Innocence Institute- Twice Facing Execution, Simmons Wins a New Lease on Life

Cambria Prosecutor Deals to End Prosecution and Give Alleged Killer Who Has Claimed Innocence Freedom

By Rob Cathers, Brooke Keane and Bill Moushey
The Innocence Institute of Point Park University

Faced with what he calls a roll of the dice on his life, Ernest Simmons had only hours to ponder whether to accept a reduced plea leading to freedom from a grisly murder conviction that twice caused him to be scheduled for a date with the executioner.

In a short time while he was being held in an anteroom of the Cambria County Courthouse, Simmons considered his options:  Should he endure a second trial so a jury and the public would see the wide-ranging misconduct prosecutors and police foisted on him in the killing of 80-year-old Anna Knaze, or should he take a deal for freedom that would put his 17 ½ years of death row isolation behind him?

He initially rejected a 20-40 year sentence for a “no contest” plea but when Cambria County District Attorney Patrick Kiniry, in his last day on the job before assuming a judgeship, reduced the sentence to what will amount to freedom by August, Simmons relented and entered a plea that will send him from just days from a death chamber in the turn of the century to freedom by mid-summer.

Despite that, during an exclusive telephone interview with the Innocence Institute of Point Park University, he had mixed emotions about his “no contest” plea because he maintains he did not do the murder.

“Everyone here tells me I ought to be happy, then why is it I don’t feel good,” he said during a telephone interview from the State Correctional Institution at Laurel Highlands, where he has been held while awaiting re-trial.

“I had the tools and I let these jokers get away….and they got promoted!”

That was the attitude the man who raised himself on the streets before living in a series of foster homes and spending nearly half of his 52 years in prison had after not only ending his date with death, but soon to reach freedom after being sentenced to a 5-to-10 year sentence with a decade of probation on the streets.

It ends a roller coaster ride of intense emotion that saw Simmons go from an ex-con trying to establish himself in lawful society in Johnstown to the convicted killer of an 80-year-old woman that caused inmates to call him “Chop em up Ernie,” and “Jason of Johnstown.”   It saw him endure the 23 hours and 40 minutes a day locked in a death row cell and two scheduled times for execution before courts intervened to the discovery of such wide-ranging misconduct that a federal judge ruled his conviction was a miscarriage of justice.

On December 30, all of that appeared to be coming to an end in the case for which he was not forced to admit guilt because he said he wouldn’t.  In the end, the case was so decimated that it was clear if Simmons proceeded to a second trial, there was little evidence against him, especially since recent DNA testing proved for a second time that blood found near the scene of Knaze’s death did not match him.

“The FBI had already done the tests and they refused to do it again, so they sent it to the Pennsylvania (State Police) Crime Lab and they said there is nothing of him there, so they was stuck. They did this for two reasons, to stick it to me and to buy more time,” he said.

The time ran out on New Years Eve when the DNA tests clearing Simmons were added to the longstanding controversies in the case stemming from allegations of misconduct, evidence suppression by prosecutors, and other issues that caused a judge to set aside Simmons’ death sentence — which was then affirmed by the 3rd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in mid-September 2009.

Simmons has steadfastly maintained his innocence since the time of his arrest, throughout his trial, and all the way to the death sentence he received for the slaying of Anna Knaze. He sat on Pennsylvania’s death row until February 2005 when U.S. District Judge Sean McLaughlin of the Western District of Pennsylvania ruled that Simmons deserved a new trial.

In his opinion, Judge McLaughlin said:

*A jury never heard that the star witness who identified Simmons near the scene minutes after the murder was actually an ex convict facing gun charges who could not identify Simmons for months until she copped a deal for freedom and told police it was Simmons she saw near the murder scene;  After the Innocence Institute proved 13 lies and inconsistencies in her many statements, she told two reporters long after the first trial that she could not say if the person she saw in the murder’s aftermath was Simmons or not;

* Police not only improperly threatened Simmons’ girlfriend into covertly recording telephone conversations from jail with Simmons, but after Simmons proclaimed his innocence 19 times during the taped phone calls, they were secreted from him at trial, keeping the jury from hearing his claims of innocence, and

* While prosecutors presented two other eyewitnesses against Simmons during his first trial, he chastised them for failing to reveal to his jury that they did not come forward until police cut a deal with one of them for an early release from jail.?Then after Cambria prosecutors appealed McLaughlin’s order, on Sept. 11, 2009, the 3rd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals denied the appeal setting the stage for another trial for Simmons — who some see as a cold-blooded killer, and others see as a victim of circumstance.

“Had Simmons had access to the information suppressed by the prosecution, there is a reasonable probability that his trial would have had a different outcome,” read the Circuit Court’s opinion, as adopted from the ruling of McLaughlin.

Then during an Oct. 21 hearing to set a new trial date and appoint an attorney for the destitute Simmons, prosecutors made it clear they are not backing off when police, brandishing a court order, collected DNA from Simmons while he was still in the courtroom.

The affidavit accompanying the court order said DNA testing on evidence collected from Knaze’s home in 1992, which included fingernail clippings, the victim’s clothing and sweepings from the living room, dining room and kitchen floors, was not done. In 1992, fingerprints found on the scene did not match Simmons, while blood and fingernail clippings were not fit for testing. None of it matched Simmons.

The conviction

On May 6, 1992, Anna Knaze was found dead in her home with almost every bone in her body broken. Though none of the originally tested physical evidence tied Simmons to the killing, police targeted him because he had a prior record of violence against the elderly.

By 1984, when he was sent away to prison for almost a decade, Simmons had already pled guilty to more than 20 crimes, including the robbery and brutal beating of two elderly men in Harrisburg. Police there believed he had done other crimes against the elderly, but no additional charges were ever filed.  He served seven years in prison and then moved to Johnstown in 1991, looking to use his skills as a barber to begin a new career and life there.

When Harrisburg detectives learned of the Knaze killing, they alerted Johnstown police that the man they believed was a serial-type killer was in their midst.  Nine days after the murder, he was jailed on a minor parole violation as the investigation intensified.  As he sat in jail on the parole violation, the prosecution built their case against him and he was officially charged with Knaze’s murder in August of 1992, while still imprisoned.

The key to Cambria County’s case against Simmons was Margaret Cobaugh.  Simmons attorney at his initial trial, Cambria County Public Defender Michael Filia, said without Cobaugh it would have been difficult for the commonwealth to make a case against him.

A 61-year-old ex-convict who lived a few blocks from Knaze, Cobaugh reported to Johnstown Police the day following Knaze’s murder that her wallet had been stolen around the time of the murder, and that she had been raped by a black man during the same period. The next day, Cobaugh tried to withdraw her claims, and before police arrived to question her, she had destroyed all physical evidence by trying to flush her undergarments down the toilet. She also could not initially identify her attacker in a lineup.

Trying to buttress his case as the trial grew near, Johnstown Police Detective Richard Rok, who was later fired from his job and imprisoned for kicking a handcuffed suspect in an unrelated matter, questioned Cobaugh ten times. By the time police were done with her, 13 material changes from her initial report arose, taking her from possible assault victim at the hands of a nameless, unidentified black man to the victim of a heinous rape committed, she was certain, by Simmons.

As the state’s star witness several months later, Cobaugh repeated those questionable statements under oath. She also claimed that her attacker threatened her, telling her not to “open your mother f—king mouth or you’ll get the same thing that Anna Knaze got,” despite the fact that this incident would have taken place several hours before the discovery of Knaze’s body.

The jury also heard that Rok also threatened Simmon’s girlfriend LaCherie Pletcher until she agreed to tape telephone conversations from the Cambria County Jail, believing she could cajole a confession out of him.

Instead of obtaining a confession, Simmons claimed innocence 19 times during these conversations. Since Simmons did not implicate himself, the detective did not disclose the tapes to defense lawyers — who could have used it in Simmons’ defense.

Filia said there would have been a chance for a different outcome had the defense known about the tapes.

“It would have helped us in cross examining several of the commonwealth witnesses and stood a much better chance of raising some reasonable doubt in this case,” said Filia.

In addition, two witnesses who corroborated Cobaugh’s testimony also emerged. While the two female neighbors of Knaze’s claimed months after the killing they saw a black man talking to Knaze outside her home, neither woman could pick Simmons out of a six-man photo lineup.

That changed by trial time when the women, armed with a deal for freedom for one of their jailed relatives that wasn’t turned over to Simmon’s jury either, identified him at the murder scene.

On June 1, 1993, Simmons was convicted of murder and robbery and in a short sentencing phase, a judge ordered that he be put to death by lethal injection.

Questioning testimony

After the trial, much of the information that had been withheld from the jury slowly began to emerge.

First, defense lawyers learned Cobaugh had served an 11-year jail sentence for burglary and larceny. She did not disclose this information after purchasing a firearm in 1992, so Cobaugh was charged with violating gun laws. But when Cobaugh agreed to testify against Simmons, detective Rok convinced Cambria County District Attorney Patrick Kiniry to drop these charges, another fact kept from the jury.

In 1993, a former Philadelphia police officer – who became a central Pa-based private detective working for Simmons defense team — -visited Cobaugh’s home and was greeted by her double-amputee husband who began shouting at Cobaugh to “tell [the detective] the truth.” She promptly wheeled him away without a word to explain what her husband meant.

Then in 2004, during the Innocence Institute of Point Park University’s investigation, Cobaugh, who passed away in October, 2007, told reporters Nathan Crabbe and Jamie Keaney that she “could not positively identify anyone. It could have been [Simmons], it could have not.”

Crabbe, who is now a reporter for the Gainesville Sun in Florida, recalled the 2003 interview with Cobaugh as compelling evidence that he knew immediately would be fodder for another Simmons appeal.

He said he went into the interview with an open mind and questions about the many different stories Cobaugh had concocted during 10 interrogation sessions.  Crabbe said he did not expect Cobaugh to admit she lied on the stand.

Crabbe said Cobaugh told them Rok convinced her Simmons was guilty and cajoled her into falsely identifying in court, despite her previous statements to the contrary.  In fact, there is much suspicion as to whether any such attack even occurred.

“I was a little bothered by it,” said Crabbe about his initial reaction to Cobaugh’s interview.   “The surprising part was that someone would lie on the stand and get someone a death sentence.”

Cobaugh would later deny the recantation and clung to her original testimony to her death.

Crabbe said that considering Cobaugh was a perjurer on the stand, he was not surprised she denied what she said during their interview.

“I feel confident in what she told us. It was the truth,” said Crabbe.

Matthew Lawry, an appellant attorney for Simmons, said the information obtained by the Innocence Institute’s interview with Cobaugh was “very helpful” to the case.

In Judge McLaughlin’s opinion, in which he quoted the Innocence Institute story, he said a recantation by Cobaugh could have been pivotal in the case.

“The prosecution appears to have recognized Cobaugh’s central role, the Commonwealth itself in its case called Cobaugh a ‘critical’ witness.”

Along with the Cobaugh controversy, the federal judge castigated the prosecution for hiding the tapes.

“Had the defense in this case had access to the information about Rok’s efforts to pressure [Simmons' girlfriend] into cooperating with the prosecution, it would have been much better positioned to cast doubt on her credibility,” the court opinion stated.

Other eyewitness testimony in the original trial was also attacked by the federal judge.

“Although [I] cannot say with certainty that the jury would have reached a different conclusion on its verdict, Simmons has demonstrated a ‘reasonable probability’ that it would have done so.”

The retrial and release

Initially, Cambria County District Attorney Patrick Kiniry, who did not respond to letters, phone messages and e-mail queries of the Innocence Institute, told the Johnstown Tribune-Democrat he would continue to fight the court’s ruling.

“My office will be prepared to try the case again,” he said. “Ernie Simmons is a cold-blooded killer, and a jury from Erie County found he had killed Anna Knaze, and they sentenced him to death.”

Simmons said he had no concerns about the latest DNA testing because he insists he was not there.

Once they came back “inconclusive,” he knew there was almost nothing left.

That’s when the prosecutor offered him a 20-40 year sentence for a guilty plea.  Simmons rejected that and the notion that he would ever plead guilty to the crime.

When they came back with an offer of five-to-ten years in prison which will set him for release in midsummer 2010, he still planned to reject it and go to trial.

That’s when he said his attorneys convinced him that if he were to be retried, a parade of jailhouse snitches would probably be brought before a jury to say Simmons admitted guilt in prison.

“They were afraid if I rolled the dice, something bad would happen,” he said.

He relented, pleaded no contest in front of Cambria County Common Pleas Judge Timothy Creany, was sentenced without making a statement and sent back to prison to apply for parole.

Betsy Nightingale, a Public Information Officer at the State Correctional Institution at Laurel Highlands, said records show Simmons should be released on or about July 11.  Nightingale said the date is still pending a review from the parole board.  She was not certain when that review will take place.

Lawry said Simmons decision to plead no contest will get him home the soonest since you cannot predict what will happen in a trial.

“I do not think there was credible evidence that he committed the event.  You never know how a trial will go,” said Lawry.

Filia said he thought the plea was fair considering it was based on time served.

While Simmons still harbors anger at the prosecutors and police officers who put him in that spot, he voiced a special affinity for the Innocence Institute and its reporters.

“I can’t thank you enough.  If there is anything, I mean anything I can do when I get out, I’m there,” he said.  His first stop on his release will be to the Innocence Institute offices to express his thanks.

He said he still has a relationship with the woman who revealed the taping scheme to the court, and plans to move to North Carolina to be with her on his release.

Brooke Keane and Robert Crothers are undergraduate students at Point Park University’s School of Communication where they studied at the Innocence Institute.  Bill Moushey is director of the Innocence Institute.  They can be reached at 412-765-3164 or at Bmoushey@pointpark.edu.