An interview with Senior Investigative Reporter Nichole Manna

Nichole will be moderating a panel of experts at an in-depth discussion of the case and what it reveals about the state of the death penalty in Florida. The event takes place on Monday, April 21 at 6 p.m. here at the Jessie Ball duPont Center, or streamed live online for those who live outside of Jacksonville. Register for the in person event, or you can sign up to get a link to the online simulcast here.

Can you give a brief synopsis of the story? 

The project investigated  the prosecution of Kenneth Hartley, who was arrested for the murder of Gino Mayhew in 1991. We found a lot of questionable tactics used by the prosecutor and detectives on the case, including the use of jailhouse informants and an eyewitness who had been convicted of perjury for lying under oath during a murder trial in 1979. Some of our findings were based on thousands of pages of court filings by Hartley’s attorneys over the years, but we also uncovered things that were not already in the court record.

How did you find the story? And what made you interested in it?

Hartley’s case is in a state appeal, so his appellate attorneys filed a roughly 470-page document that outlined the issues they would bring up if a judge ordered an evidentiary hearing, which could potentially lead to a new trial, or a new punishment for Hartley. That was found during a federal court docket search, which is common for reporters to do to see what kind of cases (and potential stories!) are out there.

This story became something I was interested in because of the tactics described above. There was no physical evidence that tied Hartley to the murder and two of the three informants who testified against him admitted within the last couple of years that they lied on the stand. There’s no way that as a baseline is not interesting enough to write a story about. Death Row cases also naturally standout given their high stakes, especially when there are fair questions about the foundation of the case against these defendants.

What were your first steps in reporting it? 

Reading. I read every court document that was available to me already, which was many hundreds of pages worth of older appeals.

And then I filed several record requests, including for every public document related to the case that the State Attorney had on file. That alone gave me a return of about 65,000 pages of documents.

From there I noted every single person who was mentioned in the case and tried to contact everyone I could. However, the case is more than 30 years old and a lot of the key players – including the detective and two of the informants – have since passed away. Some other people I just wasn’t able to find.

How did you organize the documents?

I have a 3-inch three ring binder and printed out most of the documents I knew I would need to refer back to, especially during the fact-checking process. I organized it by sections – court transcripts, the police report, Florida Supreme Court decisions, affidavits written by people who were in jail with the informants, etc. It feels like there are probably a million tabs labeling all of the parts I needed.

Your story says you talked to everyone who is alive and was willing to speak with you. Why weren’t some people willing to talk? 

Most of the people I wanted to talk to could be called as witnesses if there is an evidentiary hearing. So the number one reason was that they couldn’t speak before that hearing, which is common. My editor Casey Frank and I also went door-knocking for a few days in December in an attempt to get Sidney Jones (the eyewitness) and Anthony Parkin (the only informant who is alive) to talk. I got Jones on the phone and he hung up on me when I said I was writing about the Mayhew case. We found Parkin at his house and when we asked him about recanting his testimony, he said he wanted to put it behind him and then he walked away from us. 

How did you contact the people you wrote about, namely George Bateh and Sidney Jones?

Like I said, I got Jones on the phone very quickly. He knew we were writing about the case but I wasn’t able to tell him that we were writing specifically about his involvement in it. 

With George Bateh, the prosecutor, we had a 90-minute off the record conversation with him, so I can’t divulge anything we discussed. But I can tell you that we gave him a list of our findings. We have this no surprises policy, so when we can, we tell the people we’re writing about exactly what they’ll read in the story and we give them a chance to comment, if they’d like. 

If someone will only agree to talk with us off the record, we explain what that means – that we cannot print or discuss anything that happened in the meeting – that way they can decide if they want to go on the record at any point. The only comment Bateh would make on the record was about his career, and we printed that in part 1 and 2 of the series.

What was the most compelling piece of evidence you found?

A couple months before we published, I realized I should also ask the State Attorney for all of their public records related to Hartley’s co-defendant, Ronnie Ferrell. That document dump was really small but contained an email that a former JSO detective, John Zipperer, sent to Ferrell’s appellate attorney, Rick Sichta. 

In the email, Zipperer called Jones a “lying piece of shit” and admits that no one will say why Jones was blackballed from the police department. To back up a little: A part of Jones’s history included that he was a paid confidential informant for JSO who was at some point “blackballed” – meaning he wasn’t allowed to continue informing for cash. But I was never able to pinpoint exactly why that happened, and Zipperer helped me confirm that I wasn’t the only one. 

It’s not often you have someone like a detective call the state’s star witness in a murder case a liar, so I was pretty blown away when I found that. 

Do you think Kenneth Hartley is innocent? 

I actually wasn’t looking into Hartley’s innocence or guilt – and neither are his lawyers! They didn’t file a claim of innocence in their appeal. Their argument centers around the jailhouse informants recanting, and an accusation of Brady violations by Bateh since he didn’t disclose that Jones had a history of perjury or that he was blackballed by JSO.

How prominent is the use of jailhouse informants? 

According to the people I talked to for this story, it was pretty prominent in the 1990s. Multiple people, and multiple court documents, said that Bateh in particular used them on nearly every capital case he tried. We found that one of the informants also informed on two other cases before Hartley’s.

They still get used today, but much less frequently and now detectives have the advantage of sending folks into jail with recording devices.

What comes next for Kenneth Hartley? 

His state appeal is still ongoing. If an evidentiary hearing is granted, his attorneys will likely call a number of people to testify, including his original defense attorney, Bateh and Parkin. From there it’s really up to the judge on what happens next. She could grant a new trial, reduce his sentence, overturn the case, etc. Or she could decide to deny the appeal and keep Hartley on Death Row.

What was the response to this story? 

The response has been overwhelmingly positive. I think people like to read stories that give insights into how our criminal justice system works. And for all the reasons I said before, I think Hartley’s story in general is compelling. 

We have gotten a couple emails from friends and family of Bateh’s who felt like the series didn’t paint a kind picture of the prosecutor or his work and were critical of the story.

Former Jacksonville Mayor John Delaney, who is quoted in part 2, was critical that the series focused heavily on the defense side. He added that Bateh “is a man of integrity and deep religious faith. I would trust George with my life, my money and my family. He is a fair and honest man.”

John Wallace, who is Bateh’s son-in-law, said he was disappointed in what he viewed was the confirmation bias of the series and said, “Bateh deserves more than to be subjected to rumor and innuendo, most of which is founded upon interviews of criminals and adversaries who may have ulterior motives of their own.”

Will you write more stories about his case?

Yes! We will continue to follow Hartley’s appeal and you will see his name in The Tributary again.