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The witness who recanted everything
Released, then another scam
Five days after Jim Daly's sentencing, Skalnik was released. A state memo credited his cooperation in the murder trial. He promised to stay in Florida for three more murder trials and his own grand theft trial, but went back to Texas and scammed a jewelry store out of almost $30,000 of merchandise.
The affidavit
Caught and sent back to Florida, he was angry to be held in jail before the trials where he was due to testify, and angry that prosecutors would not trust him to go free and show up. In retaliation, he wrote a sworn affidavit that everything he had said in every earlier Pinellas County case had been fed to him by police and prosecutors and was false.
Prosecutors respond
Prosecutors now stood where the defendants had stood for years. Their filing with the court argued that no prosecutor or investigator had fed him anything, that he was lying now, and that everything he said in the earlier cases was true and should remain on the record.
Pinellas prosecutors wanted him gone. He served his time, even for the Florida crimes, back in Texas, and was released after not very much time. Before he left, he wrote a judge that the State Attorney's Office had always called him an honest, forthright witness and that together they never lost a case. The office has stated that he was never its agent, that it gave him no leniency in exchange for testimony, and that everything he provided was independently verified.
Why can't prosecutors use testimony they know is false?
The Supreme Court held in Mooney v. Holohan in 1935 that a conviction obtained by knowingly using perjured testimony violates due process. In Napue v. Illinois in 1959, it extended that to prosecutors who let false testimony stand uncorrected, even when the falsehood bears only on a witness's credibility. The reasoning is that a trial is supposed to be a search for the truth, so the state cannot build a verdict on evidence it knows is untrue. Napue arose after a witness denied having been promised a reduced sentence while the prosecutor knew otherwise.
Why do courts doubt recanted testimony?
Courts tend to treat a recantation with suspicion because the original testimony was given in open court, under oath, and tested by cross-examination. A witness who changes his story has by definition sworn to two incompatible versions, so a judge must decide which one to believe. Recantations can also be the product of pressure, payment, or personal motives that arise after the trial. Many jurisdictions will order a new trial only when the judge finds the recantation credible and likely to change the verdict.
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