The West Virginia Supreme Court reached decisions this week in two important cases.
In the first, the high court allowed Anthony Joseph “Joe” Buffey to withdraw a guilty plea he made in 2002 to the rape of an 83-year-old woman. Buffey has remained in a state prison since the plea, serving a 70-year prison sentence. Read the decision here.
Buffey’s case was taken up by the Innocence Project, a national non-profit organization that works on behalf of prisoners who may be exonerated by DNA evidence. The crime scene DNA showed that Buffey was not the attacker. A second individual, Adam Bowers, was linked by the DNA evidence and convicted earlier this year of rape and robbery and sent to prison.
Buffey’s professed innocence had always been suspect because he did offer a confession to the crime–albeit vague– and he did plead guilty. However, the Supreme Court agreed with attorney Allan Karlin, who worked with Innocence Project, that it was a reluctant confession after nine hours of interrogation and was retracted almost immediately.
Additionally, Buffey faced unrelated burglary charges, and his attorney at the time advised him if he took the plea deal, which was being offered for only a limited time, his sentence for the rape would be no longer than the burglaries.
Critically, the DNA results showing semen recovered from the victim was not Buffey’s was known to the state six weeks before the final plea hearing, but not provided to Buffey. Technically, that fit the standard established by the U.S. Supreme Court in 1963 in Brady v. Maryland requiring prosecutors to turn over exculpatory evidence (evidence that could be used to absolve the defendant) before a trial, but not before a plea bargain.
Since then, several courts have come to the conclusion that exculpatory evidence should also be turned over in plea bargains. That was also the finding of the West Virginia Supreme Court regarding Buffey, meaning that going forward in West Virginia, that protection will extend to all defendants as part of their due process rights, even if a plea deal is in the works.
In a second case, the state Supreme Court dismissed a complaint filed by former State School Superintendent Jorea Marple. The State School Board fired Marple in 2012, and Marple sued claiming she was denied due process rights.
However, the Court determined that Marple was clearly an at-will employee with “no guarantee of future employment or procedure for termination.” The Court made clear it was not weighing in on the “wisdom, correctness or fairness” of her firing, but added, “Dr. Marple had no constitutionally protected interest in continued employment as superintendent.” Read the decision here.
At-will employment has long been established in this country. In the absence of a specific contract, employees understand they can be terminated without cause or leave for another job without penalty.
Of course there are exceptions. For example, a will-and-pleasure employee cannot be fired because of their skin color, age, religion or because they refused to do something illegal. But barring exceptions, the rule of law is on the side of dismissal without cause.
Had the court ruled otherwise in the Marple case, or left open even a crack for an appeal, the result would have been permanent employment for even non-civil service state workers at the highest levels of government.