Season 3: BONUS Jeff Pelley's Status Hearing
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Hey, CounterClock listeners. If you follow me or the official show pages on social media, you might have seen that recently there was a court hearing held in St. Joseph County, Indiana for Jeff Pelley. If you haven't listened to season three of CounterClock, which focuses on the 1989 Pelley family murders and my reinvestigation into the crime, stop now and go listen. Otherwise, nothing in this episode will make sense.

For those of you who have listened but need a refresher, I highly recommend going back and re-listening to the bonus episode I released last March. That covered Jeff Pelley's post-conviction evidentiary hearing. That proceeding lasted four days and was something Jeff's attorney, Fran Watson, spent more than a decade fighting to get. The fact that it even happened at all shocked a lot of people in northern Indiana.

Since then, so many of you have been commenting, tweeting, and emailing me desperate for an update in this case. And I heard you loud and clear. Here it is. Today, I'm going to walk you through the recent developments regarding Jeff's ongoing post-conviction petition for relief, a.k.a. his request for a new trial. All right, let's get into it.

In Indiana, public court hearings are streamed via Zoom, but state law prohibits anyone from recording them. So in this episode, you won't hear audio from the actual hearing that took place on May 31st, 2023. But to start, I should go over what led up to Judge Stephanie Steele ordering this status hearing in the first place.

After the four-day evidentiary hearing in March of 2022, both the prosecution, led by Deputy Prosecuting Attorney Mark Kapinski, and the defense, led by Attorney Fran Watson, filed what's referred to as their proposed findings of fact and conclusions of law. Think of this paperwork as each side's final thoughts. These lengthy documents had deadlines. Fran Watson submitted hers on November 1st, 2022.

Then, three months later, on February 1st, 2023, Mark Kapinski submitted his. Since then, we've all been waiting to see when Judge Steele will issue her ruling. Will she agree that some of Jeff's claims are valid and merit him getting a new trial? Or will she reject them all and side with the state? That weighty decision is solely in her hands.

To be clear, her role is not to decide whether Jeff is guilty or innocent of the murders, or retry the case all over again. Her job is to decide whether Jeff and his legal team have met their burden of proof to have a shot at a new trial. Attorneys I've interviewed who have experience with post-conviction cases tell me it can take anywhere from six months to well over a year for a judge in Stephanie Steele's position to hand down a ruling.

That's just how post-conviction cases go. They drag on. But I have to say, Judge Steele seems extremely thorough and completely the opposite of dragging her feet just for the sake of dragging her feet. At the start of the hearing last week, she reminded both sides, as well as Jeff Pelley himself, who joined via phone from prison, that the case record she's tasked with reviewing is massive. She said in part, quote,

"It's like a swimming pool of information. This is a voluminous record that has now spanned 34 years, involves appeals, motions, and now an evidentiary hearing. In reading through the arguments and claims, it's apparent to me that both sides are very passionate about their positions and how they think I should decide." As someone who's worked on this story for more than three years now, I wholeheartedly agree with that statement.

Judge Steele explained that her reasoning for ordering this unexpected status hearing was really out of courtesy, so she could get even more clarity from both sides on information they submitted in their findings of facts and conclusions of law briefs.

Basically, she felt like both sides could improve a few things in their final arguments and wanted them to file additional stuff for her to review. She outright said that she has a draft of her decision prepared, but it's just a draft. She's unable to finalize it until she receives what she's asking for.

What I took away from her first few statements was that she was essentially saying, hey, I'm very, very close to making up my mind, but the stuff y'all gave me needs some tidying up.

Now, I don't want to get too far into the weeds with legal terminology here, but the big takeaway was that Judge Steele wants both Fran Watson and Mark Kopinski to double-check their work and do a better job of citing the specific case law which supports their individual arguments. As a journalist, I know more than most people the importance of citing source material, but when you're a lawyer, I'd say it's even more important, especially if you're involved in post-conviction cases.

Judges need to be able to see where there's been precedent set in other cases in order to know how to interpret the law and apply it. Something that was interesting to me is that between the two sides, Judge Steele requested more from the defense than she did the prosecution, which to me says a lot in and of itself.

What I mean is, if Judge Steele was already dead set on siding with the prosecution and plans to reject all of the legal claims Fran Watson initially raised in Jeff's petition for relief — you know, the stuff about how he had ineffective assistance of counsel, there's newly discovered evidence, the prosecutor at his 2006 trial committed a Brady violation, etc. — then, in my mind, she would have just issued her ruling.

But the fact that she didn't, and instead asked Fran and her team to essentially provide her a clear roadmap on possibly how to rationalize ruling in their favor, is super interesting to me. My point is, why would Judge Steele ask the defense to clarify their arguments, sharpen their work, and give her more stuff, if she's just planning to reject everything they have to say anyway?

During the hearing, it came as no surprise to me that the one thing Judge Steele wanted the defense to flesh out a little more was their arguments about Jeff's blue jeans. And really, it's two specific arguments about the blue jeans. One is that the defense claims the blue jeans were not washed. And Alan Baum, Jeff's trial lawyer, did a terrible job because he didn't even think to question this evidence.

Allen just took the state's word for it at trial that Jeff's jeans were washed, like the prosecution said, and those were the pants he wore during the murders. But in reality, knowing what we know now, the likelihood that the blue jeans were washed is extremely low. And if you ask Fran Watson, she would say it's impossible that the blue jeans were washed. But Judge Steele asked the defense to make their points about this clearer.

The second thing the defense has argued about the jeans is that Frank Schaefer, the prosecutor who tried the case in 2006, presented the jeans in such a way to jurors that they wouldn't see the coins, receipt, and Anna's grocery store bag. Fran says this was intentional on the prosecution's part and an attempt to mislead the jury into thinking the jeans had not been worn out of the Pelly home by Jeff, but in fact stayed at the house in the washing machine after the murders.

Basically, because of the way jurors were shown the blue-jean evidence, Fran argues that the act itself may have prejudiced them against Jeff by not giving them the full picture. Judge Steele wanted Fran's team to clarify a few things with that argument as well.

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The other big thing to come out of the hearing was that Fran told Judge Steele the defense is now abandoning its newly discovered evidence claim regarding the Tony Beeler interview and some of the Florida facts. If you'll remember, Tony Beeler was the photographer who was hired by Bob Pelley before the murders to take pictures for the Olive Branch United Brethren Church Directory. ♪

In 2003, shortly after Jeff was arrested, but years before he would go to trial, Tony Beeler came forward and was interviewed by a St. Joseph County investigator named Timothy Decker. That interview was videotaped and a short summarizing report was typed up. When Tony spoke with Timothy Decker, she claimed that Bob Pelley expressed to her that he did not want his family's photo taken because he had a past in Florida that he was afraid would catch up to him and endanger his family.

However, by the time Jeff went to trial in 2006, Tony's interview had never made it from the prosecutor's office into the hands of the defense during discovery. Fran Watson has long said that was extremely problematic. Because if Alan Baum, Jeff's defense attorney at the time, had known about Tony Beeler, he would have likely been able to get the Florida facts about Bob Pelley and his fears about his previous life from Florida admissible during Jeff's trial.

That would have been huge because some of those things more than likely would have been exculpatory, meaning they would have pointed away from Jeff as the only possible suspect. Currently, though, Fran and her team's position is that everything Tony Beeler's interview represents falls less under the term of newly discovered evidence and more under some of their other claims related to Brady violations, ineffective assistance of counsel, and speedy trial and pre-charging delays, etc.,

And Fran wholly admitted to Judge Steele that several of the defense's claims do overlap. But that's the point. There are a series of complicated issues that are interconnected that plagued Jeff's initial trial, which Fran says all resulted in constitutional violations, which is what she says makes them so powerful. At one point in the hearing, Fran said, quote, "'What creates the prejudice?'

Even though Fran is not harping on what she calls the Florida facts as much anymore, I still want to take a moment and mention where the Eric Dawson murder case in Southwest Florida stands right now. If you listened to season three, you know that Eric's case is somewhat tangentially connected to some of the same players in Bob Pelley's past.

Eric was the businessman/land development entrepreneur from Fort Myers, Florida who vanished in September of 1988 and whose decomposing body was found two months later in November 1988 entombed in a makeshift concrete grave in a rural patch of woods. The same woods he planned to develop into a residential community. He'd been shot execution style in the head with a .22 caliber gun.

Eric's murder is still unsolved, despite the key figures who defrauded him, Phil Hawley and his sons, being convicted for financial crimes related to stealing Eric's land before his death. These days, Jason Dawson, Eric's youngest son, is watching the Pelley case closely. He and I talk frequently, and that's because he's convinced that whatever happens in Jeff's legal future may have a ripple effect on his father's case.

You see, when Jeff's evidentiary hearing was held in March of 2022, an entire day was spent deconstructing the circumstances surrounding Eric's murder and the Hawley family's connection to Bob Pelley. That was the first time ever that critical information and witness testimony related to Eric's murder investigation and the investigation into the financial fraud carried out against him was submitted in an official court proceeding.

The most explosive fact that was established in the evidentiary hearing came from former Lee County Sheriff's Office homicide detective Tom Continos. While he was testifying, Tom confirmed that he had personally seen an evidence destruction form produced by the Lee County Sheriff's Office, stating that the physical evidence in Eric's case had been purged.

Now, that's a huge problem because Eric's case is still an open homicide. So someone mistakenly destroyed the physical evidence, thinking that when the Hollys were convicted of the financial crimes against Eric, that the evidence from his murder was no longer needed. The Dawson family has grounds to potentially sue the Lee County Sheriff's Office over this mistake.

And now they have the proof that the mistake occurred thanks to Tom Cantinos' testimony existing in the Indiana court record related to Jeff Kelly. I know, it's wild, right? Jason tells me he and his family members are considering all their options, but they won't make any definitive moves until Jeff's case plays out a little more.

I know this episode is shorter, and it's hard to distill everything down that happened in the hearing, but those are pretty much the highlights. Something Judge Steele repeated several times throughout the proceeding was that she needed both sides to be more precise in some sections of their arguments where they were pointing to historical documents or transcripts already in the case record.

She said, quote, if you don't cite it, I will not go search for it. I know everyone is eager for me to make a decision. I hope you both can see how carefully I'm considering these things and how important I think it is to carefully read everybody's proposed findings and apply the law correctly, end quote. Judge Steele noticed early on that Mark Kopinski and his co-counsel for the prosecution were not writing much down at their table in the courtroom.

She reminded them that no transcript of the hearing would be made available, and at one point she bordered on admonishing them to take diligent notes. It's hard to tell, though, if the reps for the state took that warning to heart. Neither attorney talked much during the hearing. However, towards the end, Mark Kopinski did offer this up when asked if he would be prepared to respond to the judge's request in a timely manner.

He said, quote, On August 18th, both sides will submit the paperwork Judge Steele asked for. Then we're back to what we've been doing, waiting.

Shortly after the hearing, I spoke on the phone with Jackie Pelley, Jeff's younger sister. She wanted to know my thoughts on the whole thing, and I gave her my honest opinion, which was similar to what I've expressed to you all in this episode. Jackie told me that the waiting is difficult. She wants Judge Steele to be thorough, but the days ticking by wear on her. She's always nervous when stuff like this comes up, and she said that the idea hope is worth having takes a toll on her and Jeff too.

Now, for those of you listening who believe Jeff Pelley is guilty of the crimes he's in prison for, you'll have a hard time understanding that. And I get it. I totally do. Jackie's pretty active on social media these days. She's not as closed off to the world as she once was, mostly because she feels like ever since CounterClock Season 3 released, a lot of people have become more open to hearing her perspective and not jumping to any conclusions too fast.

Because Judge Steele already has a draft of her ruling prepared, she said that she doesn't anticipate it taking her very long to finalize and issue her ruling, but she will need some time.

Exactly how long that will be, though, is anyone's guess. It could be days, weeks, months. We might not know till Halloween, or we might not know until closer to New Year's. In the meantime, I'll be keeping a close eye on things. And as always, we'll return with a future update. CounterClock is an AudioChuck production. So, what do you think, Chuck? Do you approve?

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