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Gillispie case illustrates imperfect justice system

Eyewitness IDs aren’t always reliable.

Roger Dean Gillispie faces months, if not years, of more legal proceedings following U.S. District Court Magistrate Michael Merz’s ruling that Gillispie’s second trial was unfair.

Jim Witmer Roger Dean Gillispie faces months, if not years, of more legal proceedings following U.S. District Court Magistrate Michael Merz’s ruling that Gillispie’s second trial was unfair.

ENLARGE PHOTO

Jim Witmer Gillispie served 20 years in prison, all the time insisting he was innocent of raping three women.

ENLARGE PHOTO

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By Laura A. Bischoff and Mary McCarty
Staff Writers 9:16 PM Saturday, January 7, 2012

When Roger Dean Gillispie walked out of London Correctional Institution three days before Christmas, he joined a rare brotherhood.

Since May 2003, the Ohio Innocence Project has obtained the release of 13 prisoners who collectively spent more than 175 years in prison before being exonerated, pardoned, paroled or having their convictions overturned, many because of problems with eyewitness identifications.

Former Ohio Attorney General Jim Petro said the growing use of DNA and other evidence is challenging the reliability of witness identifications. Nationwide, Innocence Project chapters have won 284 exonerations based predominately on DNA evidence. Seventy-five percent of those cases were based solely on eyewitness identification, and 30 percent of those involved more than one eyewitness.

“The justice system and prosecutors need to be aware of serious risk of injustice if their case is based solely on eyewitnesses,” Petro warned.

Gillispie is not totally in the clear. The 46-year-old Fairborn man faces months, if not years, of more legal proceedings following U.S. District Court Magistrate Michael Merz’s ruling that Gillispie’s second trial was unfair. Ohio Attorney General Mike DeWine is appealing Merz’s decision to the U.S. 6th Circuit Court of Appeals.

At this point, though, Gillispie’s case illustrates how an imperfect criminal justice system can put lives on hold for decades, devastating families and friends.

Gillispie served 20 years in prison, all the time insisting he was innocent of raping three women.

Gillispie’s advocates maintain the case was flawed from the beginning: Evidence was lost, destroyed or returned to the victims. An early report clearing Gillispie as a suspect got buried. There was no physical evidence tying him to the crimes. The photo lineup was biased and mishandled.

Problems with the case were so obvious and egregious to Petro, a tough-on-crime Republican, that he joined Gillispie’s defense team as a pro bono attorney and later co-wrote a book with his wife, Nancy, about Gillispie and wrongful convictions.

But there are those who still believe Gillispie is the man who forced a woman to perform oral sex on him at gunpoint in a parking lot in Harrison Twp. and then, a few weeks later, kidnapped twin sisters at gunpoint from a Miami Twp. strip mall parking lot and forced them to perform oral sex on him in a wooded area in August 1988. DNA evidence examined in the case was inconclusive.

“Three victims in this case identified Gillispie as the man who kidnapped and raped them at gunpoint. Two juries heard the evidence and found him guilty. The state court of appeals upheld that conviction. The Supreme Court of Ohio refused to overturn his conviction,” said Greg Flannagan, spokesman for Montgomery County Prosecutor Mat Heck. “We stand behind that conviction.”

System reforms

Petro and Ohio Innocence Project Director Mark Godsey used Gillispie’s case to illustrate grave problems in the system and lobby for reforms that lawmakers adopted with Senate Bill 77, which took effect July 6, 2010. While those reforms — including requirements for the retention of biological evidence and changes in how lineups are done — might have helped Gillispie, some experts believe further change is needed. Petro noted that in an FBI analysis of 19,000 cases solved by DNA, 25 percent of the eyewitness identifications proved inaccurate.

No one can give an accurate estimate of how many innocent men and women languish in America’s prisons. “Only God knows,” Petro said. “But there are 2.3 million people in American prisons. If you use a conservative estimate of 2 percent, there are more than 100,000 innocent people in our nation’s prisons.”

Multiple eyewitness accounts don’t necessarily lead to more accuracy, Petro said: “They can reinforce one another. That’s compounded if there’s a taint in a photo lineup, as there was in this case.”

In the photo lineup used to implicate Gillispie, his face was much larger than the others, the photo was on a yellow background and printed on matte paper. The other photos were on a blue background and printed on glossy paper.

It was eyewitness testimony that convicted Gillispie in court 21 years ago.

“If someone rapes you, you’re going to remember their face,” said Joe Laforsch, who served on the jury in 1991. “The jury was very influenced by the eyewitness testimony. Each one of these women was certain, totally certain.”

Yet Petro noted that Gillispie was indicted in October 1990, more than two years after the August 1988 attacks. The initial physical description of the suspect deviated significantly from Gillispie’s appearance at the time.

“Contrary to what people have always said and thought, a stressful situation doesn’t burn a memory into the mind of the victim,” Petro said. “That is flat wrong. It makes it more shaky. After a year, it’s a matter of chance whether you pick the right person or not.”

Miami Twp. Police Chief John “Chris” Krug said the latest turn of events shows “the criminal justice system works for both sides. At this point in time, it has allowed him to be released. We’ll just follow the process from here...My feeling is that every person, no matter what kind of crime they commit, has their constitutional rights.”

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