IAPE Evidence Blog

www.kxl.com
Link to Article

Salem, OR

The Ore­gon attor­ney general’s office said Mon­day that an investigator’s search has failed to turn up miss­ing evi­dence in a triple mur­der case, a find­ing that makes it doubt­ful pros­e­cu­tors will seek to retry the case.

Philip Scott Can­non, who claimed he was wrongly con­victed of the triple mur­der more than a decade ago, was freed Dec. 18 after pros­e­cu­tors said key evi­dence needed for a retrial was unavailable.

The attor­ney general’s office said Mon­day that spe­cial inves­ti­ga­tor Den­nis Car­son couldn’t track down any of the miss­ing evi­dence used against Can­non. The evi­dence likely was destroyed, Car­son said.

In his report, Car­son said he inter­viewed for­mer Polk County Dis­trict Attor­ney John Fisher, who told Car­son he might have signed an order to have the mate­r­ial purged in 2005, and that he had no idea where the miss­ing items ended up.

Can­non, 43, who was serv­ing a life sen­tence, had main­tained he did not mur­der Jason Kinser, Suzan Osborne and Celesta Graves. 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 approved a new trial for Can­non after he claimed foren­sic evi­dence was flawed. How­ever, plans to retry Can­non were dropped after pros­e­cu­tors were unable to locate evi­dence that was used as trial exhibits.

Stan But­ter­field, the cur­rent county dis­trict attor­ney, said Mon­day he was aware of Carson’s find­ings when he issued a Dec. 18 state­ment say­ing that “dis­missal is in the best inter­est of jus­tice” in view of the miss­ing evidence.

But­ter­field said it’s pos­si­ble his office could refile the case against Can­non. He also said he has insti­tuted new poli­cies to try to avoid sim­i­lar mis­takes with evidence.

- — - — - — - — - — - — - — - — - — - — - — - — - — - — - — -
Inter­na­tional Asso­ci­a­tion for Prop­erty and Evi­dence
“Law Enforce­ment Serv­ing the Needs of Law Enforce­ment“
www.IAPE.org