A Conviction In Question

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Speaker 5 Morgan County in Decatur, Alabama is not that big of a place. You can whisper a rumor over here in the northwest corner of the county.

Speaker 5 And you can get in your car and you can travel as fast as you can go to the other corner of the county, and that rumor will beat you up there.

Speaker 5 Brother Powell has been practicing law here for

Speaker 5 almost as long as I've been alive. I've been practicing here for nearly 40 years.
I'm also a part-time farmer.

Speaker 5 If you can't get hold of Sherman in the afternoon, it's more than likely that it's because he's on his tractor. When I'm not in the courtroom, I like to go to the farm and make hay.

Speaker 5 I don't think Mr. Powell knew what he was getting into when he took this case on.

Speaker 6 It's been five days since 39-year-old Karen Tipton was murdered.

Speaker 7 Daniel Wade Moore is facing capital murders.

Speaker 5 Miles 250 foot from the execution chamber.

Speaker 5 They've defended Daniel Wade Moore in three trials

Speaker 5 for the capital murder of Karen Tipton.

Speaker 5 She was a proud mother.

Speaker 5 She was a good wife. She was a pleasant, happy person.

Speaker 5 I will never forget, nor will I ever forgive, what was done to Karen.

Speaker 5 Did she kill Karen Tipton?

Speaker 5 I'm not going to quit. I want to see justice done.

Speaker 5 Justice number one is acquitting Daniel Wade Moore, and then justice would be going after the person that killed Karen Tipton.

Speaker 5 Opening statements again this morning in the third capital murder trial for Daniel Wade Moore. I was not at that house the day she was murdered.
I didn't have anything to do with it.

Speaker 6 He's a liar.

Speaker 5 He lies all the time. If it isn't me, the only person it leaves is him.

Speaker 5 Nobody that knew me would consider me capable of doing such a crime.

Speaker 5 This has been a long journey. It's been an odyssey.

Speaker 5 It's been 10 years.

Speaker 5 Now it's finally over.

Speaker 5 Lies and whispers. Tonight's 48 Hours Mystery

Speaker 5 If I hadn't had any idea

Speaker 5 that he did this horrible a crime, I wouldn't represent it. It's just that simple.

Speaker 6 For nearly a decade, Attorney Sherman Powell's faith in the innocence of accused murderer Daniel Wade Moore has never wavered.

Speaker 5 I've talked to a lot of defendants, but after sitting there nose to nose with him, there was no doubt in my mind that he was telling the truth, that he did not do it.

Speaker 5 He knew nothing whatsoever about it.

Speaker 6 But authorities see it differently. They say Moore killed Karen Tipton, a wife and mother from Decatur, Alabama.

Speaker 5 We're not talking about a few years of my life.

Speaker 5 We're talking about my entire life.

Speaker 5 My right to breathe.

Speaker 5 They can't do this.

Speaker 6 Moore has always said he wanted his day in court.

Speaker 5 I didn't do it. I was nowhere near that house that day when that woman was murdered.

Speaker 6 Well, he got it.

Speaker 7 Daniel Wade Moore is facing capital murder during a robbery, kidnapping, sexual assault, and a burglary.

Speaker 6 In fact, he's received more days in court than he'd care to count.

Speaker 5 Time and time again, you can get a little bit of hope, only to have your carpet jerk right out from under you. You know, you can only take that so many times before you learn to quit hoping.

Speaker 6 No one would blame Moore for giving up hope, especially after his first capital murder trial in 2002, when he was found guilty.

Speaker 6 Do you remember what you were thinking or what was going through your mind when the jury said guilty?

Speaker 5 My jaw hit the floor. It was just unbelievable.
I mean, it was just shock.

Speaker 6 He wasn't the only one. Presiding Judge Glenn Thompson, who read over the jury's verdict moments before it was revealed in open court, could not believe his eyes.

Speaker 5 Former law partner saw my reaction. He said he saw the blood drain out of my face.
He said I just turned white from the top down when I saw the verdicts. You know, I was that surprised.

Speaker 8 Why?

Speaker 5 I didn't think the state had proven it. Too many unanswered questions.
It never got to the point of beyond a reasonable doubt.

Speaker 6 Given his reservations, what Judge Thompson did next could be considered shocking.

Speaker 5 It didn't matter what I thought. The jury said that he did it.

Speaker 6 When it came to sentencing, Thompson said he was required by law to consider the severity of the crime.

Speaker 5 It was the most heinous crime that I think has been committed in this county ever.

Speaker 6 Karen Tipton had been stabbed 28 times and her throat was cut.

Speaker 5 No one deserves for their loved one to be butchered like that.

Speaker 6 In accordance with the law, Judge Thompson imposed the maximum penalty, death.

Speaker 5 Death was the appropriate sentence.

Speaker 6 It's highly unusual for a judge to speak publicly about a case, but he granted 48 hours this interview.

Speaker 5 It's not that I wanted to sentence him to death, but I did.

Speaker 6 But that guilty verdict was set aside, and the state tried Moore again,

Speaker 6 and then yet again.

Speaker 5 I'd say maybe a fraction of 1% of cases may end up lasting this long or having three trials. It's just really unheard of.

Speaker 6 How can that happen? How does a man get tried three times for the same murder?

Speaker 6 We'll explain. But first, we need to go back to the afternoon of March 12th, 1999.

Speaker 5 Perfectly normal day.

Speaker 6 Dr. David Tipton, a psychiatrist, was married to Karen, who was a 39-year-old housewife.

Speaker 5 She was in the prime of her life. She was prettier than she had ever been in her life.

Speaker 6 Tipton, who was also 39, says he came home from work earlier than usual that day to go to the theater.

Speaker 5 We had plans to go to the sound of music that night.

Speaker 6 When he walked from the garage into the house, he noticed the deadbolt on on the door was not locked. Dr.
Tipton went into the foyer to hang up his coat.

Speaker 5 I still think Karen's upstairs. This is a big house.
Are you yelling for her? I did call for her. Yeah.
She should have been there with the children. At that point, saw a drop of blood.

Speaker 5 One small drop of blood on the foyer on the tile.

Speaker 5 The next thing I saw was more blood. in the foyer towards the door.

Speaker 5 And I walked up the stairs and was the most surprised person on the face of the earth to get to the top and find a dead body there that looked somewhat like karen

Speaker 6 it was that bad it didn't even look like your wife

Speaker 6 karen's nude body was lying at the top of the stairs

Speaker 6 i have no idea where my children are There's just nobody here. There's blood everywhere.

Speaker 6 Investigators began searching for clues as officers tracked down the Tipton children, still at school where they had never been picked up.

Speaker 5 The worst day of my life was about a week after the murder. And that was when Catherine, then three years old, asked me when mommy was coming back from heaven.

Speaker 5 That was the worst single moment that I could ever imagine because that was a beautiful, innocent little child. who had been told that her mommy had gone to heaven.

Speaker 5 And a week later, she was wanting to know when she came

Speaker 6 The crime scene was puzzling. Dr.
Tipton reported that Karen's purse and some jewelry were missing, but her diamond ring was still on her finger.

Speaker 5 It was a shockingly brutal homicide.

Speaker 6 At the time of the murder, Ken Collier was chief of investigations for the Decatur Police. Today, he is police chief.
Was there any evidence of forced entry?

Speaker 5 There was not.

Speaker 6 In a case where a woman is found in her own home, murdered in the middle of the day, who is usually the first suspect? I mean, who do you look at first?

Speaker 5 Well, you know, you start normally with the husband or wife. Even from the beginning, I realized that I had to be a suspect because I was the first on the scene and the husband.
I knew that.

Speaker 6 Police believe Karen was murdered sometime between 1 p.m. after a phone call to a friend and 2.30 p.m.
when she usually picked up the kids from school. Dr.

Speaker 6 Tipton's office manager told police that Tipton left his office in neighboring Huntsville at 3.30.

Speaker 5 He had an alibi that we were able at least that same day to partially substantiate.

Speaker 6 It was enough for police to allow Dr. Tipton, the natural suspect by his own admission, to go back into his home the night of the murder.

Speaker 6 But if they let him back in the house, the crime scene, they obviously didn't consider him a suspect who might try to destroy any kind of evidence.

Speaker 5 Well, I can't get into their heads, but

Speaker 5 that's a reasonable statement.

Speaker 6 Did he have any injuries on him or anything that would indicate to officers that he had just been involved in a brutal murder? No, no.

Speaker 6 One thing's for sure. The police needed some answers.
There was no murder weapon or fingerprints found at the scene. Was there a lot of pressure to get someone for this crime? Sure, there was.

Speaker 5 High profile. Rich doctor's wife, beautiful lady, brutally slain.

Speaker 5 Don't you think there was a little bit of pressure on the PD?

Speaker 5 I think it was a lot of pressure on them. They had to have something.

Speaker 6 Cops got nowhere for a month until suddenly a lucky break. A relative of Daniel Moore's went to the police and told them that Moore had said something alarming.

Speaker 5 He said, you know the Tipton murder, the doctor's wife that was murdered on Chapel Hill Road? And I said, yeah. And he says, well, I was there.

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Speaker 6 Back in 1999, even Daniel Wade Moore thought of himself as a drug-addicted loser.

Speaker 5 Been on drugs for a while, and I'd pretty much just given up on life.

Speaker 6 What kind of drugs were you using at that time?

Speaker 5 Track cocaine and marijuana.

Speaker 6 Desperate for money, he brazenly snatched a gold chain in full view of a store clerk who called police. The chase was on, and Moore wound up crashing his pickup truck.

Speaker 6 He was arrested and taken to jail, but as soon as he got bailed out, Daniel continued to binge on drugs. His uncle Sparky Moore tried to help, but Daniel pushed him away.

Speaker 5 I think he would have said anything to do the drugs, to be on his own so he could do the drugs.

Speaker 6 Anything, including telling his uncle that he was involved with the murder of Karen Tipton.

Speaker 5 And

Speaker 5 I said, are you telling me that you killed Miss Tipton? And he said, no, no, I couldn't kill anybody.

Speaker 5 But I was there when she was killed. What he told his uncle was something you could have read in the local media.

Speaker 6 Defense attorney Sherman Powell says that Moore's confession was pure fiction.

Speaker 5 What he said basically was, we broke in the house.

Speaker 5 I was upstairs. They killed her downstairs.
Nobody broke in the house. She was not killed downstairs.
And that just wasn't true.

Speaker 6 Help me out here, Daniel. Why would you

Speaker 6 basically confess or put yourself into a situation that you say you had nothing to do with?

Speaker 5 Well,

Speaker 5 I wanted to get my grandfather and my uncle to leave me alone.

Speaker 6 But if Moore thought that story was going to bring him peace and quiet, he was mistaken. His uncle went to the police and told them what Moore had said.

Speaker 5 That was a significant statement to us.

Speaker 6 Decatur Police Chief Ken Collier.

Speaker 5 And if you've got a guy saying, I was there, then you're going to focus on that till you find out what you can.

Speaker 6 According to Collier, Moore was in town at the approximate time of the murder and had no alibi.

Speaker 6 Police brought him in for questioning, and the moment Moore was left alone in the interrogation room, he began stabbing himself with a penknife.

Speaker 6 Were you actually trying to kill yourself? Yes, ma'am.

Speaker 5 And they started telling me how, you know, my family were such good people and it was just a shame that I wasn't nothing but a junkie.

Speaker 5 He walked out of the room and I just said, that's it. Took out a knife out of my pocket.
I just closed my eyes and did like that.

Speaker 6 You know, somebody who doesn't know your case could look and say,

Speaker 6 look, you're using a knife. Karen Tipton was stabbed.
You're trying to kill yourself. That could sound like a guilty man.

Speaker 5 Just mad. I understand that.

Speaker 6 Police saw the stabbing incident as confirmation of Moore's guilt. And that was even before investigators discovered a link between Moore and the Tiptons.
How would you describe Karen Tipton?

Speaker 5 Middle-aged. I mean, she seemed nice.

Speaker 6 As it turns out, Moore had worked for a security company that had installed the alarm system at the Tipton house. David Tipton speculates Karen may have allowed Moore in because she recognized him.

Speaker 6 How did you think it happened?

Speaker 5 He came and knocked on the door and said, hello. I worked for the alarm company.
He had been there just a few months before. He lied his way in the house.

Speaker 6 The attack, Tipton says, continued upstairs in the bedroom where police found Karen's clothing on the floor and blood on the bed.

Speaker 5 I think that it's very likely that after that prolonged period of sexual and physical torture,

Speaker 5 that she managed to actually escape from that and got to the top of the stairs stairs before she was finally killed there, somewhere in the range of 28 stab wounds.

Speaker 5 Probably the last thing to be cut was her throat.

Speaker 6 To David Tipton, it is an open and shut case of a drug addict killing for money.

Speaker 5 Daniel Wade Moore confessed to involvement. Daniel Wade Moore is an absolutely 100% profile matched with somebody that would do a crime just like this.

Speaker 6 But except for that one-time admission to Uncle Sparky, Moore insists he had nothing to do with Karen Tipton's murder, and the physical evidence seems to back him up.

Speaker 6 Were your fingerprints found anywhere near this house? No, ma'am. Was Karen Tipton's blood found anywhere on you, on your clothing?

Speaker 5 No, ma'am.

Speaker 6 In your car? No, ma'am. Any fibers, any of her hair, anything?

Speaker 5 Nothing.

Speaker 6 Two hairs were found at the scene, but they were in poor condition. It's possible, but not definitive, that they belonged to Daniel Moore.

Speaker 5 It rules out 99.8% of the population, leaving two-tenths of 1%,

Speaker 5 and he's in that two-tenths.

Speaker 6 But there are hundreds of other people in that group, too. He's not the only person.

Speaker 5 He was the only person in that group that had the means, motive, and opportunity to do the crime.

Speaker 5 This was not something that a burglar, a robber, a rapist, or anybody does. Not even a contract killer does that.
This was a crime of passion, period.

Speaker 5 This is important.

Speaker 6 Sherman Powell pointed the finger of guilt directly at Dr. David Tipton.
If Dr.

Speaker 6 Tipton says that this was a happy marriage, they were both very happy, both faithful to each other, is he telling the truth?

Speaker 5 That's what he testified to, but from the evidence I've seen, I would just, in my opinion, say it was a very open marriage.

Speaker 6 Even David Tipton was aware of the rumors going around town.

Speaker 6 During that first trial, Tipton admitted that just weeks before the murder, his best friend Mike Ezell had emailed Karen suggesting they swap spouses.

Speaker 5 I was offended by that, not only by Mike, but by Karen as well.

Speaker 6 What do you mean?

Speaker 5 That she had carried on a silly conversation with a friend of mine.

Speaker 6 On the day she died, Karen had been using that computer and may have discovered a collection of pornography.

Speaker 5 The majority of the stuff in there was gay men interacting. And I have never seen a lady yet that would sit down and look at that kind of stuff.

Speaker 6 Powell speculates that Karen discovered the porn and confronted her husband, sparking the fatal fight.

Speaker 6 Oh, so you absolutely, as you're sitting here, think David Tipton is the one who's responsible for his wife's death?

Speaker 5 That's what my evaluation of the evidence tells me, yes. Now, if that hurts somebody else's feelings, I'm sorry.
That's just the way it is. Am I capable of killing somebody? Yep.

Speaker 5 Am I capable of killing a loved one? No.

Speaker 5 Am I capable of torturing my wife to death?

Speaker 5 That's crazy. It is easier for people to think of me being a killer than it is for Daniel Moore to be a killer.

Speaker 5 It scares people to think that some stranger off the street could show up in your house and the next minute you're in a torture chamber.

Speaker 5 But in the end, you really kind of need to look at the evidence.

Speaker 6 But Judge Glenn Thompson looked at the evidence and he found it inconclusive.

Speaker 5 There's circumstantial evidence that indicates that Dr. Tipton had an opportunity and a motive to do it.
But I'm not accusing him.

Speaker 5 You know, the circumstantial evidence against him is no stronger than the circumstantial evidence against Daniel. I don't know who did it.
It could be an entirely different party.

Speaker 5 I do not have a clue who did it.

Speaker 6 At the end of the first trial, Moore's uncle was hopeful until he saw the jury file in with the verdict.

Speaker 5 They just came in. You know, one of them was crying.
And I pretty much knew when I saw that that it's just going to be something bad.

Speaker 6 Daniel Moore was found guilty of capital murder. And on January 23rd, 2003, he was sentenced to die by lethal injection.

Speaker 6 He might still be on death row, if not for a discovery that saved his life and rocked Decatur.

Speaker 5 And even in polite southern society, a liar is a liar is a liar.

Speaker 6 They lied.

Speaker 5 They lied.

Speaker 5 I was 250 foot from the execution chamber, locked in a five foot by nine foot cell.

Speaker 6 In February of 2003, Daniel Wade Moore became the newest inmate on Alabama's death row.

Speaker 5 There's things that he's more afraid of than death, I can assure you.

Speaker 6 Which is

Speaker 5 being accused of something he did not do.

Speaker 6 Sherman Powell immediately began working on Moore's appeal. What happened next changed the Moore case forever.
Prosecutors turned over this 245-page report compiled by the FBI on the Tipton murder.

Speaker 6 An FBI report that prosecutors had repeatedly denied existed.

Speaker 5 It was the most egregious case of prosecutorial misconduct that I have ever been aware of.

Speaker 6 Judge Glenn Thompson was incensed. He believes Don Valeska, the assistant state attorney general trying the case, had lied to him.

Speaker 5 Well, Mr. Valeska, who was the lead prosecutor for the state, stood in this courtroom and I'll quote him.
He says there ain't no such thing as an FBI report.

Speaker 6 You asked him directly. Absolutely.

Speaker 5 And he looked me in the eye and said that. It infuriates me when someone lies to the court.
They should be indicted for attempted murder and perjury.

Speaker 6 No one from the Alabama Attorney General's office would speak to 48 Hours about the case.

Speaker 6 But Valeska has insisted publicly that he did not lie and claimed that the FBI information was not a formal report.

Speaker 6 But whatever it was, that material appeared to help the defense.

Speaker 6 Why would the prosecution, why would the police withhold information from you?

Speaker 5 Because it shows opportunity or motive for someone else.

Speaker 6 The Decatur Police Department had asked the FBI for help.

Speaker 6 The information collected by the Bureau revealed that Karen Tipton had been leading a, quote, secret life, which included extramarital affairs.

Speaker 6 The FBI surmised that Karen may have known her killer and recommended that both David Tipton and his best friend Mikey Zell be given polygraphs, even though they had been ruled out as suspects by police.

Speaker 6 Is it fair to say that once you had Daniel Moore and there was more evidence building against him?

Speaker 5 Once we had a viable suspect, we pursued that suspect until we were able to build what we thought was a viable case against him.

Speaker 6 Police Chief Ken Collier and didn't follow up on these other leads.

Speaker 5 I don't know that they did or didn't. Their focus was on Daniel Wade Moore once he admitted to have been in the house when she was killed.

Speaker 6 Powell kept digging and struck pay dirt with a new witness who was not called during Moore's first trial for the simple reason that Powell did not know she existed.

Speaker 6 On that day, about what time were you coming this way on the road?

Speaker 10 Approximately 3.30, 3.25.

Speaker 6 Pam Smith, a Tipton neighbor, said she saw Karen alive near her mailbox the afternoon of her murder.

Speaker 6 After the time, police believed Karen had already been killed.

Speaker 10 She was on her way back to her truck.

Speaker 6 Pam says she called the police just days after the murder to tell them what she saw. Did you ever hear from the police again after you made that initial call? No, ma'am, never.

Speaker 6 Do you think maybe your call got lost? What do you think?

Speaker 5 I think my story didn't fit with their theory. In order for their theory to work, she had to die at about 1 or 1.30.
It wouldn't work if she was alive at 3.30.

Speaker 5 I think clearly they knew about that and they said, well. We'll just lose that.

Speaker 6 Was that ignored because it didn't fit the ultimate theory that the police department had formed?

Speaker 5 I can tell you, I don't think anything was intentionally ignored.

Speaker 6 You think Pam Smith was mistaken?

Speaker 5 Yes, I don't think she's mistaken.

Speaker 6 But Judge Thompson found Smith credible. She was there and described her, what she was wearing, and was convinced Moore had been treated unfairly.

Speaker 5 The man had been denied a fair trial.

Speaker 5 They'd been given every opportunity to prosecute him fairly, and they'd squandered that opportunity.

Speaker 6 In February 2005, two years after sending Daniel Moore to death row, Thompson made a ruling that shocked everyone.

Speaker 6 The judge declared that a new trial would subject Daniel Moore to double jeopardy, being tried twice for the same crime, and instead ordered him released.

Speaker 5 I thought I'd committed political suicide. I really did.

Speaker 6 But you did it anyway.

Speaker 5 I did it anyway. It was the right thing to do.

Speaker 6 By this time, Dr. David Tipton had taken his daughters and moved 700 miles away from Decatur.

Speaker 5 There are hateful people in Decatur whose seemingly their whole life is dedicated to attacking me.

Speaker 6 When he heard the news about Daniel Moore's release, he was furious.

Speaker 5 I think that he needs to be dead.

Speaker 5 I'm not allowed to kill him. The second best is to have the state to kill him.

Speaker 6 Even his daughters were shaken.

Speaker 8 Even though we're way far away, it made me nervous, I'll admit it.

Speaker 5 They're afraid that he would come after them. Why not? Everybody should be afraid.

Speaker 6 The state of Alabama wanted another crack at Moore and convinced the courts to put him back in jail pending appeal.

Speaker 6 After four short days of freedom, Moore was sent back to jail while prosecutors prosecutors tried to undo Thompson's ruling.

Speaker 5 Just like every time when you finally think it's fixing to be over, something else puts it off.

Speaker 6 It took years, but prosecutors got their way. In February 2008, nine years after Karen Tipton was murdered, Daniel Moore went on trial for the second time.

Speaker 6 Veleska petitioned to have Judge Thompson removed from the case to avoid the appearance of impropriety. And so Thompson was replaced by Judge Stephen Haddock.

Speaker 6 Jurors from the second trial were clearly affected by information contained in the now infamous FBI report.

Speaker 6 What do you now know about Karen Tipton from that trial?

Speaker 5 She had

Speaker 5 a secret life.

Speaker 5 Whoever killed Mrs. Tipton,

Speaker 5 according to our expert, it was a love-turned-to-hate relationship.

Speaker 6 As part of his strategy, Powell played up the allegations of extramarital affairs and the pornography, gay and otherwise, found on the home computer, to the dismay of Karen Tipton's husband.

Speaker 5 I'm the pot-in-porno guy. I'm the multiple affairs.
I'm the, you know, wild, crazy sex party, sex swap, wife swapper king of the sex swapping club. All of these things have been said about me.

Speaker 6 Dr. Tipton testified as he had in the first trial, but some jurors were not impressed.

Speaker 5 If that was my wife that got murdered, I would have probably had a different face expression. I just didn't feel like I believed him at all.

Speaker 5 I know the truth about me and Karen, and I don't need a bunch of rumors and silliness

Speaker 5 to

Speaker 5 change that.

Speaker 5 I know the real stuff.

Speaker 6 As the second trial wound down, Sherman Powell smelled victory.

Speaker 5 I thought we had some good evidence. I thought there certainly existed reasonable doubt.

Speaker 6 Finally, after six long days, the jury came back into the courtroom.

Speaker 6 We tried very, very hard

Speaker 11 and we just couldn't do it.

Speaker 6 Their decision was no decision, and Judge Haddock declared a a mistrial.

Speaker 6 Indicator, how do people view Daniel Moore?

Speaker 5 Not guilty.

Speaker 6 Who do they think killed Karen Tipton then?

Speaker 11 Some say Dr. Tipton, some say

Speaker 11 jealous wife, some say

Speaker 5 boyfriend.

Speaker 5 Yeah.

Speaker 6 I mean

Speaker 5 I hear everything. I hear everything.

Speaker 6 But co-prosecutor Corey May says he has no doubt about who killed Karen Tipton.

Speaker 5 Every piece of evidence shows Daniel Wade Moore is guilty and for us not to come back, for us to give up would be to allow a murderer to go free in this county and we will not let that happen.

Speaker 6 Daniel Wade Moore will stand trial a third time, although he was allowed to go home after posting bond.

Speaker 6 But will this case ever come to an end?

Speaker 6 If there is another trial, do you think Daniel Moore will be convicted?

Speaker 5 I don't think you're going to get 12 people to say he's guilty.

Speaker 6 But the state is going to try.

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Speaker 6 Eight years after taking on Daniel Wade Moore's case, Sherman Powell is preparing yet again for trial, the third one.

Speaker 6 Once again, Moore faces the death penalty in the murder of Karen Tipton.

Speaker 6 And once again, Powell will do battle with Assistant State Attorney General Don Valesca.

Speaker 6 Powell can hardly believe it.

Speaker 5 Any law firm in Alabama that sent an attorney somewhere to try a case and they were

Speaker 5 devious with the court and it was adjudicated, they would never go back.

Speaker 6 More disturbing, Powell still believes he's missing evidence.

Speaker 5 I will never have all the evidence I'm entitled to. That That is a fact.
I know it. I know it.

Speaker 6 One of Powell's chief concerns has always been the Tipton home computer.

Speaker 6 For eight years, he's been trying to find out if there's any evidence on it.

Speaker 6 Unbelievably, just 72 hours before trial, the information surfaces. Daniel Moore's mother, Virginia Byrd.

Speaker 8 The court was told on numerous occasions that

Speaker 8 there was no copy of the hard drive.

Speaker 6 And when did the FBI produce this copy?

Speaker 8 On Thursday before we started trial on Monday.

Speaker 6 And as it turns out, it's what's missing from the home computer that's critical.

Speaker 6 Someone with access to the Tipton home deleted files from the computer after Karen's death, but before it was turned over to police.

Speaker 6 How do you react to something like that, suddenly having more evidence come to light at Daniel's third trial?

Speaker 8 All we ever wanted was the truth.

Speaker 8 We'll never get it.

Speaker 6 Despite her frustration, Virginia hopes with all her heart that this time around, her son will be found not guilty.

Speaker 6 In the year he's been out on bond, Daniel's been living on his own, working at a local electric company, and enjoying the support of his community.

Speaker 8 People would come up and hug him and shake his hand and tell him they were pulling for him and praying for him and hundreds and hundreds of people who've come and told him how much

Speaker 8 they hope that it'll all be over soon.

Speaker 6 How old is Daniel today?

Speaker 8 He's 34.

Speaker 6 Almost a third of his life

Speaker 6 has been, he's been in limbo over these

Speaker 6 over these charges. Right.

Speaker 6 How do you cope with that? How does he cope with that?

Speaker 8 What are the alternatives? You don't really have any choice in the matter. It's not supposed to be this way.

Speaker 8 You just do the best you can.

Speaker 6 It's hard to believe in a town like Decatur, where Karen's murder and Daniel's trials have been big news. But these jurors on Moore's third trial say they knew little about the case.

Speaker 6 Had any of you heard that name? Knew who he was?

Speaker 5 I kind of heard it, but it didn't mean nothing to me.

Speaker 6 Prosecutor Don Valeska methodically lays out the state's case against Daniel Moore. The two hairs found inside the Tipton house.
Moore's confession that he was there the day of the murder.

Speaker 6 His suicide attempt while in police custody.

Speaker 6 It sounds damning.

Speaker 6 But then the defense gets its turn and Sherman Powell makes good use of the new computer evidence, those curious deletions, to turn suspicion back on Dr. Tipton.

Speaker 6 Were you all concerned about the fact that there were things missing from the home computer?

Speaker 14 Yes, that was a big part.

Speaker 6 But isn't it possible that perhaps Dr. Tipton did erase embarrassing things, but still might not have had anything to do with the death of his wife?

Speaker 14 What's more important, me being embarrassed or my spouse being murdered?

Speaker 6 Sherman Powell attacks the prosecution's timeline, introducing workmen who were paving the neighbor's driveway the day Karen was killed. They say they saw Dr.

Speaker 6 Tipton arrive home much earlier than Tipton claimed. Why is that important in this case?

Speaker 5 Because he said he didn't get home until 4.30.

Speaker 5 So if he was home an hour and a half before that and he didn't call the police, I think that would be very significant.

Speaker 6 And when Dr. Tipton testifies, as he did in the two previous trials, the jurors listened carefully.

Speaker 14 When he took the stand, I was surprised because he spoke with a lot of authority.

Speaker 11 He looks like a little man, but he came up with a big voice and

Speaker 8 I really don't think he was telling the truth when he was on the stand.

Speaker 6 And then there's the troubling FBI report, the reason Daniel was granted a new trial after being found guilty and sentenced to death.

Speaker 5 Said on there that Karen Tipton had told somebody that she felt like she was going to meet her demise before she turned 40, and she was 39 years old at that time.

Speaker 6 She couldn't have anticipated someone someone like Daniel Moore that that had to be something that was going on in her life that she knew about. Yeah.

Speaker 6 After a month of testimony, it's the jury's turn.

Speaker 14 The first thing we've done was we prayed.

Speaker 5 Yeah.

Speaker 5 All of you? Yes.

Speaker 14 We just prayed for

Speaker 6 guidance.

Speaker 11 We prayed that we would make the right decision.

Speaker 6 The jurors take their time reviewing every single piece of evidence.

Speaker 6 Then, after seven long days of deliberation.

Speaker 8 When we heard that the jury had a decision, my heart was pounding. I looked at Daniel.
We held our breath.

Speaker 6 As the 12 jurors return to the courtroom for the last time, they feel like the entire town of Decatur, Alabama is waiting for them to hear the fate of Daniel Wade Moore.

Speaker 5 I mean, my heart was pounding. I was, I felt like I was fixing to get shot, you know.

Speaker 6 Will they find Moore guilty of the murder of Karen Tipton and send him back to death row? Or will they set him free?

Speaker 14 We had two security cards to one person and that was, you know, we need this much security.

Speaker 6 Three times now, both the Tipton family and Daniel's mother have gone through this excruciating wait, anxious for the jury to announce its verdict on all five counts of murder, combined with robbery, kidnapping, and sexual assault.

Speaker 8 We had to have five not guilties.

Speaker 8 And on the

Speaker 8 first one, we held our breath. And on the last one, Daniel looked at me and he just

Speaker 8 and it was over.

Speaker 6 Not guilty.

Speaker 6 It is finally over.

Speaker 6 Daniel Wade Moore walks out a free man.

Speaker 5 I'm glad it's over. It's kind of like Mr.
Powell said, said if this wasn't reasonable doubt, then reasonable doubt doesn't exist. And

Speaker 5 I'm just glad they came, you know, they found a verdict. It wasn't another home jury.
I'm just glad it's over.

Speaker 6 But for the Tipton family, this saga is far from over. Karen's daughters are now in their teens.
If Daniel Wade Moore didn't kill their mother, then who did?

Speaker 5 It goes unsolved. There's not any justice yet.

Speaker 6 Judge Glenn Thompson, who's also been living with the Tipton case for a long time now.

Speaker 5 I pray that before the end of my life on this earth, that the killer will be brought to justice and sentenced.

Speaker 5 But justice is slow. Certainly it it is not justice for Karen Tipton to put an innocent man in jail

Speaker 5 but not everyone thinks Moore is innocent police chief Ken Collier I won't judge this jury I didn't attend the trial all I can say is that we were confident that we presented enough evidence to convict who we think and still think is guilty in this crime.

Speaker 5 And we're just disappointed that the jury didn't feel the same way.

Speaker 6 So is Assistant State Attorney General Don Valeska, who won a guilty verdict in the first trial, only to have it set aside because he withheld evidence from the defense.

Speaker 6 When the trial was over, the prosecutor said publicly that Daniel Wade Moore was the killer and that you all made a mistake. What was your reaction to the prosecutor saying you were wrong?

Speaker 11 Well, they picked us.

Speaker 5 It wasn't our job to make him guilty. It was his job.

Speaker 6 And so for Daniel's mother, the 10 years of fear she has felt for her son has turned to anger.

Speaker 8 I'm angry for Daniel.

Speaker 8 I feel like

Speaker 8 they took 10 years of his life, and they can never give that back.

Speaker 8 Go cry.

Speaker 9 It's hard, isn't it?

Speaker 8 I wasn't going to do this.

Speaker 8 This is the happy part.

Speaker 6 As for Sherman Powell, well, he's just relieved his long quest fighting on behalf of Daniel Moore is finally over.

Speaker 5 Life is getting back to normal. You know, we're just catching up.

Speaker 5 Oh, we got plenty of them.

Speaker 6 The ultimate victim then remains Karen Tipton, who can never go home, never watch her children grow up, and whose death now seems destined to remain a mystery.

Speaker 5 You know, for no good reason, she died very badly, and the girls have gone a lifetime without their mama.

Speaker 5 The fact that I can see them alive and happy, stay together,

Speaker 5 and normal and see parts of Karen in them means that Karen is still here with us, in them, if nowhere else.