Floyd Bledsoe - Misleading Forensics / Perjury / Inadequate Legal Defense

Bledsoe, Floyd; KS; NRE: false/misleading forensic evidence, perjury/false accusation, inadequate legal defense (official misconduct)

39 P.3d 38; Sup. Ct. of KS 2/1/02; affirmed

"On Monday, November 8, 1999, the body of Bledsoe's 14-year-old sister-in-law was found buried in the trash dump on the property of Bledsoe's parents. At the time of her disappearance, C.A. was living with Bledsoe and his wife Heidi. (Both locations were near each other outside the town of Oskaloosa.) On November 5, 1999, C.A. rode the bus home from school. She was dropped off at the Bledsoe's home around 4:20 p.m. A friend of C.A.'s stopped by around 5 p.m., but C.A. was not there."

"Tom Bledsoe, the defendant's brother, was originally arrested for the murder. Tom lived with his parents. Two days after C.A. was reported missing, Tom turned himself in and, through his attorney, led investigators to C.A.'s body. Her body was found under a pile of dirt, with several sheets of plywood and some clothing on top. She had been shot once in the back of the head and three times in the chest. According to forensic evidence admitted at trial, the shot fired to the back of C.A.'s head was a contact shot and was not fired at the location where she was found.

"The murder weapon, a 9mm semiautomatic pistol found in Tom's bedroom belonged to Tom. He had purchased the gun about 2 weeks before the murder. Tom kept the gun behind the seat in his truck. No fingerprints were found on the gun."

"On Saturday, November 6, 1999...a neighbor of the Bledsoe family, saw a truck around 8 or 9 a.m., resembling Tom's, coming out of the field where C.A. was buried. Tom made a statement to police implicating [his brother Floyd]."

"On Saturday, November 6, 1999, Tom left for work between 11 a.m. and 1 p.m. He testified that on his way to work, he saw [Floyd's] green car with a white top. Tom stopped [Floyd] at the edge of Oskaloosa."

"Tom testfiied that [Floyd] laid his hand on the steering wheel and looked a little nervous. When Tom asked what was wrong, [Floyd] said C.A. was dead. Tom said [Floyd] was mumbling, but he heard him say 'accidentally shot her.' Tom asked, 'What?' [Floyd] said, 'she's dead, accidentally shot her.' Tom testified that he asked [Floyd] why she was dead. [Floyd] shook his head and shrugged his shoulders.

"Then Tom said he started asking why she was dead and if [Floyd] had raped her or sexually abused her. [Floyd] responded, 'Yes, no, I don't know.' [Floyd] told Tom that he recalled her shirt and bra were above her breasts and that he had used Tom's pistol to shoot C.A. Tom said he reached behind the truck and felt his gun in the case. He said [Floyd] knew he kept a gun in his truck. Tom testified that [Floyd] told him he shot C.A. once in the back of the head and twice in the chest. When Tom asked where C.A. was, [Floyd] told him she was in the trash dump behind their parents' house underneath plywood, trash, and dirt.

"Tom said [Floyd] told him not to tell anyone. If anyone were to come snooping around, he wanted Tom to take the blame. If Tom did not take the blame, [Floyd] would tell people about Tom's past. At trial, Tom acknowledged that [Floyd] had threatened him this way before to get what he wanted. Tom thought [Floyd] would reveal that he had tried to have sex with a dog, had been caught with dirty magazines, and had played with himself while watching dirty movies."

"Tom went to the police station...[He] told officers that he had shot C.A....A day or two after his arrest, Tom was 'ashamed' about lying and talked with police again, implicating [Floyd]."

150 P.3d 868; Sup. Ct. of KS 2/2/07; affirmed

"We agree that several of the prosecutor's statements are troubling.

"At one point, the prosecutor said, 'The physical evidence shows that Tom didn't do it.' This statement was unsupported. There was no physical evidence produced at trial that excluded Tom as the killer. On the contrary, certain physical evidence linked Tom to the murder. Tom's gun was the murder weapon, and the bullets that killed C.A. were purchased by him.

"The prosecutor also stated:

'I can't tell you when [Floyd] did it. But I can tell you who was there. He wasn't alone. We know there [were] at least three people there, him and [C.A.], and he brought his son. His son sat in the vehicle and watched Floyd Scott Bledsoe put the gun to the back of his aunt's head and [pull] the trigger.

'Floyd takes care of the body, gets back in the car, Cody says, "You killed Aunt [C.A.]."...When Floyd Scott Bledsoe convinced his two-year-old son to say Tom did it, as soon as that powerful influence of his father was out of his presence he was comfortable with telling the truth. . .When he goes to [C.A.'s] grave he explain to her, because he was there. . . "Aunt [C.A.], I didn't kill you, my dad did."'

"Attributing a 'Daddy did it' statement to Cody at C.A.'s graveside was unsupported by the evidence. Heidi [Floyd's wife] testified that at C.A.'s graveside Cody said: 'Aunt [C.A.], I didn't shoot you, it wasn't me.'"

2008 WL 2549029; D. KS 6/23/08; writ granted, due to ineffective assistance of counsel; however, 10th Cir. subsequently reversed grant

"There was no fingerpriont evidence, no blood evidence, no DNA evidence and no hair vfidence during the trial which linked [Floyd] or Tom Bledsoe to the crime."

"In this case, because of his counsel's error, the only statements against [Floyd] by an alleged eyewitness to the crime were introduced into evidence. Those were the hearsay statements of [Floyd's] 2-year-old son, Cody."

275 F.Supp.3d 1240; D. KS 8/4/17; civil suit

"At trial, the...officers withheld evidence of Tom's guilt from [Floyd's] defense. For example, [Jim] Woods [of the Kansas Bureau of Investigation (KBI)] and other...officers withheld Tom's detailed description about how he had tried to have sex with [C.A.] in his truck and shot her when she laughed at him. The...officers also withheld evidence of Tom's history of pursuing young girls and that he had made sexual advances on [M.C.] just a few days before the murder. The...officers also withheld Tom's statements to them on the night he turned hmself in, where he described [C.A.'s] wounds and the location of her body."

"Additionally, the...officers suppressed evidence of Tom's guilt. This evidence included the shovel that Tom had used to bury [C.A.'s] body and other physical evidence taken from Tom's truck. In furtherance of the conspiracy to frame [Floyd], [Terry] Morgan and other...officers never conducted a vigorous examination of Tom's bedroom or home."

"[I]n October 2015, [Floyd] obtained additional forensic testing for some of the physical evidence officers collected from the crime scene. New DNA test results indicated Tom was the likely source of the semen found...Tom committed suicide shortly after this new DNA testing. He left a note that read:

'I sent an innocent man to prison. The Jefferson County police and county attorney Jim [Vanderbilt] made me do it. I was told by Vanderbilt to keep my mouth shut.'"

"Tom also drew a diagram depicting where he shot [C.A.] before moving her body to the trash dump. Using Tom's diagram, the police found the fourth missing bullet casing. The Jefferson County Court vacated [Floyd's] conviction on December 8, 2015 and the Jefferson County Attorney dismissed the charges against him."