A cross-border pro bono team at Reed Smith, led by senior litigation partner Michael Skrein in London and senior appellate partner Raymond Cardozo in San Francisco, represents Maharaj, who is now 79 years old and in poor health.
“Mr. Maharaj is a British citizen convicted and previously sentenced to death for a crime he did not commit,” said Skrein. “This application of more than 100 British parliamentarians, of various political persuasions and faiths, is to permit him to present evidence of his innocence in order to overturn that conviction.”
According to the brief: “There is a growing world-wide consensus around the rights of convicted persons to present evidence of their innocence even when such evidence emerges outside the normal channels of trial or post-conviction review.”
However, relying on a Supreme Court precedent, the prosecution argued in a filing last week that: “The existence merely of newly discovered evidence relevant to the guilt of a state prisoner is not a ground for relief on federal habeas corpus.”
The parliamentarians argue in the amicus that such a rule violates fundamental norms of international law, particularly in Maharaj’s case, when the evidence of innocence is so clear.
“The suggestion that innocence is not relevant is simply mad,” said Clive Stafford-Smith, the founder of Reprieve, a nonprofit organization of international lawyers and investigators that has been fighting for Maharaj’s release for two decades. “The British government and politicians from all parties recognise that the evidence of Kris’s innocence is overwhelming. Police and prosecutors had evidence that he was not the killer in 1986, but are still fighting 31 years later to keep him in prison. It’s time for the U.S. justice system to accept that, if they get the wrong man, the very least they must do is set him free.”
Maharaj was living in Florida when Derrick and Duane Moo Young were shot dead in a Miami hotel in October 1986. Although Maharaj had six alibi witnesses, none was called to testify at his trial. Furthermore, prosecutors, police and the state’s key witness have all been shown to have lied in court during his trial.
After years of investigation, Stafford-Smith and Reprieve uncovered evidence that the Moo Youngs were laundering billions of dollars for Colombian drug lord Pablo Escobar, and that it was his cartel that had them killed after they lost or stole some of that money. Five members of the cartel have given statements admitting that they were responsible for the murders.
The Reed Smith parliamentarian amicus follows a brief filed last month by the UK Foreign Office demanding the release of documents that may prove authorities knew the cartel was responsible for the murders.
The overwhelming evidence of Maharaj’s innocence will hopefully be presented at a federal hearing later this year, along with dramatic testimony from a government informant and a retired DEA agent that the police knew who the real culprits were all along. However, the prosecution argues that this is all irrelevant and that no hearing should be held.
“Kris is the victim of an appalling miscarriage of justice that has already stolen thirty years of his life and kept him apart from his loving wife, Marita,” said Stafford-Smith. “The demand from Britain’s politicians could not be more clear: it is time to bring this innocent man home."
"I have supported Kris and Marita Maharaj for over 20 years,” said Sir Peter James Bottomley, who has served as a Member of Parliament since 1975. “We have met four times in his cells in court and in prisons. I believe the evidence shows he is innocent and that his conviction is unsafe. It is strange to the outsider that the Florida Attorney General argues, now that the evidence is clear, that innocence is not enough for a prisoner to be released. My motive in respectfully signing the Parliamentarians' brief is to encourage our friends in America to clarify that innocence does justify release."
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