PCJP student gets client’s 1982 murder conviction overturned

A third-year student in the Post-Conviction Justice Project helped win a new trial for a client serving a life sentence for killing two men in the late 1970s.

Dan Weiss (pictured left)> began working on Maryann Acker’s case when he took the Post-Conviction clinical course during his second year of law school; the clinic has handled Acker’s case for five years.

“It was a great win,” Weiss said. “This was a case where a woman has served more than 20 years in jail, didn’t get a fair trial, and was convicted for a murder she didn’t commit.”

Acker and her husband, William Acker, were convicted in 1978 of robbing and killing a California hitchhiker. Maryann Acker was later convicted of killing a Hawaii man whom she and her husband robbed just days before the California crime. Her conviction in the Hawaii case was based on testimony offered by her husband, who was allowed to plead guilty to robbery and given immunity on other charges in exchange for his testimony against his wife.

However, Hawaii prosecutors failed to disclose to Maryann Acker’s attorneys that her husband was serving a life sentence with the possibility of parole. Instead, he testified in Hawaii that his sentence was without a parole possibility. That fact, said Professor Mike Brennan, would have revealed a possible motive for the husband to falsify testimony against his wife. Maryann Acker likely would have been paroled by now if not for the conviction in the Hawaii case.

Last week, a Hawaii judge ruled that Maryann Acker is entitled to a new trial. Weiss, who represented Maryann Acker at her parole hearing in October 2003, hopes this latest ruling will lead to parole for his client.

“She’s very well versed in the law, just as a lot of our clients are,” Weiss said. “She knows there’s an appeals process and that there’s still a lot to do. But she’s excited.

“Working in Post-Conviction has helped erase a lot of my preconceptions of what people in prison are like,” Weiss added. “They put a lot of effort into their cases. Especially when it’s your first case, they know a lot more about the process than you do. This whole experience has made the law a lot more real to me. Working on an evidentiary hearing, prepping for a court appearance and planning strategy — it’s stuff other law students don’t get to do.”