USA - Alabama. Judge Robert Smith dismissed capital charges against George Martin

Circuit Judge Robert Smith dismissed capital charges against ex-state trooper George Martin, 58, Black, and barred his retrial because of the prosecution's "willful misconduct." Martin had been convicted for burning alive his wife, Hammoleketh Martin, in a car fire in 1995. In 2000, jurors recommended that Martin be sentenced to life, but the trial judge overrode their recommendation and imposed a death sentence. In 2014, an appeals court overturned Martin's death row sentence. In 2015, judge Smith granted Martin bail and allowed him to work and live within Mobile County while awaiting further action in his trial. In the trial, the prosecution asserted that Martin had burned his wife alive, but suppressed a witness's statement that she kept a can of gas in her car. It also willfully withheld evidence that it had shown photos of every black trooper from Mobile County to a white witness who had seen a "black man" in a trooper's uniform in the vicinity of the car, and that the witness not only had not identified Martin, but had selected the picture of a different trooper. Judge Smith wrote, "If the Martin case is not one which is appropriate for dismissal, there may never be one... The affirmative use by the prosecutors of partial truths and untruths with knowledge," he wrote, constituted "willful misconduct."