Note: we are republishing this story, which originally made the news in May 2015.
In an attempt to prove his innocence, a Tennessee prisoner on death row inadvertently provided more evidence that he committed the crime.
Marlon Kiser was sentenced to death row for killing Hamilton County Deputy Donald Bond in 2003, Times Free Press reports.
Yet the man has repeatedly denied the charges, claiming his former roommate – James Michael Chattin – framed him.
Kiser took to his website, FreeMarlonKiser.com, to make his claim:
… James Michael Chattin had discovered that a Hamilton County Sheriff’s Deputy named Donald Kenneth Bond Jr. was seemingly having an affair with Tina Chattin who was Mike Chattin’s wife. On several different occasions, Mike Chattin has stated to several different individuals that his wife was seeing a cop and that he was going to kill him, and in the early morning hours of September 6th, 2001, that is exactly what Mike Chattin did.
And then, to throw suspicion off of Mike Chattin, he ran to police pointing his finger at me because I had a pending police brutality lawsuit against the Chattanooga Police Department since 1998 which was scheduled to be heard on September 17th, eleven days after Deputy Donald Bond’s death.
Kiser added that after he found out about Chattin’s drug habits, he asked him to vacate the premise.
That was the straw that broke the camel’s back, he said.
“In Mike Chattin’s perry old mind, he could not allow me to leave because I knew entirely too many secrets about him,” Kiser wrote, adding that Chattin had also previously asked him to kill the police officer.
Kiser also started a petition to get him off the death penalty, which has received over 470 signatures. The petition’s stated goal is 1k signatures.
“Marlon Kiser is on death row, because of police corruption, and police ineptness,” one person who signed the petition wrote in the comments section. “Marlon knew about Mike Chattin’s criminal activities, and therefore Marlon was a liability to Mike Chattin.”
Kiser also petitioned the court for post-conviction relief, Times Free Press notes. As part of that petition, his attorneys had authorities test palm and fingerprints on Bond’s flashlight and car.
The results revealed the prints were Kiser’s. Previous evidence linking Kiser to the crime reportedly included fibers from Bond’s clothes.
