Exonerating James Pugh

A Buffalo judge will take testimony over the next three days at a hearing on whether ZMO Law client James Pugh should be exonerated in the murder of Deborah Meindl in 1993.

The case has all the markings of a file noir, or, better, a season of a true crime drama spanning three decades. It starts with the murder of a young mother, and moves on to a drunken witness, a sawed-off shotgun, two cross-country flights, false accusations among friends, a prison escape, DNA exclusions, and allegations suggesting that the detective who was in charge of the investigation had a relationship with the victim and ordered her murder. Nobody tells it better than Jesse McKinley and Danny Hakim in today’s New York Times.

Four lawyers from New York City and a paralegal are making our way to Buffalo armed with DNA results that exclude both men convicted of the crime. They were not there.

We also have witnesses lined up who will show conclusively that the detective—whether or not he actually ordered the murder—engaged in egregious misconduct. Two of those witnesses are the assistant district attorneys who re-investigated the case this past summer: the brass at the DA’s office did not like their findings and forced them off the case, demoting one and causing the other to resign. A new assistant district attorney assigned to the case says she will call not only the detective but also the husband of the victim as a possible witness—and that the daughter of the victim, who was present when her sister told James Pugh in prison that their mother knew the detective very well, would like to be in the audience.

We know how this chapter ends: James Pugh and his co-defendant will be exonerated.

The real mystery now is whether the Erie County District Attorney’s office will do its job and investigate who really killed Deborah Meindl.