After spending 11 years on death row, Chauncey Starling is getting a new trial.
In an opinion released Monday, Supreme Court Justice Collins Seitz Jr. reversed Starling’s 2004 jury conviction of shooting a man and a five-year-old boy to death in a barbershop three years earlier.
Prosecutors heavily relied on eyewitness testimony and never linked any physical evidence to Starling.
Seitz’s opinion found his lawyer’s performance “ineffective” by allowing prosecutors to introduce a statement from Starling’s brother, which may have come out of duress during a police interrogation.
The lawyer also failed to ask barbershop owner Lawrence Moore about how he described the shooter as substantially taller than Starling to an investigator. Moore also said a photo of Starling printed in a newspaper didn’t look like the culprit.
In a concurring opinion, Justice James T. Vaughn Jr. agreed that a new trial is needed, but rejects Seitz’s assertion that the lack of cross-examining Moore qualifies as legal prejudice.
A spokesman for the attorney general’s office says they’re evaluating the court’s decision.