A Question Of Murder

Did John Maloney Get A Fair Trial?

(CBS) 
The trial lasted eight days. The guilty verdict was read to a packed courtroom, which included Maloney's young sons.

"They took us in a back elevator and I just fell on the floor and started crying my eyes out," Sean recalls. "I can remember saying, 'What are we gonna do now?'"

Appeals can take years, but then Sheila Berry, who had never even met Maloney, took up his cause. Berry is a part-time novelist, part-time investigator, and part-time head of Truth in Justice, a non-profit group that tries to help people it feels are wrongly imprisoned.

After consulting with more than a dozen forensic experts, Berry is now convinced that Maloney is innocent, and that Sandy Maloney wasn't murdered. She believes that there was no crime.

So how did Sandy die? Berry says the explanation is right there in the evidence - evidence the jury never saw.

Behind his back, courthouse reporters dubbed Paulus "Hollywood Joe," for his love of the camera, and for his dramatic courtroom theatrics.

"He'd get right up there, and he would act things out. His eyes are very dramatic and he knows how to use them," says Berry, who worked for Paulus in 1990. "Any attorney would be happy to have those skills, because they can skate you across a lot of thin ice."

But thin ice was the last thing Paulus had to worry about in 1998. Assistant District Attorney Mike Balskus says Paulus' career was on a fast track: "His goal was to become one of the U.S. attorneys in Wisconsin. The Maloney case would probably be a good vehicle for that."

After the guilty verdict, Paulus said: "Ultimately, the jury paid heed to what I talked to them about in my closing argument – and that is, we all know what the truth is here, don't get sidetracked. Just let the truth flourish so we can get to the right verdict."

Over the next few years, Paulus missed few opportunities to wax idealistic about truth and justice. But in March 2002, the FBI began investigating Paulus for corruption, looking into charges that the prosecutor was taking bribes to fix cases. Soon, the story leaked to the press, prompting a torrent of righteous indignation.

"I did nothing wrong. There was no impropriety here. All of this is a big fat lie," says Paulus. "If there is an investigation out there, at the end of the day, absolutely nothing will come of it."

News of the FBI inquiry came as no shock to Berry, who’d had a run-in with Paulus years earlier when he was her boss. It involved allegations that a star witness had lied, but Paulus was able to keep the matter quiet, stay out of trouble and fire Berry.

"Several people in law enforcement urged me to leave the state," says Berry. "Said, 'He hates you. He is afraid of you. He is going to set you up on false criminal charges.' I knew he could do it."

But in April 2004, Paulus' world of influence and power came tumbling down. He was charged with bribery and income tax evasion. Within weeks, he had cut a deal, pleading guilty to accepting $48,000 to fix 22 cases – six of them criminal. Paulus is now serving a sentence of more than four years at a federal prison in Florida.

The Paulus bribery investigation covered June 1998 through June 2000 – the very time period when Maloney was arrested, tried and convicted. Did the corrupt district attorney act improperly in the Maloney case as well?

"He had to have known there were big question marks on whether this was even a murder or a homicide," says Berry, who adds that despite their history, she has no ax to grind with Paulus. She just knows the man.

"Here you've got a prosecutor who, on the one hand, is taking money to fix cases, and they are little cases. So what does he do to distract attention and pump up this image he has of being the big crime fighter, the big justice guy? He goes after high-profile cases. They attracted him like a moth to a flame."