A lawyer for convicted murderer Angel Richardson argues in a new court filing that the state's position is "ludicrous" and "inane" in suggesting that his lawyers could have uncovered information favorable to him prior to trial.
The case from Durham was a part of a recent series in The News & Observer in which questions about prosecutions by District Attorney Tracey Cline are under review in the court system.
In the case of Richardson, one of the issues was that a gang underboss had given a statement to a Durham police officer that implicated someone else in the crime. The officer was also working on a federal task force and had not provided the statement to Richardson's defense that another man claimed the killing for which Richardson was charged.
Richardson is seeking a new trial, saying that the statement came out at the end of his trial and rendered his defense ineffective.
The statement to the police says that a man named Lemeul Sherman had claimed the killing.
Police arrested Sherman after the killing, and he cut a deal with police and fingered Richardson.
The state, in fighting Richardson's appeal, said in a court filing that Richardson's lawyers could have located that same information that was in the statement by talking directly with Sherman.
Richardson this week responded.
"The suggestion that the defense would have obtained the exclupatory information that Sherman admitted that he was the one that killed Marlon Rand is ludicrous," the brief by Chapel Hill lawyer Ann Petersen says. "Sherman was charged with accessory after the fact in exchange for providing the name of the person he claimed was the one that shot and killed Marlon Rand. He named Defendant Richardson. ... To suggest that Sherman would have told defense counsel what he told (the gang underboss), that he, Sherman, was the one that committed the murder, is inane."
The full brief is attached to this post.
Read previous material on the Richardson case by clicking on this sentence.
J. Andrew Curliss covered state and local politics and government for The News & Observer for more than a decade before joining the investigative team in December 2008.
Contact him at 
