TIMELINE
(from http://www.aboutinnocent.org/Pages/Mauricetimeline.html)

December 20, 1973
Off-duty police officer Thomas Schadler is shot six times by an unknown gunman in the Harbor Wig and Record Store in downtown Benton Harbor, Michigan. His wife Ruth escapes injury. Schadler says he cannot identify the gunman.

 Maurice Carter is picked up by police in the neighborhood brought to the scene of the crime. Store clerk Gwen (Jones) Baird who spent 10-15 minutes with the gunman says Carter is not the shooter. Carter is released.

 December 22, 1973
Police take Ruth Schadler and Gwen Baird to Kalamazoo to view a lineup. They pick out Luther Whitfield as someone who looks like the gunman. Gunman was described as 5'8", dark complexion, left-handed. (According to the Benton Harbor arrest records Carter is 6'1", light complexion and right handed.)

 December 23, 1973
Thomas Schadler is released from the hospital.

 December 27, 1973
Detective Al Edwards receives a tip from a confidential informant that Maurice Carter is the shooter. Carter has left town for Oklahoma to visit relatives and then California looking for work.

 January 1974
Schadlers are shown a photo line-up of three individuals and Maurice Carter. They do not pick out Carter.

 November 1975
Wilbur Gillespie aka Tucker is arrested on drug charges.

 December 1975
Gillespie spends four days with the Benton Harbor police preparing an affidavit charging Maurice Carter with the Schadler shooting. In return, Gillespie receives $150 and a bus ticket to Lansing; drug charges against Gillespie are dropped by Benton Harbor police.

 Warrant is issued for Carter's arrest.

 January 1976
Carter arrested by Gary police and waives extradition the same day thinking a mistake has been made and he can clear up the matter by going to Benton Harbor. Upon his arrival at 10 p.m. at the police station a photographer from the daily newspaper is waiting to take his picture.

Carter's photo runs two columns wide near the top of page one of the next day's newspaper. Gwen Baird calls the Benton Harbor police to say they have the wrong man. The following week Schadler and his wife Ruth pick Carter out of a police line up. Schadler, who is now working for the Berrien County prosecutor, his wife Ruth and prosecutor employee identify Carter for the first time in two years. Gwen Baird is not invited to the line up.

 April, 1976
Gillespie recants in the courtroom, and says he lied about Maurice to cooperate with the police. He is charged and convicted of perjury. Meanwhile, with no physical evidence, no fingerprints, no known motive, and no weapon, the prosecution obtains a conviction of assault with intent to murder based entirely on the conflicting testimony of eyewitnesses. The only three African-Americans on the jury panel were all dismissed before they even got to the courtroom. Carter is sentenced to life in prison.

 April, 1990
A new television news network, CNN, hires one of the most reputable experts in the nation to run a series of polygraph tests on Carter on camera. He passes three times. The examiner declares that Carter was "innocent beyond a shadow of a doubt." Reporter Larry Woods did a thirty-minute segment on the case, and believes, today, that Carter is innocent.

March, 1999
After a series of failed Carter appeals, a fledgling Innocence Project in the University of Wisconsin-Madison Law School agrees to take on the case of Maurice Carter. Later, similar endorsement and involvement would come from Northwestern University Law School's Center on Wrongful Convictions, the Medill School of Journalism Innocence Project, the Michigan Innocence Project at Thomas M. Cooley Law School, and the Toronto-based Association in Defence of the Wrongly Convicted. The Kalamazoo law firm of Levine and Levine agrees to serve as Michigan counsel for Carter on a pro bono basis.

 November, 2002
The Wisconsin Innocence Project, the Center on Wrongful Convictions and the law firm of Levine and Levine files a motion and supporting brief in Berrien County Circuit Court seeking a new trial for Carter.

January, 2003
Berrien County Circuit Court Judge John T. Hammond directs the Berrien County Prosecutor's office to respond to the allegations of the Carter legal team.

June, 2003
After months of delays, Assistant Berrien County Prosecutor Beth Wild files a brief urging the court to deny the request for a new trial. At the conclusion of her brief, Wild states that Carter had confessed committing the crime to another inmate, Samuel Hill.

June, 2003
In a press conference in St. Joseph, ex-prizefighter Rubin Hurricane Carter announced that Carter and Samuel Hill had never met each other, and that the alleged confession was orchestrated by Carter's first defense attorney Jesse James. He produced a statement signed by Samuel Hill to substantiate his claim.

 July, 2003
The legal team for Carter cried "foul" in the prosecution's use of an unreliable, inadmissible, false assertion as a basis for denying relief and filed a 25-page rebuttal.

July, 2003
The Citizens Committee for the Release of Maurice Carter files a grievance against Carter's former attorney James Jesse with the State of Michigan Attorney Grievance Commission.

July, 2003
A stricken Carter is rushed to Lapeer Regional Hospital for treatment of an unknown illness. He is released after two days and returned to his cell.

July, 2003
Through his room-mate, Carter appeals for help from his best friend and his family after losing consciousness and suffering a loss of memory. After a dramatic appeal to the Governor's office by members of the Citizens Committee for the Release of Maurice Carter, Maurice is transferred to the Duane L. Waters prison hospital in Jackson where he is diagnosed with a liver ailment. His supporters believe he must be released in order to be treated properly, and made efforts to contact the court and the governor's office.

 August, 2003
Maurice Carter is diagnosed with Hepatitis C, end stage! It is also learned that he is being treated for Parkinson's Disease.

September, 2003
Carter attorneys ask to have the hearing on the motion for a new trial expedited, so that he can receive proper medical treatment.

October, 2003
Prosecutor James Cherry refuses a deal to grant Carter's release based on time served, so that he can receive appropriate treatment.

November, 2003
Berrien County Circuit Court Judge rejects the request for a new trial, climaxing four years of legal work.

December, 2003
Carter's attorneys file an Application for Leave to Appeal with the Michigan Court of Appeals. Meanwhile, Carter supporters ask Governor Granholm to commute Carter's sentence, even though the Michigan Parole Board votes against the move, 7-2.

 

ARTICLES | TIMELINE | BRIEF | ORGANIZATIONS