Twenty years later, the man found guilty of murdering Michael Jordan's father may get a fresh trial. Attorneys for the convicted gunman, Daniel Green, say the original trial was rife with problems that only now are coming to light, the Charlotte Observer reports. To recap, Green and Larry Demery were teenagers when they were tried for murdering 56-year-old James Jordan—whose son was an all-time great NBA player—during a 1993 carjacking in South Carolina. In the high-profile trial, Demery became a witness for the state and accused Green of pulling the trigger. With physical evidence apparently supporting Demery, both were found guilty and eligible for parole in 20 years, but Green got an added 10 years for conspiracy. Now Demery is up for parole consideration, and Green's attorneys are claiming that:
- The trial's jury forewoman broke the rules by conducting her own investigation of the murder. Other jurors may have violated orders by reading or seeing accounts of the case.
- A state forensics expert admits that her testimony about blood in the car (which supported Demery's version of events) was shaky, and she destroyed the only existing blood sample from James Jordan on a supervisor's orders.
- The editor of a local Native American newspaper said that during a jail interview, Demery admitted to pulling the trigger.
- The first person the killers called from James' car phone was a cocaine dealer who happened to be Robeson County Sheriff Hubert Stone's out-of-wedlock son, but the jury wasn't allowed to hear about the sheriff's connection. Details about that could undermine "the entire Jordan investigation," the attorneys say.
A judge is likely to rule on the attorneys' request sometime after the end of April, says Bleacher Report. (More murder trial stories.)
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