evidence is reviewed or the victim changes their mind.
Fixed it.
On the other hand, I have no problem whatsoever believing a prosecutor would take an easy conviction, even he knows the person is completely innocent.
Smothers is serving “52 years” in jail for killing 8 people including the wife of a police officer.
Yes, Detroit where some of the judges were hardcore communists (i.e. Rep. George Crockett, Jr; Claudia Morcom; etc).
Smothers should be serving 8 life sentences. What happened?
Sounds like a cat I used to have.
Plea bargains will do that for ya.
If its any consolation, two scumbags who killed two teens a year or so back got some 200 years each.
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