Frank Sterling savors freedom after conviction for killing Viola Manville overturned

Freedom never tasted so good.

"Thumbs up," Frank Sterling said as he downed a Rohrbach Brewing Co. beer Wednesday night in his first meal outside a cell or jailhouse dorm since 1991.

Surrounded by friends, supporters, attorneys and private investigators — many who worked pro bono for years to prove Sterling's innocence in the 1988 Hilton murder of Viola Manville — Sterling savored his dinner at Dinosaur Bar-B-Que on Court Street.

Hours earlier, after a judge had ruled that Sterling should be freed, Sterling described his freedom as "heaven."

"It didn't change who I was," Sterling, now 46, said about the nearly 19 years he spent behind bars. "I'm an innocent man."

But prison and the years clearly took a toll. There is a slight quake in Sterling's body when he speaks, and, he said, he now suffers seizures. "It causes stress," he said of his wrongful imprisonment. "I never had seizures before now. I've got them now from the stress."

Sterling's meal as a free man capped a whirlwind day in which, emotionally drained, he was brought from prison to court in leg irons and handcuffs for state Supreme Court Justice Thomas Van Strydonck to release him. At the afternoon hearing before Van Strydonck, lawyers for Sterling detailed why they are now sure Mark Christie, imprisoned for the 1994 murder of 4-year-old Kali Ann Poulton, killed Manville.

"Our justice system's goal is to assure that only the guilty are convicted," Van Strydonck said in court. "This case and others demonstrate that ours remains an imperfect system."

Local lawyer Donald Thompson has worked since the mid-1990s to prove Sterling's innocence, and the Innocence Project joined him in the push in 2004. Three years ago, the District Attorney's Office consented to DNA testing that provided a match with Christie.

The Innocence Project, an affiliate of the New York City-based Benjamin N. Cardozo School of Law, uses genetic testing to free the wrongly convicted.

According to officials with the Innocence Project, DNA testing conducted last year on clothing Manville was wearing when she was murdered showed a match with Christie. While the match was not definitive — male relatives of Christie's might have the same genetic trademarks, for instance — an Innocence Project lawyer and private investigator from Kroll Associates used the evidence to confront Christie in a prison interview last year.

Christie did not confess at the first meeting, but he made statements that prompted the Innocence Project staff to return with an interrogation expert from John G. Reid & Associates Inc., which trains police in interview and interrogation techniques. Christie confessed, revealing details that only the killer would know, Innocence Project officials say.

The District Attorney's Office and the Monroe County Sheriff's Office have since interviewed Christie, and he confessed to them also and revealed evidence that Manville's killer would have known, District Attorney Michael Green said Wednesday.

Innocence Project officials contend that investigators became too fixated on Sterling and ignored other possibilities.

"There's no question in this case the police officers had tunnel vision," said Innocence Project co-founder Peter Neufeld.

Green said the police work in the Manville homicide was solid. "I'm very uncomfortable going back and second-guessing what people did 19 years ago," he said.

Sterling's innocence and Christie's apparent admission to Manville's slaying link two of the most high-profile suburban homicides in the region in the past 30 years. The murder of Manville, a sprightly woman known for her vigorous daily walks along the same path where she was slain, sent tremors through Hilton. Similarly, the 1994 murder of Kali, who disappeared from her Pittsford townhouse complex, shocked the community and triggered a nationwide search for the cherubic blonde-haired youngster.

Sterling confessed in 1991 to Manville's murder. That statement, partly videotaped, was compelling enough to sway investigators, prosecutors, a jury, and multiple local and appellate judges who for years believed in the propriety of Sterling's conviction even when evidence arose that Christie may have been the real killer. But the videotaped portion of Sterling's 1991 statement represents a fragment of his total interrogation, and his supporters have long maintained that Sterling, frazzled and worn down, began telling investigators what they wanted to hear.

Manville's killer shot her twice with a pellet gun, beat her violently about her face and body, removed her pants and left her body in bushes near the Hilton trail.

Investigators questioned Sterling on July 11, 1991, after he'd finished a 36-hour shift as a truck driver. After he was questioned for nearly a dozen hours and showed a deceptive reading on a polygraph exam, Sterling told investigators that he had confronted Manville on the path and killed her because he believed she had falsely accused his brother of a crime.

A jury convicted him in September 1992 during a trial in which his attorney maintained that the confession was false and the result of an exhausted man in an almost trance-like state making false claims.

Within weeks of Sterling's conviction, and before his sentencing, teenagers came forward to tell authorities that Christie had said he in fact killed Manville. He told some of them that he had shot her with a pellet gun and beaten her viciously.

Authorities interviewed Christie, who said he'd lied in a weird attempt to make friends. The District Attorney's Office contended that Christie had nothing to do with Manville's murder, a judge ruled that there was insufficient evidence against Christie to revisit Sterling's conviction, and Sterling was sentenced to 25 years to life.

That, of course, left Christie free. In May 1994, he killed Kali.

Kali Ann Poulton vanished from the Gleason Estates townhouse complex early in the evening of May 23, 1994. Two years later, Christie admitted to his wife his involvement in Kali's killing. She called authorities, who questioned Christie and secured a confession. He took investigators to Kali's submerged body, which was in a cooling water tank at a Rochester business where he worked in 1994.

Manville's son, Robert, said Wednesday that the family never seems able to escape from news about his mother's murder. He said he still can't understand how Sterling gave a confession with information that prompted his conviction.

"I feel sorry for Sterling if he suffered for all that time," Manville said.

Asked whether there may be a final answer as to who killed his mother, Robert Manville, 68, answered: "It kind of looks that way. Or it's going to outlive me."

GCRAIG@DemocratandChronicle.com
http://www.democratandchronicle.com/article/20100429/NEWS09/304290015