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Chicago lawyer, law student fight for Ohio man who faces death penalty
MARY KATE MALONE
Law Bulletin staff writer
Published: July 11, 2012
As third-year law student Elliot Slosar investigates an Ohio death penalty case, he said the case keeps him up at night.
An innocent man sits on death row, Slosar said, and the clock ticks to get him a new trial.
Slosar teamed up with attorney Tara E. Thompson through the Exoneration Project at the University of Chicago Law School.
Last week, Thompson and an Ohio attorney filed a 78-page motion in Ohio's Lorain County Common Pleas Court on behalf of 41-year-old Stanley Jalowiec. They asked a judge for a new trial based on recently-discovered evidence that prosecutors and police withheld during Jalowiec's 1996 trial for the murder of Ronald Lally in Elyria, Ohio, Thompson said.
The evidence includes a recorded confession from a different suspect, Slosar said, and information indicating the state presented several tainted witnesses.
"It's hard for me to talk about it, let alone sleep," Slosar said. "It is so disturbing."
Slosar, a legal intern with the Exoneration Project and a student at DePaul University College of Law, helped investigate the Jalowiec case during the last six months, tracking down witnesses and reviewing thousands of pages of previously-undisclosed discovery from the Elyria Police Department, he said.
Slosar assisted Thompson, an Exoneration Project staff attorney and Loevy & Loevy associate, who filed the motion for the new trial along with Kimberly Rigby, an assistant state public defender in Ohio.
"There is just an incredible amount of information that the court never heard for various reasons," Thompson said. "This is a particularly compelling case of innocence. ... You have someone whose life is on the line."
Jalowiec received a death sentence for Lally's murder, and fought his conviction ever since, losing at the federal level just before the case headed to the U.S. Supreme Court, Rigby said.
"It's disturbing that a guy is close to getting executed by the state," Slosar said, "and all the while the police and prosecutors know he is innocent."
Slosar conducted nearly two dozen interviews with various witnesses, including a woman who worked as a confidential informant for the Elyria Police Department and who obtained a recorded confession from a different suspect — which was never revealed at Jalowiec's trial, Slosar said.
The police department continues to not turn over the taped confession, Slosar said. Slosar also learned that various witnesses who testified for the state at Jalowiec's trial gave untruthful testimony in exchange for "deals" from the chief of police and prosecutor, Slosar said.
The Lorain County prosecutor's office did not return a phone call seeking comment last Tuesday.
Jalowiec's case stands out among previous Exoneration Project cases because of the depth of information officials kept hidden for so long, Slosar said.
"Some of these cases (Thompson) and I have worked on, you can see how an eyewitness just picked the wrong guy, or DNA may not have been available, and you can see how a mistake was made," Slosar said. "But (the new evidence) shows that Stan's wrongful conviction was purposely done, and that, as a law student, is disheartening to say the least."
Slosar and Thompson said they hope the judge schedules an evidentiary hearing on the matter after the state responds to the recent motion.
"We're going to continue to investigate and develop additional evidence in the meantime, so our work doesn't stop here," Thompson said.
Loevy & Loevy funds the Exoneration Project, which the firm started about five years ago with the University of Chicago Law School, said Russell R. Ainsworth, a partner at Loevy & Loevy.
"We've helped a number of prisoners just by giving a voice to their claims," Ainsworth said. "We've been told over and over again that our clients had written numerous organizations and never received a response, so to get a response from us, and to get representation, was extremely meaningful for them."