PORTLAND, Ore. (AP) — An Oregon State Police investigation has found that evidence from a 1990s triple-murder case was in a state Department of Justice hallway for years, even as the Attorney General was recommending dismissing the case.
A jury found Phillip Cannon guilty of the 1998 murders of three people near Salem.
In 2009, the state approved a new trial after Cannon claimed that the technique used to analyze bullets at the murder scene was discredited.
When authorities attempted to retrieve the ballistics evidence in 2009, they found it missing.
Susan Gerber, who was then Assistant Attorney General, said she never received any evidence, an assertion challenged by Cannon’s appellate lawyer and a note in Gerber’s handwriting from 2005 listing contents of evidence boxes, the Oregonian reports (http://bit.ly/xIxEki ).
___
Information from: The Oregonian, http://www.oregonlive.com
