Truth On Trial

Produced by Jamie Stolz and Susan Mallie

Decatur, Ala., sitting along the banks of the often murky Tennessee River, was once a booming river city with a thriving railroad.

Local crime reporter Jonathan Baggs says nothing shattered that quiet city like the case of 34-year-old Daniel Wade Moore. The ordeal Moore's been through has left him yearning for life's most simple pleasures, like sitting on the front porch with his sister.

Daniel learned about life the hard way - Decatur is home, except when he was living on Alabama's death row.

Daniel, who works for the local electric company, has his simple life back. But a constant part of that life is an unimaginable possibility: that he could once again become a dead man walking.

Nearly six years ago, Daniel was convicted of the murder of Karen Tipton and sent to death row. In 2005, the conviction was overturned, but he now faces another trial, and once again the death penalty.

"Time and time again you get a little bit of hope only to have the carpet jerked right out from under you. You can only take that so many times before you learn to quit hoping," he tells correspondent Erin Moriarty.

Dr. David Tipton also struggles to hang on to hope. He once lived in Decatur, on the other side of the tracks from Daniel.

Tipton, a psychiatrist, was raising his daughters Caroline and Catherine in their leafy Decatur neighborhood until something went terribly wrong: the brutal murder of Karen.

What happened nine years ago to Karen would connect David to Daniel in ways neither man could have imagined. Certainly not back in 1984, when David, a medical student, first met the beautiful blonde technician at an Alabama hospital.

Karen's brother Lance and sister Laurie say after five years of dating, Karen decided David was the one. "She said at one point, you know, 'He is just a great guy. He's gonna make some person a great husband. It might as well be me,'" Laurie remembers.

The first thing Karen wanted to do was start a family.

But the Tiptons' seemingly idyllic like came to an abrupt end on March 12, 1999, when David says he came home from work earlier than usual that day to go to the theatre.

When he walked from the garage into the house, he noticed the deadbolt on the door was not locked. Inside, he also noticed that the alarm panel had been removed from the wall. He found it lying on a kitchen counter.

"It was unusual. But it was not so weird. Given the fact that our alarm system was not working and we were expecting it to be fixed," he remembers.

David went into the foyer to hang up his coat. As he was calling for his wife, he says he noticed a small drop of blood on a tile in the foyer. "The next thing I saw was more blood. In the foyer, toward the door," he remembers. "And I walked up the stairs and was the most surprised person on the face of the earth to find a dead body there that looked somewhat like Karen."

Karen's nude body was lying at the top of the stairs. She had been stabbed 28 times, and her throat had been cut.

David called 911. "She is dead. I have no idea where my children are. There's blood everywhere. I'm really concerned about my children," he told the operator.

Investigators began searching for clues, as officers tracked down the Tipton children, who were still at school where they had never been picked up.

Who would kill this 39-year-old housewife and mother? The crime scene was puzzling: David reported that Karen's purse and some jewelry were missing, but her diamond ring was still on her finger and there was no evidence of forced entry. Most striking of all was how brutal and vicious the killing was - a sign to investigators that the killer may have been someone who knew Karen.

"Even from the beginning, I realized that I had to be a suspect. Because I was the first on the scene and the husband. I knew that," David says.

Police believed Karen was murdered sometime between 1 p.m. - after a phone call to a friend - and 2:30 pm when she was supposed to pick up the kids from school. David's office manager said he left his office in neighboring Huntsville at 3:30 p.m.

Jonathan Baggs, then working for the Decatur Daily, heard the report come across his police radio. He says that once police ruled out Karen's husband, they faced another problem. "There was a lot of pressure to solve this case and solve it very quickly," he remembers.

But days, then weeks went by with no solid leads.

Until one month later, when a high speed chase of a random shoplifter ended with the arrest of Daniel Wade Moore, then just 24 years old. Some 48 hours later, in a twist no one could have predicted, police believed they had found Karen's killer.

In April 1999, when Decatur, Ala. police arrested Daniel, all they thought they had was a petty thief and drug addict. "'I'd been on drugs for awhile, I'd pretty much just given up on life," Daniel told Moriarty, acknowledging he had been using crack cocaine and marijuana.

But in two days' time, Daniel's case would quickly change from a shoplifting charge to murder. It all started when, out on bail, Daniel went for a ride with his uncle, Sparky Moore.

"He said 'You know the Tipton murder? The doctor's wife that was murdered on Chapel Hill road?' And I said 'Yeah.' And he says 'Well, I was there.' He said 'Me and two other guys broke into a home and the guy that was with me had stabbed her and killed her,'" Sparky remembered.

Sparky couldn't believe what he was hearing, but wanting to do the right thing, he got word to police, who found Daniel in a motel room littered with drug paraphernalia. They brought him in and were questioning him, when suddenly during a break Daniel pulled out his penknife and stabbed himself 16 times.

Daniel admits to Moriarty he was trying to kill himself.

While he recovered from his wounds, police decided they had the perfect suspect. They believed Daniel was driven by guilt over Karen's murder. The case seemed to get stronger when police searched the apartment Daniel rented and found an alarm company toolbox. Investigators discovered that Daniel had previously met David and Karen Tipton.

As it turns out, he had serviced the alarm system at the Tiptons' house just six months before Karen's murder.

Asked how he thinks it happened, David tells Moriarty, "He came and knocked on the door and said, 'Hello, I work for the alarm company.' He had been there just a few months before. He lied his way in the house."

Police believe the attack began downstairs. "The first injury was being cut or stabbed on the back left aspect of her neck. Her shirt was forced off of her. And then she was forced upstairs with a blood trail going the whole way," David says.

The attack - David says - continued upstairs in the bedroom, where police found Karen's clothing on the floor and blood on the bed. "I think it's very likely that after that prolonged period of sexual and physical torture she managed to actually escape from that and got to the top of the stairs before she was finally killed there - somewhere in the range of 28 stab wounds. Probably last thing cut was her throat," David says.

To David, it was an unimaginable nightmare, an open and shut case of a drug addict killing for money. "Daniel Wade Moore confessed to involvement Daniel Wade Moore is an absolutely 100 percent profiled match for somebody who would do a crime just like this. That's what crack heads do," he said.

But by October 2001, when Daniel was charged with capital murder, he had changed his story: he denied having anything to do with the murder, and considering the brutality of the crime, there was very little evidence against him.

Daniel says his fingerprints weren't found in the home, and that none of Karen's blood or other hairs and fibers were found on him or his clothing.

But there were two hairs found at the scene of the murder. Their poor condition would make precise DNA testing problematic. All that could be confirmed was that they could have been Daniel's.

Daniel's attorney Sherman Powell, a second generation country lawyer, got set for the toughest case of his 32-year career. It was November 2002, three and a half years after the murder, when Daniel went on trial for the first time.

As one of the biggest trials the county had ever seen got underway, those who loved Daniel continued to believe he was incapable of murder.

Assistant State Attorney General Don Valeska thought he had the case against Daniel sewn up.

But defense attorney Sherman Powell believed this was a crime of passion. Powell suggested that the wrong man was on trial, and that the killer might even be Dr. Tipton himself. The motive? The oldest one on earth: jealousy. "There is some indication of extramarital affairs that were ongoing at this point in time," Powell said.

On the stand, David admitted that just weeks before the murder, his best friend Mike Ezell had e-mailed Karen suggesting they swap spouses. "I was offended by that. I was offended not only by Mike but by Karen as well," David admitted. "That she had carried on a silly conversation with a friend of mine."

And Karen may have had her own reasons to be angry at her husband: at trial, a defense expert testified that authorities had found pornography on the home computer. Karen had been using that computer the day she died.

"The majority of the stuff in there was gay men interacting, and I have never seen a lady yet that would sit down and look at that kind of stuff," Daniel's attorney Sherman Powell said.

Powell speculated that Karen could have discovered the porn and confronted her husband, sparking the fight that ended her life.

But David says, "Am I capable of killing somebody? Yup. Am I capable of killing a loved one? No. Am I capable of torturing my wife to death? That's crazy."

And there is Daniel's confession to Uncle Sparky that led police to him in the first place. At trial, Daniel tells the jury that he made up that story. He says he was desperate to get back to his drugs, so he wanted his family to leave him alone.

Daniel's confession notwithstanding, even with the two questionable hairs found at the scene, Powell believed the brutality of Karen's murder pointed to one man, and it wasn't Daniel. "Somebody got very angry and started out slapping her around, beating her and it just exploded from there to torture and murder," Powell said.

The jury deliberated for two days. On Jan. 23, 2003 Daniel was sentenced to death by lethal injection. He might still be on death row, if not for a discovery that saved his life and rocked Decatur.

Daniel's only hope was an appeal, but as Sherman Powell began to work on it, he never dreamed what he would learn just days after Moore's conviction.

First, there was a new witness: a Tipton neighbor who said she saw Karen alive by her mailbox the afternoon of her murder, at a time police believed she was already dead. Pam Smith says she called the police just days after the murder to tell them what she saw.

But Pam she never heard from police after making that initial call.

Police claim they have no record of Smith's call. Asked if she thinks her call just got lost, Pam says, "I think my story didn't fit with their theory, that's what I think."

Powell was convinced that the state had deliberately suppressed evidence, so he immediately filed a motion for a new trial. What happened next changed Daniel's case forever: prosecutors turned over a 245 page report on Karen's murder, compiled by the FBI - a report that prosecutors had repeatedly denied existed.

In fact, the FBI had been involved from the start. The police had asked them to help develop suspects by analyzing information about the victim.

The report revealed that Karen had been leading a "secret life" which included "extra marital affairs." The FBI believed Karen may have known her killer and recommended that both David and his best friend Mike Ezell be given polygraphs, despite both men having been ruled out as suspects by police.

Why would the police and prosecution withhold information? "Because it shows opportunity and motive - someone other than me," Daniel says.

Prosecutors and police refused 48 Hours' request for an interview.

But David insists that the FBI document is not an official report, but simply an analysis of information gathered by local police. "Nothing that was evidence, as part of the investigation, was hidden from anybody."

Powell says that's not the point. "They're supposed to report all the evidence. All the leads, all the investigation. They didn't do that."

Judge Glenn Thompson, who had sent Daniel to death row two years earlier, agreed. In February 2005, in an extraordinary written decision, the judge accused Assistant Attorney General Don Valeska of intentionally suppressing evidence just to win a conviction.

What the judge did next was even more shocking. Ruling that a new trial would subject Moore to "double jeopardy" - trying him twice for the same crime - the judge did the only thing he felt was fair: he sent Daniel home.

The development was devastating for David and his daughters, who'd moved to North Carolina, 700 miles away from Decatur. "I think that he needs to be dead. I'm not allowed to kill him. The second best is to have the state kill him," he says.

But Daniel would not remain free for long. The Alabama Court of Criminal Appeals agreed to review Judge Thompson's decision and stayed all proceedings.

After less than a week of freedom, Daniel was back behind bars at the Morgan County Jail. "Sometimes I think I did die that day in the interview room and that this is hell. Because it's like every time when you finally think it's fixing to be over, something else puts it off," he says.

It was then up to the Court of Criminal Appeals to decide whether to give Daniel a new trial or free him for good, a scary possibility for Karen's daughters. Catherine and Caroline. "They are afraid that he would come after them. And why not? Everybody should be afraid," David says.

In July 2006, seven years after Karen's murder, the appeals court rendered its decision . Daniel Wade Moore would stand trial a second time, and again, face the death penalty.

In February 2008, Daniel returned to court for the fight of his life. If possible, the attention focused on Daniel's second trial was even greater than the first. "For this town it's become huge. People have this mental and vested interest in who killed Karen Tipton," Baggs explains.

Nearly nine years after Karen's brutal murder, Decatur, Ala. was hoping for justice.

Time had also passed for David. He returned to Decatur, this time bringing his daughters, 17-year-old Caroline and 13-year-old Catherine, to attend the murder trial of Daniel Wade Moore.

Virginia Byrd, Daniel's mother has endured her own wait for justice for a son she is certain is no murderer. "As soon as we can get him home, he's gonna be fine."

But Daniel will never get home if it's up to Assistant State Attorney General Don Valeska. Amazingly, Valeska was again the lead prosecutor, even though he was accused of hiding the FBI report in the first trial.

"It was the most egregious case of prosecutorial misconduct that I have ever been aware of," Powell charges.

For the second time, Daniel's life was on the line. Twelve new jurors would weigh the state's most compelling evidence.

Cameras weren't allowed in the courtroom, but five jurors from Daniel's second trial took 48 Hours through the case, starting with the prosecution's key evidence: the two hairs in the Tipton house.

"Did you believe that hair was Daniel Moore's hair?" Moriarty asks.

"I believe that particular hair was Daniel Moore's hair," a male juror replied.

The prosecution was very persuasive. They say it wasn't just the two hairs, but Daniel's initial confession to his Uncle Sparky.

A male juror said that was "absolutely" significant. "That's number two on the prosecution hit list."

And Daniel's failed suicide attempt also troubled some of the jurors. "Why would he just absolutely freak out and start stabbing himself? To me, it just showed he was guilty, he knew that he was cornered," a female juror remarked.

When it was defense attorney Powell's turn, he gave jurors another explanation for the damning evidence against Daniel, especially the hairs inside the home.

"Daniel Moore had been in that house," Powell said. But he says he doesn't believe Daniel had been at the house on the day of the murder.

And several jurors did believe Daniel could have left those hairs months before the murder when he was in the Tipton house to fix the alarm.

As for stabbing himself at the police station, maybe Daniel was just plain scared. "I think so much was going on all of a sudden he wanted to die and just get out of it," one juror remarked.

And some jurors agreed with Uncle Sparky - that Daniel's entire confession could have been made up. "I don't know if he's crying out for attention," another juror said, adding that he doesn't believe Daniel was actually confessing.

Remember, this time around Powell had that FBI report, the document that suggested Karen might have been killed out of jealousy or rage by someone she knew. Among her many wounds, Karen had literally been stabbed through the heart.

"What do you now know about Karen Tipton from that trial?" Moriarty asked a juror.

"She had a secret life," the juror replied.

On the stand, Powell confronted David about the pornography found on the home computer, but David had long grown tired of speculation about his marriage. "I'm the pot and porno guy. I'm the multiple affairs," he said. "I'm the, you know, wild, crazy, sex-party, sex-swap, wife-swapper, king of the sex-swapping club. All of these things have been said about me."

Some jurors were bothered by David's testimony.

"I know the truth about me and Karen and I don't need a bunch of rumors and silliness to change that. I know the real stuff," David said.

At this trial, besides neighbor Pam Smith, there was also a new witness: a paver, who had been working on the driveway next door, testified he'd seen David's truck arrive home a good 90 minutes before the 911 call was made.

But David was not on trial; Daniel was, and as the trial wound up, Sherman Powell smelled victory. "I thought we had some good evidence. I thought there certainly existed reasonable doubt."

But what the jurors ultimately decided took everyone by surprise. After six days, the jury couldn't come up with a verdict - a hung jury - giving the judge no choice but to declare a mistrial.

In fact, the jury never even got close to a unanimous verdict. From the beginning the majority thought Daniel should be acquitted. "Nine not guilty, three guilty. And we'd vote once or twice a day. It would go eight to four. Nine to three. And that's how it kept going back and forth until the last day," a male juror explained.

A weary Daniel was sent back to the Morgan County Jail.

Co-prosecutor Corey Maze says the state of Alabama is not prepared to let go.
"Every piece of evidence shows that Daniel Wade Moore is guilty and for us to give up would be to allow a murderer to go free in this county and we will not let that happen."

Daniel will have to stand trial a third time.

But one month after the mistrial, Daniel would get extraordinary news. He'd be allowed to wait for his next trial at home, if he can raise the $150,000 bond.

As she had for nine straight years, Daniel's mother Virginia Byrd sprang into action to help her son, calling family and friends for money and support. Just hours later, Daniel walked out of jail

For Daniel this second taste of freedom was about savoring the simplest of pleasures, and daring to dream about the future. "Maybe meet a girl, start a family. I could work a minimum wage job for the rest of my life, and have a wonderful life," he says.

And within days Daniel got a call from a local company offering work.

This still accused murderer would find refuge right in the heart of his hometown.

Asked how people in Decatur people view Daniel, a juror says, "Not guilty."

"Who do they think killed Karen Tipton then?" Moriarty asks.

"Some say Doctor Tipton. Some say jealous wife. Some say boyfriend. Yeah I mean I hear everything," the juror said.

The next trial will begin in April 2009, and Don Valeska can't wait. "We'll be ready anytime, we'll be ready."

There's no limit to how many trial Daniel could be subjected to. "We'll go through this third trial, we'll present the evidence and hopefully this time we'll come back with a unanimous verdict of not guilty and this'll be done with. You just go on with life," Daniel says.

Daniel remains in a legal limbo. He says he's a casualty of a justice system that's failed.

David feels like he's a casualty too. "What keeps it from being the final trial? This could go on for the rest of my life."

But the ultimate victim is Karen, who can never go home, never watch her children grow up, and whose death may always remain a mystery.