10 August 2018 :

Teddy Chester did not have adequate legal representation when he was convicted in Jefferson Parish for the killing of John Adams, so he needed to be either retried or set free by Oct. 9, U.S. District Judge Susie Morgan in New Orleans ruled on June 11. Chester (40, Black) was found guilty in 1997 of 1st-degree murder and sent to death row for the December 27, 1995 killing of 34-year-old Adams, when Chester was 18. Chester maintains his innocence, reiterating that co-defendant Elbert Ratcliff was the killer. Ratcliff is serving a life sentence without the possibility of parole after exhausting his appeals. Fingerprints on the business cards led authorities to Ratcliff, who had fled with Chester. Ratcliff was later convicted of 2nd-degree murder and sentenced to life. In turn, Ratcliff led investigators to Chester, with each of the men claiming they had climbed into Adams' cab to try to sell him something when the other man killed the victim to rob him. Chester, now 40, pursued an appeal in Louisiana's state court system reluctantly. He repeatedly expressed a desire to end his appellate efforts and face execution before the state Supreme Court upheld his conviction in late 2016. But, with help from Kappel's team, Chester soon filed for what is known as post-conviction relief in the federal court system, which sent the case to Morgan. According to Morgan's ruling, Chester's team of court-appointed attorneys deprived him of his constitutional right to effective legal representation by missing key opportunities during the trial to undermine the prosecution's theory that Chester fired the gun that killed Adams. A man named Anthony Curtis said he was driving down the street when he heard Adams' shooting and saw Ratcliff emerge from the cab. Ratcliff, who had just rummaged through the cab, tucked a gun in his waistband, Curtis said in filings presented to Morgan. But the defense team led by attorneys Graham da Ponte and Cesar Vazquez did not call Curtis to testify about what he saw, which would likely have been favorable to Chester's defense, Morgan said. Furthermore, the defense didn't call a blood spatter expert to challenge the state's theory that 2 drops of blood on Chester's cap proved he was the shooter. A blood spatter expert consulted during the appellate process testified that the blood on the cap actually supported Chester's claim that he was a bystander and not the triggerman, Morgan noted. The defense team also didn't challenge the prosecution's assertion that it had used a DNA test to establish that the blood on the cap belonged to Adams. In fact, the test showed it was possible but "highly unlikely" that Adams was the source of the blood drops.