MEDIA CONTACT:

STEVEN ENGELHARDT (314) 504-4029

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE: FRIDAY, NOVEMBER 9, 2012

Clay “Deeply Troubled” by Missouri AG Koster’s Decision to Appeal Release of George Allen

Cites Irrefutable Evidence that Allen is Innocent

WASHINGTON, DC – Congressman Wm. Lacy Clay (D) Missouri has sent an urgent letter to Missouri Attorney General Chris Koster expressing his astonishment regarding AG Koster’s decision to appeal the immediate release of Mr. George Allen, who was wrongly convicted of murder and rape, even after St. Louis Circuit Attorney Jennifer Joyce declined to re-file charges against him.

In his letter to AG Koster, Congressman Clay said in-part:

“I am deeply troubled by your decision to appeal Cole County Circuit Judge Daniel Green’s decision to void the convictions of George Allen. As you know, Mr. Allen is a mentally ill black man who was wrongfully convicted in 1982 and has spent the last thirty years incarcerated for crimes of which he is actually innocent.

I am astonished by your decision to appeal and to ask for a stay of Mr. Allen’s release.

There is overwhelming evidence of Mr. Allen’s actual innocence and that exculpatory evidence of actual innocence was suppressed at his trial, as well as a clearly false confession taken from a mentally disturbed person.

There has been a long and thorough court review of the considerable and irrefutable evidence that Mr. Allen is innocent, including St. Louis Circuit Attorney Jennifer Joyce’s decision not to re-file charges against Mr. Allen.

I agree with Judge Green’s decision that he should be released immediately.

I ask you in the strongest possible terms to drop your appeal and allow this innocent man to return to his family after three long decades.

I am also quite disturbed by the evidence that has emerged of serious misconduct on the part of the St. Louis Police Department.

Police provided false testimony at Mr. Allen’s trial, hiding the fact that they found semen on the victim’s clothing which was not from the victim’s boyfriend (or her husband) and which could not have come from George Allen.

Police also hid that an important witness at trial, whose testimony corroborated a detail in the confession, was actually uncertain about the memory to which she testified; police sent the witness to a hypnotist prior to trial. This is obviously exculpatory evidence that police should have turned over to the defense.

Mr. Allen has suffered a grave injustice that must be remedied swiftly.

This matter is of the utmost importance to the local community, the State of Missouri, and to our nation.

I ask that you no longer stand in the way of justice being carried out for this innocent man, and allow George Allen to be returned to his family and his community immediately.”

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