October 13, 2017

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

State v. Lamonte McIntyre:                      
    As prosecutors, our job is to at all times pursue justice and not simply convictions.  I ran for this office with the aim to pursue the interests of justice, and in so doing to promote public safety and strengthen bonds of trust with our community.  I intend to continue to run this office with those guiding principles in mind.
Information has been presented over the last few weeks by Mr. McIntyre’s defense team and individuals in the community alleging misconduct on several  levels of law enforcement.  My office is not agreeing that any of those entities committed wrongdoing.  
In seeking to pursue the interests of justice, the question that I must instead determine as District Attorney is whether the unanimous jury verdict in 1994 might have been different if the information presented to my office was available for consideration during the deliberation.  It is incumbent upon my office to ensure the process we employ to bring about that justice is done in such a way that due process is provided to all accused, no matter how many years have passed.
In light of information learned by my office since I began in January, as well as through conversations with opposing counsel and many of the proposed witnesses who had been set to testify in court, I have been presented with information regarding identification of Mr. McIntyre in 1994 as the killer of Doniel Quinn and Donald Ewing. That information, which I believe was not available during the trial, is of a nature that I believe that had it been presented to the jury that convicted Mr. McIntyre, it may certainly have caused those jurors to have reasonable doubt as to Mr. McIntyre’s guilt.  With this information in mind, and my duties as a minister of justice, today I asked the court to find that manifest injustice exists and as a result Mr. McIntyre’s case was dismissed.
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