Attorneys for Daniel Green are requesting a new trial, according to the Associated Press. Green is currently serving a life sentence in prison for the murder of Michael Jordan's father James in 1993. But recent developments regarding the shirt James wore when the murder occurred have the defense claiming tampering of evidence.
Jordan's autopsy found no hole in the shirt that corresponded to the fatal bullet wound in his upper right chest area, but that has now been called into question. Specifically, Green's defense wants to know the exact trail of custody of the shirt from when the body was found in a South Carolina swamp to the present. They believe somewhere between the autopsy and trial, someone tampered with the shirt.
Chris Mumma, executive director of the North Carolina Center on Actual Innocence, recently joined Green's defense team. Here are his remarks after the defense submitted new filings to to the state attorney general's office on Wednesday:
"This newly discovered evidence of tampering adds to the growing list of legal concerns and factual evidence which add weight to the conclusion that not only does Daniel Green deserve a new trial but that he is innocent of the murder of James Jordan." - Chris MummaDuring the trial in 1996, Green's supposed accomplice Larry Demery testified that Green is the one who shot James Jordan while he slept in his Lexus on the side of the road. Green admitted in a post-conviction interview that he did help dispose of Jordan's body in the swamp. He also admitted to wearing Jordan's watch and an NBA championship ring Michael gave him, but insisted he was not the one to pull the trigger. An excerpt from the AP report:
This week's court filing says the absence of a hole in the right chest area contradicts the prosecutors' theory that Jordan was lying in his car when he was shot. "It also gave strength to the defense theory that there was an altercation between Demery and Mr. Jordan, which was kept from the jury," the court filing says.
The filing describes an unusual chain of custody for the shirt. It says Dr. Joel Sexton of Newberry, South Carolina, who performed the autopsy, gave it to a law enforcement officer who gave it to a civilian employee of a company that provided services for funeral homes. That employee gave the shirt to his boss, who said he buried it in his backyard because of the smell.
When law enforcement later determined that the shirt was evidence, the SBI worked with South Carolina law enforcement officials to exhume the shirt and transport it to Raleigh. And it was then that an SBI agent reported the presence of a bullet hole in the upper right chest area of the shirt, the filing says.
Sexton had written in the autopsy report that he looked for and didn't find a corresponding hole in the right chest area of the shirt that corresponded with James Jordan's fatal wound. Instead, he found three holes near the shirt tail, he wrote. Those holes would line up with the fatal wound if the shirt were pulled up about one foot, he wrote -- "as one might do if pulling a gun from their waist," the court filing adds.
SBI Agent R.N. Mars testified that the hole he found in the shirt "marked the location where the single, fatal bullet transversed the victim's clothing and entered his body," the filing says. "But Agent Mars offered no explanation for the three holes in the lower section of Mr. Jordan's shirt that Dr. Sexton's autopsy suggested were caused by the bullet. The district attorney, who had once highlighted Dr. Sexton's notes about the absence of a bullet hole in the chest area of the shirt, did not ask about the three holes in the lower section of the shirt, and -- critically for Mr. Green -- neither did his defense attorneys."
Michael Jordan has not made a public statement yet about this new court filing from Green's legal defense team.
Updates to come as news warrants.
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