A Pennsylvania man, convicted of brutally murdering a woman and three children, has been freed from death row after being acquitted at a retrial.
A jury in New Castle, Pa., found Thomas H. Kimbell Jr. not guilty Friday after a trial that lasted nearly two weeks.
Kimbell became the 101st person to be released since 1973 from death row after exoneration, according to the Death Penalty Information Center in Washington, D.C.
Kimbell, 40, a onetime crack addict, was convicted in 1998 of viciously stabbing to death a woman and three small children in a mobile home four years earlier in what prosecutors had portrayed as a drug deal gone bad.
Two years later, the Pennsylvania Supreme Court overturned the conviction and said Kimbell was entitled to a new trial because the judge had refused to permit jurors to hear evidence that raised doubts about his guilt.
Although Kimbell, who lived near the murder victims, became a suspect early on, he was not arrested until more than two years after the killings.
There were no eyewitnesses or physical evidence linking Kimbell to the crime.
The issue that led to the retrial involved the testimony of Marilyn Herko, who was the sister-in-law of murder victim Bonnie Dryfuse. In addition to Dryfuse, her daughters Jacqueline, 7, and Heather, 4, and Herko's daughter, Stephanie, 5, were stabbed many times and their throats were slashed on the afternoon of June 15, 1994.
At Kimbell's first trial, Herko was called as a defense witness and testified that she was on the phone with her sister-in-law shortly before the murders. She said that Dryfuse ended the call, saying, "I got to go, somebody just pulled up in the driveway."
Then, defense lawyer Thomas W. Leslie attempted to ask Herko about a statement she had earlier given to state police, saying that Dryfuse told her she had to end the call because her husband, Tom Dryfuse, was pulling into the driveway. The prosecutor contended that Leslie could not impeach his own witness and thereby suggest that Tom Dryfuse had been at the crime scene 40 minutes earlier than the time he told police he had arrived and found the bodies. The judge agreed with the prosecutor.
The state Supreme Court said there was "a significant difference" between the two versions. "Defense counsel's inability to cross-examine Herko regarding the statement" deprived him of the opportunity to establish that the husband "was at the scene of the murders during the time he claimed to be elsewhere.
Kimbell had maintained his innocence despite testimony from witnesses that he had been near the scene of the crime shortly before the murders and despite the testimony of several individuals, including three jailhouse informants, that he had admitted committing the murders.
At the retrial, jurors heard both versions of Herko's story. In addition, one of the jailhouse informants had died and a second recanted his earlier testimony, saying he had been pressured into giving it.
Defense lawyer Leslie said he was very pleased with the outcome because "I felt all along that the prosecution did not have a good case to begin with. I think it's always questionable to use jailhouse informants because they are usually looking for something, and that creates an incentive for the inmate to make up a better story."
Anthony J. Krastek, Pennsylvania's senior assistant attorney general, said he was very disappointed in the outcome and still believes that Kimbell was the murderer. Krastek, who was the lead prosecutor at both trials, said that Kimbell had told people details of the crime that only the murderer could have known.
Lawrence County Dist. Atty. Matthew Mangino said his office would reopen its investigation of the case.
"There may not be anything more that we can do
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