19 March 2022 :
Death sentence of Kevin Dowling overturned.
A Pennsylvania trial court has granted a new trial to death-row prisoner Kevin Dowling, now 63, White, finding that prosecutors withheld evidence that would have shown he was 40 miles away when their sole eyewitness claimed to have seen him near the murder scene.
In a ruling issued February 22, 2022, Lebanon County Senior Judge Robert J. Eby, also found that prosecutors failed to correct the testimony of a state trooper who fabricated a timeline that supported the eyewitness’s erroneous identification. Dowling’s trial counsel, Eby found, also was ineffective in failing to request evidence in the possession of the prosecution that would have demonstrated that the prosecution’s timeline was inaccurate and that its eyewitness testimony was mistaken.
Dowling was convicted and sentenced to death in 1998 for the October 20, 1997 murder of Jennifer Myers. No physical evidence linked Dowling to the murder. The prosecution’s case against Dowling relied heavily on the testimony of a single eyewitness, Sandra Sue Eller.
Dowling has been on Pennsylvania’s death row more than 23 years.
