Tony Ford was the driver for
two brothers, Van and Victor Belton, who went to a house in El Paso to
collect a drug debt in December, 1991. After knocking on the door, the
brothers forced their way in. Finding that the man they were looking
for was not there, they demanded money from the woman who owned the
house, her two young adult daughters, and her seventeen-year-old son.
They then shot each of the family members, killing the son, and
seriously wounding (and permanently disabling) the mother, though not
seriously injuring either daughter.
Van Belton was arrested
because one of the daughters had gone to school with him and recognized
him. Van told the police Tony was the other assailant (even though Tony
remained outside in the car). Tony was arrested and his photo was put in
a suggestive photo array that did not included Victor Belton. Both
daughters identified Tony as the second person and as the shooter.
Victor Belton and Tony looked remarkably similar, were nearly the same
age, nearly the same height, and nearly the same weight. The shooter
wore a stocking-type cap down to his ears. The victims are Mexican
American. Tony and the Beltons are African American. There was no other
evidence that put Tony in the house that night.
At trial, the defense asked
for funds for an eyewitness identification expert to help them challenge
the daughters' identifications of Tony. The court denied the request.
The case went to trial without such an expert. Tony was convicted and
sentenced to death, despite his testimony that he was not involved in
the home break-in and murder.
During federal court review
of Tony's case, he was provided funding for an eyewitness identification
expert, Roy Malpass, from the University of Texas-El Paso. With that
funding, Tony was able to show how an expert would have helped: (1)
explaining the great risk of erroneous identification in cross-racial
crimes like this one, (2) explaining that witness certainty in the
accuracy of the identification bears no relationship to accuracy
(especially where a gun was used and the glimpses of the assailant were
brief, under great stress, and obscured by a cap worn by the
assailant), (3) conducting empirical studies that showed that Victor
Belton and Tony Ford looked much more like each other than anyone else
in the photo array and that Tony looked much more like the described
assailant than anyone else in the photo array, and (4) explaining how
one of the identifications was preordained by that witness seeing Tony's
photo in the newspaper (identified as a suspect) before she saw the
photo array.
