Double Trouble

Questioned by Warhurst, Smith confirmed that police officers came to his house carrying a warrant for Haley's arrest and a photograph of Haley to help identify him. Based on the photograph, the cops thought Smith, who answered the door, was Haley. Officers cuffed him; they released him only after he produced his driver's license.

But prosecutors zeroed in on more confusing aspects of the crime. Ketchmark's wife, Roseann (also now a federal prosecutor), was co-counsel in the prosecution. Questioning Smith, she walked him through the night.

"Why should we believe you that you didn't shoot someone if you don't know what happened?" she asked.

"Because I know I didn't shoot anyone."

She then showed the videotaped confession. "I can't deny that it was me because that's me on the tape," Smith said. "But whatever I said on there, I know I didn't do that."

Then she asked Smith to roll up both of his sleeves to show the jury there was no tattoo on either of his forearms.

David Ketchmark argued in court that Smith's mind was filled with too many blanks in his videotaped recollection of the crime. Ketchmark tells the Pitch he has two theories why Smith would confess to a crime he didn't commit.

First, he suggests, Haley made Smith feel guilty for having had Haley bail him out of the fight. It's possible that Haley demanded Smith take the fall and that Smith agreed, Ketchmark says.

Second: Smith was so out of it, in a dreamlike state from Xanax and alcohol, that Haley could have convinced him that he'd been the shooter by continually putting the thought in Smith's head before the police stopped him.

The question of whether Haley's DNA was on the gun did come up in court — but not prominently until Warhurst's closing argument, when he blamed police for not testing the gun themselves. "There is some sloppy police work here," Warhurst told the jury. "There was no DNA testing on the blood. John Frank Smith had blood on his hands, and there was blood on the gun. And they [investigators] could have tested that blood to find out whose blood it was.... One person and only one person knows who fired, for sure, who fired that shot, and he told you he did it, and he told you why he did it.... Smith has blood on his gun and blood on his hands. He's got two victims already. Don't add Jack to his list of victims."

It took the jury 10 hours to find Haley guilty on all counts.

Platte County Circuit Court Judge Owens Lee Hull sentenced Haley to 27 years.

After Haley was bused to prison, the Haley family hired Mike Sanders, who is now the Jackson County prosecutor but was then in private practice, to review the case. Sanders took Haley's first appeal to the Western Division of the Missouri Court of Appeals, where he argued — unsuccessfully — that Haley hadn't received a fair trial.

Sanders continued working on the case for a year and a half before he was nominated to run for Jackson County prosecutor. Preoccupied with that campaign, Sanders handed Haley's files to Jonathan Laurans.

Laurans moved into the next phase of appeals — if he could prove that Haley's DNA was not on the gun, the court might grant a new trial.

He investigated whether Warhurst should have had DNA tests run before the trial. The question before the three-judge appeals panel wasn't whether Haley deserved a new trial based on new evidence. Rather, Haley's fate turned on a question of courtroom strategy: Had Warhurst, by not having the gun tested for DNA, demonstrated incompetence in his representation of Haley?

On April 1, 2003, after repeated motions, the court allowed Laurans to have the gun tested.

According to the lab, Technical Associates Inc. in Ventura, California, Haley's blood was not on the gun. Laurans tells the Pitch he was certain that the new evidence was enough to set Haley free or get him another chance in court, but the appeals judges were not swayed.

"Warhurst recalled discussing with Haley whether to test the gun for fingerprints, but he decided not to pursue the issue because Haley had acknowledged handling the gun in the hours preceding the shooting incident," the judges wrote in their ruling this past March. "Warhurst hoped to avoid developing any evidence that might indicate the gun was ever in Haley's hand.

"The motion court found that it was reasonable trial strategy not to conduct DNA testing on the bloodstained gun, because all three men in the car had been bloodied during the nightclub brawl and the test might have produced an unfavorable result for Haley," the judges continued. "The court noted that the absence of DNA testing allowed counsel [Warhurst] to argue the blood belonged to someone else and that police had poorly investigated the case by not conducting the testing themselves.... In assessing counsel's performance, we are to refrain from using hindsight to second-guess decisions of trial strategy."