Steven L. Toney

1. Steven L. Toney Jessica Tucci NirmalaSubnaik Liz Rondepierre

2. Who Was Steven Toney?? 35 years old Male 6’ tall, 135 lbs, pockmarked face, and a full beard and mustache. Location: St. Louis, Missouri High School graduate Served in Army with an honorable discharge

3. The Crime Scene September 30, 1982 at 3:00 am Kelly Eve Morris testified that she arrived at her apartment complex, and noticed a man on the stair landing. She said that she was grabbed from behind by a man who covered her mouth and nose and held a knife blade to her throat. She stated that she had been dragged to the nearby wooded area, where she was raped. After being raped, she called the police and described her assailant.

4. THE Description From Kelly Eve Morris • Negro male • age 25- 30 years old • 5’8” stocky, muscular build • dark complexion • wore a white t-shirt, blue jeans, and leather gloves.

5. Steven Toney’s Arrest 1983: Steven Toney was arrested for a bad check, he proved his innocence and had the charges dropped. After his bad check charge was dropped, Steven Toney was asked to participate in a line up for a rape case. Kelly Eve Morris was shown photographs of some men, and picked Toney out of the group of 4, she then requested a line up. Steven Toney was picked out of the line up, despite the lack of evidence connecting him to the crime and charged.

6. Court Case One District Court for the Eastern District of Missouri Circuit Judge: Ross, Bowman, Beam During the trial, a gas attendant, Lee Adams, testified that he had seen a man approach the gas station on foot at around 3:30 am on the night of the rape and he had given a description to the Police that was the same as Kelly Eve Morris’s. Adams testified that Steven Toney was the man that he had seen at the gas station on the morning the rape had occurred. Toney pointed out that he did not match the descriptions that Adams and Morris had given to police, and that he was innocent. The judge ruled in favor of Kelly Eve Morris, and Steven Toney was convicted of the rape and sentenced to 2 consecutive life sentences to be served at Moberly Correctional Facility.

7. Toney’s Fight for Innocence: Filing for an Appeal After his conviction, Steven Toney filed for a motion for a new trial. His motion was denied at first without a hearing. The Missouri Court of Appeals, on the other hand, reversed and released the case to the motion court for more evidence of facts. Toney then filed for a petition for the habeas corpus in the United States District Court for the Eastern District of Missouri for the reversal. On September 4, 1992, the district court entered an order accepting the judge’s denial for petition. On March 24, 1994, after over a year and a half of resubmitting for further consideration, the judge recommended denial of Toney’s remaining habeas claims and denial of his renewed motion to permit DNA testing.

8. Toney’s Fight for Innocence: Appeal Court During the retrial, Toney argues that the district court erred in adopting the judge’s denial of a motion to now conduct DNA and other scientific testings. Toney claims that such testing would exonerate him of the crime. The State acknowledged that the exhibits from Toney’s state criminal trial remain in the custody of St. Louis County authorities, and are available if ordered by the court. The judge decided that Toney was not entitled access to the state exhibits for the purpose of DNA testing because the testing had no relationship to any claims put before the court. This was a violation of Rule 6 “a court’s denial of discovery is an abuse of discretion if discovery is ‘indispensable to a fair, rounded development of the material facts.’”

9. STEVEN TONEYS FIGHT FOR INNOCENCE: A FREE MAN With Toney’s allegations, the judge ruled that he showed good cause for discovery (under Rule 6), and stated that the district court abused Toney’s requests for the testing. The judge then reversed the district courts denial of DNA testing, and reversed Steven Toney’s sentencing after 13 years and 10 months in prison. DNA testing proved to be the deciding factor that proved that Steven Toney was convicted for a rape charge that he had not committed.

10. Toney’s Fight for Innocence: The Aftermath Steven Toney is now 61 years old. He has been out of prison for 11 years. He has a job with a rental car company at the airport, and works about 25 hours a week, but he does not mind, because he does not want to be “cooped up in an office.” Steven Toney does not own a car, he takes public transportation, and is living his life to the best of his ability. The Senator of Missouri had tried to get Missouri to repay Toney for his wrongful conviction for three years, before Toney was approved to receive over $200,000 for the time he served.

11. INTERESTING FACTS about Steven Toney’s Case In 1996, when Steven Toney left his home for the last 13 years and 10 days at Moberly Correctional Facility, the warden gave Toney $16 and good wishes. The first thing that Steven Toney had done after he was released was to go get a strawberry milkshake. The first time that Toney had talked to reporters, he had told them that he does not want to dwell on the negative. The March after Toney was released, he went to Jefferson City to testify on behalf of a bill that would establish some kind of payment for people who have been wrongly convicted and imprisoned, but it was denied.

12. SOURCES http://truthinjustice.org/solitude.html http://www.nacdl.org/public.nsf/defenseupdates/missouri003 http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/archives/individual/2003_05/001288.php http://caselaw.lp.findlaw.com/scripts/getcase.pl?court=8th&navby=case&no=944030p http://cases.justia.com/us-court-of-appeals/F3/79/693/555741/