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Miami criminal appellate attorney Benjamin Waxman, together with the his law firm Robbins, Tunkey, Ross, has been representing Spanish national death row inmate Pablo Ibar for approximately two and one-half years. Ibar, who maintains he is innocent, is seeking to vacate his triple homicide conviction and death sentence based on a violation of his constitutional right to effective assistance of counsel. Waxman and partner Alan Ross represented Ibar at a week long hearing in mid-March, 2009, before Broward Circuit Court Judge Jeffrey Levenson, at which they presented evidence supporting Ibar's claims. Chief among this evidence was testimony from a British expert on facial identification, Raymond Evans, criticizing the quality of the grainy, home-video recording that captured the murders on tape, as an unreliable basis for identification of Ibar. For a recent example of the rapidly evolving field of biometircs, see the transcript of the recent news report from National Public Radio. Evans further identified five material discrepencies between Ibar and the image on the crime video that the police and the prosecution claimed was Ibar. For a recent example of the dangers of eyewitness identification testimony, see the recent "60 Minutes" expose concerning a rape victim who positively identified her assailant and two trials, only to have the convicted defendant exonerated more than 10 years later by DNA.
Ibar's case was recently featured on the Maria Elvira show. The following week, a viewer was featured on another segment of the Elvira show who knew a person who confessed to a similar crime 15 years ago, shortly after the murders. Having seen a short segment of the crime video on the Elvira show, this viewer has identified the person in the crime video as the person who confessed to him many years ago. That person is now in prison serving a life sentence for a different crime. Waxman and Ross have moved the court for an order compelling a DNA and fingerprint comparison between "Willy," the person who confessed to the crime, and the DNA and fingerprint evidence found at the triple homicide crime scene. That DNA evidence excluded Ibar as a potential source. Likewise, none of the fingerprint latents matched Ibar.
A status report on the motion to compel DNA and fingerprint comparisons is scheduled for April 20th. It is not anticipated that a ruling on the claim of ineffective assistance of counsel will be handed down for several months pending preparation of the evidentiary hearing transcript and argument from the parties.
