A 53-year-old woman who has spent more than five years in jail charged with the 1996 killing of a traveling appliance salesman was acquitted yesterday in D.C. Superior Court, ending a case that dragged on for so many years that it outlasted the other defendant.
Ida Chase, charged with robbery and murder in the death of 69-year-old Julius Adelman, gasped loud enough to be heard in the back of the courtroom as the jury foreman read the final "not guilty." Her husband, Charles, also charged in the case, died last year.
Salesman Julius Adelman, 69, was found suffocated.
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Chase and her attorneys, Renee P. Raymond and Alison Flaum of the D.C. Public Defender Service, collapsed into a brief collective embrace, seemingly overcome by the verdict, which will allow Chase to walk out of jail, free for the first time since October 1999.
"Mrs. Chase has always had faith in the system, and finally that faith and Mrs. Chase were vindicated," Raymond said.
Authorities had alleged that Adelman was robbed and killed by the Chases in the couple's Northeast Washington home. Adelman, of Randallstown, Md., sold appliances and other goods from his station wagon on routes in Maryland and the District, and the Chases were among his regular customers. Prosecutors said they robbed him in a bid to dispense of the debts, including $14,000 in loans they owed him.
Adelman was found dead July 8, 1996, in the 300 block of Randolph Place NE. He had been suffocated and was wrapped in a comforter, with duct tape binding his wrists and ankles and a pillowcase over his head.
The trial, first scheduled for 2000, was put off at least 10 times, often at the request of defense attorneys. In addition to Charles Chase, who died in January 2004, at least one key prosecution witness died.
The oldest murder case on the Superior Court docket, it finally went to trial last summer, and ended with a hung jury split 10 to 2 in favor of conviction. With two new witnesses, including the Chases' teenage son, lined up to testify in the retrial, the prosecution's case seemed stronger than the one presented last summer.
Yesterday's acquittal came after barely a day of deliberations. Afterward, a juror said that the police work was sloppy and incomplete and that the prosecution left too many alternative theories unrefuted.
It was a question of the "quality of the investigation," said the juror, a 46-year-old civil trial lawyer who spoke on condition of anonymity. "There were things that should've been done that weren't done, leaving many unanswered questions."
For example, the juror said, not only did a fingerprint found on the duct tape not match either of the Chases, but investigators were never able to determine who had left it.
With such questions left unanswered, the jurors did not believe the circumstantial evidence against Chase was conclusive, the juror said. "It wasn't so much that she wasn't guilty, but that there were very serious questions about whether she was."
U.S. Attorney Kenneth L. Wainstein defended the work by police and prosecutors. Prosecutors argued that circumstantial evidence tied Ida Chase to the killing, including carpet fibers found on Adelman's body that were consistent with those found at the couple's home.
"Homicides by their very nature are some of the most difficult cases to investigate and prove, especially when they are largely circumstantial," Wainstein said in a statement. "This case was no exception."
Several D.C. detectives stood up after hearing the verdict and walked out of the courtroom, even as Judge Rhonda Reid-Winston was still addressing the jury. Left behind was Adelman's son, Steve, a fixture in the courtroom through the two trials. Seated next to his wife, he did not move after hearing the verdict.
