Published: July 06, 2008 09:57 pm            

COURTS: Convicted killer's verdict tossed

State’s highest court throws out murder confession

A Niagara Falls man accused of a brutal murder will get a new trial in August after the state’s highest court unanimously overturned his conviction.

The New York State Court of Appeals said Anthony R. Porter should be re-tried because police failed to stop questioning him after he asked for a lawyer. The high court overruled a lower appellate that had upheld Porter’s conviction.

The unsigned opinion, which Chief Judge Judith Kaye and all the associate judges agreed with, said the Supreme Court Appellate Division Fourth Department erred when it ruled that it was not clear whether Porter had absolutely invoked his Miranda right to counsel while being interviewed by Falls police detectives. Investigators were questioning Porter about the stabbing death of Sherree Mallory on Oct. 25, 2003, in her Fifth Street apartment.

The high court wrote, “The only evidence, the defendant’s words, ‘I think I need an attorney,’ coupled with the interviewing officer’s notation that the defendant was ‘asking for an attorney,’ demonstrates an unequivocal invocation of the defendant’s right to counsel. The defendant’s confession, made after police questioning continued, must therefore be suppressed.”

Porter, 33, was sentenced in April 2005 to 25 years to life in prison after a jury convicted him of second-degree murder and third-degree criminal possession of a weapon. The sentence drew cheers and applause from members of Mallory’s family when then-Niagara County Court Judge Peter Broderick used the phrase “for the rest of your natural life” in imposing the maximum possible sentence on Porter.

Mallory’s body was discovered at the bottom of a stairway in her apartment house by her 14-year-old daughter. An autopsy revealed she had been stabbed 56 times.

Police characterized the murder as “a drug-related robbery attempt.” Some cash and over 22 grams of crack cocaine were found on Mallory’s body.

Porter was found hiding under a table in the basement of his mother’s home on East Utica Street in Buffalo two days after the slaying.

Detectives said Porter told them he had visited Mallory the day she was killed to get drugs and then left to smoke crack with another woman. He said he returned to Mallory’s later that day and she “came to the door with a (15-inch) knife” and cut his hand and stabbed him in the upper thigh during a struggle.

He said he stabbed her in self defense.

“I didn’t know I stabbed her as many times as I did. She had attitude, she’s quick to pull a knife or razor,” Porter told investigators.

Porter was no stranger to Falls police, having been arrested on a number of occasions and having served two years in prison for assaulting a city police officer in 1996.

        

• Click to discuss this story with other readers on our forums.