To date, justice, in the form of a full and fair hearing of the issues, has been denied Petitioner Debra Milke at every stage of the judicial process. Multiple errors occurred in her trial and on appeal due to the fallibility of the key individuals who investigated, prosecuted, judged, and defended the case. And because the system is weighted so heavily toward sustaining prior decisions, these errors continued to go unchecked in the postconviction review process.

Before ever meeting or speaking to Debra Milke, Detective Armando Saldate was convinced of her involvement in the murder of her son. His early rush to judge Debra permitted him to ignore the procedural safeguards intended to protect her rights and to insure the accuracy and reliability of his investigation. The resulting "confession" by Debra was gained in a thirty minute interview without benefit of a witness, an audio or video tape recording, or a signed statement. Worse, Detective Saldate destroyed his contemporaneous notes of the interview. Nothing exists to corroborate his contention that Debra confessed. She adamantly and consistently denies that she ever confessed to the crime. The failure to suppress Debra's statement, under these conditions amounts to constitutional error of the first magnitude.

Without other evidence to link Debra to her son's murder, this illusory confession became the backbone, the very foundation, of the State's case against Debra. The lack of direct evidence against Debra also rendered her character a critical issue for the jury. Armando Saldate's early judgement of Debra's guilt permeated and tainted the entirety of subsequent proceedings; thus, one police officer was able to have an incredible impact on the outcome of this case.

In addition, the pressure to "win" this case was intense. A prosecutor's main priority must be to "do justice", but in a case such as this, the temptation to sacrifice that priority to "get the win" was overwhelming. He repeatedly misstated prior testimony, relied on innuendo, and engaged in inflammatory rhetoric and improper argument to secure a conviction and death sentence.

The trial court's rulings in this case clearly demonstrate the existence of impermissible bias against Debra. The trial court failed to suppress Debra Milke's purported confession, she impeded defense counsel's ability to impeach critical witnesses, she allowed the State to present an ambush rebuttal witness, she sat a jury with vacation plans that impinged on the trial and she allowed those plans to rush the trial and deliberations to completion. As a result of the errors of the trial court in the conduct of this case, Debra was denied her constitutional rights to present a thorough defense and to properly confront the witnesses against her before an unbiased judge and an impartial jury.

The trial court's bias against Debra manifested itself in postconviction proceedings as well. She ignored the ample evidence of the bias inherent in her one-sided rulings, both at trial and in post- conviction proceedings. By summarily dismissing all of Debra's claims, the trial court denied counsel the ability to conduct necessary additional discovery.

The essence of the trial court's power in a jury trial is its ability to allow or withhold evidence to the jury. When the stakes are so high, the trial court's rulings as to admissibility of evidence should, where possible, inure to the benefit of providing more information rather than less. The trial court allowed evidence of Debra's character by a witness who had not seen Debra for more than a year before the offense, but found more recent, highly favorable character testimony inadmissable. The trial judge is as fallible as any other human being and her bias in the conduct of this case is clear.

Defense counsel, too, are merely human and despite their best efforts, egregious error, fatal to a trial, sentencing or an appeal can occur. Here, defense counsel failed to have Debra testify in the critical voluntariness hearing. He failed to properly investigate the case or adequately prepare her for trial. He did nothing to investigate or impeach the critical witnesses in this case. Many of counsel's discovery requests were late or insufficient. Trial counsel repeatedly raised ineffectual objections or neglected to object altogether, thereby waiving issues on appeal. Further, trial counsel failed to raise a meaningful defense on Debra Milke's behalf or to investigate and present ample mitigation evidence available. No good reasons or strategy exist to excuse such meaningful failures.

Debra's counsel on direct appeal raised very few issues. His failure to recognize and preserve the voluntariness issue, among other issues, denied Debra her right to effective assistance of counsel and grossly prejudiced her.

These are but a few of the issues deserving attention by this Court in this proceeding. Other constitutional challenges to Debra's convictions and sentences exist and are also addressed. The evidence of actual guilt in this case is sparse. There was no physical evidence linking Debra to the crime and her conviction hangs on a tainted, unverifiable confession and character witnesses moved by that purported confession and the assurances by police that they had solved the crime. In a civilized society, the state sponsored taking of a human life cannot be allowed to rest on such flimsy evidence.