Robert Kiner
Appearances
Dark Valley
Chapter 14 | A Town on Trial
I don't think it took very long for the LeClaire brothers to get what they were after from Delbert.
Dark Valley
Chapter 14 | A Town on Trial
We had a feeling this case was going to go to trial from fairly early on. And if that concession became too widely known within the community, we were fearful that potential jurors would reach their conclusions before they ever set foot in the courtroom. And we knew at some point that we would attempt to suppress that confession given Delbert's cognitive disabilities.
Dark Valley
Chapter 14 | A Town on Trial
We thought it would be both prudent and necessary for us to keep that confession out of the public sphere. As you probably know, the judge disagreed.
Dark Valley
Chapter 14 | A Town on Trial
The prosecution, I think, was fairly smug in their confidence that they could go forward by putting Delbert near the scene of the crime at the time that it happened.
Dark Valley
Chapter 14 | A Town on Trial
We needed to present the jury with some kind of alternative to Delbert having done this. And I don't mean that to sound as if we needed to create something. Maybe we just needed to dig a little further into the case. And I think that's around the time that Albert Sargent's name surfaced. Albert Sargent was a local guy, probably twice Delbert's age. Delbert, in fact,
Dark Valley
Chapter 14 | A Town on Trial
I've lived with him for some period of time. He was a martial artist. And as we came to see, he was a little bit, he came across as kind of dangerous and not all there. And the more we delved into this, the more it became apparent to us that he may have been involved in this in some way.
Dark Valley
Chapter 14 | A Town on Trial
that notion just became stronger and stronger as time wore on to the point where we decided we were going to take his deposition. Chris Frappier had established a pretty good relationship with Albert Sargent, so I think he was unaware of what our thinking was. I think he was caught off guard a little bit during his deposition, and he gave some answers, and I
Dark Valley
Chapter 14 | A Town on Trial
I can't remember exactly what they were, but I do remember that they were answers that threw even more suspicion on him that he could have been involved in this somehow. And so our defense posture slowly morphed from simply the confession was not to be believed because of overbearing cops. That Delbert had no reason to do this, was not looked upon as dangerous. He didn't have a criminal record.
Dark Valley
Chapter 14 | A Town on Trial
He got into small scrapes. I think he was charged a couple times with minor offenses, but never convicted. The state's case was grounded primarily on a confession that shouldn't be believed. So that was the early on theory. But then as this Albert thing evolved, we came to believe that we might have
Dark Valley
Chapter 14 | A Town on Trial
a good explanation for how this murder occurred and that the police should have been looking toward Albert Sargent and not Albert Tallman. But because the confession happened so soon after the murder, I think it was case closed in their eyes and it was up to us to undo what a lot of people believed was a fait accompli come trial time.
Dark Valley
Chapter 14 | A Town on Trial
Dumont and I going crazy, jumping on the defense table, thinking the judge can't possibly at this stage of the game allow this to happen. We argued. I think it became quite heated. Ultimately, the judge ruled that he was going to allow the state to call Agent Rawalt to testify. Dumont and I were stunned.
Dark Valley
Chapter 14 | A Town on Trial
I can't think I couldn't think at the time and I can't think now of the judge that would have allowed that testimony at that late date. But Judge Hudson decided to allow it. And we continued to argue about this in front of the judge. We had no notice of this. This is obviously crucial testimony. And here we are in the middle of the trial.
Dark Valley
Chapter 14 | A Town on Trial
I headed for the men's room and was literally standing at a urinal. And I looked to my right and someone began speaking to me. And there was Agent Rawalt with a smug grin on his face. And as we were standing there, said to me, Mr. Kiner, I guess you're ready to plead your client guilty now, aren't you? I didn't have any weapons on me, and that was probably a good thing that I didn't.
Dark Valley
Chapter 14 | A Town on Trial
I just wanted to smash him in the face because I thought he was full of crap, essentially. And the notion, the general notion that I think the public has that all of us want to have that that the FBI is neutral, that they do investigations and they call them and they see them, and they're not on the side of the defense or the side of the prosecution, they're on the side of the truth.
Dark Valley
Chapter 14 | A Town on Trial
And Ray Waltz's testimony could not have been further from the truth. We may have asked for a mistrial at that point, if the judge was going to allow that, that we cancel everything that's happened up to now and start all over at some point if we have to. But Clearly, the state did not follow the discovery deadline. We were completely disadvantaged at that point.
Dark Valley
Chapter 14 | A Town on Trial
But the judge, in all his wisdom and kindness, gave us the weekend to, he said, we'll allow you, if you would like, to find your own expert, if you wish, to counter what Agent Rawolf is going to say. So here we are facing a weekend looking for someone who had this type of experience and training.
Dark Valley
Chapter 14 | A Town on Trial
We left court that afternoon, went back to our, I think it was the Sharon Inn at the time, and we just started making phone calls. And eventually called the University of Vermont asking if they had any professors who were might be able to shed some light on this. I know he was a professor. His name was Fred Magdoff.
Dark Valley
Chapter 14 | A Town on Trial
Obviously, I was not there. I know it occurred in the Rockingham barracks of the Vermont State Police. I also know that the confession was given to two brothers, Vermont State Police Detectives Mike and Ted LeClair, who were veterans. And I think it's fair to say had, at least among the defense bar, had a reputation of perhaps being a little bullying with defendants who they were dealing with.
Dark Valley
Chapter 14 | A Town on Trial
I don't mean in the physical sense, but they were known for putting a lot of pressure on defendants to give confessions and making defendants very uncomfortable in their presence.
Dark Valley
Chapter 14 | A Town on Trial
No, and that sort of underscores what I just said. As a police detective, if you have someone whom you believe to be responsible for a murder or for any really serious crime or even a less serious crime, and the suspect is given Miranda warnings that waives them, so you know they're about to talk to you about whatever happened, and you're expecting...
Dark Valley
Chapter 14 | A Town on Trial
I suspect, on some level to get incriminating information. You would want to have that down on tape or even on video for purposes of being able to show the jury what a suspect said in case the suspect changes the story at trial. The best way to preserve a confession is to have it on tape.
Dark Valley
Chapter 14 | A Town on Trial
And the LeClaire brothers, my suspicion is they didn't want anyone to hear the manner in which they interrogated Delbert. And so they didn't tape it. And so we were left solely with their testimony at trial about what Delbert told them the day he was arrested. I think Debra was 22 at the time. He was found to have an IQ in the low 60s, I believe. He was, I think, retarded is no longer the...
Dark Valley
Chapter 14 | A Town on Trial
appropriate term, but that was the term that was used then. And then we have these two tough guy detectives. I've never been in that situation, and my IQ is a couple points higher than the low 60s, but I'm not sure how I would respond under those circumstances, let alone a kid who was at the time living on the street, didn't have much parental support, and was probably scared to death.