Sex, Lies And The Doctor's Wife

Was Karen Tipton's Murder A Crime Of Passion Or A Robbery Gone Wrong?

(CBS) 
On Jan. 23, 2003, Moore was sentenced to death by lethal injection.

That February, Daniel Moore became the newest inmate on Alabama’s death row, moving into a cell some 250 feet from the execution chamber.

Moore’s only hope now was an appeal. Sherman Powell got to work, but never dreamed what he would learn just days after the conviction: a new witness had come forward with information that seemed to contradict the prosecution’s timeline.

In a sworn statement, neighbor Pam Smith says she saw Karen Tipton at her mailbox at 3:30 p.m. on the day she was murdered, a time when police believed Karen was already dead.

Smith says she called police right away but says she never heard from authorities after the initial call.

Police claim they have no record of Smith’s call.

Asked whether she thought police had just lost the call, Smith says, “I think my story didn’t fit with their theory, that’s what I think.”

Whether or not Pam Smith saw Karen Tipton that day, her information suggested to Powell that police had suppressed evidence

Powell immediately filed a motion for a new trial, and what happened next changed the Moore case forever.

Prosecutors turned over a 245-page report on the Tipton murder, compiled by the FBI, a report that prosecutors had repeatedly denied existed.

In fact, the FBI had been involved from the beginning, called in by police to help develop suspects and analyze information about the victim.

The FBI report says Karen Tipton was leading a “secret life,” which included “extra-marital affairs.” The report also said that Karen may have known her killer and the FBI recommended that, even though they had alibis, both David Tipton and his friend Mike Ezell be given lie detector tests.

Moore says the prosecution and police withheld information because “it shows opportunity and motive -- someone other than me.”

Prosecutors and the police refused 48 Hours’ request for an interview. Tipton, on the other hand, had plenty to say about the FBI report.

Tipton says the FBI never did a real investigation and says the report is simply information the police supplied to FBI profilers shortly after the murder. “Nothing that was evidence, as part of the investigation, was hidden from anybody,” he says.

He says that the report contained the same allegations that were made at trial and that they were based on rumor, not fact.

“The affairs that were alleged were never found,” Tipton insisted.

But as Powell points out, this was a capital murder case, and even if the FBI report contained no new information, prosecutors were still required by law to turn it over.

And because they didn’t, some jurors now say they have their own doubts about the decision they made. “I just think it doesn’t give him the fair trial he deserved,” one female juror told 48 Hours.. “I think Daniel deserves a new trial,” a male juror said.

Judge Glenn Thompson agreed, and in an extraordinary decision, he accused the prosecutor, Asst. Attorney General Don Valeska, of intentionally suppressing evidence and willfully defying court orders in order to win a conviction.

And the judge didn’t stop there. He ruled that the prosecutors’ actions amounted to double jeopardy, forcing Moore to be tried twice for the same crime.

And that, the judge said, left him with only one option: freeing the same man he had sentenced to death.