The story of a partially
blind Englishman serving life in California for a murder he never committed. Following
Paul’s guest blog, some readers asked for more details about the facts of Paul’s
case. Here’s his story. Reading it made me angry and frustrated at California’s
justice system, which in terms of evil and corruption seems to be right up
there with Arizona’s. I only served 5¾ years whereas Paul has served 15. I can’t
imagine what that feels like. Thinking of Paul rotting away in there really
upsets me. It’s time he gets a DNA test, and is set free.
I
was arrested in Los Angeles for the murder and attempted murder of Ed Weinmann;
I thought that I would be in jail no longer than a week. After all, I had a
fractured hand which did not match the description of the shooter. Ed was being
targeted by gangs for his family’s connection with the Klu Klux Klan, and the
arresting detectives harvested a bias against me. But in America anything can happen.
In 1994 I had flown to Los Angeles to
meet Dolores Legaspi, a Californian girl that I had been dating from a prior
visit to the United States. Dolores asked me to marry her to enable me to
receive a work permit. We married in Las
Vegas. However, during this marriage,
Dolores began to see an old friend, Ed Weinmann.
Police reports show that Ed experienced
6 gang related problems in the winter of 1994, and early 1995. For example, his
home was set ablaze with petrol bombs
while he slept inside. Rocks were lobbed through the windows, the house was painted
with “KKK HOUSE”, and car windows were smashed.
A witness to these attacks described the perpetrators as African
American youths. When the Weinmann’s
were asked for any motives for these attacks they never mentioned any telephone
death threats, but did describe an exchange of words some 6 months prior with
someone tapping on their fence.
Then on a dark night in January 1995,
someone fired a shot while Ed sat in his car. Luckily he wasn’t hit. Even
though the crime occurred in a poorly-lit car park, a witness, Lorna Santomin
saw the offender flee from the scene. He left behind a silencer and a shirt
after a struggle with Ed. Police were
able to determine that the perpetrator wore black gloves, picked a lock,
dismantled a car light and struggled with Ed while holding a gun and silencer.
Lorna had seen both the criminal’s hand’s from the wrist down, “there was
nothing unusual about them” she would later testify. Ed described his attacker
as clean shaven and they both stated that he wore a red hooded sweatshirt.
According to Dolores, Ed didn’t
like me. Ed called Dolores from the police station where he reported the
shooting and told Dolores he wanted to blame me for it. But Dolores said I was
with her at home in Carson and asleep on medication because of a fractured hand. She told Ed that I had beard stubble as the
injury prevented me from shaving, and I did not own a red hooded sweatshirt,
and she knew that as I was living with her. The round trip from Dolore’s home
to the crime scene is about 20 miles. Ed urged Dolores to feel the bonnets of
my vehicles to see if they were warm. Protesting strongly, she finally did. The
bonnets were cold. Proving no one had used them.
I
could never be mistaken for an African American. I am serving a life sentence without parole.
I have absolutely no history of violence to anyone, and could not be mistaken
for an African American. In addition, my attorney never got Dolores to testify,
even though a defence investigator concluded that Dolores would make a good
defence witness. Neither did my attorney inform the jury that I was born with
retinitis pigmentosa which makes me night blind. I cannot see in poorly-lit areas.
The
trial judge didn’t allow the jury to hear about the KKK attacks. He considered the attacks as vandalism and he
couldn’t see how they could escalate to a shooting. Neither would the judge
allow Rose Legaspi to testify that Ed specifically told her that I was not his
attacker.
I
researched the crime statistics for 1995. There are over 26,000 serious crimes
for the South Bay sector of Los Angeles. Most of these are racially or gang
related. I wonder how a Californian judge can rule out this third party
culpability evidence when most of the murders stem from race related hate
crimes.
In
January 1995, I was shot in an attempted robbery at Carson Mall. I have the
scar on my hand where surgeons opened it to remove the bullet. It looks
grotesque and I remember how much it hurt. It was pretty bad. I have two
Medical Reports, describing this injury and the treatment. I was prescribed
Tylenol No.3, a strong narcotic, and my hand was fractured, sutured, dressed,
splinted and bulky dressed. The report is dated for the same day as the
shooting incident, only hours before it took place. You might wonder why the
jury didn’t believe these reports.
Unfortunately my lawyer didn’t get them for the jury to
see. I told my lawyer about my hand injury, but he did not bother to interview
the doctors that treated me.
Neither
did my lawyer put my doctor on the stand to testify about my injury. The jury did
hear about me wearing a big mitt on my hand when my sister-in- law was
subpoenaed by the prosecution, but she never described my injury.
Yet
the prosecution had possession of my medical reports and had full knowledge of
my injury. The prosecution deliberately
mislead the jury by informing them that I faked wearing a big mitt for an alibi
and merely had a minor flesh wound and if the injury was serious then the
defence lawyer would have introduced testimony through my doctor. This is Prosecutorial misconduct because the
Prosecutor’s duty is to seek the truth. But here, they mislead the jury with an
argument known by the Prosecution to be false.
But
is does not end there, my injury has greater significance in this case and
there’s a problem. Upon reviewing the
police reports I notice that the Los Angeles Sheriff’s Department booked one
bullet fragment into evidence from my hand. I was told by doctors and police
that it came from a .22caliber weapon, as from point- blank range a larger
bullet would have passed through like a juggernaut hitting a tomato. In other
words straight through my hand almost blowing my fingers off. So I ask some
police officers I know who have weapon training, and they agree. But there’s a problem because this one
fragment passed through the custody of Detective McMahon and turns into two fragments. Detective
McMahon then sent these for ballistic examination and are described to be .38
the same calibre as the bullets from Ed’s shooting. But I could not have been shot with the same
calibre gun, as my injury was far less than the fatal injury that killed Ed.
The prosecution used this evidence to link me incorrectly with the shooting. I
wonder what my lawyer was doing when he was supposed to be making sure that the
jury heard the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth.
In March 1995, Ed was fatally shot while
driving on a Los Angeles freeway at night. One bullet caused his death. The .38
bullet that killed Ed passed through a tempered window then fragmented and lost
velocity, two fragments struck bone and passed clean through losing velocity on
the way, yet they continued and struck more bone passing clean through and lost
more velocity before resting in soft fleshy tissue. Sadly, this is what a .38
caliber bullet does. There were no witnesses. Because I had been married to
Dolores and Ed was seeing Dolores, then I became a suspect. Detective McMahon
and Martinez were rude, abusive and threatening to me, when they interviewed
me. McMahon knocked me continually on the head as he screamed, Bang you shot
him. Bang you shot him. I recall the
frightening, intimidating, encounter with detectives investigating the murder.
So
I filed a complaint on them and consequently they framed me. The Detectives said that I denied owning a
handgun. I never denied that. I had purchased one following a burglary on my
home after being advised to get one. I
registered it to myself. We talked about the gun during the interview and
Detectives made notes. But when I tried to get copies of these notes I received
a letter that states the notes are “Lost.” This is serious because the duty of
detectives is to gather and preserve relevant evidence. After the interview I
was no longer a suspect? So they lost their notes to keep me a suspect.
In
August 1995, before I was arrested I filed a complaint on the detectives. They
retaliated by ransacking my home. In a sworn Affidavit Detective McMahon swore
that he had me under surveillance prior to the complaint to make the search
appear to follow the surveillance. Detective McMahon states that he observed my
blue Mazda pick-up on my driveway and describes the registration number.
McMahon lied about that to cover his retaliation. My last contact with him had
been April11th, 1995 when I owned that blue Mazda. I have a Department of Motor Vehicles
statement to verify this.
In
April 12, 1995 they changed the registration number, and in May 1995 it was
painted Yellow. I have a photo of my yellow truck sitting on a sunny
driveway. According to the Royal
Observatory Greenwich, the photo can be dated by the sun’s shadows. Also the
film can be dated .My lawyer never introduced this evidence.
During the Los Angeles homicide, I had
been in San Francisco some 350 miles away, and was not on any flight manifests.
My vehicles were eliminated as suspect vehicles as one sat too low to have
fired a downward shot and the other one was sitting on Legaspi’s driveway.
Neither did my name show up at any Los Angeles car rental agencies that are
requested by law to view and record the identification of all renters. The
Detectives knew this. My lawyer never introduced all this evidence into the
trial. And this evidence showed that I could not have flown to Los Angeles, nor
could have driven a vehicle to commit the crime during the driving murder. I had no idea whatsoever concerning Ed's agenda - where he should be and when, because I
hardly knew the guy.
The
entire case is circumstantial. There are no fingerprints, confession, video
footage, no direct evidence. Ed’s mother did testify that I telephoned and
threatened to kill Ed in December of 1994. I never did. She never filed a police
report about this, or even told police after her home was set ablaze, just
weeks after the alleged threat.
The
silencer recovered from the earlier attack had yellow tape on it and a roll of
yellow tape discovered at my home which an expert testified matched 100% to the
naked eye. This evidence passed through the custody of Det. McMahon.
Detective McMahon and Martinez had the
silencer in custody on March16, 1995. Detectives testified that in April of
1995 they were searching for tape to match the tape on the silencer and
obtained a roll from my home. On August 31 1995, the even executed a Search
Warrant that specifically searched for rolls of tape. But they found none at my
home. Now this shows that any tape they had prior to August 1995 could not have
been a match, that’s why they continued looking. In August I filed my complaint
and 8 months later the roll that they got in April 1995, was submitted for
forensic analysis resulting in a perfect match to the naked eye. So it appears
they were not a good match until I filed my complaint.
They look similar, but not the same. For
instance one is wider than the other and they only join up at the same width
because someone has altered the narrower one... I look at the rip pattern
caused as the tape was ripped off its roll. The piece from the silencer has a
pattern that changes course across the rip, none of this is seen on the leading
end from the roll. My lawyer never had this evidence examined.
I
had been in jail awaiting trial for a year and never knew it was going to
start, until a bailiff threw some clothes at me. When I asked what they were
for, he told me I was starting my trial. That’s how I found out as my lawyer
wasn’t communicating with me, neither did he return my calls I made through
British Consulate.
The
first days of my 1998 trial were terrible. While handcuffed, I was strangled
unconscious and beaten, by other inmates. I don’t want to say it was terrible;
I want to describe how terrible it was. During the attack I was reciting the
Lord’s Prayer and then woke up and it was later..The attack occurred at about
7am and I was still bleeding at 1.30pm while in the courtroom. The trial
transcripts states,
“The
attackers ......put chains around his neck, and then beat him......a quantity
of ...dried blood fairly slashed about leaving him with a fair quantity of
dried blood fairly slashed about his upper garments...both his eyes are black
looks like he probably has a broken nose...his lip will be swollen throughout
the trial...Paul’s been crying...very shaken...he’s in fear for his life right
now...he may not be competent to assist in his defence in the next few days”
This
attack secured my conviction, as I was unable to assist in my own defence to
correct the false and misleading, prosecution’s evidence.
Despite
my physical and mental condition the trial continued as the prosecutor argued
that a delay would be inconvenient for her witnesses. I did not see a doctor
for three days, and then I was prescribed narcotic medications. I can’t
remember much of the trial; as the narcotic drugs made me feel giddy and
drowsy.
But
something I do remember was when someone sitting close to the victim’s mother
began to shout out instructions for a witness to say. This was while the
witness was on the stand and the judge had stepped out of the courtroom. In the
absence of the jury, the judge immediately held an evidentiary hearing and
concluded that Det. McMahon and the victim’s mother deliberately lied to the
court. Both were critical witnesses for the prosecution, yet my lawyer never
used this evidence to attack their credibility.
With
false and misleading evidence, and no defence at all, the prosecution secured
an easy conviction. Since my 1998 conviction, I have attempted to appeal on the
grounds of ineffective assistance of my trial lawyer. The British Commonwealth
Office reviewed my case in 2002 and because “there are concerns concerning the
fairness of the trial procedure”, they assisted me in obtaining a barrister.
Unfortunately, the barrister was not qualified to practise law in California.
In
2003 the organisation Fair Trials Abroad also reviewed my case and stated that
“we have grave concerns regarding the professional conduct of (Paul’s)
lawyer.” However, as European lawyers
they were unable to assist in the United States.
I
really need to prove my innocence by getting DNA testing of the perpetrator’s
shirt, the one he left behind with the silencer. They can do these tests now
when someone has worn or handled clothing, I plead.
I
have written to the courts asking them to test this and to have the yellow
tapes chemically analysed for comparison. I’ve also told the courts about my
hand injury and my lawyer’s total failure to present any evidence for me. Or
question witnesses for me. But the California courts just ignore me. I thought I’d
only be in jail for a week, but it’ll be 16 years shortly.
Fairness
is the very fabric upon which the justice system is woven. I was entitled to a
fundamentally fair trial but through prosecutorial misconduct, rogue
detectives, an ineffective lawyer, and violent jail inmates, I was denied that.
The sad truth is that as a result of this, I will remain in prison for the rest
of my life unless I can get a competent lawyer to fight for an appeal.
Paul
John Denham
If
anyone wants to help Paul he would like them to send a copy of "Paul's
Story " to their MP or to the Foreign and Commonwealth Office, or both
and ask what is being done. Then to write to the media and explain that
the MP or FCO did nothing or very little.
Shaun Attwood
17 comments:
shaun nobody ever did it
Paul
dna tests are getting 100's of these guys released, they actually didn't do it, and were set up by prosecutors and cops
fair play
Paul
My daughter is 17 this year she was born in 95, apart from the obvious that this goverment is in the pocket of the U.S is there anyway he can get back onto the british consulate and somehow find someone that will be able to practice out there and eventually get this poor guy released as there has been one serious miscarriage of justice but then money talks
Sarah
it is all a function of money, Sarah, his mum is helping him, but i don't know what her resourses are, right now Paul is a $50k a year revenue stream for the prison system, and they don't give up those revenue stream very easily
Ive just read the story regarding Paul, this is an absolute disgrace and something needs to be done.... How can we help
Lisa x
How about a petition?
Sarah
his mum will read your comments, and hopefully let us know what can be done
It's so wrong our goverment should be helping but as usual not in their favour/ election looming so heads in sand. And it stinks that they get money from him we can just live in hope that one day justice will be done
Sarah
This is really scary. Sometimes I wonder if I should be grateful that i don't live in the "Land of the Free". How can courts there, deny evidence? AMERICA have a lot to learn about "fairness, equity and corruption". Though in my country we have had a few cases that the Govt have had to compensate for. But it is on a real small scale. Everyone is accountable, and families are HEARD... Most of the time.... Our lawyers can not be seen to be incompetent! Our country is small in comparison. So word about dodgy lawyers gets around real fast!!! Screw the people over once? U don't get to do it a second time!!!! I hope this guy gets FREED... From what I read, he has a great case! Stupid prosecutors man! They need to be put behind bars.....
Shaun, thank you for printing Paul's Story. You are an angel.
If Sarah or any body wants to help Paul they would be very welcome.
Thanks again.
Paul's mum.
Awful, dreadful story. As an engineer I see people ignore facts, misinterpret data and succumb to the 'do something as we're under pressure' syndrome. All are done 99% of the time from lack of capability, demands of workplace-pressure and never willfully, but when you see the same type of factual courtroom evidence deliberately ignored and misconstrued to incarcerate one individual it beggars belief, or maybe not. It reinforces the sad truth that there are mendacious muppets out there in all walks of life, from those who hadn't the guts, or stomach to stand up and admit incompetence at Hillsborough, to those in California who have framed someone in denial of all the evidence in front of them. Sad Story indeed.
Bucko
You may be interested in this .http://www.reddit.com/r/Bad_Cop_No_Donut/comments/11uvh2/sheriff_joe_arpaio_settles_suit_for_325_million/
This is a message for Pauls mum. Hi there , My name is Shameen Syed I went to Eltham Green with Paul and have just heard about his case via Ian Puddefoot. I 'm aghast. I'm going to write to Paul and offer him my support. My cousin who lives in Colorado used to work for Amnesty I'm going to contact him and ask him what he thinks can be done. I'm sure you've explored every option and have beaten on every door but don't give up there is strength in numbers and somtimes its a case of having the right contacts and connections. Stay strong. Any extra information about his case would useful. How much money is needed for DNA testing ? you can contact me at Shameen@another.com
With much love Shameen
We only hear his side. He show the court transcripts on a link, we can decide for himself. To add, he committed a illegal act to stay in the US by engaging in a fraudulent marriage... This is pre Sept 11, 2001. That marriage wouldn't have been allowed.
For anyone following this story, you are all being lied to about this POS.
Paul Denham is a delusional psychopathic narcissistic murderer. He should rot in jail for the rest of his life. His ex-wife is a gold digging whore who got engaged to someone else right after Paul got incarcerated. She should be investigated for tax and immigration fraud and thrown into jail with Paul as an accessory to Edward Weinmann's murder. I'm happy to share the information that will help keep this POS in prison for the rest of his life! And an investigation to be opened on his ex-wife.
Lisa, it's not a disgrace because the fact is Paul is guilty for murder!
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