Kris Maharaj’s case has been, without question, the most comprehensive miscarriage of justice I have ever witnessed. I have seen bizarre cases of blasphemy in Pakistan, where mentally ill men have been sentenced to death for making irrational statements about Islam. There have been the drugs cases in Indonesia—the only "crime" other than blasphemy where large swathes of the public believe it should be totally legal, while others think you should die for what you did. But Kris’s case is just more extreme, in almost every way—everything that could go wrong with a case did go wrong.
An extremely successful businessman here in Britain, in the mid-1980s Kris was exploring splitting his time between London and South Florida, where he wanted to set up new business ventures. Then, in October of 1986 he was arrested for the murder of his former business partners, Derrick and Duane Moo Young in a Miami hotel; his alleged motive that the victims had stolen $400,000 from him in the months before.
Kris passed a polygraph asserting his innocence and six alibi witnesses placing him 30 miles away at the time of the murders inexplicably did not appear at the trial. In 1987 he was found guilty and sentenced to death in the electric chair.
I took on the case in 1993 at the behest of the British Government. It was clear to me from the start that Kris was innocent, and it is hard but to feel that I have failed him since then. We eventually (in 2002) got him off death row, but he is now 75, in ill-health and not eligible for parole until he is 101 years old.
The original trial judge, the impartial arbiter of the trial and, in Florida, the person ultimately responsible for the life-or-death decision, was Judge Howard Gross – popularly known as Howie the Mouse, who famously had a swimming pool in the shape of a small rodent. On the third day of Kris’ trial, half way through the State’s key witness, Judge Gross was led away in handcuffs having been caught on tape taking a bribe to fix a case for an agent posing as a Colombian narco-trafficker.
Remarkably, the trial continued, but the problems did not stop there. Kris’ defence witnesses never materialized and things could not have gone more wrong. He was nowhere near Room 1215 of the Dupont Plaza Hotel in downtown Miami when Derrick and Duane Moo Young (father and son) were murdered on October 16, 1986.
If a murder took place in Miami in the 1980s, odds were that it was related to drugs. If the money that the Colombian cartels had to launder each year was piled up in dollar bills, it would have weighed more than the population of Washington DC—not a city known for its shrinking waistline. The same pile of money contributed to the corruption in the Miami police department. A policeman who received an official salary of some $25,000 could pocket that much again by merely turning a blind eye to a stash of cocaine in the trunk of a narco-trafficker’s car. A second impressive statistic came in the form of corruption in the Miami Police Department’s homicide department: there were only 38 officers in the unit and 16 of those were themselves arrested or dismissed in one drug investigation.
Small wonder in Kris Maharaj’s case, perhaps, that the police hid the fact that the Moo Youngs were themselves involved in trying to launder billions of money around the Caribbean for the same cartels and were apparently skimming money off the top.
Over the years, we have dismantled the prosecution case, witness by dubious witness – but Kris is running out of time. Confined to hobbling around behind a walker after a bad case of necrotizing fasciitis (flesh eating bacteria) three years ago, and struggling with diabetes, his deteriorating health is moving in parallel with the creeping pace of the criminal justice system. His only respite, the weekly visits from his devoted wife Marita, who has stuck with him all this time.
Last month, Judge William Thomas in Miami presided over Kris’ last, best chance at justice, an evidentiary hearing on the new material and witnesses that we have accumulated to show who actually committed the crime.
First, Henry Cuervo, a retired DEA agent pointed out the various "red flags" in the police investigation at the time, as well as supporting the proposition the murders were the work of the Colombian drug cartels. Mr. Cuervo also testified about a telephone call that he received just last week from one of Pablo Escobar’s chief lieutenants, who told him that the cartels had had the Moo Young’s murdered because they had stolen money from Pablo Escobar.
Next, the Court heard from a former cartel pilot, testifying under a false name because of dangers to his life, who recounted how just two months after the murders, Pablo Escobar had told him not to steal from him—or he would end up being killed just like “Los Chinos” who he’d had killed in a Miami hotel. Indeed, another former cartel member, Jorge Maya, testified by video that his brother Luis had paid almost one million dollars from Escobar to a cartel hitman named “Cuchilla” (‘The Blade’) for the murders, as well as that of another victim.
Miami lawyer Brenton Ver Ploeg testified about documents he located when defending the Moo Young’s life insurance claim (worth $1.5 million)—documents he viewed as strongly indicating their involvement in narcotics and money laundering. The court also heard from one of the State’s witnesses at trial, Prince Ellis, who testified about the drug involvement of his then associate Eddie Dames (in whose name the hotel room used for the murders was booked) and that he now suspects that Dames used him as an alibi that day. He also recounted how he had seen the alleged eye-witness shortly after the murders wearing a torn and bloodied shirt, repeating several times that “they just went crazy and started shooting, there were bullets all over the place”—as well as two suitcases full of money.
Last, Baruch Vega, a former CIA and government informant testified that the elder victim, Derrick Moo Young, was being investigated at the time by the authorities for his involvement in narcotics. Not only this, but that he knew in 1986 that it was a cartel murder and that he reported this fact to his law enforcement handlers at the time. This, in addition to a former Miami police officer who admits that the Miami Police Department helped frame Kris.
And yet it is by no means clear that Kris will be home for Christmas. He may well win last month’s hearing, but he faces a difficult challenge if he wants the courts to recognize his innocence. While the legal system purports to place a heavy burden on the prosecution at trial—proof beyond a reasonable doubt—once a jury has reached the wrong decision, appellate courts exalt the false god of finality above all else. In the earlier appeals of Kris’ case, the federal courts cited the bizarre Supreme Court precedent—Herrera v. Collins—suggesting that whether Kris is innocent is not legally relevant under the U.S. Constitution to whether he should spend life in prison. He had the right to a fair trial, they intoned, not necessarily a trial that reached the right decision.
Even in those few states that do recognize a claim of innocence, the prisoner must prove his case by “clear and convincing evidence”—meaning that a judge must be very sure that Kris did not commit the crime, well above a preponderance of the proof. By way of contrast, if you flip a coin you have a fifty-fifty chance of getting the right answer.
It is a sobering thought that an innocent person may be more likely to receive justice from a coin toss than from the US judicial system.
An extremely successful businessman here in Britain, in the mid-1980s Kris was exploring splitting his time between London and South Florida, where he wanted to set up new business ventures. Then, in October of 1986 he was arrested for the murder of his former business partners, Derrick and Duane Moo Young in a Miami hotel; his alleged motive that the victims had stolen $400,000 from him in the months before.
Kris passed a polygraph asserting his innocence and six alibi witnesses placing him 30 miles away at the time of the murders inexplicably did not appear at the trial. In 1987 he was found guilty and sentenced to death in the electric chair.
I took on the case in 1993 at the behest of the British Government. It was clear to me from the start that Kris was innocent, and it is hard but to feel that I have failed him since then. We eventually (in 2002) got him off death row, but he is now 75, in ill-health and not eligible for parole until he is 101 years old.
The original trial judge, the impartial arbiter of the trial and, in Florida, the person ultimately responsible for the life-or-death decision, was Judge Howard Gross – popularly known as Howie the Mouse, who famously had a swimming pool in the shape of a small rodent. On the third day of Kris’ trial, half way through the State’s key witness, Judge Gross was led away in handcuffs having been caught on tape taking a bribe to fix a case for an agent posing as a Colombian narco-trafficker.
Remarkably, the trial continued, but the problems did not stop there. Kris’ defence witnesses never materialized and things could not have gone more wrong. He was nowhere near Room 1215 of the Dupont Plaza Hotel in downtown Miami when Derrick and Duane Moo Young (father and son) were murdered on October 16, 1986.
If a murder took place in Miami in the 1980s, odds were that it was related to drugs. If the money that the Colombian cartels had to launder each year was piled up in dollar bills, it would have weighed more than the population of Washington DC—not a city known for its shrinking waistline. The same pile of money contributed to the corruption in the Miami police department. A policeman who received an official salary of some $25,000 could pocket that much again by merely turning a blind eye to a stash of cocaine in the trunk of a narco-trafficker’s car. A second impressive statistic came in the form of corruption in the Miami Police Department’s homicide department: there were only 38 officers in the unit and 16 of those were themselves arrested or dismissed in one drug investigation.
Small wonder in Kris Maharaj’s case, perhaps, that the police hid the fact that the Moo Youngs were themselves involved in trying to launder billions of money around the Caribbean for the same cartels and were apparently skimming money off the top.
Over the years, we have dismantled the prosecution case, witness by dubious witness – but Kris is running out of time. Confined to hobbling around behind a walker after a bad case of necrotizing fasciitis (flesh eating bacteria) three years ago, and struggling with diabetes, his deteriorating health is moving in parallel with the creeping pace of the criminal justice system. His only respite, the weekly visits from his devoted wife Marita, who has stuck with him all this time.
Last month, Judge William Thomas in Miami presided over Kris’ last, best chance at justice, an evidentiary hearing on the new material and witnesses that we have accumulated to show who actually committed the crime.
First, Henry Cuervo, a retired DEA agent pointed out the various "red flags" in the police investigation at the time, as well as supporting the proposition the murders were the work of the Colombian drug cartels. Mr. Cuervo also testified about a telephone call that he received just last week from one of Pablo Escobar’s chief lieutenants, who told him that the cartels had had the Moo Young’s murdered because they had stolen money from Pablo Escobar.
Next, the Court heard from a former cartel pilot, testifying under a false name because of dangers to his life, who recounted how just two months after the murders, Pablo Escobar had told him not to steal from him—or he would end up being killed just like “Los Chinos” who he’d had killed in a Miami hotel. Indeed, another former cartel member, Jorge Maya, testified by video that his brother Luis had paid almost one million dollars from Escobar to a cartel hitman named “Cuchilla” (‘The Blade’) for the murders, as well as that of another victim.
Miami lawyer Brenton Ver Ploeg testified about documents he located when defending the Moo Young’s life insurance claim (worth $1.5 million)—documents he viewed as strongly indicating their involvement in narcotics and money laundering. The court also heard from one of the State’s witnesses at trial, Prince Ellis, who testified about the drug involvement of his then associate Eddie Dames (in whose name the hotel room used for the murders was booked) and that he now suspects that Dames used him as an alibi that day. He also recounted how he had seen the alleged eye-witness shortly after the murders wearing a torn and bloodied shirt, repeating several times that “they just went crazy and started shooting, there were bullets all over the place”—as well as two suitcases full of money.
Last, Baruch Vega, a former CIA and government informant testified that the elder victim, Derrick Moo Young, was being investigated at the time by the authorities for his involvement in narcotics. Not only this, but that he knew in 1986 that it was a cartel murder and that he reported this fact to his law enforcement handlers at the time. This, in addition to a former Miami police officer who admits that the Miami Police Department helped frame Kris.
And yet it is by no means clear that Kris will be home for Christmas. He may well win last month’s hearing, but he faces a difficult challenge if he wants the courts to recognize his innocence. While the legal system purports to place a heavy burden on the prosecution at trial—proof beyond a reasonable doubt—once a jury has reached the wrong decision, appellate courts exalt the false god of finality above all else. In the earlier appeals of Kris’ case, the federal courts cited the bizarre Supreme Court precedent—Herrera v. Collins—suggesting that whether Kris is innocent is not legally relevant under the U.S. Constitution to whether he should spend life in prison. He had the right to a fair trial, they intoned, not necessarily a trial that reached the right decision.
Even in those few states that do recognize a claim of innocence, the prisoner must prove his case by “clear and convincing evidence”—meaning that a judge must be very sure that Kris did not commit the crime, well above a preponderance of the proof. By way of contrast, if you flip a coin you have a fifty-fifty chance of getting the right answer.
It is a sobering thought that an innocent person may be more likely to receive justice from a coin toss than from the US judicial system.
