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SHOTGUN MURDER TRIALS PRODUCED SOME BIZARRE COURT PROCEEDINGS
Claude Willis, Guest Columnist
GARY POST-TRIBUNE ALL ED
P B7
Friday, November 12, 1999
Claude Willis lives in Gary.
Obadyah Ben-Yisrayl, also known as Christopher Peterson, had four trials for being the shotgun killer who murdered several people in this area in 1990, but those trials turned out to be the most bizarre court proceedings this area has ever seen.
The strange thing was that all witnesses that seen this killer described him as a tall, skinny, blond, stringy-haired white man; but at trial they all changed their story and said it was Peterson, a black man, that they were mistaken before. The juries in the first two Lake County trials refused to believe that all the witnesses could make such a mistake and acquitted Peterson after the witnesses were caught in lies by the defense on the stand.
In the first trial, I was called to jury duty and was rejected by the prosecution; but the whole drama of turning a white killer into a obviously black man struck my attention. So I observed the first two Lake County trials plus a few days of the other two and followed news reports.
The third trial was in Porter County and after seeing two acquittals, prosecutors were afraid to try and sell the white man-black man story even to an all-white jury. So they arrested a lighter skinned friend of Peterson's, Ronald Harris, with no evidence other than eye witnesses who were sure the killer was white and were now willing to testify that Harris was the mistaken white man they saw. The witnesses stories changed so much in these trials, nothing was believable. First it was a white man, then it was Peterson, then it was Harris, then it was Peterson again.
The described white killer had a thin frame, thin lips and nose, white as a sheet, and stringy blond hair down to his neck. Harris had a solid frame, full lips and nose, brown complexion and bald head. Harris was tried and convicted in Porter County before Peterson's trial there. He was never tried in Lake County.
With the white man-black man question out of the way, Porter County was ready to try Peterson for the other murder, even though no witnesses told police before those trials that they had seen Peterson or Harris near or at the crime scenes. But the judge allowed pop-up, unheard of witnesses to testify who suddenly had remembered seeing Peterson in the area around the murder time. Where did they come from? Ask the prosecutors. This judge also allowed witnesses from the fourth Lake County trial to testify, two trials in one to achieve one conviction. That ruling was and still is purely unconstitutional.
The Lake County judge in the forth trial refused to allow a two for one trial, but he did allow more pop-up, unheard of witnesses to testify who also suddenly remembered they'd seen Peterson acting and sounding criminal. The only witness who testified at all four trials was an ex-con named Antwon Magee who said Peterson told him with others around that he killed all those people with a shotgun, but no one else heard it.
Magee also told of his deal with prosecutors. If Peterson wasn't convicted, Nagee would serve his full sentence in prison for a robbery at Southlake Mall.
When Peterson was arrested, his picture appeared in the Post-Tribune the next day with a story that said he gave a confession.
What's surprising is, Peterson's appeal of the Porter County trial is just being processed, but the Indiana Supreme Court ruled three years ago that his forth Lake County trial was fair. The third appeal was filed before the fourth, so why wasn't the appeals heard in that order?
It was only because of the illegal third trial that Peterson was convicted in the fourth. It wasn't until Peterson's head lawyer Jerry Jarret was suddenly disbarred from practicing law for three years, before the fourth trial started, that the whole circus act looked like a state conspiracy.
The fourth trial jury was so confused that they allowed the conviction, but chose not to put Peterson to death. The judge overruled that decision and sentenced him to die. This same judge watched Peterson be acquitted in two trials on no evidence but now wants death against the jury's wishes.
The night Magee was arrested for the Southlake robbery, he fingered Peterson as the shotgun killer. The police went to Peterson's mother's home with a search warrant and was let in. They found the shotgun Magee said Peterson had, but the gun was clean with no evidence of being fired recently; no fingerprints were on it; it was not loaded; and there were no shells in the house for it.
We are supposed to believe that Peterson willfully confessed to all shotgun murders that same night, even though he knew there was absolutely no evidence against him but the word of an ex-con trying to save his own neck. I rest my case.
(c) 1999 Post-Tribune. All rights reserved. (THIS IS THE FULLTEXT}
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