Defense
During the defense stage of the trial, Segal called Helena Stoeckley to the witness stand;
intent on extracting a confession from her that she had been one of the
intruders MacDonald claimed had entered his house, murdered them, and attacked
him. During the nine years after the murders had been committed, she had made
several contradictory statements regarding them, sometimes saying she was
present when the murders happened, other times stating she had no recollection
of her whereabouts the evening they occurred. Just prior to her testimony,
separate interviews had been conducted by the defense and the prosecution,
during which she denied ever being in the MacDonald house or ever seeing him
before that very day in court. Afterward, Segal argued for the introduction of
testimony from other witnesses to whom Stoeckley had confessed. Dupree refused,
in the absence of any evidence to connect Stoeckley to the scene, citing her
history of long-term drug abuse.
MacDonald's defense called forensic expert James Thornton to the stand. He unsuccessfully
tried to rebut the government's contention that the pajama top was stationary
on Colette's chest, rather than wrapped around MacDonald's wrists as he warded
off blows, by conducting an experiment wherein a similar one was placed over a
ham, moved back and forth on a sled, and stabbed at with an ice pick. The defense also called several character
witnesses. MacDonald took the witness stand as the last defense witness. Under
Segal’s direct examination, MacDonald denied committing the murders. When Blackburn cross-examined him, however,
MacDonald could offer no explanation against the evidence.
Outcome
On August 29, 1979, MacDonald was convicted of one count of
first-degree murder in the death of Kristen and two counts of second-degree
murder in the deaths of Colette and Kimberly after the jury deliberated for
just over six hours. Dupree immediately gave him a life sentence for each of
the murders, to be served consecutively. He also revoked his bail. Soon after
the verdict, MacDonald appealed Dupree's bail revocation ruling, asking that
bail be granted pending the outcome of his appeal. On September 7, 1979, this
application was rejected, and an appeal on bail was further rejected by the Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals on
November 20, 1979.
Fatal Vision
In June 1979, MacDonald invited author Joe McGinniss to write a book about the case. McGinniss was given full access to him and the
defense during the trial. He expected
that the book would be about his innocence in the murders of his family. However, McGinniss' book, Fatal Vision, first published in the spring of 1983, portrayed him
as "a narcissistic sociopath"
who was indeed guilty of killing his family. It contains excerpts from court
transcripts and sections entitled "The
Voice of Jeffrey MacDonald," which was based on tape recordings he
made following his conviction.
MacDonald subsequently sued McGinniss in 1987 for fraud,
claiming that McGinniss pretended to believe him innocent after he came to the
conclusion that he was guilty, in order that he continue cooperating with him. After a trial, which resulted in a mistrial on
August 21, 1987, they settled out of court for $325,000 on November 23, 1987.
The Journalist and the
Murderer, written by Janet Malcolm
and published in 1990, is about the relationship between journalists and their
subjects and explores the relationship between McGinniss and MacDonald as the
subject of Malcolm's thesis that "Every
journalist who is not too stupid or too full of himself to notice what is going
on knows that what he does is morally indefensible." Malcolm maintained that McGinniss tricked MacDonald—a
claim that McGinniss subsequently responded to in the epilogue of a later
edition of Fatal Vision. In a 2012 book, A Wilderness of Error: The Trials of Jeffrey MacDonald, filmmaker
and writer Errol Morris argued that
many of McGinniss' claims about MacDonald are untrue and irresponsible.
McGinniss' book was adapted into a made-for-TV film of the
same title starring Karl Malden, Eva Marie Saint, Andy Griffith, and Gary Cole
as MacDonald. It aired on NBC in 1984.
An adaptation of McGinniss' follow-up book, Final Vision, aired in 2017 on Investigation Discovery, starring Scott Foley as Jeffrey MacDonald and Dave
Annable as McGinniss.
Other media
Jodi Picoult, an American author, discusses the MacDonald murders in her novel House Rules.
Post-conviction
Appeals
On July 29, 1980, a panel of the Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals reversed MacDonald's conviction in
a 2–1 split on the grounds that the nine-year delay in bringing him to trial
violated his Sixth Amendment rights
to a speedy trial. On August 22, 1980, he
was freed on $100,000 bail. He subsequently returned to work at St. Mary's Medical Center in Long Beach, California, as the Director of Emergency Medicine.
On December 18, 1980, the Fourth Circuit Court voted 5-5 to hear the appeal en banc. Since a majority did not vote
to hear the appeal, the application was denied and thus the earlier decision
stood. On May 26, 1981, the United
States Supreme Court accepted the case for consideration and on December 7,
1981, heard oral arguments. On March 31, 1982, they ruled 6–3 that MacDonald's
rights to a speedy trial had not been violated. He was rearrested and returned to Federal prison and his original
sentence of three consecutive life terms was reinstated with time already
served since his 1979 conviction. Defense lawyers filed a new motion for
MacDonald to be freed on bail pending appeal, but the Fourth Circuit refused. His remaining points of appeal were heard
on June 9, 1982, and his conviction was unanimously affirmed on August 16, 1982.
A further appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court was refused on
January 10, 1983. It was shortly after
this that MacDonald's licenses to practice medicine in both North Carolina and California were revoked.
On January 14, 1983, Helena
Stoeckley, aged 32, was found dead in her small apartment. She had
apparently been dead for several days, and an autopsy revealed that she died of
pneumonia and cirrhosis.
On March 1, 1985, Dupree rejected all defense motions for a
new trial. Lawyers for MacDonald
appealed to the Fourth Circuit Court of
Appeals, which upheld Dupree's ruling on December 17, 1985, and refused to
reopen the case. On October 6, 1986, the Supreme Court upheld the lower court's
decision.
On March 27, 1991, MacDonald became eligible for parole, but
he did not apply, continuing to vehemently maintain his innocence.
On July 8, 1991, Dupree, after hearing arguments that
MacDonald should be granted a new murder trial on the grounds of prosecutorial
misconduct, denied the petition. On
October 3, 1991, his defense counsel appealed Dupree's ruling on the grounds of
judicial bias due to his rulings in favor of the prosecution during the trial,
and of the harshness of his prison sentence that Dupree imposed. The appeal was
denied.
On June 2, 1992, the Fourth
Circuit Court of Appeals ruled against a new trial for MacDonald. They stated that the materials now introduced
should have been presented by MacDonald's then-lawyer, Brian O'Neill, in the 1984-85 appeal. Therefore, all rights to
further appeals were forfeited. The ruling was upheld by the U.S. Supreme Court on November 30 of
that same year.
Dupree died after a short illness on December 17, 1995.
MacDonald's former in-laws, Colette's mother, Mildred, and stepfather, Freddie Kassab, who brought his case to
the Justice Department, both died in
1994; she on January 19 and he on October 24.
The courts ruled that Dupree had acted correctly when he
refused to let the jury see a transcript of the 1970 Article 32 military hearing, and, because this was not an
insanity trial, he had also acted properly in not allowing the jurors to hear
any of the psychiatric testimony. Had he done so, the jurors would have learned
that none of the doctors hired by the defense, or who worked for the Army or government at Walter Reed Hospital, had concluded
that MacDonald was psychologically incapable of committing the murders. The
courts have also ruled that Helena
Stoeckley's confessions of committing the murders were unreliable and at
odds with the established facts of the case, and that her treatment at 1979
trial was correct. During the trial, she was arrested under a material witness
warrant and testified before the jury that she could not remember her
activities on the evening of the murders due to substantial drug use; witnesses
to whom she had confessed were not allowed to testify.
MacDonald was granted leave to file his fourth appeal on
January 12, 2006. This latest appeal is based on the 2005 affidavit of Jimmy Britt, a decorated retired United States Marshal who worked as
such during the trial. Britt states that he heard the material witness in the
case, Helena Stoeckley, admitted to the
prosecutor of the case, James Blackburn
that she was present at the MacDonald house at the time of the murders and that
Blackburn threatened her with prosecution if she testified. Stoeckley, however,
met with counsel for the defense prior to this alleged meeting with Blackburn,
and she told them that she had no memory of her whereabouts the night of the
murders. Defense Attorney Wade Smith
advised Dupree that Stoeckley had testified on the stand essentially the same
as she had stated in the defense interviews. Also, she contacted Dupree during
her retention as a material witness to claim she was terrified, not of the
prosecutors, but of Bernie Segal,
the lead defense attorney. Britt died on October 19, 2008.
On April 16, 2007, MacDonald's attorneys filed an affidavit
of Stoeckley's mother, in which she states that her daughter confessed to her
twice that she was at the MacDonald house on the evening of the murders and
that she was afraid of the prosecutors. Her past statements concerning her
daughter are at odds with the details contained in her affidavit. MacDonald has
requested to expand the appeal to include all the evidence amassed at trial,
evidence which he claims was discovered subsequent to the trial (for example,
statements of individuals to whom Stoeckely had made confessions) and the DNA
results completed in 2006. The 4th
Circuit Court of Appeals granted MacDonald's motion for a successive habeas
petition and remanded the matter back to the District Court Eastern Division for a decision. In November 2008,
Judge Fox denied MacDonald's motion regarding the statement of Britt. This
denial was based on the merits of the claim, generally, that Stoeckley was
unreliable, as she had made many varying statements regarding the murders.
Also, that MacDonald's claim that she was expected to testify in a manner
favorable to him until threatened by Blackburn is contradicted by the trial
records. MacDonald's motions regarding the DNA results and the statement of
Stoeckley's mother was also denied. The denial of these two motions was based
on jurisdiction issues, specifically, that MacDonald had not obtained the
required pre-filing authorization from the Circuit
Court for these motions to the District
Court.
Subsequent to the November 2008 decision, a government
motion to modify the decision to reflect that Britt's claims were not factual
was denied. Included with the motion was jail documentation establishing that
Stoeckley was originally confined to the jail in Pickens, South Carolina, not Greenville,
South Carolina, as Britt had claimed. Also included were custody commitment
and release forms indicating that agents other than Britt transported Stoeckley
to the trial. MacDonald appealed the
district court's denial of his claim to the 4th Circuit Court of Appeals. In 2011, the Court of Appeals
reversed the District Court's decision, remanding MacDonald's
claims back to the District Court
with instructions for consideration. An
evidentiary hearing on the Britt claim and the unknown hairs was held in
September 2012. In July 2014, Judge Fox
ruled against MacDonald's appeal and upheld the conviction.
Allegations of
evidence suppression
In the years since the trial, defense lawyers have used the Freedom of Information Act to find
evidence that the government did not present at trial. However, all of his claims regarding
suppressed evidence has been rejected by the courts, citing evidence that many
of the items had indeed been available to the defense and, even if they had
not, the items did not establish his innocence and would not have changed the
verdict of the jury.
MacDonald claims that unidentified fingerprints and fibers
found in the house were never matched to anyone known to have been in there
prior to or after the murders and that these prints are evidence of intruders. However, the prints do not match anyone named
by him as the intruders, and fingerprint exemplars of the children were not
obtained and Colette's fingerprint exemplars were of poor quality, as they were
taken subsequent to embalming.
Other claims of withheld evidence involve two unidentified
22 inch (56 cm) long synthetic hairs found in a hairbrush, but not pointed out
specifically to the defense, and a minute spot of blood that was either type O
or type B (MacDonald's blood type) that was found in the hallway. His
supporters continue to insist that this was not disclosed to the defense,
despite the existence of the trial transcripts which clearly show this spot was
indeed disclosed and discussed. They also point to unsourced black wool fibers
found on Colette MacDonald's mouth
and shoulder as evidence of intruders that the government deliberately did not
report to the defense.
In 1995, two of MacDonald's supporters, Jerry Allen Potter and Fred
Bost wrote Fatal Justice, a book
meant to both refute McGinniss' Fatal
Vision and present the evidence they claimed had been hidden by government
prosecutors.
DNA testing
On September 2, 1997, the district court granted MacDonald's
motion to file a supplemental affidavit with the Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals. Lawyers representing him were given the right
to pursue DNA tests on limited hair and blood evidence on October 17, 1997, by
the Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals.
Testing began in December 2000. Defense
lawyers hoped that the results would tie Stoeckley and her associate Greg Mitchell to the scene.
DNA test results released by the Armed Forces DNA Identification Laboratory on March 10, 2006,
showed that neither Stoeckley's nor Mitchell's DNA matched any of the tested
exhibits. A limb hair found stuck to Colette's left palm matched MacDonald's
DNA profile. It also matched hairs found on the bedspread from the master bed
and on the top sheet of Kristen's bed. A hair found in Colette's right palm was
sourced as her own. Three hairs, one from the bedsheet, one found in her body
outline in the area of her legs, and one found beneath Kristen's fingernail did
not match the DNA profile of any MacDonald family member or known suspect.
MacDonald was unsuccessful at incorporating a motion
regarding the DNA results into his motion regarding the claims of Britt, with
the court stating that he must obtain a pre-authorization for what should be a
separate motion regarding the DNA results. On April 19, 2011, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fourth
Circuit granted prefiling authorization for his DNA claim. The court
reversed the district court and remanded for further proceedings.
In September 2012, the District
Court conducted an evidentiary hearing, including MacDonald's claims of new
DNA "evidence," on remand
from the Fourth Circuit's April 2011
ruling. On July 24, 2014, the District
Court rejected his claims in their entirety and re-affirmed MacDonald's conviction
on all counts. He moved the district court to alter or amend
the July 24, 2014 judgment, and the District
Court denied his motion in November 2014. He has appealed the denial of his
motion to alter or amend the July 2014 judgment to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit. On December 21, 2018, in a 154-page opinion
the United States Court of Appeals for
the Fourth Circuit affirmed the district court's denial of relief to
MacDonald. http://www.ca4.uscourts.gov/opinions/157136.P.pdf
Parole
At the urging of MacDonald's second wife, Kathryn MacDonald (née Kurichh, married
in 2002), and his attorneys, he applied for a parole hearing, which was held on
May 10, 2005. His parole request was immediately denied. His next scheduled
parole hearing will be in May 2020.
As of 2015, MacDonald is serving his sentence at a federal
prison in Cumberland, Maryland. He continues to maintain his innocence. In
January 2017, the 4th U.S. District
Court of Appeals heard an appeal from MacDonald's attorneys challenging the
2014 refusal to grant him a new trial based on "new evidence", including the hairs found at the scene
that doesn’t match the family’s DNA and the statement from Jimmy Britt.
Second marriage
In August 2002, MacDonald married Kathryn Kurichh, former children's drama school owner/operator. The
two had met briefly in Baltimore
decades earlier, but reconnected in 1997 when Kurichh wrote MacDonald a letter
asking him how she could help with his legal case. They developed a friendship,
which became a romantic relationship. Their marriage occurred while MacDonald
was incarcerated at a federal prison in California.
After their marriage, MacDonald was transferred to the Federal Correctional Institution at Cumberland, Maryland, which is closer to his new legal state of
residence and second wife.
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