Man serving life in 1985 killing seeks new trial
On International Wrongful Conviction Day, Edward Wright says he is innocent
Attorneys for a man convicted over 38 years ago of a Springfield murder filed a motion for a new trial Monday, citing recently discovered DNA evidence and police reports that were kept from the defendant for decades.
The push to overturn the 1985 firstdegree murder conviction of 61-yearold Edward Wright comes on International Wrongful Conviction Day, which was also marked with events in Boston and around the state by people who spent decades in prison before they were exonerated.
“We are hopeful that after an openminded review, the Hampden County District Attorney’s Office and its new Conviction Integrity Unit will see that there are substantial grounds for [Wright] to receive a new trial,” said Stephanie Hartung, senior staff attorney at the New England Innocence Project, which announced it was taking the case alongside attorneys from two international law firms.
The motion marks the sixth appeal by Wright, who is serving a sentence of life without parole and has steadfastly maintained his innocence.
“I’ve never stopped trying to prove my innocence,” Wright said in a press release issued by his lawyers. “After so many denials, I am hopeful that a judge will finally look at all the evidence in my case – not just the horrific facts of the murder.”
He added, “I just want the truth to finally come out so a court can do the right thing and I can live out the rest of my life in freedom.”
Jim Leydon, a spokesman for Hampden District Attorney Anthony Gulluni, said a previous forensic review conducted by the office “did not reveal any new evidence questioning the integrity” of Wright’s conviction.
“The defendant has been denied a new trial on five previous occasions going back to 1985, one year after his conviction in a ghastly murder where the victim, a single mother, was found tied to a chair and stabbed over 60 times,” Leydon said in a statement. “The Hampden District Attorney’s Office’s Appeal Unit will review his most recent filing and present its case in court.”
Wright was arrested by Springfield Police in 1984 for the murder of Penny Anderson, a 24-year-old exotic dancer who was found stabbed to death in her apartment while her infant cried in his crib.
In previous appeals, Wright argued investigators had testimony from a
now-deceased witness who insisted that another man confessed to the murder. In oral arguments before the state’s highest court in 2014, an attorney for Wright said a woman had told investigators repeatedly that her ex-boyfriend, Allen Smalls, threatened her during an argument that he’d “kill her just like he killed Penny.”
The Supreme Judicial Court denied that motion, ruling that the discovery of new witness testimony “did not cast real doubt on the justice of the defendant’s conviction.”
Smalls is deceased, according to Wright’s lawyers.
In Monday’s motion filed in Hampden Superior Court, Wright’s attorneys said new genetic testing shows that DNA found on key pieces of evidence, including clothing Anderson was wearing the night she was killed, and a blood-covered washcloth found by police, does not belong to Wright.
“The absence of Mr. Wright’s DNA on items connected to the murder, and the presence of an unknown male’s DNA on those same items, strongly suggests that someone else committed this crime,” Wright’s attorneys said in their statement.
In their motion for a new trial, Wright’s attorneys also said they recently received Springfield police reports from Gulluni’s office that had never been disclosed to the defense by prosecutors and show that police were aware of other suspects with a motive to murder Anderson, yet did not investigate them. The reports also demonstrate that at least one officer lied on the stand during Wright’s trial about the reliability of crime-scene evidence, Wright’s attorneys alleged.
In a memorandum filed in support of their new trial motion, Wright’s lawyers said testimony from Springfield police “concealed that a break-in had occurred at the crime scene while the investigation was ongoing... [and] continued to make false statements about that break-in to post-conviction courts for over 35 years.”
In the filing, attorneys said one officer testified at trial that no one had been inside the victim’s apartment since the murder except for police, “even though he authored and signed the report recording the breakin at Ms. Anderson’s apartment.”
Isaac Saidel-Goley, one of Wright’s attorneys, said the new motion presents “overwhelming evidence” of Wright’s innocence, and he hopes it will prompt prosecutors to take swift action.
Wright’s attorneys have urged the court to hold an evidentiary hearing to examine the new evidence if prosecutors oppose the motion for a new trial.
“Mr. Wright has spent four decades fighting to recover his most fundamental human right — his freedom,” said Saidel-Goley. “We are optimistic that the Commonwealth will support Mr. Wright’s fight for exoneration; and we are confident that, at long last, justice will be served.”
On Monday morning, exoneree Sean Ellis and others who spent decades in prison before overturning their convictions gathered with lawmakers outside the Massachusetts State House to support legislation that would overhaul the state’s wrongful conviction compensation system. It would speed up payments by the state to prisoners who are released after their wrongful convictions are overturned and provide them with social services to help them return to the community.