A 34-year court employee in Kansas City was recently fired for giving a public document to a prison inmate that showed him how to properly seek DNA tests. The man, who then filed a motion seeking DNA testing which subsequently exonerated him, was freed in June.
According to an Associated Press story in the Kansas City Star, Robert Nelson, 49, called Sharon Snyder an “angel” for giving him the document that showed him how to properly seek DNA tests. Nelson was convicted of a Kansas City rape in 1984 that he insisted he didn’t commit and was sentenced to 50 years. In 2009, Nelson filed a motion seeking DNA testing that had not been available at his trial 25 years earlier, but Jackson County Circuit Judge David Byrn denied the request, then did so again two years later because it didn’t meet the requirements of the statute Nelson had cited.
After the second motion failed in October 2011, Snyder gave Nelson’s sister a copy of a motion filed in a different case that the judge had granted. Nelson used that motion, which was a public document, as a guide for the motion he filed in February 2012 and the judge granted the motion in August. DNA testing excluded him and he was freed June 12.
Snyder, a 70-year-old great-grandmother, said despite her firing she would do it again.
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