Yet another former death row inmate touted as actually innocent and wrongly convicted is now known to be actually guilty.
Tom Jackman reports for the WaPo:
This is a clearly proper case for a nontriggerman to be considered fully culpable for the crime. Where conspirators both intend and premeditate the victim's death, which one actually did the dirty work is virtually irrelevant.
Tom Jackman reports for the WaPo:
Justin Michael Wolfe, whose capital murder conviction and death sentence was reversed amid concerns about prosecutorial misconduct, pleaded guilty to murder in Prince William County on Tuesday, admitting in a handwritten statement that he and another man plotted the 2001 robbery and slaying of a fellow marijuana dealer.
It was a stunning reversal from Wolfe, who had proclaimed his innocence for 15 years. Wolfe had argued, at times from Virginia's death row, that the murder of Daniel Petrole Jr., the son of a decorated Secret Service agent, was the work of a rogue drug associate. The case featured a co-defendant repeatedly changing his story about the slaying, a federal district judge ordering Wolfe's release from jail in 2012, and two federal courts chastising Prince William prosecutors for withholding evidence from the defense.* * *In a four-page handwritten statement to the court, Wolfe essentially validated the prosecution's consistent version of events: Wolfe and Owen Merton Barber IV decided to rob and kill Petrole because they knew he would have a large amount of cash and marijuana and feared that a robbery alone would invite revenge. Wolfe acknowledged that he owed Petrole tens of thousands of dollars from continuing drug transactions, and he said that he had planned to split the proceeds with Barber and erase a debt Barber owed him.* * *Wolfe wrote that he and Barber initially planned only to rob Petrole, as he delivered a marijuana shipment to them, but "eventually we both agreed that it would be necessary to kill Danny because he was probably going to resist the robbery or figure out who did it and have to get revenge. ... I am responsible for Danny's death even though I didn't pull the trigger. If I had not been involved Danny would never have been killed."
This is a clearly proper case for a nontriggerman to be considered fully culpable for the crime. Where conspirators both intend and premeditate the victim's death, which one actually did the dirty work is virtually irrelevant.
If you want to see the Death Penalty Information Center's page on Wolfe, you might want to do so promptly before they take it down. The DPIC's 2012 press release refers to Wolfe as "vindicated." That word choice creates the impression in readers that he was actually innocent while still giving them enough wiggle room to claim later that they never actually said he was innocent.
This case really points up the sophistry inherent in the DPIC's "Innocence List"---to the extent the guy on the list actually did it, the system's procedural liberality is being used against it.
This is obvious to anyone who thinks for more than two seconds about it---but the press always uncritically passed along that DPIC BS.
To give the devil his due, they hadn't put Wolfe on the list. They have, though, put a lot of other guilty murderers on it.
I should have said "a" guy. This dishonesty has always stuck in my craw.