Lovitt said that when he came out again, the place was empty and Dicks was dead. Fearing he would be accused, he decided to flee, he said -- then spotted the cash register, snatched the drawer of money with about $200 and rushed off.
"With a track record like mine, would you call for help?" he asked a detective under police questioning. "The first thing I thought was I better get the [expletive] out of here. . . . The stupidest thing I could have done was grab the cash register, 'cause if I hadn't, I wouldn't be here now."
The jury in Robin Lovitt's case was not told about several things, says Kenneth W. Starr, right, shown with Charles Bakaly during the 1998 presidential impeachment inquiry. Among those were Lovitt's upbringing and a report challenging the validity of the murder weapon.
(Gary Hershorn -- Reuters)
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Lovitt did not fare well at his 1999 trial, where prosecutors told a starkly different story. They said Lovitt came to the 24-hour pool hall to steal money when no one was there. Confronted by Dicks, they said, Lovitt grabbed a pair of scissors from the bar and stabbed him six times. Two customers walked in on the scene and called 911, they said; one told jurors that he was 80 percent sure Lovitt was the assailant. A cellmate of Lovitt's testified that Lovitt had confessed. Lovitt did not take the stand.
The cash register drawer was found at Lovitt's cousin's house, where Lovitt had admitted bringing it in his police statement.
After two hours of deliberation, the jurors convicted him of first-degree murder and robbery. They later recommended that he be put to death.
Mary Dicks, mother of the victim, took heart in the sentence, recalling her son as a quiet, reliable man who did not smoke or drink and had wedding plans. A single father who lived in Northeast Washington, he had been raising two boys whom a one-time girlfriend had left in his care years earlier.
Lovitt "needs the electric chair," she said. "He gave Clayton the electric chair, and Clayton won't be back. Let him know what death is."
Evidence Destroyed
When Starr came to the case, Lovitt had been on death row for nearly four years. He had always maintained his innocence. His attorneys at Starr's firm won a new evidentiary hearing in 2002 but have not been able to persuade a court to throw out the death sentence or conviction. Now their arguments are in the final stages.
Among their biggest concerns is a court clerk's decision in May 2001 -- against the warnings of two fellow clerks -- to discard nearly all evidence in Lovitt's case, in spite of his continuing appeals. "The fact that evidence would be destroyed where additional testing could be done is extraordinary and, frankly, outrageous," Starr said in an interview.
The lack of evidence left Lovitt's attorneys with no way to do further DNA testing on the scissors that prosecutors identified as the murder weapon. At trial, experts said that the victim's DNA was identified on the scissors but that other DNA tests were inconclusive.
"No one ever took apart the scissors, and we know from many other cases that criminalists often uncover important blood evidence in the screws or joints of scissors," said Peter Neufeld, co-founder of the Innocence Project in New York, who has worked on DNA-based appeals for scores of inmates and testified at Lovitt's 2002 hearing.
DNA technology and training have become far more sophisticated since Lovitt's 1999 trial, Neufeld pointed out. To proceed with an execution in spite of missing evidence, he said, "constitutes a gross injustice."
"I know no [other] case where the evidence has been lost or destroyed within two years of conviction," he said.
Prosecutors have successfully argued that the destruction of the evidence was a mistake by a clerk and that there was no proof of "bad faith." The courts said it was not clear that the destroyed items were "potentially useful."
