Kaine pardons three of four in '97 rape-murder of Navy wife

RICHMOND

Lawyers for three sailors sentenced to life in prison for the 1997 rape and murder of Navy wife Michelle Moore-Bosko said Gov. Timothy M. Kaine didn't go far enough Thursday when he granted them conditional pardons that grant their release.

Moore-Bosko's family had the opposite response, saying they are "devastated" by the governor's decision, which will free the men they believe are guilty.

Those divergent reactions are the latest twists in a saga that has spanned more than a decade and directly affected members of at least five families.

The conditional pardons granted by Kaine make Derek Tice, Danial Williams and Joseph Dick Jr. eligible for release but don't wipe clean their criminal records. Two of the men were released Thursday night, and the third is expected to be released today. They will be on supervised probation for at least 10 years.

Kaine rejected the clemency petition of Eric Wilson, a fourth sailor convicted of rape who received a shorter sentence and was released in 2005.

All four men were convicted in connection with Moore-Bosko, an 18-year-old newlywed who was found murdered in her Norfolk apartment in 1997. She had been raped.

A fifth man, Omar Ballard, was later convicted and said he acted alone. His DNA alone was found at the scene and he is serving a life sentence.

The so-called Norfolk Four said they confessed because of coercive police tactics. Although Norfolk police began videotaping interrogations in major cases in 2006, they did not at the time of the Moore-Bosko murder investigation.

Kaine, a onetime civil rights lawyer, said he gave the case a lengthy review.

"There are many, many aspects of the case that are troubling," the governor said during a 45-minute news conference in the state Capitol on Thursday.

"And I would say that these individuals have raised serious doubts about their involvement, or about the level of their involvement, but I do not believe that they have conclusively demonstrated that there is no possibility that they were involved in this crime," he added.

Kaine said he weighed the multiple, and sometimes conflicting, confessions made by the sailors, how lie detector tests were used in the investigation - people subjected to them were told they had failed - and the lack of DNA evidence linking the four to the crime.

Kaine said his review of the court records led him to conclude that Ballard "was the primary perpetrator of this crime... the person who is most responsible for this crime and it is appropriate that he be in prison for the rest of his life."

That was of little comfort Thursday to Moore-Bosko's parents.

"It is truly shameful and a disservice to the citizens of Virginia and our family, that the decisions of the courts have been ignored, and confessed rapists and murderers are being set free," John and Carol Moore said in an e-mail. They live in Pittsburgh.

Likewise, the conditional pardon drew strong reaction from attorneys for the sailors, who argued that they deserved a full pardon.

"We are not satisfied because this injustice has not ended for our clients," said Don Salzman, Williams' attorney, adding, "There is overwhelming evidence that our clients are innocent."

Attorneys for the sailors believe Ballard acted alone and didn't rule out that they will ask a future Virginia governor to revisit Kaine's decision.

The case had twists and turns from the beginning. First, one man, Moore-Bosko's neighbor Danial Williams, was charged with the murder. Six months later, Joseph Dick Jr. also was charged.

In the months that followed, a total of eight men were arrested. Charges against three were withdrawn. Four of the five who were convicted later maintained their innocence, insisting their confessions to the crimes were coerced by police.

The case has become a cause célèbre in circles. It inspired a book, "The Wrong Guys: Murder, False Confessions and the Norfolk Four."

Best-selling author John Grisham recently said he was writing a screenplay on the case.

The Moores say they believe politics played a role in the governor's decision.

"We do not believe it is a coincidence that Governor Kaine granted these pardons just a few weeks after the announcement that John Grisham intends to write a screenplay," they wrote.

Since 2000, Grisham has given more than $390,000 to Virginia Democrats, including $175,000 to Kaine and his political action committee, according to the Virginia Public Access Project. He recently told The Virginian-Pilot he doesn't believe the four men are guilty.

After Thursday's news conference, Kaine said he determined the sailors "have served enough time" and he wasn't going to delay their release for political reasons.

"I'm putting governance above politics," the governor said.

One encouraging development, Kaine said, is that Norfolk police now record suspect interrogations. The Virginia State Police have a similar policy, but not all localities adhere to that standard.

Shawn Armbrust, executive director of the Mid-Atlantic Innocence Project, said Virginia should join those states that require police to record interviews of criminal suspects.

Many police departments do so now, said Rob Warden, executive director of the Center on Wrongful Convictions at Northwestern University's School of Law. It benefits police as well, he said.

If someone claims brutality or that they falsely confessed under extreme duress, there is an electronic recording that shows exactly what happened, he said.

Warden said studies have documented hundreds of examples of false confessions in which the defendants were later exonerated.

False confessions are a product of powerful psychological techniques police are trained to use in interrogations, he said.

Allan Zaleski, a Norfolk attorney who represented Tice at one point, said what bothered him most about the case was that the contradictory confessions did not make sense.

"You ought to look at the confession critically to make sure it fits the facts," he said. "I think that's the lesson we all learned by this."

D.J. Hansen, a special prosecutor in the case, declined to comment, but he said he stood by statements he and another prosecutor in the case made in an earlier letter to the editor of The Virginian-Pilot, denouncing the bids for pardons.

"It is unfortunate that the facts of this case, as decided by the justice system, are being drowned out by a series of post-trial armchair opinions that have no scientific basis and would not be admissible in a court of law in this commonwealth," he wrote.

Pilot writers Patrick Wilson and Janie Bryant contributed to this report.

Julian Walker, (804) 697-1564, julian.walker@pilotonline.com

Michelle Washington, (757) 446-2287, michelle.washington@pilotonline.com