The Missouri Attorney General’s office opposed Ryan Ferguson’s petition for habeas corpus last Tuesday.
In February 2011, supporters of Ferguson petitioned for habeas corpus, which would have required Ferguson to appear in court again. The petition stated that testimonies provided by key witnesses Charles Erickson and Jerry Trump had been retracted.
After Kathleen Zellner, Ferguson’s lawyer, filed the petition, the court reviewed it and conducted an evidentiary hearing to determine the merit of this petition’s assertions.
In a 61-page response, Assistant Attorney General Stephen Hawke argued to the Missouri Court of Appeals Western District that Ferguson’s claims of perjury have already been heard in a circuit court and that a second review is a waste of judicial resources. Hawke also wrote that “full and fair evidentiary hearing has now established those claims to be meritless and, in several instances, completely untrue.”
The document goes on to say that the petition did not prove Judge Kevin Crane was or should have been aware that Erickson lied at Ferguson’s trial.
The attorney general wrote that the petition had nothing new or substantial to litigate and was instead hoping to convince a different judge to reach a different result.
Ryan Ferguson was convicted of the murder of Kent Heitholt in 2004. Heitholt, the sports editor at the Columbia Daily Tribune, was robbed and beaten to death in the Tribune parking lot. There was no DNA, blood or fingerprints linking Ferguson to the crime. Due to the varied accounts of the murder since 2005, especially Erickson’s, Judge Daniel Green did not consider their recantations to be credible and denied Ferguson a new trial.
The court’s response has generated a furious flurry of responses on the Facebook page created to petition Ferguson’s freedom.
“It’s interesting that instead of considering why this case has gone so far procedurally they instead dismiss Ryan’s attempt of regaining freedom by describing it as a ‘shopping for the court who will rule to his liking,’” Columbia resident Annie Aguzzi wrote in a Facebook post.
Bill Ferguson, Ryan Ferguson’s father, said he thinks the attorney general’s response to the appeal is confusing, inconsistent and factually incorrect on several counts.
The next step for the family is to respond to the attorney general’s denial.
“We asked the court if we could respond and within an hour of filing the request, it was granted, which is very unusual,” Bill Ferguson said. “They’ve given us until March 22 to respond to the denial.”