GREENFIELD — A Franklin County Superior Court judge on Friday took under advisement a motion to grant a new trial to Elvio J. Marrero, the former Greenfield man in prison since being convicted of a 1994 murder.
Judge Michael Callan has heard arguments and testimony at various sessions since December, as the Committee for Public Counsel Services and the Boston College Innocence Program have joined forces to try to get Marrero in front of a jury again, citing travel information they say suggests Marrero was out of the country when the killing occurred. Marrero, now 60, was convicted in November 1996 of the murder of Greenfield resident Pernell R. Kimplin and sentenced to life in prison. He has been incarcerated at the Massachusetts Correctional Institution in Shirley.
Attorney Ira Gant, of the Committee for Public Counsel Services, and Assistant District Attorney Bethany Lynch, representing the state alongside First Assistant District Attorney Steven Gagne and Assistant District Attorney Cynthia Von Flatern, delivered final arguments via Zoom Friday morning. Also present were Marrero, also represented by the Innocence Program’s Lauren Jacobs and Charlotte Whitmore, and a Spanish language interpreter.
Gant told Callan this process has “been a long road” for both parties and the community as a whole.
“The totality of the evidence in this makes it clear that justice was not done here,” he said.
Lori Levinson, one of the defense attorneys in 1996, took the stand in December and she had been tasked with investigating an alibi defense for Marrero, who claimed to be in his native Dominican Republic when Kimplin was murdered. She explained passenger name records from American Airlines — the airline Marrero used to get to the Dominican Republic — included the letters “ADA,” which her team fruitlessly tried to decipher. Levinson said she learned through Gant’s investigation that they were a capitalization of Ada, the first name of the travel agent who took Marrero’s reservation and who testified via Zoom from her Florida home in December.
Kimplin was found dead in his Greenfield apartment on Oct. 16, 1994. He had been gagged, and his hands and feet were hog-tied with electrical cords and rope. He had been stabbed once in the chest and once in the back, and had been beaten on his head, neck, shoulders and back with a wooden board broken from a dresser drawer. The medical examiner opined that the victim died on or about Oct. 14 as a result of the stab wounds. Kimplin, who was 26 at the time, was last seen alive in his apartment on the evening of Oct. 13. Marrero was also at the victim’s apartment and was reportedly planning to spend the night there.
On Friday, Gant said the prosecution during the trial failed to disclose the results of an investigation into the airline record and the jury did not have an opportunity to make an informed decision.
“The evidence … would have provided aid to Mr. Marrero’s defense by opening an avenue he did go down — that the police failed to thoroughly investigate the airline record by only requesting flight manifests from Oct. 15 to the 21st, and totally missing Oct. 14 at all,” he said.
Gant said Marrero’s travel was a centerpiece of both parties’ cases.
“It is hard to think of something that is more damaging, more prejudicial, than the failure to turn over evidence that corroborates the defendant’s alibi, that supports his defense that he could not have committed this crime, that he was somewhere else entirely,” Gant said.
Callan asked Gant how the defense could not have known “when, where and with whom the reservation was made.” Gant explained trial defense attorneys were more focused on proving Marrero got on the plane to the Dominican Republic. He also said Marrero would have told his attorneys about a reservation document if he knew one existed.
Gant also said DNA evidence rules out the blood leading away from Kimplin’s body or the DNA on a nearby door as belonging to Marrero, who is also definitively excluded from DNA found on the murder weapon, which consisted of unidentified third-party DNA. And Kimplin’s DNA is excluded from the blood inside Marrero’s jacket.
Lynch said Marrero, a crack cocaine dealer, sold drugs to Kimplin, who owned him money. Marrero also may have believed the victim had stolen his stash. Lynch said this speaks to motive.
“The defendant had previously threatened other people and he’d threaten to tie people up with extension cords. He had threatened to stab people with their own knives. He threatened to hit them in the head, neck and face with random pieces of wood,” she said. “And all of those things were exactly what happened in this murder. The victim was tied up with an extension cord. The victim was stabbed with his own knife and the victim was beaten up (with) a random piece of wood in his own apartment. The defendant was the last person seen with the victim before his death and he was left alone with the victim. His fingerprint was left on a folding chair in close proximity to the victim’s body.”
The following morning, Marrero was seen with bloody hands and acted excessively nervously, according to Lynch. To get a ride to Chicopee, he paid someone gas money and two crack rocks — twice his usual rate. Lynch also said Marrero told someone he had used a knife to kill a person and he needed money to flee to the Dominican Republic, where he stayed for months instead of his typical shorter trip. When he returned to the United States, Lynch said, he lied to law enforcement about where he lived and when he left the country.
Reach Domenic Poli at: dpoli@recorder.com or 413-772-0261, ext. 262.