Word: babin
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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...pressure...Then James Rowell gets busted for a whole slew of robberies. My read is, Rowell led them to Shareef. This is a classic case, where the snitch provides the first lead. When Rowell fingers Shareef, the cops say, 'Hey, we've got our guy.' They come to Connie Babin and say, 'If you don't finger him, he'll kill again...
...Nearsighted Witness. On the night of the murder, Babin told police that things were so confusing she doubted she could identify the killer. She did say he was "slightly shorter" than Gerardi--but, in fact, Cousin is 4 in. taller than Gerardi. Three days later, in a formal, taped statement, police asked Babin again if she could ID the killer. "I don't know," she said. "It was dark, and I didn't have my contacts or my glasses so I'm coming at this at a disadvantage." That statement was never turned over to the defense. Later...
...Absent Evidence. No physical evidence links Cousin to the crime--no fibers, no blood, no weapon, nothing. Prosecutors say he became a suspect when he was identified by Babin in a "photo lineup." A tourist and a restaurant worker were said to have made, as prosecutors put it, tentative identifications. "A tentative identification is the equivalent of a partial pregnancy," says Stafford-Smith. "There is no such thing." Stafford-Smith charges that Babin and the other "tentative" witnesses were coached by detectives to identify Cousin in the photo lineup...
...didn't the D.A.'s office share Babin's seemingly indecisive original statement with the defense? Berry says the prosecution had no legal obligation to share the statement. But Bryan Stevenson, head of the Equal Justice Initiative in Montgomery, Ala., says prosecutors do, in fact, have a legal obligation to share with the defense exculpatory evidence--and in capital cases mitigating evidence, as well. Says Stevenson: "The obligation of the prosecution is to accomplish justice, not just get a conviction...
...Babin is still haunted by Cousin. "It was very hard to sit on that witness stand and breathe the same air as he, Shareef, does," she says. "He knows what I know. Unfortunately, Shareef and I are the only two people left who know what happened." There was something about him on the night of the murder, she says, that she can't shake. "He was the one who made eye contact," says Babin. "I watched his face. I watched his hands. I'll live with that. That's the face Michael...