Judge Daniel Green has repeatedly shown malice when ruling on appeal cases. Rodney Lincoln is his latest victim. Judge Green didn’t just reject Rodney Lincoln’s appeal, he intentionally released his decision on the day of Rodney’s granddaughter’s funeral. Just one day prior, Green denied Rodney’s request for a furlough to attend the funeral, so the judge was well aware of the date he chose.
Was Green’s decision to release his ruling on that specific date a mere coincidence? His past history makes that prospect highly unlikely. Green is the same judge who denied Ryan Ferguson’s appeal on October 31, 2012. Green chose to hold onto his decision until that day, because it was the day that the crime had occurred. It is quite clear that Judge Green goes out of his way to show his disdain for those who are appealing their convictions.
Thankfully Green’s ridiculous ruling against Ferguson was overturned by a state appeals court panel, and Ferguson was released in November of 2013. According to St Louis Today, Lincoln’s attorneys stated that they are already working on their appeal. If our justice system has any hope at all, Green’s ruling against Lincoln will be overturned just as his ruling against Ferguson was.
Here is the latest new article on Rodney’s case:
Judge rejects appeal of Rodney Lincoln in 1982 St. Louis murder
A judge on Thursday rejected the appeal of a man who claims that he is innocent of the 1982 murder of a St. Louis woman and the attack on her two young daughters.
Rodney Lincoln, 71, had cited the recantation of testimony by one of the daughters of JoAnn Tate, questions about hair analysis, claims about prosecutorial misconduct and his own lawyer’s ineffectiveness.
But Cole County Circuit Judge Daniel Green wrote that Lincoln had to make “a clear and convincing showing of actual innocence that undermines confidence in the correctness of the judgment.” He had to do so, Green wrote, with evidence that “instantly tilts the scales” and leaves the fact-finder’s mind “with an abiding conviction that the evidence is true,” quoting a 1996 appeals court opinion.
Green wrote that he did not find credible the daughter’s recantation 33 years after the trial, triggered by a television program suggesting another culprit.
A spokeswoman for the Missouri Attorney General’s office declined to comment.
Tricia Bushnell, legal director of the Midwest Innocence Project, said, “We are working on the appeal as we speak,” in a phone interview Friday.
Bushnell pointed out that Green’s opinion is an “exact duplicate” of a filing by the Missouri Attorney General’s office in January opposing Lincoln’s bid for freedom, with the exception of a short concluding section. She said that it includes none of the evidence brought out in a hearing in March, including the recantation by Tate daughter Melissa DeBoer and claims that DeBoer was coached and pressured into making the original identification of Lincoln as the attacker. Read more >>