Saturday, June 15, 2013

Angela Corey and her string of horrifying tactics as a prosecutor.

Next topic seems to be a popular one at the moment. Angela Corey…..

In the wake of the George Zimmerman acquittal, many of the sub-stories have been overlooked. Especially the story of Angela Corey and her handling or mishandling of the case.

Trayvon Martin supporters believe State Attorney Angela Corey blew the prosecution and trial, allowing George Zimmerman to be free. On the other side, George Zimmerman supporters feel that Angela Corey never should have charged him, and only did so to quell the public pressure.

Among a nation divided, the only common ground is the belief that Angela Corey mishandled the case. This comes as no surprise to me and many others familiar with her unprofessional, unethical, and downright dirty practices. The Trayvon Martin case is not an isolated incident. Rather, it is decades of misconduct and manipulation catching up to a prosecutor, ( Angela Corey ), who holds  little or no regard for truth or justice. For me, Angela Corey deserves this exposure and I am well received by it. This is what I have hoped for since November 28, 2000.

In my case there are too many instances of Angela Corey and her misconduct to cover in this short section of my blog, but I will try to cover the major glaring examples.

Many people believe and expect that a prosecutor would fairly and thoroughly investigate and weigh all the facts and evidence of a case before deciding whether to charge a person with a crime, especially a serious offense like murder. When it comes to Angela Corey, she routinely charges first and asks questions later.

I was arrested in Easton, Maryland two years after Corey Parker was murdered in her Jacksonville Beach, Florida apartment. Neither Angela Corey nor the police bothered to investigate whether I had an alibi for the day of the murder. Once Angela Corey discovered that I had an alibi consisting of 11 people, and rather than wonder if she’d charge the right person, she persuaded a medical examiner who had not even performed the autopsy to say the murder had occurred before my alibi began.

In the Trayvon Martin case there were indications that Angela Corey and others in her office withheld evidence capable of exonerating George Zimmerman. Whether anything comes of it after George Zimmerman’s acquittal remains to be seen, but this is certainly not the first time Angela Corey has been accused of withholding or manipulating evidence.  

In the mid 1990’s Angela Corey prosecuted Chad Hines for the murder of his sister-in-law relying entirely on DNA evidence to win a conviction. Over a decade later the Innocence Project sought to test DNA evidence capable of excluding Chad Hines as the murderer. Instead they met with fierce resistance from Angela Corey who tried everything in her power to restrict access to the DNA specimens Chad Hines wanted to test. The Innocence Project eventually was granted the right to test the evidence and it exonerated Chad Hines of murder. The Chad Hines case was the beginning episode of a chain of events that led to her termination from the State Attorney’s office. Angela Corey would rebound by being elected as the Head of State Attorney of the 4th Judicial Circuit in 2008.

My case was of no exception to the tactics played by Angela Corey.  Aware that DNA evidence had been destroyed, contaminated, and tampered with, she looked the other way and encouraged police misconduct and mishandling of the evidence. See the June entry to this blog for a more detailed account of questionable evidence. Most prosecutors would be wary of introducing the problematic evidence that was found in my case, but Angela Corey did all she could to mask the elusive / true nature of it.

For years, both before and after trial, there have been rumors circulating that Angela Corey withheld evidence in my case that was exculpatory. The rumors have been rampant in the Jacksonville legal community, including from former attorneys and investigators within the state attorney’s office.  Different attorneys assigned to my case to represent me over the years have investigated these rumors and have in fact discovered new evidence. However, because the investigation is on-going I cannot go into all of the details here.

Perhaps Angela Corey and her most obvious unprofessional practice is accepting and presenting testimony from witnesses she knows to be false or that she even assisted in manufacturing. Her willingness to do this was apparent in my case throughout pre-trial and trial phases of my case.
The worst instance was when Angela Corey attempted to introduce a sworn statement from a jailhouse snitch who tried to claim I confessed to him. Fortunately this informant placed a recorded phone call from the jail explaining to a family member how Angela Corey fed him brownies, showed him police reports and pictures of the victim, then coached him on what to say in his sworn statement. When Angela Corey was confronted with the informant’s phone call, which proves witness tampering, she decided not to use his fake testimony at trial and the entire incident was swept under the rug.

Even after this close call Angela Corey was undeterred from manipulating other witnesses. As I detailed in the last blog post, my former girlfriend turned stripper agreed to testify that a lighter found at the murder scene along with a blue shirt discovered outside of the Corey Parker apartment building, belonged to me. She provided this testimony in exchange for Angela Corey and Detective Billy Carlyle not arresting her on outstanding warrants.

Although it was extremely clear that my ex was lying to save herself and avoid arrest, Angela Corey tried her hardest to dress up the obviously false testimony. First was the Zippo Lighter with the acronym for the National Air Traffic Controllers Association (NATCA) engraved on it. There was no DNA or fingerprints on it, no link between NATCA and myself. The only person in the world to claim it belonged to me was my ex girlfriend, Heather Champion.

Then came the blue shirt found soaking wet and hanging in a tree outside Corey Parker ‘s apartment. Three hairs were found on the shirt none of which matched my DNA and which came from three different people. There was no blood on the shirt, no fibers from the shirt were found in the crime scene and the only person in the world to claim it was mine was Heather Champion (avoiding her own legal problems).

Not only is it a prosecutors job to develop evidence in a case, it is also to make sure false evidence or testimony is not used to wrongly convict someone. This responsibility has been lost within Angela Corey, and one can only wonder how many men and women have been sent to prison who or either innocent or have been overcharged and sentenced to prison terms longer than they deserve.

I can write on and on about Angela Corey and her unprofessionalism, but it wouldn't do any justice to me and others like me who have suffered as a result of her outlandish tactics. Don’t take my word for it. Research Angela Corey and you will learn her true nature.

For now I just hope that the George Zimmerman case has shed some light on what kind of prosecutor Angela Corey really is and that this scrutiny gives guys like me an opportunity to expose her misgivings.

George Zimmerman, Trayvon Martin, Angela Corey, Robert Denney