In 1990, Debra Milke was convicted in in an Arizona court of masterminding the murder of her 4-year-old son, Christopher.
Milke’s friend, Jim Styers took the boy to a mall on December 2, 1989, and both Milke and Styers both reported the boy missing later that day. On December 3, 1989, police arrested a friend of Styers’ — Roger Scott — who told investigators where Christopher’s body was buried. Christopher had been shot 3 times in the head.
Scott told police that Styers committed the murder at the behest of Milke. Police arrested Milke and she was ultimately convicted of Christopher’s murder and given the death penalty.
But in March 2013, the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals overturned Milke’s conviction because of the role of a single bad cop involved in the case.
The main piece of direct evidence against Milke was a confession she allegedly gave to Phoenix Police Detective Armando Saldate Jr. Saldate testified that Milke confessed to murdering her son to collect on a $5,000 insurance policy, but the confession was not taped or witnessed by anyone other than Saldate.
Even though the confession was uncorroborated, the jury obviously believed Detective Saldate. Unfortunately, their trust was likely misplaced. The 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals overturned the verdict based on the prosecutor’s failure to turn over information about Saldate’s personnel file which among other things,
This history includes a five-day suspension for taking “liberties” with a female motorist and then lying about it to his supervisors; four court cases where judges tossed out confessions or indictments because Saldate lied under oath; and four cases where judges suppressed confessions or vacated convictions because Saldate had violated the Fifth Amendment or the Fourth Amendment in the course of interrogations. And it is far from clear that thisreflects a full account of Saldate’s misconduct as a police officer. See pp. 24–25 infra. All of this information should have been disclosed to Milke and the jury, but the state remained unconstitutionally silent.
Ah, the soft bigotry of low expectations for police performance.
The full decision of the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Milke v. Ryan can be downloaded here (PDF).