"Sharon Snyder, a 70-year-old great-grandmother who was fired nine months before she was scheduled to retire, sees herself somewhere in the middle and insists she would provide the same help if she had a chance to do it again.
The Place Where Ludington Talks
And Justice for All?
A Kansas City man freed from prison three decades after being wrongfully convicted of rape considers Sharon Snyder his “angel” for giving him a public document that showed him how to properly seek DNA tests. A Jackson County Circuit judge considered the 34-year court employee an insubordinate for offering legal advice, a stretch since all she offered an example of how to file court papers properly.
An inmate who was trying, and failing, to file a simple motion was given a successful motion to use as a model. His motion was granted, he was exonerated, and Snyder for her part in assisting him to achieve that result got canned after 34 years of working in the courthouse.
It's a rule that a clerk shouldn’t be offering legal advice, but handing out a public document as a model is not really legal advice. Especially when the inmate has already demonstrated what legal action he means to take. In my opinion, Judge Byrn succeeded in highlighting the perversity of the criminal justice system by creating the most sympathetic fact pattern imaginable.
Byrn himself denied multiple requests of what turned out to be an innocent man for stylistic reasons, and when finally forced to acknowledge the substance, he reacted by firing his fellow public servant for having the gall to think that the system is about “guilt” or “innocence” rather than convicting someone and keeping justice withheld. Judge Byrns actions could easily be interpreted as violating canons of judicial behavior if strictly interpreted by someone who expects the justice system to actually dispense justice.
Thanks to new DNA evidence a Kansas City man was released from prison three decades after a wrongful rape conviction, though the 70-year-old clerk instrumental in his release was fired for insubordination.
Sharon Snyder, who was fired about nine months prior to her retirement after 34 years as a court employee, was let go by a Jackson County Circuit judge in Missouri for offering legal advice to 49-year-old Robert Nelson, convicted in 1984 to 50 years incarceration for a Kansas City rape the year prior. Nelson maintained his innocence in the case since that conviction, and in August of 2009 filed a motion with the court seeking DNA testing that had not been available at the time of his trial 25 years prior, reports the AP. That motion was denied, evidently due to Nelson’s lack of knowledge of the law to make a proper case. Two years after that petition Nelson filed another motion seeking DNA testing, but was again denied. Following that second attempt, Snyder gave Nelson’s sister, Sea Dunnell, a copy of a successful motion filed for a different case which had also requested that DNA evidence be tested. Nelson, who had no legal representation at the time, was able to use that motion as a guide for his own, which he filed successfully in February of 2012. In August a judge sustained the motion and assigned Nelson Laura O’Sullivan, legal director of the Midwest Innocence Project to be his legal representative. Last month the Kansas City Police Department used DNA evidence to exclude Nelson as a suspect in the 1983 rape case, which resulted in his release on June 12. Only five days after Nelson’s release Snyder was taken into a judge’s chambers and told that both the prosecutor and attorney “had a problem” with her intervention in the case. Although the documents that Snyder gave Nelson’s sister to file a successful motion with the court would have been available as public record, it was not conceivable that she would have ever been aware of its existence were it not for Snyder’s help.
"The document you chose was, in effect, your recommendation for a Motion for DNA testing that would likely be successful in this Division," Judge Byrn wrote. "But it was clearly improper and a violation of Canon Seven ... which warns against the risk of offering an opinion or suggested course of action."
Snyder was fired from her job on June 27, told that she had violated court rules by providing assistance to Nelson, and speaking about details of the case to attorneys not involved in the matter."
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