A Bitter Lesson for Lancaster County

By midmorning on the first day of Lisa Michelle Lambert’s federal habeas corpus hearing, U.S. District Judge Stewart Dalzell already could be seen displaying alarm over what he was hearing.

From the lawyers’ briefs alone, he’d read enough to persuade him to grant Lisa’s request for this uncommon federal review of a state murder conviction. He’d read enough to suspect that just possibly,Lisa Lambert, although sentenced to life without parole, hadn’t killed Laurie Show over a teenage romantic rivalry. He’d read enough to surmise that just maybe, Lisa’s boyfriend, Lawrence “Butch” Yunkin, along with a girl named Tabitha Buck, had killed Laurie.

Now, he was listening to evidence that served only to deepen his concerns regarding Lancaster County’s prosecution of Lisa.

It was March 31. Computers, boxes of documents and piles of papers filled the small hearing room on the fifth floor of the federal courthouse in downtown Philadelphia. Lisa’s parents sat in the first row, Laurie Show’s behind them. Reporters and court personnel occupied the jury box. On the stand, an expert witness for Lisa’s side, Northwestern University speech professor Charles Larson, was testifying.

Contrary to the autopsy report, Larson believed--as did three emergency medical technicians and the Philadelphia medical examiner--that Laurie Show’s left carotid artery had been severed by whoever slashed her throat. This, he explained, left her unable to say “Michelle did it,” as Laurie’s mother, Hazel, had claimed. Her vocal tract was “destroyed,” her left brain hemisphere “dying.” She was “totally incapable of speech.”

How, asked Lisa’s attorney, Christina Rainville, could two doctors have signed an autopsy report saying that the carotid arteries weren’t “involved”?

Those two doctors were both Lancaster County physicians, one the part-time coroner, the other an ear-nose-and-throat specialist.

“I don’t think they were telling the truth,” Larson replied.

Dalzell peered over gold wire-rimmed bifocals at the witness. “Oh,” he said. “Well, OK.”

So it went, hour by hour, for 15 days.

That this hearing was even being held appalled most in Lancaster County, about 75 miles west of Philadelphia. In the 1991 killing of Laurie Show, Lisa had already been found guilty of first-degree murder, Tabitha Buck of second-degree, Butch Yunkin of third-degree. Now here was Lisa, claiming her innocence, claiming all sorts of prosecutorial abuse. Now here was Lisa, seeking a federal order freeing her because the state had illegally imprisoned her.

For Lisa to cast herself as an innocent victim was maddening enough. For a federal judge to take her seriously was unimaginable. Yet that was just what was happening in this Philadelphia courtroom.

The second day of the hearing found Dalzell puzzling over two quite different versions of a videotaped police search of the Susquehanna River. The one initially provided by the Lancaster County district attorney, eight minutes long, had no soundtrack, and no images of police finding a pink bag Lisa said she’d thrown there. The second, obtained through discovery only after Rainville realized she’d been sent an edited tape, was four minutes longer. It had sound. It also had an officer kicking at a pink bag while another asked, “What do you got, a bag?”

After watching these tapes, Dalzell removed his glasses and rubbed his eyes, something he’d do more than once during the three-week hearing. He studied Lisa, also something he’d do more than once, especially in the hearing’s early days. Lisa, sobbing off and on, was staring down at the table where she sat, bent over, her hands between her legs. Dalzell looked as if he were trying to fathom her character.

The third day found Dalzell puzzling over Lisa’s initial statement to the police. He listened to East Lampeter Police Det. Raymond Solt try to reconcile the typewritten first page, where Lisa says she wore her own clothes at the murder scene, and a handwritten last page where Lisa says she wore Butch’s sweatpants. He listened to Solt explain how he destroyed all his notes from the interview. By the time Solt stepped down, the judge was referring openly to “Ms. Lambert’s alleged statement.”

With Det. Ronald Barley on the stand later that afternoon, Dalzell grew even more openly dissatisfied. Barley was a well-regarded detective in Lancaster County. A “very thorough investigator” is how Ted Darcus, chairman of Lancaster’s City Council, considered him. Barley “dealt well with people in our community accused of crimes.” Yet this wasn’t apparent to Dalzell.

Barley, being questioned about the taped interview he helped conduct with Butch Yunkin--a tape full of laughter, clicks and obvious gaps--kept waffling so much that Dalzell finally snapped: “Answer her question! Yes or no?” Rather than heed the suggestion, Barley grew even more evasive. Asked about a critical spot where the recorder clicked off, he denied even being in the interview room at that moment.

Dalzell had heard enough. He called a recess and ordered all the lawyers into his chambers.

“I want to know what is going on here,” he told Lancaster County Dist. Atty. Joseph Madenspacher. “I’m hearing perjured testimony. . . . As we had with Det. Solt, [Barley] is contradicting his own statement. . . . My patience has just run out. . . . I’m afraid the commonwealth is allowing perjured testimony in federal court. . . . I’m being lied to. . . . This man gives me the unbelievably fantastic statement that suddenly he ‘evaporated.’ It’s totally incredible, and I’m afraid I’m going to have to refer this, if this keeps up, to the United States attorney. . . .”

Madenspacher shifted uneasily. This hadn’t been his case to try. He’d left the prosecution to his seasoned first assistant, John Kenneff. “I understand what the court is saying . . .,” he replied. “I don’t know what I’m going to do, but I’m going to do something.”

Little changed, though, when Barley resumed the stand. He didn’t recall his colleague, Det. Ronald “Slick” Savage, turning the tape recorder on and off. He destroyed his notes after taking Butch’s statement.

“No, no . . . please answer her questions. Will you do that?” Dalzell interrupted at one point.

“You knew . . . because you took the statement?” the judge asked later. “Or did you disappear for that part? . . . Oh, do you have that ability to appear and disappear at will?”

By the time Barley tried to explain how he “completely forgot” they’d found a pink bag during the river search--a pink bag that Lisa told them contained Butch Yunkin’s bloodied sneakers--Dalzell was beside himself. It helped his mood little when, with Barley still on the stand, Rainville moments later played the segment of unedited videotape that showed an officer kicking the pink bag, then waving the camera off.

“No, that’s not me,” Barley said.

Rainville inched the videotape ahead a moment. “No, no ma’am.”

Again she moved the tape forward. Now the man at the river could be seen clearly.

“That is me,” Barley allowed. “I don’t know why I waved at that point.”

Dalzell again peered over his eyeglasses. “Who were you waving to? The record should reflect that the witness definitely waved directly at the camera. What in the world were you doing, if you weren’t waving to the camera?”

Barley looked blank. “I don’t recall, sir.”

Defendant Alleges Gang Rape

On the seventh day, Dalzell began to hear Lisa Lambert’s story of being gang-raped by three policemen six months before Show’s murder.

Lisa--her extravagant eye makeup toned down but still too thick for Rainville’s taste--had started testifying the previous day. Now she described being stalked by an officer named Robin Weaver, of vainly calling his police chief to complain, of receiving threatening calls after the alleged attack. She explained how fear had kept her from telling this story before. Finally, she explained why she now was willing to talk.

In a deposition given to Lisa’s attorneys before the hearing, Weaver, without being asked, had referred to the gang-rape accusation. He thought Lisa had cited it in her habeas petition, but she had not. The charge had never been raised publicly. To Lisa, Weaver’s comment, therefore, provided independent proof of her claim: “There is no way that he could have ever known about that unless he was there and he did it. It was not raised in the petition.”

Dalzell interrupted: “Is that true?”

“That is true, your honor,” said Rainville, who had been appointed by the judge to represent Lisa on a pro-bono basis.

Dalzell again had heard enough: “We’ll take another recess. . . . I want [Weaver] here this afternoon, and I don’t want anyone to say a word about what has come up here. If he resists, please tell me. I will have the marshal arrest him, OK?”

Moments later, Dalzell learned that prosecutor John Kenneff already had discussed the rape allegation with Weaver.

“So he’s been coached . . . ,” Dalzell exclaimed.

The judge’s budding animosity toward Kenneff was palpable. The prosecutor had not yet appeared before him, but the residue of his work at the Lambert trial was everywhere.

“I’m going to direct that Mr. Kenneff have no further contact with any witness in this case. . . ,” Dalzell declared. “And he might want to consult with counsel. . . . I’m going to want to hear about this, because in the context of this case, Mr. Kenneff, God help him, if he coached this witness. God help him. . . . Mr. Kenneff, at his election, should retain counsel for proceedings that may follow this one.”

On the witness stand that afternoon, Weaver absorbed the full brunt of Dalzell’s rancor. The judge grilled him: Have you talked to any human beings? You understand you’re in federal court? You understand the laws of the United States apply? You understand you’re under oath?”

Weaver said he did, and then denied any involvement in a rape of Lisa Lambert. Dalzell, though, wasn’t finished.

Weaver had been among the first on the murder scene. It was he who’d initially questioned Hazel Show, and it was he who had written the police report. Yet, nowhere in it had he indicated that Hazel Show heard her daughter make a dying declaration about Lisa. Nor had he done so in a final report written three weeks later.

“Yes or no,” the judge demanded. “Did you hear Hazel Show report a dying declaration?”

“I don’t remember. . . . “ Weaver replied. “She could have or she may not have.”

“Is it your testimony that you would not have put it in a report if Hazel Show had told you about a dying declaration, that you would not have put it down in that report? Is that your testimony? Yes or no?”

“No.”

“So the fact that you don’t make reference to a dying declaration, is some evidence that she didn’t tell you that. Correct?”

“You can infer that, yes, sir.”

“Oh,” the judge said. “I could infer it. Could I infer anything else from that?”

Mounting Anger Among Citizenry

Day by day, watching from afar or from a courtroom seat, the citizens of Lancaster County grew ever more amazed and furious as the Lambert hearing unfolded. This is shocking us, they declared. This is shaking our confidence in the American judicial system.

What troubled them, though, were not the revelations coming out of Dalzell’s courtroom. It was, rather, Dalzell’s conduct.

The judge was “making the county look bad.” The judge sounds as if he “revels in publicly humiliating Lancaster County.”

Most irksome of all was the judge’s handling of Lancaster County authorities. He was “discourteous” to the police officers and John Kenneff. He sighed and rolled his eyes and looked at the ceiling as they testified. He interrupted with his own questions, as if to assist the defense. He acted as if he didn’t believe them.

Many in Lancaster County just couldn’t fathom such an attitude. The police and prosecutors were their neighbors, their friends, their protectors. They couldn’t possibly manipulate evidence. They couldn’t possibly lie.

By midway through the hearing, a certain tone of frantic fear could be heard in the county’s response. Don’t believe the “lies and untruths” being aimed at our police, urged East Lampeter Supervisor Chairman John Shertzer. Don’t “rush to judgment.” It’s “unfortunate that so much is being made of such insignificant points.”

In his opening statement at the hearing, Madenspacher, the district attorney, had allowed that the investigation hadn’t been “perfect,” that maybe they’d been a little “careless,” maybe a little “sloppy.” Others, though, refused even to acknowledge that much. All sorts of citizens instead continued to offer glowing tributes to the police and prosecutors.

No one official drew more accolades than did John Kenneff. He is a big, heavyset man with a full, broad Irish face. Growing up in Lancaster County, Kenneff was considered a fine schoolboy, a high achiever. Not Harvard-level material, but his college, Villanova University, was nonetheless a good school. Not as good as the University of Pennsylvania, but the next step.

He’d come back after law school, opened a private practice, worked his way up through the D.A.’s office. He came to all the Fourth of July picnics; he brought his family, he brought his dog. He was known as a committed, persistent prosecutor, one of the fairest and most reasonable in the county.

Even the defense attorneys who went up against him said as much. Even they called him a decent, honest guy. To Terry Kauffman, a dairy farmer and chairman of the board of county commissioners, that particularly carried a lot of weight: “A lot of people I know here, from both sides of the aisle, say he’s the best. I know them, and I’ve known Jack Kenneff for years. I don’t know Stewart Dalzell.”

Darcus--the chairman of the Lancaster City Council, a black man from West Virginia who followed a Boys’ Club job to Lancaster 30 years ago and happily settled--believed he possessed an especially close take on John Kenneff’s character. They’d been involved together in a “Weed and Seed” anti-crime development program in Lancaster’s minority community. So Darcus saw Kenneff not just as a prosecutor, but a community leader. Also as a father: Kenneff’s children went to the same Catholic school as Darcus’ son.

“I’ve seen how he cares about people,” Darcus said. “I’ve seen him deal with people in my community. I’ve seen him go beyond what was needed. Knowing Jack Kenneff, I just can’t picture this man doing what the judge says. I wonder how that judge sleeps at night.”

Denials From the Prosecutor

No, John Kenneff insisted. No, he didn’t think Butch Yunkin’s sweatpants were a critical issue at the murder trial. No, he had no recollection of looking at the sweatpants the state put into evidence.

It was April 15, the hearing’s 11th day. Kenneff had taken the witness stand soon after court convened. Questioning him was Peter Greenberg, Rainville’s husband, a partner at their law firm and one of Philadelphia’s most-accomplished litigators.

At the trial, the state’s theory of the murder had Lisa wearing Butch’s extra-large men’s sweatpants, found full of blood in a dumpster after the attack. Trial judge Lawrence F. Stengel accepted this theory and thought it significant. So Kenneff’s answers now caused Dalzell to lean forward.

“Did you make a conscious judgment at trial as to who was wearing the clothing that you put into evidence?” Greenberg asked.

“It was my understanding that Miss Lambert had admitted to wearing the clothing . . . ,” Kenneff replied.

Dalzell interrupted: “I don’t think that’s the question he asked you. And I think you ought to listen more carefully to Mr. Greenberg’s questions because I don’t think you’re answering them. . . . That question can be answered yes or no.”

So it went through much of the morning. Lancaster County citizens were right: Dalzell by then couldn’t hide his dismay for their assistant district attorney. The moments when the judge removed his glasses and rubbed his eyes were adding up.

For 10 days he’d been exposed to an ever-more disturbing portrait of how Kenneff had prosecuted Lisa Lambert. He’d listened to the pathologist Isidore Mihalakis--a defense witness at Lisa’s murder trial--describe private conversations with Kenneff that Dalzell thought constituted witness-tampering. He’d heard how authorities had concealed critical testimony by Hazel Show’s neighbor Kathleen Bayan. He’d been presented evidence that convinced him the state had “lost” an earring of Butch’s found on the victim’s body. He’d been presented evidence that convinced him the state had edited critical video and audiotapes.

Now the man who oversaw the state’s efforts sat before Dalzell on the witness stand.

No, Kenneff was testifying. He didn’t recall looking at the river-search video.

“You didn’t think it worthwhile to look at the video?” Greenberg asked.

“I didn’t think what happened at the river was a contested issue,” Kenneff replied.

This time, Greenberg snapped before the judge could: “You’ve been in this business long enough to know that when I ask a question you’re supposed to answer it?”

“Right,” Kenneff agreed.

Dalzell joined in now: “It would be nice if you would do that. . . . I want to warn you, sir, that, if you don’t do that, you are going to put me into a position where this will have to get unpleasant. Do you understand that? . . . The record should reflect that you have been consistently unresponsive to the questions. . . . “

Greenberg turned back to the matter of Butch’s sweatpants. Now, Kenneff has even resisted saying he based the case on the theory that Lisa wore Butch’s clothing. He no longer, in fact, was sure whether the sweatpants were Butch’s.

The pair he’d produced for the habeas hearing, after all, were much smaller than men’s extra-large. “The sweatpants would have looked ridiculous if worn by 6-foot-1-inch-tall Butch,” Kenneff had argued in a written response just before the hearing.

“You are the same person . . . “ Greenberg asked, “saying that the sweatpants would have looked ridiculous on Butch, who put Butch on to testify in Lisa’s trial . . . that they were his sweatpants, these very same sweatpants that would have looked ridiculous on him?”

“Correct.”

“These are the same sweatpants that Judge Stengel found belonged to Butch?”

“Correct.”

“And if you had your way, Lisa would have been executed based on that evidence, wouldn’t she?”

Kenneff hesitated; Dalzell spoke: “Yes or no,” the judge ordered.

“That would be correct.”

Greenberg erupted: “Do you think this is some kind of game? . . . Do you realize that there is a human being sitting here who is in jail serving a life sentence based on the evidence you put on . . . that you are now disowning. . . . Not only are you disowning it, you are committing perjury. . . . Are you sure it is Miss Lambert who is a dangerous person in this courtroom?”

Handling of Letter Infuriated Judge

In the end, the commonwealth’s handling of the controversial 29 Question Letter was what most inflamed Dalzell.

Lisa had written Butch from jail, asking a series of questions. The answers Butch had scrawled under each question, the judge felt, left no doubt that he was the murderer of Laurie, and that his accomplice was Tabitha Buck. That the letter was authentic seemed equally certain to Dalzell: Both the state and defense experts had affirmed there’d been no alteration.

Yet, Kenneff--after stipulating to the experts’ opinions--had let Butch testify at Lambert’s trial that the questions were altered. That the prosecutor knew his witness was committing perjury appeared obvious to Dalzell. At Butch’s plea-bargain hearing after Lisa’s conviction, Kenneff wanted to revoke their deal precisely because of this perjury.

Experts had reviewed the 29 Questions Letter and Butch’s trial testimony, Kenneff told the judge at that Oct. 10, 1992, hearing. “They advised us that his testimony . . . regarding that [letter] that was false . . . . It is our opinion that he testified falsely . . . on that basis we feel we are entitled to withdraw from the original plea agreement.”

There just was no ambiguity, Dalzell felt: Kenneff knew that Butch committed perjury on a material issue, regarding a document that established Lisa’s innocence.

Under such circumstances, Dalzell believed Kenneff had an unambiguous ethical obligation to take remedial action with the court that convicted Lambert. The Pennsylvania Rule of Professional Conduct was clear about this: “A lawyer shall not knowingly . . . offer evidence that the lawyer knows to be false. If a lawyer has offered material evidence and comes to know of its falsity, the lawyer shall take reasonable remedial steps.”

Yet far from complying with this rule, it looked to Dalzell as if Kenneff had encouraged Judge Stengel to accept Butch’s perjured testimony. “I think he’s just like any other witness,” Kenneff told Stengel when Lisa’s attorney moved for a mistrial based on Butch’s perjury. “You can believe some of it, all of it, or none.”

It was worse than that, in Dalzell’s eyes. For, after obtaining a conviction based partly on this perjured testimony, Kenneff had coolly proceeded to seek the death penalty for Lisa Lambert.

Now, remarkably, Kenneff at this habeas hearing--and in written responses that looked to Dalzell to be blatantly false--was back to arguing that some of the 29 questions had been initially written in pencil, then altered. In other words, Kenneff, before Dalzell, was defending testimony by Butch that he had told two other judges was a lie.

“Do you want to take remedial actions with Judge Dalzell?” Peter Greenberg asked.

Here the judge interceded: “I was just going to ask that myself. . . .”

It was the morning of April 16, the hearing’s 12th day. Kenneff had been on the stand for hours.

“Well, your honor,” Kenneff responded. “I think I still feel the same way about the 29 questions. . . . That there is some type of tampering with it. . . . “

“No, no, no, sir,” Dalzell interrupted. “I am going to jump in here. You said in your answer to me that there was pencil. And you have testified under oath here that your expert and the defense expert said there was no graphite. . . . “

“Judge,” Kenneff began.

Dalzell spoke over him: “I want to warn you, sir, you are under oath, and you are subject to the rules of professional responsibility. . . . Do you retract that statement that you signed . . . as to pencil? Yes or no?”

“I just don’t think I can answer that question yes or no, judge.”

Dalzell turned to Madenspacher, Kenneff’s supervisor. “Does the commonwealth retract it?”

Madenspacher rose. “Yes, your honor. We retract it.”

“Thank you,” Dalzell said. He turned back to Kenneff. “Your boss just retracted it. Next question.”

Their confrontation hadn’t peaked yet.

The climax came minutes later, when Greenberg began listing all the pieces of evidence that the district attorney’s office kept from Roy Shirk, Lisa’s attorney at her trial. What if Shirk had the names of the emergency medical technicians? What if he knew the police had found a pink bag? What if he had the unedited river-search video? What if he knew a neighbor had seen Butch at the crime scene?

“Well,” Kenneff tried to answer, “the Pennsylvania Rule provides for certain . . . “

That’s as far as he got. Dalzell exploded: “No. Excuse me. We’re talking here--let me just make something clear to you. We’re talking here about something called the United States Constitution, and in particular the 14th Amendment thereof, which has a clause in it that refers to due process of law. OK? Have you heard of that?”

“Yes sir.”

“That’s what we’re talking about. . . . So we’re not talking about the Pennsylvania Rules of Criminal Procedure. We’re talking about due process of law here. . . . That’s what we’re talking about here. You got it? Do you understand?”

“Yes,” Kenneff replied.

Biggest Drama Begins to Unfold

As it happened, the confrontation between Dalzell and Kenneff was neither the most dramatic nor revealing sequence to occur on this 12th day of Lisa’s habeas hearing. The event that would eclipse it began only after Kenneff left the witness stand, and court adjourned for lunch.

Madenspacher, walking toward his hotel, bumped into Hazel Show’s brother, who reported that his sister needed to talk to him. Back at the Holiday Inn in downtown Philadelphia, where both were staying, Madenspacher walked up to Show’s room.

Sobbing as she talked, the murder victim’s mother told him her story.

During the hearing that morning, she’d suddenly recalled the morning of the murder: As she drove up Black Oak Road to her condo, on her way to find Laurie’s body, a brownish-colored car passed, heading out of the condo complex. It was Butch’s car. She looked at Butch. There was recognition on his face. He pushed down someone with blond hair. There was also a third person in the back seat, with black hair.

She’d told this to Det. Ron Savage back then. Savage had come to her house saying one of her neighbors had seen Butch’s car leave the complex. She’d started to say she had too. Savage had stopped her, told her not to dwell on that. They had so many witnesses saying Butch wasn’t there. Besides, this neighbor lady was kind of disturbed anyhow. Probably wouldn’t be a reliable witness. We were better to go with Butch not being there.

Hazel was sobbing harder now. She’d forgotten about it, she told Madenspacher. She’d put it aside. Until now.

Madenspacher was reeling. Hazel’s story fit exactly with testimony given by that “neighbor lady,” Kathleen Bayan, on the hearing’s fourth day. Testimony that Hazel hadn’t heard because she’d left the courtroom early that day. Testimony that had never been produced at Lisa’s murder trial. Testimony that Kenneff knew about back then but had never shared with Lambert’s attorney. Testimony that Savage had tried to water down while taking Bayan’s initial statement, then dismissed as coming from a woman with “an emotional problem.”

Hazel’s story also fit perfectly with something else: Lisa Lambert’s testimony at her trial. There she’d told of driving by Hazel Show, of Butch saying, “Oh . . . it’s Hazel,” of Butch pushing her head down.

Madenspacher pondered. If true, it seemed to him that this story knocked out the underlying theory of the trial, which was that Butch wasn’t at the condo. It didn’t mean Butch was actually inside; it didn’t clear Lisa; it could be explained. But it was a new story. It changed the theory of the case. Madenspacher felt as if he were slipping into shock.

“You sure?” he asked. “Let’s hear it again.”

Hazel repeated her story.

Madenspacher had no choice: He had to get this to the judge. He couldn’t suppress it. The only question was, when and how? It was going to come out anyway, Madenspacher figured. So let’s get the bad news over with.

The conference in Dalzell’s chambers began at 1:40 p.m. that day. Present were the judge, the lawyers for all sides, Hazel Show and Lisa Lambert.

Hazel Show told her story again, this time before a court reporter: Well, when I was sitting in the courtroom today, I realized that I had seen Lawrence’s [Butch’s] car with passengers drive out of our condominium complex. . . . Det. Savage said that I wasn’t to dwell on it. . . . I never thought anymore about it until I was sitting in there. . . . It all just came back.

By now, Lisa was sobbing along with Hazel.

“It’s OK, Miss Lambert,” Dalzell said. “It’s OK.”

To Dalzell, this revelation was the final straw. Throughout Lisa’s trial the state had been at pains to keep Butch as far from the Show condo as possible. No doubt that was why the state had never disclosed anything about Hazel’s report or Bayan.

To Dalzell, it wasn’t just that Hazel’s and Bayan’s accounts were consistent with Lisa’s testimony at trial five years ago: Just about everything being revealed at this hearing was consistent with Lisa’s testimony back then.

From all he’d heard, Dalzell now believed that the commonwealth’s misconduct had been so substantive, it had undermined the state court’s ability to find the truth. He believed the commonwealth had committed at least 25 separate instances of prosecutorial misconduct--all constitutional violations, all violations of the norms of a civilized society.

It seemed clear to him that Laurie Show did not say “Michelle did it.” It seemed clear that Butch, in the 29 Questions Letter, confessed to the murder. It seemed clear Lisa didn’t wear Butch’s sweatpants on the morning of the murder. It seemed clear the police had fabricated Lisa’s initial statement.

Worse yet, in Dalzell’s view, the commonwealth still hadn’t stopped its treachery. At this habeas hearing the state had produced not the extra-large sweatpants of Butch’s from the original trial, but a smaller girl’s pair. The commonwealth, Dalzell believed, had perpetrated a fraud on the federal court; the commonwealth had swapped evidence.

At least six state witnesses, by Dalzell’s count, had perjured themselves before him. One, Ron Savage--now an elected district justice in Lancaster County--likely obstructed justice. And now this: now Hazel’s revelation, right before his eyes. Hazel had every reason to want Lisa’s petition denied; Hazel sincerely believed Lambert did it. Yet still she’d felt compelled to tell this story. Dalzell had never seen a more courageous act.

“Well,” the judge told those gathered in his chambers. “Now we come to the question of relief. Does the commonwealth intend to defend this case?”

All eyes turned to Madenspacher.

The Lancaster County district attorney had been looking uncomfortable in recent days. Nothing he’d heard rose to the level of conscious misconduct or obstruction, he kept insisting. But he had to admit, it hadn’t been a perfect trial or investigation. He wished certain things had been done differently.

In Lancaster County, then as now, there were many who wanted their district attorney to fight ferociously. There were many who wanted their district attorney to defend their honor, to insist they’d done nothing wrong, to match Lisa’s lawyers blow for blow. Yet, Madenspacher, at this moment, wasn’t sure what should be done. Everything, he would say later, was “spinning in my mind.” It was “awful tough” operating away from the office. It “would have been nice” to have known everything from the start.

“Now, obviously . . . “ he finally told the judge. “There is some relief that is justified in this particular case. . . .”

That was all Dalzell needed; he now had the commonwealth’s assent. The state hadn’t even put on its case yet, but he meant to get Lisa out of prison. He also meant to get Savage off the bench forever; he didn’t see how Savage could hear cases anymore, and he planned to tell the Pennsylvania Supreme Court just that.

“You can make a choice overnight,” Dalzell advised the district attorney, “whether you want to defend this case, put on your own witnesses. In the meantime, I’m going to release Ms. Lambert into some agreed-upon custody. . . . Because it’s quite clear now that the petitioner is entitled to relief, the only question is how much.”

Off to one side, a dismayed Hazel Show tried to interject: “Laurie told me she did it. . . . “

Madenspacher’s voice overrode hers. “Yes, I agree relief is warranted, and I think we’re talking now. . . . “

“About what relief,” the judge said.

“What relief, your honor . . . “

“I can tell you, Mr. Madenspacher, that I’ve thought about nothing else but this case for over three weeks, and in my experience, sir, and I invite you to disabuse me of this at oral argument, I want you and I want the Schnader firm to look for any case in any jurisdiction in the English-speaking world where there has been as much prosecutorial misconduct, because I haven’t found it. . . . So are we agreed that the petitioner will tonight be released into the custody of Ms. Rainville?”

Madenspacher nodded. “I don’t see how I can object to that, your honor.”

Stunned Response in Lancaster County

In bars and cafes, street corners and living rooms, the citizens of Lancaster County gasped at the news of Lisa’s release. Their district attorney may not have seen reason to object, but they did. Most sounded stunned; many sounded enraged. One man, at 8 a.m. on the morning after her release, anonymously called in a phone threat to the Lancaster Sunday News, saying he would kill Lambert if she returned to Lancaster.

Maybe there were “mistakes,” the more rational by now were willing to allow. Maybe there was “sloppy” police work. Maybe Lisa even deserves a new trial. Nothing more than that, though. Certainly not her freedom. She was there, she was an accomplice, she was a co-conspirator. Give her a new trial, remand it elsewhere even. But don’t just let her go. You can’t just let her go.

“Lambert is not innocent--how could she be?” the Lancaster New Era editorialized the day after Hazel Show’s revelation. “ . . . even with newly revealed evidence that supports her claims, Lambert is still irrevocably involved in the events that lead to Laurie Show’s murder. These facts must not be drowned out by the explosive revelations at Lambert’s federal appeals hearing. . . . “

As it happened, these thoughts exactly echoed those offered by Judge Stengel, who’d presided at Lisa’s murder trial. “Even if Lambert’s story at trial was completely credible,” Stengel had declared in his written opinions, “she would still be an accomplice to the crime of murder. . . . The single most important fact on the issue of guilt is whether Ms. Lambert was present in the Show condominium at the time of the killing. By her own admission, she was present. . . . “

Dalzell, however, simply did not accept this notion, at least not in a federal habeas hearing.

On the proceeding’s final day, when Madenspacher in his closing argument spoke of Lambert being guilty at least as an accomplice or conspirator, Dalzell waved him off. “She wasn’t charged with conspiracy was she?” he declared. “She was charged with first-degree murder. So the only issue before me is actual innocence of first-degree murder. That is what she was convicted of.”

In fact, the law is murky on this point. Lisa was actually charged with criminal homicide, which in Pennsylvania encompasses all degrees of murder. How her conviction for first-degree murder affects her exposure to lesser murder charges is a matter for debate.

So, Madenspacher tried to argue: “What I am saying here is that charged with criminal homicide, she could be found guilty of murder in the first degree . . . or she could have been found guilty of second degree . . . or she could be found guilty of third degree.”

That didn’t sway Dalzell: “But if one took her testimony, she said that she did everything possible to de-escalate what spun out of control. . . . By her own testimony she exited when it started spinning out of control. So therefore, it was not ‘reasonably foreseeable’ from her point of view, so the argument would go.”

The judge then cut things off: “Let’s not waste time debating that.”

Dalzell had good reason for not wishing to bother further with this issue. By then--after 14 days of testimony covering 3,225 pages of transcript--the judge wasn’t thinking only about Lisa’s conduct at the Show condo. He was thinking about the 14th Amendment of the Constitution, and the role of a federal habeas corpus in upholding the unalienable right of due process.

Among other historic cases, Dalzell’s mind was on a 1973 opinion by then-Justice William H. Rehnquist, in United States vs. Russell. There, Rehnquist predicted that “we may some day be presented with a situation in which the conduct of law enforcement agents is so outrageous that due process principles would absolutely bar the government from invoking the judicial processes to obtain a conviction.”

That day, Dalzell decided at the close of Lambert’s hearing, had come.

While presiding at a habeas hearing, he reminded himself, he effectively sat as a court of equity--a court operating under a system of law designed to protect rights and deliver remedial justice. He recalled the ancient maxim that “equity delights to do justice, and not by halves.” To give Lisa full relief, it seemed to him imperative that he do nothing to benefit or empower those who had wronged her.

He would not just release Lisa, Dalzell decided. An outrageous violation of due process required even more severe sanction. He would bar the state from ever retrying her. He would strip the state of its natural right to adjudicate a murder committed within its boundaries.

He wrote his 90-page opinion over the weekend, after court adjourned at 4:10 p.m. on Friday, April 18. Before a packed courtroom late the following Monday morning, he declared Lisa “by clear and convincing evidence” to be “actually innocent of first-degree murder.”

“If Lisa Lambert’s is not the ‘situation’ to which Chief Justice Rehnquist referred, then there is no prosecutorial malfeasance outrageous enough to bar a reprosecution. . . .” he proclaimed. “We have now concluded that Ms. Lambert has presented an extraordinary, indeed, it appears, unprecedented case. We therefore hold that the writ should issue, that Lisa Lambert should be immediately released, and that she should not be retried.”

In scorching language, Dalzell explained just why: “We have found that virtually all of the evidence which the commonwealth used to convict Lisa Lambert of first-degree murder was either perjured, altered or fabricated. Such total contempt for due process of law demands serious sanctions. The question we must now answer is whether . . . the commonwealth is entitled to get another try at convicting Lisa Lambert and sending her to prison for the rest of her life. . . . In short, the question is whether we may accept a promise from anyone on behalf of the commonwealth that a trial will be fair ‘next time.’ ”

No, Dalzell concluded, we cannot.

“We hold that the due process clause of the 14th Amendment bars the commonwealth from invoking judicial or any other proceedings against Lisa Lambert for the murder of Laurie Show. . . . Equitable considerations preclude our leaving the decision whether to retry Lisa Lambert in the hands of those who created this gross injustice. . . . “

As far as legal researchers could tell, there was an accepted basis, but no exact precedent for a federal judge in Dalzell’s situation to take such action. Dalzell did not stop there.

He was, he announced in his opinion, going to refer the matter of Kenneff’s “blatantly unethical and unconstitutional” actions to the Pennsylvania Disciplinary Board. He also was going to refer the whole Lambert prosecution to the U.S. attorney for investigation of “possible witness intimidation, apparent perjury by at least five witnesses in a federal proceeding, and possible violations of the federal criminal civil rights laws.”

Still, Dalzell wasn’t finished. He felt compelled, in the two final pages of his opinion, to address the question of just why all this had happened in Lancaster County.

“Those who have read this sad history,” he wrote, “may well ask themselves, ‘How could a place idealized in Peter Weir’s ‘Witness’ become like the world in David Lynch’s ‘Blue Velvet’?’ Because it is so important to that community and indeed to many others to prevent a recurrence of this nightmare, we offer a few reflections on the record.”

Laurie Show’s grandfather, Dalzell pointed out, was, in the 1980s, the coroner of Lancaster County. Her mother was “a paragon of morality” who kept “a picture-perfect home.” By contrast, Lisa Lambert was “as though delivered from Central Casting for the part of villainess.” By the testimony of even those who loved her, “she was at the time literally ‘trailer trash.’ ” The community “thus closed ranks behind the good family Show and exacted instant revenge against this supposed villainess.” Almost immediately after “the snap judgment” was made, law enforcement officials uncovered “inconvenient facts,” but soon “discovered a balm for these evidentiary bruises, Lawrence Yunkin.” Thus “Lancaster’s best made a pact with Lancaster’s worst to convict the ‘trailer trash’ of first-degree murder.”

Dalzell’s parting words: “In making a pact with this devil, Lancaster County made a Faustian bargain. It lost its soul and it almost executed an innocent, abused woman. Its legal edifice now in ashes, we can only hope for a ‘Witness’-like barn-raising of the temple of justice.”

Uprising Began With Calls, Letters

The uprising in Lancaster County in the wake of Dalzell’s ruling began first with the usual letters to editors and calls to radio talk shows.

The legal system is a “crock of crap.” How could Dalzell destroy the reputation of “honorable and decent people” for the purpose of freeing a “cold-blooded killer?” What kind of justice do we have?

Soon enough, such talk escalated. All sorts of theories about Dalzell’s motives began circulating. Something’s been going on behind the scenes, it was suggested. Something behind what Dalzell did, something we don’t know about.

Ted Byrne, the conservative radio talk show host in Lancaster County, pored through Dalzell’s decisions in a law library. Then, seeking hidden connections, he analyzed the activities of the attorneys at Dalzell’s old law firm and Rainville’s firm.

It was considered significant that Dalzell and Greenberg, 30 years before, had been classmates at the University of Pennsylvania. Some talk had it that they were old pals. Some talk had it that Dalzell had handed the Lambert case to his own “carefully assembled defense team.”

Had Dalzell reached the end of a career path? Had he felt unfulfilled? Had he wondered how he might become an appellate judge? Had he seen a challenge to the controversial habeas corpus situation as a means to garner attention?

For that matter, how did the Lambert case get to Dalzell in the first place? Had not Dalzell displayed an excessive personal interest in Lisa in his chambers? Was it possible that they had a relationship?

“We must begin to think who it was that had to gain from this travesty of justice other than Lambert,” suggested one citizen in a letter to the editor. “My vote goes to Judge Stewart Dalzell. It would appear that it is an appropriate time for this newspaper to dig very deep into the archives of the noteworthy judge to determine what it was or who it was that set him on his grudge mission to ‘punish’ the county for sins of the past committed against him.”

Such comments reflected as much bewilderment as paranoia. They came from a citizenry who well knew Lisa Lambert, and well knew those who had prosecuted her. Yet rarely did anyone, amid all the outpouring of emotion and speculation, feel inclined to discuss the particulars of the Lambert case as revealed in Dalzell’s courtroom.

More common was East Lampeter Supervisor Chairman John Shertzer’s response. “There were a lot of false accusations throughout the trial. . . . We never had the opportunity to address those,” Shertzer told a reporter, before confessing that he, in fact, couldn’t address them: “There are some things about this that I don’t have a lot of background in. But I just know these people. . . . They were treated very abusively on the stand by Lambert’s attorneys as well as the judge.”

Lancaster’s citizens were struggling to hold together a way of viewing their world. Even those willing to acknowledge certain blemishes in that world--even those willing to acknowledge official wrongdoing in the Lambert case--found themselves laboring to understand what Dalzell had done. No matter what was revealed in a Philadelphia courtroom, no matter what Lancaster authorities did or failed to do, it seemed incomprehensible that Dalzell would let Lisa Lambert walk free, without at least a retrial.

Not even Lisa’s parents had hoped for that back when their daughter’s appeals first started. Their dream, Leonard Lambert told a reporter then, was that Lisa receive “a level of punishment that’s not greater than what’s deserved. . . . It’s a known fact that she was there. But something could argue that maybe she doesn’t deserve more than aggravated assault or third-degree murder.”

Dalzell went too far, even the more reasonable in Lancaster County now declared. He was a disgrace to the legal profession. He had made a mockery of justice. He was a man without honor.

Hazel Show, more than anyone, sounded the clarion. “Thank you for listening to me,” she’d told Dalzell on the hearing’s last day. “My parents brought me up to be truthful, and I believe in God. . . . So it is up to me to tell the truth.” Yet soon after, whether out of confusion or regret at what she’d wrought, Show began to backtrack and revise.

Never in her “wildest dreams,” she declared, had she thought her story would free Lisa. All her story proved was that she got home just as the killers left, in time to hear her daughter’s dying declaration. But the judge “didn’t want to hear that.” The judge “wouldn’t let me say that.”

No matter that Madenspacher insisted Hazel never mentioned this notion to him in their hotel meeting. No matter that she never mentioned this notion while on the witness stand on the hearing’s last day. It now became her constant refrain. “We have to get this judge off the bench,” she began declaring publicly. “There is not one bit of justice in him.”

They began first with a petition drive. Hazel’s ex-husband, John Show, drew it up, calling for Congress to “investigate” Dalzell and take “corrective action,” including impeachment. Show’s girlfriend took it to her beauty shop, where customers clamored to sign it. Local businesses started stocking piles on their front counters. Volunteers called for extra copies, carried them door to door, offered them at yard sales. One couple outside a Kmart parking lot on a hot Sunday collected more than 500 signatures. On the morning after an ad for the petition appeared in the Lancaster newspapers, John Show walked to his mailbox and found 300 envelopes. By mid-September, he had 37,000 signatures.

Then came Hazel Show’s 10-page “Citizens Action Report,” the keystone of her newly launched national campaign seeking to reform the entire federal judiciary. Now the Shows wanted, among a host of items, to bar federal judges from banning retrials, to fix stricter guidelines for appointing federal judges, to limit federal judges’ terms in office. Hazel Show’s words and image soon became ubiquitous in Lancaster County.

Television provided one forum, both local talk shows and the national tabloids. Politicians provided another. The Washington-based Judicial Selection Monitoring Project, an arch-conservative organization seeking to block the appointment of what it calls “activist liberal judges,” featured both Shows in a 15-minute videotape that lambasted Dalzell and misidentified him as a Clinton appointee.

The Shows, accompanied by 16 friends and relatives, took their campaign to Washington on Sept. 17, where Pennsylvania Sen. Arlen Specter, along with Reps. Joseph R. Pitts and George W. Gekas, accepted cartloads of petitions. The lawmakers, weeks before, had introduced legislation that would severely restrict federal judges’ power to bar retrials during habeas proceedings--a bill specifically designed to reverse Dalzell’s decision. Now, to the Shows, Specter agreed to call it the “Laurie Bill” and promised them a Senate Judiciary Committee hearing. Wherever they went, the Shows were applauded and courted.

“How often do you get to do this?” Hazel observed.

“I think we made an impact,” John offered.

Argument That Judge Brought It on Himself

It can fairly be argued that Dalzell brought some of this on himself. He may have overly embraced Lisa Lambert’s account of events, and unduly diminished her role. He may not have needed to rough up witnesses in his courtroom as much as he did. He certainly need not have painted Lancaster County with such a broad brush at the end of his opinion.

How could he claim to know this county, his critics asked. How could he claim to know our citizens? How could he say such things about us?

Yet, valid as such claims may be, it most likely will be Dalzell who leaves a lasting impact, not those fueling the backlash against him.

Whether right or wrong, whether he operated entirely within his bounds, a federal judge consumed by moral outrage has, as he intended, sent a message. The idea behind Lisa Lambert’s outright release was not, finally, to let a guilty person go free. It was to let the powers of the state know they can’t violate bedrock principles of the Constitution and get away with it.

They haven’t.

In early May, the U.S. attorney’s office in Philadelphia, responding to Dalzell’s referral, announced it had launched a criminal investigation into those who investigated and prosecuted Lisa Lambert. Aiding them will be the FBI and the Justice Department’s civil rights division. They will focus on John Kenneff and seven police officers, among them Ronald Savage, Ronald Barley, Robin Weaver and Raymond Solt.

Days later, the U.S. 3rd Circuit Court of Appeals, in refusing Lancaster County’s motion for a temporary stay of Dalzell’s order, said “the commonwealth has not demonstrated that it is likely to prevail on the merits of its appeal. . . . We remind the commonwealth that Judge Dalzell’s factual findings are based on his view of the credibility of the witnesses and testimony. . . . We can only reverse if we find them clearly erroneous.”

In that written opinion, the appellate panel also chastised the commonwealth for calling Lisa Lambert a “convicted killer” in its brief. She “no longer has that status,” the 3rd Circuit reminded. “Indeed, that description is inflammatory and inappropriate, given [Dalzell’s] findings of actual innocence. . . . “

What remains to be seen is whether Dalzell will ultimately be allowed his unprecedented involvement in a state’s sovereign affairs. At the habeas hearing’s end, Lancaster County hired its own high-powered Pennsylvania law firm, Sprague & Lewis, known for its political connections, particularly to the Republican Party. On Oct. 21, when lawyers for both sides argued the merits of the county’s appeal before a 3rd Circuit panel, the appellate judges grilled them on a critical question: Did Lisa Lambert exhaust all her appeals in Pennsylvania’s courts before turning to a federal judge for help?

This issue, rather than any question of Lisa’s innocence or a prosecutor’s malfeasance, is what presently fuels a nationwide debate in the legal community and beyond. Elemental principles of law and government in this country normally restrain federal intrusion until a state has heard all claims, and has been given the chance to correct its own errors. Just weeks ago, a 3rd Circuit panel--saying “we are sensitive to the independence of the Pennsylvania courts and of that state’s sovereignty”--denied another convict’s habeas petition because he hadn’t exhausted his state appeals.

Dalzell, in his opinion, recognized these principles, then essentially dismissed them. The Pennsylvania General Assembly, he pointed out, amended its statutes in 1995 to exclude “actual innocence” as a basis for certain appeals. By doing so, Dalzell declared, Pennsylvania, in effect, relinquished its jurisdiction over claims such as Lisa Lambert’s, and placed them “squarely into the federal forum.” And even if Pennsylvania were willing to consider some of Lambert’s claims, Dalzell added, “we find that the state proceedings that would follow if we dismissed this action are ineffective to protect the rights of Ms. Lambert.”

By thus declaring his utter distrust in Pennsylvania’s ability to deliver justice, Dalzell has challenged the fundamental balance of power between state and federal courts that governs the judicial system. This is why five state attorneys general--including California’s--have joined Pennsylvania in an amicus brief that talks of the Dalzell ruling’s “potential to seriously weaken, if not to dismantle entirely, the system for litigating habeas actions.” This is why law-and-order-minded national politicians have their knives out for Dalzell. This is why Lisa Lambert’s federal hearing promises to be one of the most carefully reviewed cases in criminal law for a long time to come.

This is also why Dalzell’s actions will leave a legacy no matter what the outcome of the present appeals. His ruling may or may not stand, his ruling may or may not establish a formal precedent, but--by granting a hearing and allowing widespread discovery--Dalzell has required that attention be paid to what happened in a Lancaster County courtroom in the summer of 1992. He’s shown why the federal habeas corpus action is essential to the integrity of the judicial system.

Dalzell has also set a moral, if not legal, example. Rulings in one case often affect other rulings. One judge’s decision shapes not just the outcome of a particular case, but also the character of justice. What he doesn’t allow, others likewise forbid.

In mid-May, in Lancaster County court, Lisa Lambert’s original trial lawyer, Roy Shirk, serving as defense attorney in a routine burglary case, rose to ask for a mistrial. As in the Lambert case, he argued, prosecutors in this one had failed to turn over exculpatory evidence to the defense. Shirk most likely meant only to put this commonplace claim into the record for later review, but Judge Paul K. Allison, to the lawyers’ astonishment, promptly granted his request.

Yes, the judge said in declaring a mistrial, this is exactly what Dalzell felt happened to Lisa Lambert.