Prosecutorial Misconduct Alleged in Jeffrey MacDonald Case
A front page article in today's Wall Street Journal on the Jeffrey MacDonald case reports that lawyers for MacDonald filed papers yesterday in the 4th Circuit to set aside MacDonald's sentence based on newly-discovered evidence of prosecutorial misconduct.
It's been more than a quarter-century since Jeffrey MacDonald was convicted of murdering his wife and two daughters in their Fort Bragg, N.C., home. The former Green Beret, 62 years old, is serving a life sentence in a Cumberland, Md., prison. Dr. MacDonald's story has been examined in dozens of judicial opinions, dramatized on television and told in a best-selling book, "Fatal Vision."
Now a bizarre epilogue is unfolding.
Helen Stoeckley matched MacDonald's description of one of the attackers the night of the murders of his wife and children. Jimmy B. Britt was a deputy U.S. marshall who drove Stoeckley to Raleigh to testify at the trial. On the way, says Britt, Stoeckley said she was in MacDonald's house the night of the murders. She gave details of the interior of the house.
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