Legal News

?The District May Be a Great Place to Live, But It?s a Bad Place to Die?

By Ashby Jones

As a journalist, it’s well known that you’re supposed to keep emotion at bay when you’re covering a given story. We try hard to follow that precept, but we’ll admit it gets hard when we turn, as we sometimes do, to the tragic story of Robert Wone.

Wone, pictured, was murdered about three years ago while visiting friends in a tony section of Dupont Circle, in Washington, D.C. At the time, he was the newly installed general counsel at Radio Free Asia. Wone, who seemed a soft-spoken and well-liked type, left behind a wife. He was 32. For background on the murder and ensuing investigation, click here, here and here for LB posts, and here and here for a pair of wonderful Washington Post stories from June.

The long and the short: the police department hasn’t filed murder charges against anyone in the case — though it has charged three men of conspiracy, obstruction of justice and crime-scene tampering.

The case even spawned a Web site — whomurderedrobertwone.com. The folks who write that site were cleared some room today by the Washington Post editors to commemorate the third anniversary of Wone’s death with an opinion piece that pulls no punches in regard to the bungled investigation.

Write Craig Brownstein and David Greer:

[T]here have been the numerous law enforcement mistakes. Each of the three men who were at home on the night of the murder was separately interviewed by the police, but authorities failed to videotape several hours of at least one of the suspects’ interrogations and missed the first hour of another’s. Forensics teams looking for blood or other biological evidence at the scene misapplied a common chemical used in investigations, Ashley’s Reagent, tainting much of the evidence recovered.

. . .

It gets worse. A D.C. police detective found Wone’s BlackBerry at the scene and saw two draft/unsent e-mail messages on it. Not only was the BlackBerry not tested for fingerprints, nor the messages transcribed, but the Secret Service, which managed the data forensics, failed to “image” the device before it was recycled back into service at Wone’s place of employment, Radio Free Asia. This critical piece of evidence is now considered lost.

And how’s this for a chilling conclusion:

Being a homicide victim in the District may be a great equalizer; position guarantees you nothing. If the slain former colleague of the U.S. attorney general gets lethargic and sloppy treatment from authorities, then what hope do the rest of us have? The District may be a great place to live, but it’s a bad place to die.

Full post as published by Law Blog - WSJ.com on July 27, 2009 (boomark / email).