RYAN FERGUSON IS INNOCENT
RYAN FERGUSON'S CASE IS UNIQUE IN MISSOURI CASE LAW
Ryan's case is unique in Missouri because no other case has demonstrated both actual innocence (Amrine) and a constitutional violation (jury, Brady violations). Amrine did not have a constitutional violation and the other cases did not have clear and convincing evidence of actual innocence.
MISSOURI STANDS ALONE
Missouri stands alone in keeping an innocent man incarcerated after the only witnesses against him have admitted perjury in open court at a habeas hearing. After an exhaustive review of case law across the United States, no case exists in which the only witnesses against the defendant admitted perjury in open court at a habeas hearing. Until April of 2012, there were two alleged eyewitnesses keeping Ryan in prison--Jerry Trump and Charles Erickson. Until April of 2012, Ryan had no chance of walking out of prison because of these two people.Remarkably, Erickson and Trump took the stand in April of 2012 and admitted they lied at Ryan's trial when they implicated him in Kent Heitholt's murder. Both men subjected themselves to perjury charges by recanting. This has never happened before in an American courtroom in a habeas hearing.
Recanting witnesses may give affidavits admitting perjury but they rarely take the stand and admit perjury. This is the watershed event in Ryan Ferguson's case. There is no case in the United States where the only alleged eyewitnesses recanted in open court, the conviction has been upheld, and the person remains incarcerated.
Statement from Ryan Ferguson on 12/5/2005:
"Some day the truth will come out and everyone will see that I am innocent, and I will be free. And that will be a great day, because on that day the justice system will finally have done justice."
It has been said, "When guilty men escape, the law has merely failed. When an innocent man is condemned, it creates the very evil it was to cure, and destroys the security it was made to preserve."
(Sir Samuel Romilly, Observations on the Criminal Law as It Relates to Capital Punishments, and on the Mode in Which It Is Administered, in The Speeches of Sir Samuel Romilly in the House of Commons 166 (1820).)
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