D. Post-Trial
Motions Directed Trial Court I to
Concepts and Testimony to Alter in the
Transcript.
For the convenience of the Court, this Memorandum will simply summarize
some of the evidence presented in the briefs, described above in the above-cited
footnote to Mr. Hartman’s appeal brief. This sampling of the evidence
demonstrates that tampering occurred and also documents the material nature of
the alterations to the corrupted “official” transcript of Mr. Hartman’s Trial I
before Judge Collier.
Aside from the
serious and fatal suppression issues, the primary issue that defense counsel
argued to the Court at the close of the trial was that the judge had deprived
Mr. Hartman of a fair trial by limiting and often foreclosing Mr. Hartman’s
right to a full and fair cross-examination of the State’s witnesses. Defense counsel expressly cited to Davis v.Alaska, 415 U.S 308, 318 (1974) (holding Petitioner was denied the right of effective
cross-examination which "'would be constitutional error of the first
magnitude and no amount of showing of want of prejudice would cure it'). During
defense counsel’s argument, the judge winced noticeably when counsel expressly
pointed to Davis.
Because Attorney Robert Dixon represented Mr. Hartman on
appeal, the undersigned counsel did not have the opportunity to review the
Trial I transcripts until preparing to file Mr. Hartman’s petition for
post-conviction relief.[1] When counsel and her investigator reviewed
the “official” transcripts of Trial I, the undersigned discovered that someone had completely deleted from the transcript the places where the
trial judge had stopped her from questioning the State’s witnesses.
That discovery immediately prompted a closer inspection and
review of the materially altered transcript of Mr. Hartman’s Trial I, which
disclosed a number of other substantive deletions and alterations to the
transcript, set out below.
[1]
Defendant had requested the appointment of Ms.
Cramer to handle his appeal. Judge
Collier, however, denied that written motion and appointed Attorney Dixon, who
was not present for Trial I or any pretrial proceedings. Thus, he could not know that the transcripts
did not reflect what had occurred.
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