Tunnel Vision

Sound Bite

Tunnel Vision is written from death row by Robert Marshall, a New Jersey inmate whose case was chronicled in the book Blind Faith, and in the mini-series starring Robert Ulrich and Joanna Kerns. Back in 1989, Blind Faith was a bestseller but nobody heard from Robert Marshall; this book is his side of the story. Marshall contends that that account is highly inaccurate and so do many people who send him letters of support. Algora Publishing is not in a position to make a judgment on the judicial aspects of his case but is happy to be in a position to enable a man to deliver a message.

About the Book

Here is the inside story of a headline-making murder-for-hire case that has been at the heart of the debate over the death penalty and mandatory sentencing laws in New jersey for over 25 years. Convicted in New Jersey in 1986 in what came to be known as the Parkway Murder, Robert Marshall says he was subjected to a seriously flawed trial. In Tunnel Vision, he refutes the allegations made by Joe McGinnis, author of Blind Faith, and seeks to set the record straight. This is a story that raises serious questions about his case in particular and the death penalty in general. It makes one wonder about the justice system when one co-conspirator in a murder, who admits his guilt, can walk away virtually scot free, and another, who has denied guilt from the beginning, receives a death sentence. Readers will come to their own conclusions. According to New Jersey Policy Reports (http://www.njpp.org/rpt_moneyfornothing.html), "In April 2004, a federal court set aside Robert Marshall's 1986 death sentence and ordered a new penalty phase trial on grounds that enough questions were raised by the way Marshall's private attorney handled the penalty phase of his trial that the lower court should review it. Marshall has since been represented in his appeals process by public defenders. The decision to reverse Marshall's death sentence was upheld by the Third Circuit Court of Appeals on November 2, 2005." "In the stark language of the court," writes Seamus McGraw in JUSTICE DELAYED: THE ROBERT MARSHALL STORY (http://www.crimelibrary.com/notorious_murders/family/robert_marshall/11.html), [Judge] Irenas declared that Marshall's lawyer had failed to meet the standards expected of "competent counsel." NJN (NJ public television) received the Philadelphia Press AssociationÃ??'sTelevision Feature Award on June 25, 2004, for its documentary Due Process: The Strange Case of Bobby Cumber, produced by Sandra King, which explores Bobby CumberÃ??'s conviction for his role in the case and the judge's statement that "he would have applied a drastically shorter sentence were it not for the demands of the mandatory minimum sentence for conspiracy to murder."

Introduction

After a pleasant dinner at HarrahÃ??'s Meadows Restaurant in Atlantic City, Rob and Maria Marshall played blackjack for a couple of hours and walked away with over $6,000. They paid off two small credit markers, then headed for home, an hour north in Toms River, New Jersey. After pulling out of a Garden State Parkway tollbooth, Rob felt a vibration from one of the tires. Thinking he might have to change a tire and wanting to avoid the potential danger of parking on the shoulder, he pulled into a nearby picnic area. Indeed, the right rear tire was partially flat. As he was checking the tire, he was knocked unconscious by a blow to his head Ã??' from behind. He woke up in a pool of his own blood, his pockets turned inside out and the casino winnings gone. Maria was lying across the front seats, bleeding from fatal gunshot wounds to her back and side.That was September 7, 1984. Three months later, Rob was arrested for conspiring to have Maria killed.The previous May, Rob and Maria had attended a neighborÃ??'s party where they met Billy Caller*, a Shreveport, Louisiana man who had become friends with the neighbor some time ago when Caller lived in north Jersey.After an afternoon of drinking together, Rob told Billy he was going to leave his wife and needed a private investigator to determine the whereabouts of over $15,000 in missing casino winnings and to find out whether Maria was consulting a divorce lawyer.Billy told Rob he knew an investigator, and advised Rob to give him a call after he got back to Shreveport. Thinking Billy would refer him to someone in New Jersey, Rob called Billy a week later and was introduced to the investigator, a former Louisiana deputy sheriff, who called himself Jerry Davies. It wasnÃ??'t until much later that Rob learned he was a conman named Jimmy McInerney.Ocean County investigators believed that Rob was involved in his wifeÃ??'s death, and they interrogated Caller in Louisiana and then arrested him and McInerney; they were extradited to New Jersey, where McInerney was offered a deal if he would name someone other than himself as the Ã??'shooter,Ã??' and Rob as the person who hired him.Before McInerney gave his statement to the prosecutor, he was allowed to review the discovery file that contained all of the notes the county had gathered up until that point in their investigation. On December 18, 1984, McInerney gave a statement matching the prosecutorÃ??'s file notes, naming Rob and identifying a Louisiana man (Larry Thompson) as the shooter. He had cut himself a deal that would limit his jail time to less than sixteen months.Rob and Larry were arrested separately on December 19, 1984. At a pre-trial hearing in 1985, Judge Michael Green decided that they would be tried together. The trial would commence the following January.For the first time in his life, Rob Marshall was facing the American justice system: the system he would count on to prove his innocence and return him to his three young sons.