Digging into the case
Sunday’s Atlanta Journal-Constitution explored the Chapman case in depth — the first in what will be a series of reports on the flawed prosecution of the Bremen man. The article did not conclude that Chapman was guilty or innocent of the crime, but it did show that he did not receive a fair trial. Subscribers may read the full report on our premium website, MyAJC.com.
Saying his client is innocent, a lawyer asked the Georgia Supreme Court on Wednesday to uphold a lower court’s ruling that Justin Chapman was wrongly convicted seven years ago of murder and arson.
“We would like to see him released,” John Rains, one of Chapman’s lawyers, told the justices.
Chapman, 35, is serving a life sentence for the 2006 killing of Alice Jackson, 79, in Bremen. Prosecutors said he set fire to his duplex because his landlord had told him to look for another place to live. The predawn fire spread to the adjoining apartment, where Jackson died of smoke inhalation.
Last year, a South Georgia judge granted Chapman a new trial, but the state attorney general appealed the order. The Supreme Court on Wednesday heard that appeal.
Lawyers for both sides focused on the South Georgia judge’s finding that prosecutors withheld key evidence concerning the state’s star witness. The witness, Joesph White, was a jailhouse snitch who testified that Chapman confessed to him that he started the fire. But the jury didn’t hear everything that White said to the prosecutors.
Paula Smith, senior assistant state attorney general, asked the justices to reinstate Chapman’s conviction and life sentence (he has remained in prison while the state appealed the order for a new trial). The evidence that was withheld was heard by jurors through other testimony, she said.
For example, an Aug. 2, 2006, videotaped interview of White, which was not turned over to the defense, and an Aug. 30, 2006, audio-taped interview of White, which was played to the jury, “are remarkably the same,” Smith said.
Rains disagreed.
At the trial, White testified that he was not trying to trade his testimony against Chapman for the DA’s help with his own case, Rains noted. But the first interview — the one that was not turned over to the defense — makes it clear that White was seeking consideration from prosecutors in exchange for his testimony against Chapman.
The jurors did not hear that interview. They heard the second one, in which the investigator starts by saying he can’t even discuss giving White any help on his case.
“That’s markedly different,” Rains said.
Moreover, in the interview that was withheld, White said Chapman told him he was thankful he got his family out of the apartment after the fire started. That was at odds with the prosecution’s theory of the case: that Chapman’s wife and children were not at the apartment when he allegedly set the fire, Rains said.
Justice David Nahmias seemed unsettled that prosecutors failed to turn over evidence and statements that could have been used by Chapman’s defense.
This included an interview with William Liner, an inmate at Hays State Prison, by the case’s lead prosecutor, Charles Rooks. White had claimed that Liner also heard Chapman confess when they were all housed together in jail.
Rooks had arranged to have Liner transferred to Bremen so he could testify against Chapman; however, on Rooks’ trip to Hays State Prison, Liner told him that he never heard Chapman confess. Rooks then canceled the transfer, and Liner did not testify at the trial.
“There’s no dispute that the prosecution team knew about him, knew what he would say and intentionally took him off … after they found out he wasn’t going to help,” Nahmias said.
The court must issue its ruling by mid-July.
Among those attending Wednesday’s hearing were Chapman’s parents, his sister and his son, 17-year-old Austin Chapman, who said he knows his father did not set the fire because he was with him that night.
“I love my dad — he’s innocent,” the teenager said. That night, he added, “I never left my dad. Never.”
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