Man serving life in Allegheny County Jail killing seeks federal relief, citing problems with appeals process

A man who has spent nearly 30 years in prison for first-degree murder — even after his co-defendant confessed to killing the victim on his own — is seeking relief in federal court.

Shawn Burton, 55, argued in a petition filed Friday in the Western District of Pennsylvania that he was denied his due process rights in Allegheny County Common Pleas Court, including by a now-retired judge who refused to transport a jailhouse witness he had subpoenaed to testify.

“There were extreme malfunctions during Burton’s (appellate) proceedings,” wrote Burton’s attorney, Craig Cooley.

Burton and another man, Melvin Goodwine, were both charged in the strangulation death of Seth Floyd inside Allegheny County Jail on March 9, 1993.

At trial, Burton was found guilty of first-degree murder and ordered to serve life in prison without parole. However, Goodwine was acquitted in the homicide and found guilty of conspiracy. He was ordered to serve five to 10 years.

In July 2009, Goodwine filed a motion to expunge the homicide charge from his record. In that motion, Goodwine said he was the one who killed Floyd, that he committed the crime in self-defense and was told by his attorney not to use that defense at trial.

Goodwine also noted that an innocent man was serving life in prison for his crime.

Then, in September 2009, Goodwine submitted a hand-written confession to the state Board of Probation and Parole.

The board granted his release in January 2010.

However, Burton, who has proclaimed his innocence from the outset, didn’t learn about any of Goodwine’s admissions until 2013. At the time, Burton was serving life in prison, had no money to retain an attorney and was unrepresented, his filing said.

As soon as he learned about what Goodwine had said, Burton filed a petition seeking post-conviction relief based on newly discovered evidence. He spent the next eight years litigating the issue.

Although his 2013 petition was denied within just a few months by now-retired Common Pleas Judge Donna Jo McDaniel, the state Superior Court ruled in Burton’s favor on his appeal. It remanded the case back to McDaniel to have a hearing about Goodwine’s confession — a decision the state Supreme Court affirmed in 2017.

In preparation for that hearing, the recent court filing said, an investigator working for Burton’s attorney interviewed one of the original jailhouse witnesses against him. In that interview, the petition said, the witness, who is also serving life in prison, admitted that he lied in court.

Burton subpoenaed that witness for the evidentiary hearing, but after the witness submitted a letter to McDaniel telling her he would not cooperate, she canceled the order to have him transported from state prison. The judge said there was no reason to waste resources if the witness refused to testify and that threatening to hold a person in contempt who is already serving life in prison would not compel him to cooperate.

Then, at the hearing, Goodwine, on the advice of his attorney, answered every question asked of him by invoking his Fifth Amendment right against self-incrimination.

When the proceeding concluded, McDaniel said she didn’t find Goodwine’s confession to be credible.

“This seems to be, to me at the time, a manufactured scheme since Goodwine was protected by the double jeopardy clause and what did he have to lose,” she said. “He had nothing to lose by coming in and helping out a fellow inmate or friend or whatever kind of co-conspirator, what kind of relationship they had.”

McDaniel denied Burton’s claims, and he again appealed. And again, the state Superior Court reversed, writing that the prosecution had presented no evidence to support her belief that Goodwine’s confession was not credible. The court again remanded the case to Common Pleas Court.

McDaniel had retired in December 2018, so the case was reassigned to Judge Thomas Flaherty.

Flaherty heard oral argument on the issue on Oct. 3, 2019, and dismissed the petition three months later, finding that Goodwine’s confessions were not credible.

Flaherty said Goodwine confessed only to receive a personal benefit — parole — and that his confession was contrary to the evidence entered at trial.

Further, he found that, even if jurors considered the confession as substantive evidence, they were “unlikely to change the outcome of the trial.”

Burton again appealed to the state Superior Court, which denied his appeal in January 2021. The state Supreme Court then declined to consider the issue in August.

In Burton’s petition, his attorney argues that the evidence against his client at trial was “patently inconsistent, demonstrably false, far from overwhelming, and based on ACJ inmates who had obvious (motives) to fabricate testimony to obtain better outcomes in their own criminal cases.”