This week there is a hearing going on for Ryan Ferguson. His attorneys are requesting a new trial because they say due process wasn’t followed, and he had ineffective assistance of counsel.
Ferguson’s defense team is putting forth some interesting information. Several new valuable pieces of information are being presented.
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Shawna Ornt (a trib employee) testified that she repeatedly told then-Boone County Prosecutor Kevin Crane that a man she saw near the body was neither Ferguson nor Erickson. She said Crane scared her, and she did not know what she was allowed to say to attorneys or in the trial. So she did not tell anyone else during the trial or the deposition.
“He made me feel like I was wrong,” Ornt said of Crane. And Ornt did not tell Ferguson’s attorney because she didn’t know whether she was allowed to (source below).
Also during the trial, the janitor at the trib, Jerry Trump, pointed to Ferguson and said the man he and Ornt saw was Ferguson. But now the employee, Christine Varner, who got Trump the job is saying something different.
She (Varner) said Trump told her that he was standing in a lit dock area next to the Tribune’s building and roughly 30 feet from Heitholt’s car, and the two people were standing near the car in the dark, so he couldn’t identify them. Varner said after she saw coverage of the trial, where Trump pointed to Ferguson, she contacted the public defender’s office.
“It just bothered me,” she said (source below).
Also, a bouncer at the bar where Chuck Erickson said that he and Ferguson went to after the murder testifies that he has never seen the bar open as late as it would have been according to the testimony of Chuck Erickson.
And there is a more. A man by the name of Ronald Hudson, in the court paperwork, talks about running into a man named Clarence Mabon, who talked about being involved in an incident where a man got killed — in connection to the incident with the newspaper reporter.
Much of the testimony completely contradicts what Chuck Erickson wants us to believe, and gives doubt to the fact Ryan Ferguson was involved.
There is much more developing on this case, and I am thrilled to hear it. I have always believed Ryan Ferguson is innocent, and I have not believed Chuck Erickson’s story either. You can read my original opinion here from February of 2006.
Check out the details for yourself. There is a lot here!
New Source: Columbia Missourian
Ryan Ferguson’s Appeal Papers
