Maurice Carter
Berrien
County, Michigan
Date of Crime: December 20, 1973
Maurice Carter was convicted of the attempted murder of
Thomas Schadler, an off-duty Benton Harbor police officer. Schadler
was shopping with his wife at the Harbor Wig and Record Shop on East Main
Street in Benton Harbor when a man suddenly and without provocation pulled a
.22-caliber pistol and shot him six times. There were twelve
eyewitnesses to the crime.
Carter, who was staying at a hotel a few blocks from the Wig and Record
Shop, was stopped by police and questioned a few hours later. Police
took him to the shop, where he was confronted by the eyewitness who had been
in the best position to see and provide an accurate description of the
gunman – a clerk who had waited on the gunman for several minutes before the
Schadlers arrived. The clerk, Gwen Baird, immediately told police at
that Carter definitely was not the assailant and, based on her certainty,
the police released him.
Two years later, police arrested a man named Wilbur Gillespie on unrelated
drug charges. Gillespie, an acquaintance of Carter, was facing a
possible life sentence as a habitual offender. In exchange for the
state's promise to dismiss the drug and habitual criminal act charges,
Gillespie agreed to testify that he had seen the gunman flee the Harbor Wig
and Record Shop after the shooting – and that Carter was that gunman.
Carter was arrested in Indiana, where he was then living and working, and he
immediately waived extradition to Michigan. The day he returned to
Benton Harbor, the local newspaper, the Herald-Palladium, published
a photograph of him two columns wide on its front page. It was not
until after that photograph appeared that the Schadlers identified him as
the gunman in a lineup. The shop clerk, Gwen Baird, who had eliminated
Carter as the gunman, was not invited to view the lineup.
Based primarily on Gillespie's allegation and the Schadlers'
identifications, the state charged Carter with attempted murder. At
trial, however, Gillespie recanted, stating that he had made up the story to
avoid serious drug charges he faced. Instead Gillespie testified that
he had been with Carter in his hotel room at the time of the shooting and
knew that Carter could not have been the assailant.
The state then charged Gillespie with perjury. While it was obvious
that Gillespie lied – either he lied when he accused Carter or he lied when
he recanted the accusation – the guilty plea he entered which the state
accepted left no ambiguity: Gillespie expressly pleaded guilty to
fabricating the accusation, not the recantation. Thus, the prosecution
was in the strange position of prosecuting one man on a charge that it
prosecuted another man for making up.
There was no physical evidence linking Carter to the crime – no
fingerprints, no fibers, no blood, no hairs. Nor was there an apparent
motive: Carter was new to Benton Harbor, where he was looking for work. And, although the crime had the hallmarks of retribution, there was no
evidence that Carter even knew Officer Schadler.
Of the 12 purported eyewitnesses who testified at the trial, the two who had
the best opportunities to observe the gunman – the aforementioned Gwen Baird
and a customer in the store, Connie Allen – testified that they were certain
Carter was not the gunman.
Five others did not identify Carter, leaving five who made identifications
with varying degrees of certainty. Of the latter five, only the
Schadlers and a women named Nancy Butzbach – who was employed by the
prosecutor’s office at the time of the trial – claimed to be positive Carter
was the gunman. And the fifth, Victor Miller, testified there was a
“reasonable possibility” Carter was the gunman.
Although there was considerable evidence that could have been used to
impeach the credibility of the five witnesses who identified Carter, almost
none of it was presented to the jury. For instance: (1) The jury was
not informed that Officer Schadler had seen Carter's photograph in the
newspaper just before identifying him at the lineup, two years after the
shooting. (2) The jury was not informed that the Schadlers had told
police at the time of the shooting that they had not gotten a good enough
view of the shooter to give a detailed description. (3) The jury was
not informed that Carter is right handed, but Mrs. Schadler had stated
initially that the assailant had fired the weapon with his left hand. (4) The jury was not informed that both Ms. Baird and Mrs. Schadler had said
another man they saw in an early lineup had a complexion similar to the
gunman’s – and that the complexion of the man in the lineup was much darker
than Carter’s.
(5) The jury was not informed that Butzbach – the only witness other than
the Schadlers who positively identified Carter – initially had stated that
she saw only “a shadow of a black man” fleeing the scene. (6) The jury
was not informed that Butzbach initially had been shown photographs of
Carter and another man, but failed to identify Carter – although she stated
she had seen the other man on the street. (7) The jury was not
informed that Victor Miller, who testified that Carter looked like the
gunman, initially had stated that he did not see the gunman at all. Since trial, Miller has come forward to say that he really could not
identify Carter and that he has doubts about his guilt. Also, Carter
has taken lie detector tests, which he has passed with no signs of
deception. – Quoted with editing from
The Maurice
Carter Case.
In 2004, Michigan Governor Jennifer Granholm commuted Carter's life sentence
for medical reasons and he was released after serving more than 28 years of
imprisonment. A 2006 book was written about the case entitled
Sweet Freedom: Breaking the Bondage of Maurice Carter.
________________________________
References: The
Maurice Carter Case,
Sweet Freedom
Posted in:
Victims of the State,
Michigan Cases
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