OPENING STATEMENT, 2
by Sherman Powell
The next thing I want to point out that we think the evidence is going to show in
this case is that this business about the DNA, and I hope you remember and I hope
you write down and never forget what Will Dill told you the evidence is going to
prove in this case and what the experts were going to say about this. I submit to you
that the evidence in this case is going to be that the experts from the State of
Alabama and probably those somewhere way down in Louisiana somewhere are
going to come in here and they're not going to testify to you like sombody said that
this hair belonged to Daniel Moore. They're not going to do that. That's not going
to happen. The only thing they're going to tell you is that these hairs are
mitochondrial DNA that he can not be excluded. They're not going to say that was
his hair. They're going to tell you that he can't be excluded. Remember what Will
Dill told you he was going to prove? They're going to tell you some facts and
numbers and we're going to have an expert that disagrees with them, and he's going
to testify to about what this mitochondrial DNA means and he's going to tell you and
we expect the evidence is going to show that he's going to tell you that even if what
they say is true about this hair that can't be excluded as coming from him, that there
is other people that share this same characteristics. They don't know how many for
sure, don't know where they are, but let's just say there's five people out of 1600 in
the world that share this. So how many would that put in Morgan County,
Alabama? We expect the evidence is going to show you or the lack thereof that
they're desperate and that their evidence is incomplete and it is not conclusive
beyond a reasonable doubt at all that Daniel Moore was even over there much less
that he killed anybody.
And some other points I wanted to briefly let you know where we're going just to
kind of show you we're not in agreement with what Will Dill says at all. Then we'll
sit down and start talking evidence. Another thing that I wanted to mention to you
is he says that he had the knowledge, and I forget the word he used, but we think the
evidence is going to be that Daniel Moore had no knowledge in the world that these
people's alarm was broken. We think there's going to be testimony in this case from
Howard Godbee that opened this electronic place that Daniel Moore hadn't worked
with him or seen him in months. He had no way of having any knowledge that this
alarm was broken. We expect Howard Godbee is going to tell you that this alarm
system had a short in the basic system in it, and that Howard Godbee will tell you a
person of knowledge of this system such as Daniel Moore did not disarm this system.
He did not take the panels off the wall but that he knew how to disarm it and that it
was not even disarmed. That's what the evidence is going to show to you.
We expect that the evidence is also going to show you in this case that somebody
that did not know what they were doing took those things off and laid them down.
We expect the evidence is further going to show you that the police department for
the City of Decatur went out there and there was a lot of them. They did a lot of
investigation. That they took fingerprints, that they got Daniel Moore's truck, they
got his motel room, they got his boots, got his drawers, and they got everything they
could find that he had. They got his apartment and microscopically vacuumed and
swept them and cleansed them and have nothing to show for it.
We expect the evidence in this case is going to show you that they didn't even
bother to go out there in the driveway and get in the vehicles belonging to the
Tiptons and check them to see if there was any blood, check them to see if there was
any hairs, check them to see if there's any sheet resins or fibers, that they didn't do
that.
They get up here and tell you that equivocally beyond a doubt that this boy is
guilty of murder. He's guilty of nothing but being a sneak thief and being addicted
to drugs and that's it.
And another thing that I want to point out to you is this. I think that--well, I
won't go there. In this particular case they expect to tell you--they expect to prove to
you with their evidence and we're going to expect the evidence to bear this out, but
they expect the evidence to show, he said, that there was a wet rag in there in the
bed and it contained a hair that was his. He said it was his and the experts will say
it was his. We.., we think in this case that you know enough about people that rape
and rob or kill and as much as I knew or Daniel Moore knew, and he tells you that
somebody is going to go over there and get them a wet rag and a towel and go in
there and jump in the bed with somebody and rape them and kill them.