James Harrison

 

Normally I probably would not put this blog together after doing my research but this case just seems too interesting not to tell even with all of the questions left. The problem with this case is that while there were several different appeals filed not all of them gave details of the crime itself that included the evidence against the defendant but most revolved around misconduct by the judge. At some point the Indiana Supreme Court threw out James Harrison's conviction and sentence. If there was a re-trial or a plea made it is unclear. What I can say is that in December of 1991 Harrison was sentenced to die and while some reports say he was later given a life sentence, according to the Indiana Department of Corrections he was given a sentence of ninety years and another sentence of sixty years. The Department of Corrections also states that James Harrison is now deceased. They list his “projected” release date as May 12, 2017. I have seen this before and this is generally the date of death for the inmate but I can find nothing to confirm this.

It seems that James Harrison's life was full of trouble and many prison stints. In 1974 Harrison was given a twenty year sentence for the second degree murder of a woman in Virginia. It appears that he may have not been out of prison long before this happened because it looks like he served a few years prior to that, also in Virginia, for a charge of involuntary manslaughter against another woman. He was released from a Virginia prison on March 14, 1988 and then released from parole on September 14^th. It was said that after he was released from parole he went to Posey County Indiana for about a month where it seems his mother lived and then left for a while, returning sometime a few months later.

On the morning of January 17, 1989 there was a fire in Mount Vernon Indiana, located in Posey County. It was quickly discovered that there were three bodies inside the home. They were twenty year old Stacy Forsee, her three year old daughter, Tia and her twenty-one month old son, Jordan. Jordan's father was Stacy's ex-boyfriend, Charles Hanmore. Many news articles listed Jordan's surname as Forsee, including in obituaries. Stacy and her children share a tombstone with only the name Forsee listed on the tomb although Jordan can be found on Findagrave.com under the name of Hanmore. It was determined that while the children died because of the fire, Tia due to burns and Jordan from smoke inhalation, Stacy had been stabbed several times before the fire began.

There seemed to be no leads in the case but my research indicated that there were leads but they were ignored. Then sometime in early 1991 investigators were contacted from authorities in a Maryland jail. An inmate was claiming that a man by the name of James Harrison had confessed to the murder and arson against Stacy and her children. Allegedly an investigation into this was launched and on April 18, 1991 James Harrison was charged with the murders, arson, and for being a habitual offender. Now, the actual charges were something new to me. While I cannot say for certain what the murder charge was against Stacy, the charge for Tia's murder was listed as “knowing murder” and the charge for Jordan was “felony murder.” Felony murder charges are pretty simple to understand but I had never heard of the charge of “knowing murder” and honestly I was not able to determine anything about what that may or may not mean.

Prosecutors alleged that James had met Stacy at a local church and that he had begun stalking her. There were conflicting reports as to just how this had been determined or whether Stacy had spoken of him or his alleged stalking. They would claim that the murder had been committed because Stacy had rejected him and that the children had basically been “collateral” damage from the fire after he had murdered Stacey. There were reports of semen being present at the scene and some reported that it had been found in Stacy's mouth while other reports were less specific or indicated it was found elsewhere. Fire officials believed that a flammable liquid had been used to start the fire and while one employee at a local store had identified Harrison through a picture ID as buying kerosene around the time of the fire. This employee apparently had been very specific because investigators claim they knew exactly what day Harrison had bought the kerosene based on her information. That being said the defense was able to find another employee who was working on that day who claimed to not have seen Harrison. By all indications the employee who had identified him claimed to do so based on behavior by Harrison that by the sounds of things would have been difficult for other employees to miss. Another eyewitness claimed to have seen Harrison at the scene of the fire before law enforcement arrived. Again, this person identified him through a picture ID. At his trial Harrison's mother would dispute the identifications based on the fact that apparently both witnesses claimed he had a beard or facial hair of some sort and his mother claimed he was clean shaven.

In my opinion I do not believe that either of the eyewitnesses, nor Harrison's mother or the second employee at the store can really be reliable. Harrison was not apparently even on law enforcement radar until two years after the murders. I find it hard to believe that any of these people could know for certain what someone looked like on a day two years prior, especially those who did not know him. And, lets be fair, I rarely give a lot of credence to jailhouse informants.

So, what else did the prosecution have that connected Harrison to the crime? The crime had occurred in 1989, at a time in which DNA was in it's infancy. The prosecution would place an expert on the stand to testify about results taken from the semen found on, or in, Stacy. First, there was controversy about when the results from this testing came. I will go more into that later but it is suffice to say that the results did not apparently come, or at least given to the defense, until a day or so after Harrison's trial had begun. This means that those results were not available before Harrison was charged or even before his trial began. The second thing that I found odd was the wording that was used by the lab expert that testified. The lab expert stated that the tests showed “the DNA type found in the defendants blood is the same type as that of the semen found in Stacy Forsee's body.” At the trial the expert would say “I can only give a probability, not conclusive” evidence that it was a match to Harrison. It was announced at trial that only 7.4% of “the white male population” matched in the country. This statement was also challenged in an appeal later filed by Harrison's defense.

Harrison's trial was initially set to begin in January of 1992. The prosecutors were seeking the death penalty so as is common Harrison was given two public defenders at his first court hearing. It seems early on, and fairly quickly the attorney's learned that not long before Stacy was murdered she had gone to the State Police department and spoke with officers there. She informed them that she feared for her life. She was convinced that a man in a “suspicious van” was following her. She also provided information about drug activity that involved her ex-boyfriend, Charles Hanmore and another man named Roger Greathouse. It was not completely clear throughout my research whether some of the information she provided were things she alleged to know first hand or if they had come from Charles, but it was damning accusations. She would allege that literally truckloads of drugs were being brought into Posey County to Roger Greathouse's home and that not only did local judge, James Redwine know this, so did several other high officials in the county.

On July 31, 1991 all of the attorney's met with Redwine and the issue of his name being brought up in the case was discussed. Redwine dismissed the allegations and in the process also refused to withdraw from the case. The defense filed for a change of venue due to this, as well as publicity in the case and Redwine denied that. In mid August Redwine granted what was described as an “oral request” by the State to move the trial up from January to November against the objections of the defense. I have seen case after case that is delayed as well as cases where yet another continuance is requested and denied but I am unsure that I have ever seen a case in which the State asks to have the trail conducted sooner and it be granted, let alone when the defense has objected.

On September 16^th the defense filed a motion for a change of judge. This required a full-fledged hearing but one in which Redwine himself would still be allowed to preside over. It was later learned, and proven, that on the day this motion was filed Judge Redwine called Roger Greathouse. He told Greathouse about the allegations being made and asked him to come to the hearing. This was not done by the State or even done so with a subpoena. This was a conversation between two friends it seems, which in my opinion gave more credence to report made by Stacy. The hearing began on September 24^th. Witnesses included detectives who had taken the report from Stacy, Stacy's mother, both Charles Hanmore and Roger Greathouse and even an attorney that had previously represented Stacy in a custody and child support case.

The detectives that had taken the report from Stacy testified as to what they recalled her saying. It was said that the interview had been taped but that it had been misplaced. The detectives would claim that they did not take notes of the interview and that no one followed up on the claims because allegedly they did not believe her story. Stacy's mother, Gloria also testified about Stacy's fears about Redwine and her knowledge of drug activity. Throughout all of the witnesses testifying Redwine would interject and with the presence of Stacy's prior attorney, Hanmore and Greathouse it was as if he was presenting his own witnesses. Redwine was trying to establish through the attorney that during any proceedings involving Stacy and Hanmore that he had not been unfair to her; with Hanmore he was trying to establish that Stacy had not been present at Greathouse's home when she had alleged she had been at a party as well as have Hanmore say he had never told Stacy any of the information that she had told detectives; with Greathouse, while Redwine openly admitted knowing him and his family, he wanted to establish that he had never been at his home, especially not to witness “truckloads” of drugs being delivered.

The point for the defense not wanting Redwine presiding over the case was basically two-fold. Of course they felt there was a conflict of interest if in fact Stacy's story was true. To be fair since the allegations had not been investigated to the validity of them the defense could not be sure that Redwine was not involved in the murder of Stacy and her children. Secondly, with Redwine presiding over the case it hindered the defense in even bringing up the allegations by Stacy because to do so ultimately Redwine's name would be mentioned. Not surprisingly however Redwine denied the defense's motion and remained on the case. The defense attempted to appeal to the Indiana Supreme Court but they either failed to even look at the case or denied the motion.

After the hearing on the change of judge things got even worse for the defense. Judge Redwine determined that the motion itself was false and fictitious and declined to compensate the attorney's for their time on that motion. He had also removed them from another death penalty case that they had been assigned to prior to the issue of this conflict of interest in this case. The attorney's would later say that prior to the Harrison case they were given cases often yet after the Harrison case they were rarely assigned cases. It seems Redwine was holding a grudge.

Harrison's trial began November 6, 1991. The following day the defense was given information about DNA results and that the witnesses involved in those results would be testifying the following day. The defense asked they be given time to depose the witnesses before they testified. Redwine told them there was no time to depose them but he gave them a mere two hours to talk to them before they testified to their findings.

The trial lasted nine days and the jury deliberated a little over seven hours before returning with their verdict. I am very perplexed at the verdict but I found no explanation as to the reasoning. The jury found Harrison guilty of the “knowing murder” of Tia, of the “felony murder” of Jordan, arson and being a habitual offender. However, they found him not guilty in the murder of Stacy. I have no idea if the DNA results played any role in that decision. I know that in today's society we would like very conclusive DNA results but in 1991 that was likely the best they could come up with. That being said, I have difficulty in understanding how they determined he was not guilty of murdering Stacy but yet guilty of setting the fire in which the children died. It just seems so unlikely that someone other than the person who murdered Stacy would have set fire to the house. The jury recommended the death sentence and on December 14, 1991 Judge Redwine obliged.

The initial appeal in 1995 was held up both by Redwine and the Indiana State Supreme Court. Then a new filing was made in 2004 that seemed to make all the difference. There were several things addressed within the appeal but the main issues revolved around Redwine. As I stated earlier it is unclear if the State Supreme Court had even reviewed the hearing for the change of judge before the trial started. Their 2004 ruling indicates that either they had not done so or if they had they had given Redwine the benefit of the doubt that he would remain fair. Their review in 2004 indicated they had been dead wrong in that decision. Not only did they admonish Redwine's behavior throughout the hearing where he consistently interjected himself and even basically called his own witnesses it had been discovered about his phone call to Roger Greathouse's home on the day the motion had been filed. At some point Greathouse had testified that the first thing he asked Redwine was if he needed an attorney and that he was told no. It was said that this was never asked in the recorded conversation.

The court discovered that Redwine had not only refused to delay or pause the trial for the defense to look over the DNA results they had just received but he had also forbidden them from mentioning any other theory of how someone else could have been involved. It was also said that the defense was also told they could not present any evidence about an alibi without the courts approval and it had to be done so outside the presence of the jury. The court decided that Redwine's behavior had prevented Harrison from having his constitutional right to a fair trial and they overturned the verdict and the sentence.

This is when things get even more weird for me in my research. I found no evidence that there was ever another trial. Some things indicated that the court had only overturned the death sentence and ordered a new hearing but that was not the evidence in which I read. I also found nothing that said there any sort of agreement made between the parties. One report stated that in 2004 Harrison was re-sentenced to life in prison but even that does not ring true with the Department of Corrections website. As I stated in the beginning the website lists Harrison as deceased but it also only listed two charges, both as murder, with a sentence date of May 5, 2008 for both. To those who may wonder if I have found the correct James Harrison, I have determined this was him based on his middle initial, his race, his age and the fact that the conviction took place in Posey County. In addition to this the Department of Corrections website had a cause number that I searched and found another site in which listed his name and crimes. That site only confirmed to me that this was the correct James Harrison because while unlike the Department of Corrections listing him as deceased with a date the other site listed a date of April 17, 2066 as his earliest release date.

As frustrating as not having the answers to everything involved in Harrison's case is, I believe there was something even more frustrating to me. By all accounts it seems as if the things Stacy reported were still never investigated, nor did I see that Judge Redwine was disciplined for his misconduct in this case. In fact Redwine apparently remained a sitting Posey County judge until his retirement in December of 2018. He has even written a book called “Judge Lynch” about a case that took place in Posey County in 1878. I does look like Roger Greathouse has been in and out of jails and Indiana prisons over the years for drug related crimes and in front of Judge Redwine at least a few times, the last time it looks like he got time served in the county jail.

Do I think James Harrison murdered Stacy Forsee and her children? I honestly do not know. I question the original jury verdict again because I do not see how he could be acquitted for the murder of Stacy but guilty for setting the fire that killed her children. If my research revealed all of the “evidence” that the prosecutors had then all I can say is that the evidence was not there. I absolutely agree that he was not given a fair trial in 1991 with Judge Redwine presiding. I would like to hear more about any alibi the defense intended to present at the trial.

I would love to hear more from people who know about this case that can fill in the blanks.