IAPE Evidence Blog

StatesmanJournal.com
BYLINE: Alan Gustafson

Polk County, OR

A man con­victed of a Polk County triple mur­der won his free­dom fol­low­ing a futile four-month search to find miss­ing evi­dence that had been used dur­ing his pros­e­cu­tion in 2000, a report released Mon­day shows.

The evi­dence against Philip Scott Can­non likely was lost or destroyed, accord­ing to the Dec. 18 report writ­ten by Den­nis Car­son, a spe­cial agent with the state Depart­ment of Justice.

With­out the evi­dence, pros­e­cu­tors con­ceded they couldn’t retry Can­non. He was freed from the Polk County jail on the same day Car­son issued his report. 

Can­non, 43, stead­fastly main­tained dur­ing almost 10 years in prison that he did not mur­der Jason Kinser, Suzan Osborne and Celesta Garves. Each was shot once in the head at a mobile home in a rural area west of Salem in Novem­ber 1998.

Ear­lier this year, the state agreed to Cannon’s request for a new trial, after he claimed that key foren­sic evi­dence used at his trial was flawed. The tech­nique used to ana­lyze bul­lets at the mur­der scene has been dis­cred­ited by the National Acad­emy of Sci­ences, and the FBI stopped using it in 2005.

Plans to retry Can­non recently col­lapsed after Car­son reported that he was “unable to locate any of the evi­dence that was used as pros­e­cu­tion trial exhibits.”

Trial exhibits often include pho­tos, affi­davits, reports out­lin­ing foren­sic evi­dence and other materials.

Carson’s five-page report describes his attempts to track down the exhibits, recount­ing his inter­views with var­i­ous Polk County and state DOJ offi­cials, all to no avail.

Car­son reported that he began look­ing for the evi­dence Sept. 11, at the behest of Darin Tweedt, a state assis­tant attor­ney gen­eral work­ing with the Polk County Dis­trict Attorney’s Office on the case.

In his report, Car­son said he inter­viewed for­mer Polk County Dis­trict Attor­ney John Fisher, who suc­cess­fully pros­e­cuted Can­non in 2000.

Can­non was accused of killing Kinser and his girl­friend, Osborne, along with Graves, all in their 20s, after vis­it­ing the mobile home to check on plumb­ing problems.

No mur­der weapon was found, and there were no wit­nesses to the killings.

Fisher never pro­duced a motive but he the­o­rized the slay­ings resulted from a drug deal gone bad.

The for­mer DA recently told Car­son that he prob­a­bly signed an order in June 2005 to have the trial exhibits purged, but he had no idea where the mate­ri­als ended up.

Polk County Cir­cuit Court Clerk Cindy Beachell told Car­son the exhibits were pre­served, despite Fisher’s purge order. She told the inves­ti­ga­tor that she per­son­ally deliv­ered the exhibits to the dis­trict attorney’s office around July 2005.

“Beachell told me although the paper­work Fisher signed states the exhibits are to be destroyed, that does not reflect what they would do with the exhibits,” the report states. “She explained the exhibit purge form is auto­mat­i­cally gen­er­ated to ensure the exhibits are returned to the Polk County Dis­trict Attorney’s Office.”

Beachell said she turned over the exhibits to Renee Ham­mell, then office man­ager in the dis­trict attorney’s office.

Ham­mell, who left the DA’s office in Jan­u­ary 2009, ini­tially told Car­son that she had kept a box of Can­non case evi­dence stored in her office and that it was picked up by a per­son from the state Depart­ment of Jus­tice. How­ever, Ham­mell later changed her story, telling Car­son “she did not believe it was the Can­non case she had spo­ken to me about. She would have looked in the box if it was a homi­cide case.”

Ham­mell also told Car­son that she believed that a Polk County detec­tive, Bur­ney Krauger, kept a box con­tain­ing evi­dence from the Can­non case in a hall­way of the DA’s office, “but never brought it into the office.”

Car­son reported that he met with Krauger and evi­dence tech­ni­cian Ailsa Gray at the Polk County Sheriff’s Office.

“We went through the evi­dence for this case, but did not locate any evi­dence that was used as exhibits in the trial,” he wrote.

Addi­tional futile searches for the miss­ing evi­dence were con­ducted at the county’s evi­dence stor­age facil­ity, as well as pos­si­ble stor­age rooms around the DA’s office, the report says.

Julie Licht­en­berger, cur­rent office man­ager in the DA’s office, told Car­son the county used interns to purge evi­dence dur­ing the rear­rang­ing of the evi­dence facil­ity but that “she did not have any doc­u­men­ta­tion reflect­ing the dis­po­si­tion of the pros­e­cu­tion trial exhibits in this case.”

In con­clu­sion, Car­son stated that he found “no doc­u­men­ta­tion or rec­ol­lec­tion” to show that the exhibits were turned over to any­one at the Depart­ment of Jus­tice after the trial.

“The Polk County Dis­trict Attorney’s Office and evi­dence stor­age facil­ity have under­gone con­struc­tion and ren­o­va­tion dur­ing this period, and the pros­e­cu­tion trial exhibits could have been lost in the move,” he wrote. “Finally, with the unavail­able doc­u­men­ta­tion regard­ing purg­ing of some evi­dence from the Polk County Stor­age Facil­ity it is likely the pros­e­cu­tion trial exhibits have been destroyed.”

agustafs@StatesmanJournal.com or (503) 399‑6709

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