County prosecutor Noel Levy's
role in the Ray Krone case

p. 76

( ... ) Then he decided to take a closer look at the bite mark evidence. He used his contacts in the dental world to track down Dr. Homer Campbell, one of the leading bite mark experts in the country and former president of the American Academy of Forensic Sciences. Campbell was also the chief forensic odontologist at the Office of the medical Investigator at the University of New Mexico Medical School.
   Jim approached Dr. Campbell in between sessions at the annual meeting of the American Academy of Forensic Sciences in San Antonio and asked him to take a look at the bite marks from Ray Krone's trial and render a quick judgement on whether they matched. To his surprise, Dr. Campbell said they did not match and that Ray should be excluded as the killer. According to Jim Rix, Dr. Campbell said, "This is bullshit! Who marked this?"

p. 81 - 84

( ... ) "And I thought," said Plourd, "Why wasn't Dr. Sperber the expert for the prosecution, because that's how things work."
   Ploud meant that if Dr. Sperber, the mentor and more established expert, had been helpful to the prosecution, they would have called him as a witness. But clearly Sperber's opinion had been to the contrary - "This is not a match" - so they had dropped him and kept looking for an expert witness who would support their case. That is not unusual. Experts often have different opinions. The defense and prosecution teams each find the expert who agrees with its interpretation of the case and lets the jury decide between them.
   But under the rules of discovery, Dr. Sperber's finding was exculpatory evidence - "freed from blame" - and it should have been turned over to the defense even though it would have hurt the prosecution's case. The system is set up to do the right thing, to ensure that justice is produced. Unfortunately, the lawyers don't always follow the rules.
   It's easy to understand why the prosecutor would want to drop such a piece of evidence. The thought process might go something like this: "Why should I do the work of the defense attorney? That's what the adversarial system is all about. Let the defense find their own witnesses." But what if the defense attorney is so underpaid or ill-prepared and inexperienced or overloaded with other cases that he fails to find an expert who refutes the prosecution's findings? Should the prosecution sit on its hands during the trial and say nothing, knowing that an expert witness would refute its own evidence?

Comment: Here Mr. KURTIS gives LEVY the benefit of a doubt. In light of his conclusion, let's ask a question which is close at hand in regard to Debra Milke's case: Did LEVY really believe what he 'sold' to the public? Or could it be he knowingly and intentionally prosecuted two individuals in order to achieve three win-at-all-costs convictions where only one would have been 'just'? Speaking for Debra Milke's case this website's answer is clear: LEVY knew that neither Debra nor JIM STYERS actually had to do with the murder of CHRISTOPHER, or that they had any thought or intention of having it done. He knew that ROGER SCOTT shot the little boy and that no conspiracy existed. The evidence is overwhelming: In Debra Milke's case a synopsis as a part of the police records reveals [note: see at the top of that page, listed under 'support personnel'] that LEVY was already in the picture on the day [December 6th, 1989] that DET. SALDATE wrote his two crucial reports - the one about the interrogation of Debra and the other about ROGER SCOTT. Why did the detective pen those in a chronologically twisted way, whereas the actual interrogations took place just the other way around? The answer is clear: LEVY had briefed SALDATE as how to write those reports. SALDATE got the heavier task done first, composing the report including the fabricated, not tape-recorded or witnessed-by-anyone so-called 'confession' of Debra Milke, just like LEVY must have instructed him to do. Only after SALDATE had finished doing that he proceeded with his next, less heavy duty - composing the report about ROGER. He commenced writing that one approximately five hours later. Reconstructing all motions and activities of SALDATE since he detained Debra we can see that he never made any statement toward anyone that a 'confession' of the young woman existed [which means within the time-span from December 3rd, 8.30 p.m. to December 6th, 8 a.m.]. When he exited the room inside the Pinal County Sheriff's Office together with the young woman he did not mention to any of his fellow detectives that Debra had confessed to him [note: see at the bottom of DET. HAMRICK'S report]. In a newspaper article of The Mesa Tribune from December 5th it solely reads: "Little information has been released on what led police to arrest the trio." Conclusion: The alleged, so-called 'confession' of Debra was an invention [or an idea] of LEVY after he had learned from SALDATE that ROGER SCOTT would say just about anything he was supposed to say. Such an invented confession would found the claim that a conspiracy existed and therefore also frame JIM STYERS conveniently. ROGER SCOTT'S alleged incrimination of Debra Milke, according to SALDATE'S police report purportedly made inside a police car and en route to the murder-scene, is more than questionable. After all the other detective inside the car [DET. R. MILLS] does not even mention such a statement of ROGER in his report. The question is whether ROGER had really made such an incrimination of Debra at all. At the time JIM STYERS was arrested there was no hard fact other than ROGER'S accusation which led to assume that JIM really had the idea to kill CHRISTOHER MILKE. LEVY corrected SALDATE at the Grand Jury Hearing where the detective almost commenced telling a false story, deviating from the agreed scenario. At first SALDATE talked about ROGER SCOTT and how he led police to the dead body of CHRISTOPHER. Armando Saldate: (...) He indicated that it should not be too far away because they had wanted the child found within two or three days. Noel Levy: They or Styers ? Armando Saldate: Styers wanted -- I'm sorry, that's correct. (...) In other words: Three days after the arrest of the pertinent suspects LEVY already knew 'his case' better than the detective who worked on it. He knew it so much better that the detective even had to excuse himself. Go figure! And LEVY made sure SALDATE emphatically pointed at JIM STYERS who allegedly had the intention to collect insurance money. Another single fact told to the jury in order emphasize that a 'conspiracy' existed. LEVY boasted to the press that is was 'usual' for a detective to destroy his notes after writing a report. Interestingly, SALDATE referred exactly to those notes only 2 1/2 months before Debra's trial began [in an interview held on June 26th, 1990] which exposes the fact that SALDATE had never destroyed those notes. LEVY repeatedly pursued a plea bargain with ROGER SCOTT to have him testify against Debra at her trial. SALDATE had managed to talk ROGER into claiming that he was solely the driver, and so expecting ROGER to accuse Debra was only logical. Plus, this offer from the prosecution would have saved ROGER from a possible death sentence, but he declined. Any diligent attorney, even if prejudicial toward a defendant would have to question whether the young woman was really involved in the murder in light of this development. Apparently LEVY never lost any sleep about it. All these examples show that LEVY never had an intention to 'ensure that justice is produced'. Just the opposite, his sole intention was to achieve as many convictions as possible, no matter the ruthless fashion, including manipulating, withholding facts from the jury and knowingly suppressing records of the police report. Similar to Mr. Kurtis' narration about the RAY KRONE case LEVY'S tactics toward Debra Milke were unfortunately everything but intended to 'do the right thing'.

   Who made the decision not to reveal Dr. Sperber's opinion to the court? Was it NOEL LEVY, the prosecutor who is famous for controlling all aspects of his cases? Or did Dr. Piakis make the decision not to tell Mr. Levy?
(...)
   On the other end of the telephone line, Dr. Sperber did remember the conversation because he told Chris Plourd that he specifically told the Phoenix forensic odontologist that there was no match.
   If we view the incident in a light most favorable to Dr. Piakis, perhaps he was inexperienced and didn't know about things like discovery rules. Or maybe in his zeal to find positive data for the prosecution he failed to tell MR. LEVY about Dr. Sperber's position. To suggest otherwise - that Dr. Piakis told MR. LEVY about Dr. Sperber's exculpatory opinion and that MR. LEVY deliberately kept that opinion from the defense - would be a serious charge and at this point cannot be confirmed. When asked, NOEL LEVY declined to comment, claiming that making public comment might hinder a related proceeding.
   Either way, Ray Krone's first defense attorney, Jeffrey Jones, never heard about Dr. Sperber's opinion and Ray Krone was convicted and sentenced to death without a single suggestion that there was a bite mark expert out there who did not believe the bite was a match. The entire case could have turned around right there - no ten years behind bars for RAY KRONE, no three and a half years on death row, no million dollar cost to the taxpayers of Arizona.
(...)
   Lawyers are human beings who make mistakes. But where death hangs in the balance, we can't afford mistakes.

Comment: Very true ... and very interesting. After Debra's fellow worker CARMEN SANTANA testified at trial LEVY reproduced her statements in his closing argument, reminding the jury that CARMEN had said that Debra sounded 'bored that morning' [on December 2nd, 1989]. That part of the testimony served LEVY'S intentions and helped him make Debra appear a reckless, heartless mother [insinuating she knew that CHRISTOPHER was going to be killed that day, which was not the case]. At the same time LEVY conveniently failed to mention CARMEN'S steadfast memory that she had talked to Debra already at 9 a.m. on that day and that Debra had told her that CHRISTOPHER an JIM had already left the apartment. This didn't suit into the story LEVY was after, in which the two had only left at approximately 11 a.m. Due to this proclaimed scenario the prosecutor could weaken the reasonable and sound testimony of witness JEAN PUGH, making it appear as if this woman's sole intention was to receive public attention [now that the trail had begun]. Ridiculous! JEAN PUGH and her neighbor CAROL GRIFFIN informed the jury that they heard five to seven shots on that fateful Saturday, December 2nd, 1989. Five to seven shots disprove the allegation of a conspiracy, because firing such an amount of shots would suggest that the purpose of going to that remote desert area and firing the gun was not to kill CHRISTOPHER. And in fact, that was never the intention of STYERS when he took SCOTT and CHRISTOPHER there. Another example is LEVY'S indisputable knowledge of an interview held with a fellow inmate of both JIM STYERS and ROGER SCOTT, a man named ROBERT E. JOHNSON. JOHNSON clear cut told the investigator for the county attorney's office that ROGER SCOTT had admitted to him that he had shot CHRISTOPHER. Disregarding this information obtained by his own office is definitely prejudiced and one-sided. In fact, LEVY never mentioned this information with one single word in the court room. What could the thought process have been here? His idea was clearly that he wanted both Debra Milke and JIM STYERS convicted. Convicted and sentenced to die for a crime which LEVY knew the two had nothing to do with. Why else would he have used all those manipulative delusions? In Debra's case, death hung in the balance, but LEVY was only after as many death convictions as he could get. Justice and the truth were and are never his concerns.

p. 96

   Chris Plourd remembered: "The way [LEVY] sold it was - the bite mark fits, so there must be some innocuous explanation for the blood from this unknown person. And the jurors after the trial, that's what they said, 'Well, we checked the models and the teeth seemed to fit so we thought there must be some explanation for this blood that nobody knew.'"