By Jennifer Henderson, From The Am Law Daily

For 23 years, Raymond Tempest Jr. has been professing his innocence in the gruesome murder of Doreen Picard, whose bludgeoned body was found in a basement in the Rhode Island city of Woonsocket in 1982.

Tempest, a high-school dropout and the son of a local sheriff, was convicted in 1992 of strangling the 22-year-old homecoming queen with her own sweater and pummeling her to death with a 28-inch pipe. But on Monday a state judge in Rhode Island finally agreed that the conviction must be overturned, setting the stage for Tempest’s possible release—and handing a hard-earned pro bono victory to Michael Kendall of McDermott Will & Emery.

“Irrespective of the petitioner’s guilt or innocence, justice demands the setting aside of his conviction,” wrote Justice Daniel Procaccini of Rhode Island Superior Court.

Kendall, the head of McDermott’s white-collar and securities defense practice, has been leading Tempest’s defense since 2012. Along with partner Matthew Turnell and associate Kate Dyson, he spent six snow-packed weeks in February and March this year shuttling back-and-forth from Boston to attend a bench trial in Providence, contesting the evidence against Tempest by day and preparing for the next day’s appearances by night.

The biggest challenge, according to Kendall, was working on a case involving evidence that was more than three decades old.

Picard’s 1982 murder stunned the small suburban city of Woonsocket, midway between Providence and Worcester, Massachusetts. Picard’s killer had beaten her almost beyond recognition, and had also assaulted her neighbor, Susan Laferte, so viscously she sustained brain damage that left her unable to recount the attack.

No one was charged for roughly a decade. But after witnesses testified that Tempest had confessed to the crime, a jury convicted him of second-degree murder in April 1992. He was sentenced to 85 years in prison.

Beginning in 2001, when the efforts of Tempest’s friends, family and private investigators failed to prove his innocence, Tempest’s close friend, Evelyn Munschy, turned to the New England Innocence Project (NEIP), which is known for successfully using DNA testing to contest convictions. Betty Anne Waters, whose efforts to free her wrongfully convicted brother were memorialized in the Hilary Swank film Conviction, was volunteering with the Project at the time, and ended up serving as Rhode Island counsel to Tempest.

Over the last decade, Waters worked with the Rhode Island Department of Health and Orchid Cellmark to test DNA in blood and hair samples found at the scene of Picard’s murder. Earlier this year, the tests suggested that hair found in Picard’s hand at the time she was killed did not belong to Tempest. While the DNA evidence didn’t ultimately sway the court, it helped pave the way for the recent bench trial.

In addition to highlighting the DNA evidence, McDermott’s Kendall argued at the trial that the Woonsocket Police Department, which once employed both Tempest’s brother and his father, had coaxed witnesses to say that Tempest had confessed to the killing. Kendall and his team maintained that the witness statements were manufactured in order to retaliate against Tempest, because his brother had arrested a former police chief’s relative for running an area chop shop.

Tempest’s lawyers also claimed that substantial evidence was suppressed related to the conviction, including evidence related to a car that Tempest allegedly used to travel to the murder scene.

Preparation for the bench trial was exhaustive, Kendall said, and ranged from preparing witnesses to collecting the DNA of previous suspects from garbage cans. During the trial, the McDermott team worked six days a week out of a Providence row house—which the McDermott group affectionately dubbed “the bunkhouse”—housed atop the office of Rhode Island counsel Lauren Jones. The group consistently put in 18-hours days, Kendall said.

According to court documents, McDermott invested over 6,000 hours on Tempest’s case and spent $161,000 in investigatory expenses alone. In addition to Kendall, Turnell and Dyson, McDermott associates Evan Panich, Sam Feldman, Karen Eisenstadt and Jennifer Aronoff all contributed substantial time to the case. And while an appeal by the state could delay or ultimately scuttle Tempest’s release, the work appears to have paid off with this week’s ruling overturning his conviction.

“This Court finds two independent bases—the suppression of favorable evidence and the unduly suggestive interviewing of witnesses—that establish Mr. Tempest’s due process rights were violated before and during his trial in 1992,” Procaccini wrote in Monday’s decision.

Tempest, now 62, may be eligible to be released under the supervision of family next month, Kendall said, following the results of a bail hearing.

In a statement issued Monday, however, Rhode Island Attorney General Peter Kilmartin confirmed that the state would appeal. “Legal meanderings aside, we cannot forget that a young woman was brutally murdered, and her family still grieves her loss every day,” KiImartin said.

The appeal means Kendall’s work may be far from over.

“The entire trial team is committed to Raymond through the conclusion” of the case, Kendall said. “Raymond has done everything everyone has asked to corroborate and prove his innocence.”

IMAGE: Michael Kendall

For more on this story go to: http://www.americanlawyer.com/id=1202732254615/McDermott-WhiteCollar-Ace-Wins-Pro-Bono-Victory-in-1982-Murder-Case#ixzz3g3xyu6cx