Judge Brian Sullivan put over a decision yesterday on a key evidentiary question in imprisoned Davontae Sanford's quest for a new trial, saying he wants more time and attorney input on the matter. The defense would like to introduce testimony from Gabi Silver, the former attorney for confessed hit man Vincent Smothers that Smothers admitted to Silver he participated in the murders of four people in a drug house on Runyon St in 2007, and that Sanford was not there.
Sanford, who was 14 at the time of the murders and is developmentally disabled, went down for the crime alone, based on a confession that defense counsel has said was made just to please police officers. The concept of a 14-year-old kid making a frontal assault on a dope house is a bit hard to fathom. The confession does not match the forensics, especially the ballistics evidence, but the prosecution rode that lame horse all the way to the finish line and Sanford wound up in Thumb Correctional.
Enter Vincent Smothers, self-professed hit man, who told police detective Ira Todd in 2008 he had been chilling people, mostly drug dealers, for about two years. He also did a cop's wife. His confessions included the Runyon St four, and he did not name Sanford as an accomplice. The prosecutor simply ignored the latter confession. To do otherwise they would have to assert that Smothers and Sanford acted together (silly), or admit they put the wrong person in prison (politically embarrassing).
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