WHY SHAKESPEARE WROTE: THE FIRST THING WE DO, LET’S KILL ALL THE LAWYERS

Or why the only difference between a lawyer and a liar is the spelling

It would appear that a pack of lying lawyers are battling back and forth in the case of a convicted murderer.

In the last chapter of her book Shattered, prominent crime writer Kathryn Casey explains why she is convinced that David Temple murdered his wife.

The Harris County District Attorney has appointed a special prosecutor to investigate the charges brought forth by Temple’s lawyer.

EX-KATY COACH PROCLAIMS INNOCENSCE IN WIFE’S DEATH
By Patricia Kilday Hart

Houston Chronicle
September 11, 2012

Attorneys for David Mark Temple, the coach and former Katy high school football star convicted for the 1999 murder of his pregnant wife, Belinda, filed a petition on Monday asking a state district judge to declare Temple innocent, based on newly discovered evidence they say points to another man's guilt.

Attorneys Dick DeGuerin and Stan Schneider also charged former Harris County prosecutor Kelly Siegler with "the willful suppression of exculpatory evidence."

If Temple had had the benefit of the evidence at his November 2007 trial, "no rational jury" would have convicted him because he could prove he was away from home when the murder likely occurred, they claim.

In a telephone interview late Monday, Siegler angrily denied the charges and accused the two attorneys of falsely implicating a young man in a capital murder because of a long-standing feud between herself and DeGuerin.

"This is not about David Temple being innocent," she said. "This is about Dick DeGuerin." She claimed that DeGuerin "hates" her because she beat him in "three hotly contested trials." "His ego can't handle it," she claimed.

Siegler, who ran against Harris County District Attorney Pat Lykos, also claimed her old political foe was assisting DeGuerin in his attempt to reopen the Temple case as a "political favor."

According to the documents filed Monday, a long-silent witness contacted DeGuerin in May and recounted a conversation with another suspect in the case, Riley Joe Sanders III, in which Sanders acknowledged he burglarized the Temple home on the day of the murder, and fired his shotgun inside the residence.

Belinda Temple was found in her bedroom walk-in closet, shot in the back of the head at close range with a shotgun.

After taking the new evidence to the Harris County District Attorney's office, DeGuerin and Schneider were allowed to review the full file of the Temple investigation, and found crucial grand jury evidence favorable to Temple's defense that was not turned over by Siegler, as required by law, the petition states.

"David Temple is currently serving a life sentence in the Texas Department of Criminal Justice. He has been there for nearly five years. Temple is actually innocent of the murder of this wife, Belinda Temple," the petition asserts.

"His claim of innocence is supported by newly discovered evidence pointing to the actual killer of his wife and exculpatory evidence that the prosecutor willfully and deliberately failed to produce prior to trial. This court needs to end this injustice as quickly as possible and restore an innocent man to his freedom, his son, and his family."

Husband had an affair

The brutal January 1999 murder shocked the Katy community, where Belinda Temple was a beloved special education teacher. The investigation quickly focused on David Temple, who, it was discovered, was engaging in an affair at the time of his wife's murder.

Temple claimed that he was running errands with the couple's son, Evan, 4, the afternoon of the murder, and returned home to find his rear door ajar, and a window broken. He took the boy to a neighbor's before entering the home and discovering his wife's body.

At the 5-week-long trial, Siegler portrayed Temple as a calculating murderer who took the life of his wife and unborn child in order to pursue a relationship with a woman he later married. The investigation went cold in 1999 after a grand jury was presented with evidence but declined to return an indictment.

A different theory

The case was reopened in 2005, and Temple was indicted that February. During the trial, DeGuerin advanced the theory that Sanders, a neighbor, killed Belinda Temple in the course of a burglary. But Siegler says that Sanders, who testified at trial, cooperated throughout the investigation.

In May, a new witness identified as "John Doe" contacted DeGuerin with an account of a conversation with Sanders. Citing a death threat to "John Doe," the statement was filed under seal, but the petition claims that Sanders "admitted the burglary of the Temple home on January 11, 1999, and admitted shooting his shotgun during the burglary." It also states that "John Doe" passed a polygraph.

Also, in reviewing the full file, DeGuerin and Schneider learned that Sanders and three friends gave conflicting stories to investigators about their whereabouts the day of the murder. Sanders and two of the other boys failed polygraph tests.

In their petition, Temple's attorneys also fault Siegler with failing to turn over grand jury testimony of Detective Mark Schmidt regarding the timeline of Belinda and David Temple on the day of the murder.

A convenience store security camera 12 minutes away from the Temple home caught David Temple on tape at 4:32 p.m. Schmidt testified he believed Belinda Temple did not arrive home until 4:10 p.m. That would have left only a few minutes for David Temple to clean himself up after the brutal murder and dispose of the murder weapon, which was never found.

"That time difference is clearly exculpatory," the petition states. "There is no way Temple could have committed the offense if Belinda arrived home at 4:10 p.m. Temple did not have access to Detective Schmidt's grand jury testimony at trial. It was not furnished for cross-examination purposes. Yet all the information was clearly in possession of the state and not produced."

'Legal sophistry'

Houston attorney Chip Lewis, retained by the Sanders family, called the petition "legal sophistry" and said the allegations against his client are "as unfounded today as when Dick DeGuerin made them at trial."

He also said his client denies having the conversation that "John Doe" describes.

"The family is extremely disappointed to hear that after all Riley's cooperation and having the courage to stand up to Dick DeGuerin" that the attorney is pressing for his arrest for Belinda Temple's murder, said Lewis.

Asked about Seigler's charges, Schneider said he would "let the record speak for itself."

(Brian Rogers contributed to this report.)