Andrew Wolfson

The Courier-Journal

A Spencer County woman who claimed she pleaded guilty to a homicide she didn't commit only because she was railroaded by a state police detective has been granted a new trial.

The Kentucky Court of Appeals ruling Friday means that Susan Jean King likely will be exonerated in the 1998 slaying of Kyle "Deanie" Breeden, lawyers say.

"This is a great victory for Susan, her family and the Kentucky criminal justice system," said Linda A. Smith, director of the Department of Public Advocacy's Kentucky Innocence Project, which won the case.

King, who spent 6½ years in prison before serving out her sentence in 2012, said, "I think it's about time."

The homicide went unsolved for eight years until then-Detective Todd Harwood of the Kentucky State Police was assigned to investigate it as a cold case and concluded 18 days later that King was the perpetrator. Facing life in prison if convicted of murder, King, while maintaining her innocence, pleaded guilty in 2008 to manslaughter and accepted a 10-year sentence.

The Innocence Project began investigating after concluding it would have been physically impossible for King, who has only one leg and weighed 97 pounds at the time of the offense, to have thrown Breeden's body off a bridge into the Kentucky River, where it was found.

Then in May 2012, while he was being interrogated by Louisville Metro Police about another crime, Richard Jarrell Jr. confessed to killing Breeden and two other homicides. Louisville narcotics Detective Barron Morgan then passed his statement to the Innocence Project.

After a two-day hearing, Spencer Circuit Judge Charles Hickman said Jarrell had offered a "startling level of details" about the homicide in his confession. But as a matter of law, Hickman said he couldn't grant King's motion for a new trial because she had pleaded guilty.

In a unanimous decision, however, a state Court of Appeals panel reversed that ruling Friday, saying she deserved a new trial based on Jarrell's confession — regardless of whether her conviction came by plea or trial.

"In a society whose foundations were built upon the guarantee of justice to every citizen, the conviction of an innocent person represents a serious and egregious violation of such guarantee," Judge Jeff S. Taylor of Owensboro wrote for the court.

In an interview, Spencer Assistant Commonwealth's Attorney David Nutgrass, citing Jarrell's confession, suggested it is unlikely that the office would move to retry King. Smith also said a trial was unlikely given the evidence against Jarrell.

In an interview, Morgan hailed the ruling, saying it vindicated both of them.

He alleged he was demoted to patrol officer on the graveyard shift for trying to help King, and in April he won a $450,000 settlement from Louisville on his claim that he was punished in violation of the state whistleblower protection act.

Smith credited Morgan with bringing King to the brink of exoneration.

"Barron Morgan was absolutely the hero of this story," she said. "Without him sticking his neck out and doing the right thing, we would not have had the information about Richard Jarrell's confession."

Morgan's lawyer, Thomas Clay, said, "I think justice has finally been done."

Harwood, who was transferred from detective to trooper assigned to the Campbellsburg post, did not respond to a request for comment.

State police Commissioner Rodney Brewer said in an email that he had no comment, other than to note that Harwood's transfer was unrelated to King's case.

Morgan claimed Harwood initially refused to interview Jarrell about his confession and complained to Louisville detectives that they were "opening a can of worms" in taking his claim seriously.

Morgan also said that when he re-interviewed Jarrell after Harwood eventually decided to talk to him, Jarrell gave him the impression that Harwood "wanted him to keep his mouth shut."

Harwood denied discouraging Jarrell from cooperating but was unable to produce a recording of the interview, saying he had lost his tape recorder.

A state police lieutenant interviewed Jarrell later and he recanted his confession, saying he had implicated himself only to win leniency for his brother, who had been charged with drug trafficking.

Hickman, the circuit judge, said that he couldn't tell if Jarrell was telling the truth when he said he had killed Breeden 13 years earlier on Jarrell's 21st birthday — or when he recanted.

But the Court of Appeals noted numerous ways in which Jarrell's confession was accurate, including his description of the location of two bullets he said he fired into Breeden's head, which matched the state medical examiner's findings.

The Court of Appeals also said that Jarrell's confession to other shootings proved accurate — including his claim that he threw guns into McNeely Lake after one of them; the guns were found in the lake by Louisville Metro Police divers.

The court held that if Jarrell's confession had been available when King's initial case was in the courts, it would have "within reasonable certainty" have changed the result.

"It is self-evident that the conviction of an innocent person offends both social norms of justice and the laws embodied in court constitution," the court said.

King said she lost more than her freedom during the years she was incarcerated. She said the most painful time was when she had to have a friend put down her dog, a Labrador-Australian shepherd mix named Susie Q.

"She was my best friend," King said. "I have been through an awful lot and I lost an awful lot."

Reporter Andrew Wolfson can be reached at (502) 582-7189.