Another Alabama inmate on death row claiming innocence

BIRMINGHAM, Ala. — Anthony Ray Hinton, who spent 28 years on Alabama's death row for two murders despite his claims of innocence, walked free earlier this month after prosecutors admitted they couldn't prove his guilt.

Another inmate who maintains he was wrongly convicted in a separate killing is now challenging his death sentence in a case with eerie similarities to Hinton's, down to allegations of botched ballistics evidence, a questionable eyewitness identification and the judge and prosecutor who handled both trials.

Donnis George Musgrove, who been on death row for 27 years but says he is innocent, is asking a federal judge to overturn his case — the first step toward what his lawyers hope will be freedom for a man they contend was wrongly convicted during a trial fraught with unconstitutional errors, cooked-up evidence, prosecutorial misconduct, inept defense work and outright lies.

Experts have proven that a shell casing used during the trial to link Musgrove to the Sept. 27, 1986, slaying of Coy Eugene Barron had nothing to do with the crime, the defense claims, and police pressured Barron's wife to identify Musgrove as the shooter even though she first told police she saw nothing.

The Jefferson County prosecutor at Musgrove's trial used bogus evidence to win the conviction against an overmatched defense lawyer, just as he did to Hinton a few years earlier, the defense contends.

"We believe there were constitutional errors in his trial and they were so great he deserves a new trial," said Cissy Jackson, an attorney for Musgrove. "He was wrongly convicted."

While the state attorney general's office hasn't yet responded to Musgrove's arguments in court and declined comment this week, it has defended the conviction for nearly 30 years and once got the Alabama Supreme Court to reverse a lower state appellate court that overturned the case.

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