Innocence Project Files for ‘94 Killing Evidence (scroll below the fold)
This is the most important and story I’ve ever written, and I fought editors at two newspapers to write it. Ultimately, I was only allowed to tell it through the lens of DNA evidence, rather than through the lens of judicial, police and lawyer misconduct, and inadmissible information that provided a motive for an alternative perpetrator. These things that I couldn’t write about resulted in what was very likely a wrongful conviction (a conviction several members of the original jury later regretted), that led to Belynda Goff, a mother and now grandmother, being sentenced to life without parole. (My editor was worried the newspaper would seem like an advocate. Frankly, I felt an advocacy role was warranted.) This story pressured a reluctant district attorney’s office and judge to release DNA evidence, setting a district precedent, and caught the attention of an op-ed writer, who ran with this story in a way that, as a news reporter, I couldn’t. He kept it in his column nearly every week, while I covered the related court filings.
I started reporting this story in 2012. At that time Belynda Goff had been imprisoned for nearly 18 years. The media coverage at the time of the homicide assumed her guilt. The coverage never mentioned that credible evidence implicated the victim, Stephen Goff, in an arson-for-hire scheme (he was allegedly paid but didn’t complete the “job”), nor did the jury hear this evidence. (Neither did my belated coverage mention the arson-for-hire, per editorial decisions made above my pay-grade. ) Belynda was charged a year after her husband’s death. In that year, she endured all various intimidation tactics, including her rental home burning as a result of arson, with her children inside. (Their barking dog woke them, and they fled the flames).
The DNA evidence was missing or corrupted, so Belynda languished in prison for 23 years until, due to the fantastic work of her Innocence Project lawyer, Karen Thompson, Belynda was sentenced to time served and freed in 2019. Had I not pushed this story and taken it from paper to paper, this story might never have made it to the public spotlight for a second time. Belynda could easily have died in prison.
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