About Joy’s second wrongful conviction

The trial on the cold murder case that was pinned on Joy years later with no physical evidence was fraught with prosecutorial misconduct:

1. The District Attorney violated jury instruction regulations in his opening statement telling the jury that another individual charged with the murder (Shaliq Reed) was acquitted, thereby implying that Joy had to be responsible. The Judge issued curative instruction, yet there was no way to ‘unring the bell.’
2. In violation of the Brady rule, prosecutors did not disclose that they planned to call former codefendant Shaliq Reed to the stand or that they planned to introduce an audio tape recording allegedly of Joy singing a rap song “confession.” The audio tape was not mentioned to the defense team or the jury either pretrial or in opening statements until the trial was underway in 2011, despite claiming that it had been in law enforcement possession for 19 years (since June 16, 1992). In fact, this tape was not mentioned until after Shaliq’s acquittal. Moreover, a copy of the tape has to this day never been provided to the defense team, despite a written demand for discovery. Only an unverified transcript was given to the jury–this should have been ruled inadmissible and prejudicial. This audio is the sole piece of evidence used in her trial.
3. In violation of the Confrontation Clause, the transcriber of the tape was never disclosed, nor was defense given an opportunity to cross examine them.
4. The Prosecutor, Joseph Cardone, violated the advocate rule and acted as an unsworn and impartial witness in his questioning of Investigator Darryl O’Shei, as well as his speculations from opening to closing of when tape was made, what the words meant and whose voice it was. Defense contends that the court should have recused this prosecutor and transferred it to one who had not participated in the investigation.
5. A voice analysis was never performed on Joy’s voice to compare it to that on the tape.
6. Investigator O’Shei testified that he took the audio tape home with him overnight, which thereby should have deemed it inadmissible, in addition to the fact that a chain of custody for the 19 years the tape was supposedly in law enforcement possession could not be verified.
7. An audio engineer testified that he enhanced the vocals on the tape at the request of investigators, which should have deemed the tape as tampered with.
8. The prosecutor improperly called [and transported him from the prison where he was serving time for another case] the acquitted former codefendent, Shaliq, to testify against his will. Shaliq openly told Judge James Punch that he refused to take the stand and revealed that the DA had interrogated him and offered him after his acquittal to write a letter to the parole board for him if he would testify against Joy (Cardone admitted to this in court record). Despite not receiving a subpoena, the Judge threatened Shaliq with contempt of court if he did not testify for the prosecution. The Judge went as far as to threaten, “And if you go before the parole board, these [charges] would be made available to the parole board.” Shaliq then stated to the court, “I don’t have any involvement. I don’t know anything.”
9. Joy contends that she was deprived of effective counsel because so many of her lawyer’s objections were overruled and he was unfairly threatened with contempt at one point that by closing arguments, he was no longer objecting to the prosecutor’s misleading statements. Showing impatience and bias against the defense, the Judge at one point posed to Joy’s counsel, “What on earth is your objection?” and after counsel’s answer said, “Come on. Alright. Overruled.” The Judge’s favoritism is grounds for a mistrial, yet this motion was denied.