Clemency for widow urged in 1994 slaying

Crucial evidence missing, lawyer says

Clemency remains the best path to freedom for a 53-year-old woman convicted of killing her husband in 1994 because crucial evidence expected to help prove her innocence is missing, according to a lawyer for the nonprofit group that has been seeking relief for Belynda Goff.

“If we are unable to find a [DNA] profile [on remaining evidence] or if the court rejects our arguments, clemency remains Ms. Goff’s only path to freedom,” said Karen Thompson, a lawyer for the Innocence Project.

Goff, who has been imprisoned since 1996, refused a plea bargain and has maintained her innocence in the bludgeoning death of Stephen Goff.

Since Nov. 24, about 2,000 people have sent Gov. Mike Beebe a form letter provided by the Innocence Project, a New York-based advocacy group, urging the governor to consider clemency for Belynda Goff, Thompson said. Goff applied for clemency in August.

But Matt DeCample, a Beebe spokesman, said the state Parole Board is not scheduled to review Goff’s clemency application before May, when there will be a new governor, Asa Hutchinson.

Goff’s clemency request seeks a commutation to time served.

In June, Carroll County Circuit Judge Kent Crow granted Goff ’s request for

DNA testing on stored evidence, which her attorneys say might cast doubt on her conviction.

Under Arkansas Code Annotated 12-12-104, evidence in violent cases must be kept permanently, but pieces of evidence that Goff ’s attorneys believe are crucial are missing.

The missing evidence includes fingernail and hair samples taken from the victim’s clothes and palms, which Thompson believes may contain third-party DNA profiles. According to the autopsy report, Stephen Goff was found in a defensive position, with bruises and scrapes on his right knuckles and an inchlong cut on his right hand.

“Quite frankly, the hair and fingernails were our best hope,” Thompson said.

Neither the state Crime Laboratory nor the Carroll County sheriff’s office could find the missing evidence.

The Crime Lab has documents showing that on Dec. 12, 2000, Carroll County Deputy Greg Lester retrieved the evidence, but the sheriff’s office has no documentation of the evidence’s return.

In September, a court-ordered private investigator searched the sheriff’s office’s evidence rooms.

“It is my opinion that items of evidence relating to Goff have been lost and not accounted for, intentionally or otherwise,” Michael West of Arkansas Investigations wrote in his October report to Innocence Project lawyers.

“Items [of evidence] were generally placed inside tubs in a manner best described as ‘assorted’ or ‘random,’” West wrote. “Evidence items are not stored according to a sequential numbering system or by identification number. In other words it is not possible to go directly to a specific, identified section of the evidence room(s) and pull all items relating to a case.”

Once Goff’s clemency application is reviewed, the Arkansas Parole Board will determine whether a hearing is warranted. After, or in lieu of, a hearing, the board will send the file to the governor with a recommendation to grant or deny clemency.

If the governor decides to grant clemency, notice must be filed with the secretary of state. During a 30-day waiting period, the prosecuting attorney and sheriff in the county where the crime was committed, as well as the victim or victim’s next of kin, are notified of the intention.

If an application is denied, the person convicted must wait four years to reapply for clemency for the same crime. But in a case such as Goff’s, in which the applicant is sentenced to life without parole, the waiting period is usually six years.

The Parole Board may reduce the waiting period to a year because of such circumstances as the discovery of new evidence or the deteriorating health of the convicted person, according to Arkansas Code Annotated 16-23-207.

Thus far, Beebe has commuted eight sentences and has pardoned or intends to pardon 743 people, none of them for murder convictions. He has commuted at least one effective life in prison term, changing a 95-year sentence to a 40-year sentence.