Attorneys representing the person accused of dressing as a clown and fatally shooting a Florida woman in the entryway of her home in 1990 are asking a judge to dismiss the case, because prosecutors made "tactical decisions" in dragging their feet and in turn prevented the defense from being able to build a case, records show.
"This is not a ‘cold case’ in the traditional sense: the State merely picked up their investigation decades later and conducted new tests on some of the trace evidence."
Prosecutors deliberately chose to delay the indictment of Sheila Keen-Warren for decades, and then charged her with the murder of Marlene Warren in 2017 despite the lack of new evidence, the defense team argued.
As a result, defense attorneys were faced with untraceable or now-deceased witnesses, people who no longer remembered what they did or saw, and even some who had suddenly changed their accounts of events over the course of 30-plus years, lawyers wrote in a motion to dismiss for pre-indictment delay, filed Wednesday.
FLORIDA JUDGE ON ‘KILLER CLOWN’ CASE MULLS USE OF ALLEGED COSTUME, KEY EVIDENCE AS TRIAL LOOMS
"Those charges are based, not on some dramatic cold case breakthrough, but instead almost entirely on the same attenuated circumstantial evidence that has been in the State’s possession since 1990," the filing states. It later adds: "More than 30 years after Marlene Warren’s murder, much of the evidence that Sheila Keen-Warren could have relied on to establish that someone else has confessed to the murder, to impeach the State’s witnesses, or present an alibi defense is unavailable for various reasons."
Several experts who would be called to testify as defense witnesses, including two people "who would have testified about the mishandling of evidence," are no longer alive.
Another example provided in the filing details how investigators failed to "preserve the three white LeBarons that they recovered shortly after the shooting."
"The law permitted the State to take their time in filing charges, but not to force Sheila Keen-Warren to fight her case blindfolded with one arm tied behind her back," the filing goes on.
Marlene Warren, 40, was shot and killed at her Wellington, Florida, home Saturday, May 26, 1990, officials said. Warren had just finished breakfast with her son and his friends around 10:45 a.m., when they spotted a Chrysler LeBaron roll into the driveway, the Palm Beach County Sheriff’s Office said.
A person dressed like a clown exited the vehicle and walked to the home’s front door, police said.
"The person dressed as the clown was carrying a flower arrangement and two balloons," the sheriff’s office explained. One balloon reportedly bore a picture of Snow White, the other was emblazoned with the words, "You're the Greatest!"
"Marlene answered the front door and as the clown offered the items to her, witnesses heard a gunshot and Marlene fell to the ground," police said. "The person dressed as a clown calmly walked back to the LeBaron and drove away."
27 YEARS LATER, ARREST IS MADE IN KILLER-CLOWN CASE
Warren suffered a gunshot wound to the face and was rushed to a local hospital, where she died two days later.
Police arrested Keen-Warren Sept. 26, 2017, 27 years after Warren’s death.
Investigators learned Keen-Warren, who was married to someone else at the time of the murder, went on to wed Warren’s husband in 2002. The pair had been living in Tennessee, where they operated a restaurant, police said.
Defense attorneys argued in the dismissal attempt that prosecutors suspect Warren’s husband was involved in the homicide, though he has never been charged in connection with the crime.
Keen-Warren is slated to go to trial in May. Prosecutors have not yet responded to the defense team’s motion.
