CLARKSBURG, W.Va. — A fifteen year-old case involving the rape and robbery of a then 83-year-old Clarksburg woman will once again be litigated in a Harrison County courtroom Tuesday.
Joseph Anthony Buffey, 33, of Hepzibah, has already served fourteen years in prison for a crime he confessed and pleaded guilty to, but has claimed for the past decade didn’t commit.
On November 30, 2001, police responded to a string of break-ins in Harrison County. Buffey was arrested, and he eventually admitted to the break-ins.
Police believed Buffey was also responsible for a break-in at the home of a Clarksburg police officer’s mother. During that break-in, the 83-year-old woman was robbed and raped by an unknown assailant or assailants.
Buffey admitted to being in the home. Eventually, he confessed to the accusations. It was a confession he would later recant, claiming it had come under duress of a lengthy interrogation.
In February 2002, Buffey accepted a plea deal that he said was based on the advice of court-appointed legal counsel. The deal would put him in prison for 70 years.
In 2004, Buffey began his first attempt at an appeal. At that time, he didn’t yet have access to DNA evidence that could have potentially cleared his name.
Fast forward to 2013: DNA evidence points to another man already serving time in prison for unrelated crimes. The Innocence Project, a New York based firm that represents people nationwide who they believe have been wrongfully convicted, has come to Buffey’s aid.
DNA evidence pointed not to Buffey, but Adam Derek Bowers. Now 30, Bowers was 16 years of age at the time of the crime. He was tried with adult status and found guilty in May 2015.
One DNA expert testified before the jury during Bowers’s trial that the the odds of the recovered DNA belonging to someone other than Bowers was 1 in 40 billion.
In September 2015, a judge sentenced Bowers to a 70-year prison sentence for the crime. He would be eligible for parole after 40 years.
One month later, Joseph Buffey found his appeal in front of the State Supreme Court of Appeals; and he won.
“On top of that, you get the bad advice your lawyer gave you about, ‘You’re not going to get any more time anyhow,'” Justice Margaret Workman then said in 2015. “Then you get the, weren’t there misrepresentations or misstatements made by the authorities to the grand jury? The ‘so called’ confession had so many inconsistencies with what the victim said occurred. It just really comes out a mess.”
Buffey’s lawyers argued that their client had the right to Brady evidence, or potentially exculpatory DNA evidence that the state didn’t share with Buffey before his 2002 sentencing hearing. The West Virginia Supreme Court of Appeals agreed and threw the conviction out.
Once Attorney General Patrick Morrisey decided he wouldn’t pursue the case on behalf of the state in the U.S. Supreme Court, a stay on West Virginia’s highest court’s ruling was lifted. Buffey could withdraw his guilty plea, post bond, and–for a time–leave prison.
But the Harrison County Prosecutor’s Office wasn’t finished with Buffey. In March, a transfer order removed Judge Thomas A. Bedell from the case. Judge John Lewis Marks, Jr. became the new presiding judge in Buffey’s case.
In July, Buffey waived his right to a trial by jury–fearing that local, statewide, and national media attention would contaminate a jury room.
Now, Buffey is just one day from the beginning of a trial that will determine his fate. It’s a trial that hinges on convincing one out of one–a judge–rather than one out of twelve in a juror’s box.
Harrison County Special Prosecutor Dave Romano is expected to argue and attempt to prove the state’s ‘two-suspect’ theory. They believe Bowers and Buffey acted together. They also believe Buffey could have used a condom.
The victim, now 98, had previously told police that she only believed there was one attacker.
Police, however, say her statements support a two-suspect theory as more plausible.
In addition to this trial, Buffey also faces indictment for charges previously thrown out by the now defunct plea deal. The charges include assaulting a girl when he was 19 and being part of an alleged break-in at an animal clinic. That trial is scheduled for December 6.
Additionally, Buffey faces new legal problems after Clarksburg Police arrested him for allegedly passing a fraudulent check for $1,150.54 on September 26.
That arrest was made October 3.