The evidence was circumstantial and there are problems with what was presented to the jury that convicted Marcus Ray Johnson and sentenced him to die, his attorney wrote in a petition for clemency.
Johnson is scheduled to die next week for the 1994 murder of Angela Sizemore, a woman he met in an Albany bar. The Parole Board will hear his plea for mercy next Wednesday, the day before he is scheduled to die on Nov. 19.
Johnson had told police he and Sizemore had consensual sex soon after meeting at a bar called Fundamentals, but she was alive the last time he saw her, sitting in a field and crying after he punched her because she insisted on cuddling.
Other than semen, there was no physical evidence tying Johnson to Sizemore, attorney Brian Kammer wrote. She was stabbed 41 times yet there was only a drop of blood on Johnson’s leather jacket, which he same got on him because he punched her in the nose.
Kammer also wrote in the clemency petition filed Tuesday that one of the prosecution’s witnesses, Tony Kallergis, was not forthcoming about the nature of his relationship to Sizemore. During a hearing last year, Kallergis’ former girlfriend testified that Kallergis and Sizemore were in the drug business together. She said Kallergis had paid Sizemore $3,000 just hours before she was killed.
Kallergis, through his attorney, denies he was ever involved in any drug business and denies he made any payment of any sort to Sizemore. Furthermore, he said Kallergis has no connections with any activity related to Sizemore’s death.
Kammer said had jurors known that, they might have wondered if someone else had killed Sizemore for her cash or in retribution as her common-law husband in prison in Florida owed drug distributors about $500,000.
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