“That would have been a red flag for me,” said Rosia Ivey, who paid part of Spolin’s fees in installments and put part on her credit card. You can’t just say, ‘I asked my lawyer to hire a ballistics expert and he didn’t do it.’ That’s nonsense,” said Cliff Gardner, who has done habeas cases in California for 40 years and represented Scott Peterson in his successful attempt to overturn his death sentence. “You have to have the raw evidence for the judge to analyze. Top habeas experts said courts require detailed evidence in filings before considering whether to hold an evidentiary hearing. evaluating a petition for a convicted murderer named Davione Wiley noted, “Petitioner has not explained what opinions a gang expert might have added that would have benefited his defense.” She added, “This court is not the forum for Petitioner to develop the evidentiary record.” “The Petition includes no exhibits or declarations from a video expert alleging what forensic video techniques would uncover in the video in question,” Alameda County Superior Court Judge Morris Jacobson wrote last year in refusing to overturn the conviction of Spolin client Alex Ivey.Ī federal magistrate judge in L.A. But he didn’t retain experts himself to present evidence to the court how their testimony might have resulted in a different verdict, common practice in habeas petitions.
In numerous other petitions reviewed by The Times, Spolin argued that clients should get a new trial because their previous lawyers hadn’t called expert witnesses. In the petition he filed on Soto’s behalf in 2021, for example, Spolin listed eight individuals who could attest to his whereabouts on the day of the crime but did not interview them or submit sworn declarations from them. How a Westside lawyer cashed in on criminal justice reformĪ Times investigation found that Aaron Spolin built a booming enterprise by fanning the false hopes of inmates’ families.
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