Locked up more than 20 years for a crime he says he didn't commit, a North Jersey businessman convicted in a 1983 double murder could be freed by a federal appeals court.
Today, a defense attorney detailed six instances of prosecutorial misconduct that he said were deliberately concocted to keep Paul Kamienski behind bars despite his innocence.
Kamienski, a well-known businessman who grew up in Passaic before moving to Garfield, was convicted in Nov. 1988 as an accomplice in the Jersey Shore slayings of a Florida couple during a major cocaine deal gone bad.
However, the judge in the trial dismissed the murder conviction, saying the prosecutors produced no justifiable evidence of his participation. Kamienski still went to prison after the judge let a conviction stand against him for allegedly bringing the victims and killers together.
The Ocean County Prosecutor’s Office appealed, and a state Appellate Court reinstated the murder conviction nearly three years later. Kamienski was serving a 10-year sentence for the drug conviction at the time.
The appeals judges based their ruling, in large part, on the testimony of an ex-girlfriend who said blankets used to cover the victims' bodies came from Kamienski's yacht.
The state Supreme Court and federal courts rejected subsequent appeals by Kamienski, now 61, who argued that the prosecutor held back evidence and fabricated half-truths.
Today, he made his final bid for freedom.
"False and misleading"
Defense attorney Timothy J. McInnis told the three-judge U.S. Third Circuit Court of Appeals in Philadelphia this morning that the prosecutor's office filed "false and misleading" briefs to deliberately undermined each of Kamienski's appeals.
These are severe charges, not only against then-Ocean County Prosecutor E. David Millard -- who is now a state judge -- but also against the judges who kept Kamienski behind bars.
The justices were more than eager to listen, however.
During the original trial, transcripts show, Millard conceded that Kamienski didn't plan or participate in the killings of Barbara and Henry “Nick” DeTournay. However, he insisted the drug-addicted playboy helped dump their bodies.
Kamienski and his girlfriend at the time had partied with the DeTournays on their boats. They also frequently used drugs with the convicted killers, Toms River businessman and realtor Anthony Alongi and Joseph Marsieno (Marzeno) a/k/a Michael Testa, of Island Heights, New Jersey.
When the couple's bodies were found floating in Barnegat Bay, wrapped in blankets and tied to cement blocks, contact information for Kamienski and Alongi were discovered on Henry DeTournay, according to a report on releasepaulnow.com, a new Website that went live today.
(The impressive site presents Kamienski’s own words and video from prison, along with thousands of pages of filed court documents, including his trial transcript.)
The prosecutor told jurors DeTournay and his wife were trying to break into the drug distribution business in New Jersey and had contacted Kamienski to see if he knew anyone who could help them unload kilos of cocaine.
Kamienski introduced the couple to Alongi and Marzeno, whom he had met only a few weeks earlier.
The group gathered on Sept. 19, 1983 at Alongi's house to exchange three kilos of coke for $150,000, prosecutors said. But Marzeno pulled out a 9mm handgun and fired 10 shots, killing both victims, Millard contended.
Kamienski to this day insists he wasn't there.
The only evidence a
gainst him was his ex-girlfriend's testimony that the blankets used to wrap the victims were his -- none of which was corroborated.
Despite requests by McInnis's lawyers, Millard's office didn't provide results of the FBI's examination of hair and fibers taken from the blankets before the trial, McInnis said.
"A former supervisor from the same FBI lab now says that the blankets most probably came from the victims' own car, according to court documents filed by Kamienski," according to releasepaulnow.com.
"The victims' car had been parked in Alongi's driveway around the time of the shootings, according to the prosecution at trial, and was full of towels, bedding and clothing, according to crime scene photos."
Full disclosure?
The FBI analyst who examined the blankets was even on the prosecution's witness list, McInnis said, but was never called to testify.
Instead, prosecutors relied on the ex-girlfriend's word that the blankets were "earth tone," had "satin borders" and "looked similar" to those on Kamienski's boat.
The U.S. Constitution obligates prosecutors to relinquish all evidence favorable to defendants before trial, said McInnis, who obtained the lab information through a Freedom of Information request.
Failing to do so -- known as a "Brady" violation -- cannot be excused by ignorance, according to the U.S. Supreme Court.
The prosecutors "had a constitutional duty to look and now they say they didn't," McInnis said.
The ex-girlfriend also testified that a knot on a clothesline around one of the victims in a crime-scene photo looked like knots she had seen Kamienski tie on his boat.
However, a nationally recognized forensic knot expert filed an affidavit saying the type of knots were simple and commonplace. Besides, the expert said, no one can determine a knot type simply from a photograph.
The ex-girlfriend was facing drug charges when she agreed to testify against Kamienski, McInnis noted. Those charges were later dropped, he said.
Other proofs presented today by McInnis use direct trial testimony to contradict:
- the prosecutor's repeated characterization of Kamienski in appeals briefs when he was clearly referring to Marzeno and Alongi;
- alleged threats to the ex-girlfriend that McInnis said Kamienski never made;
- references to Kazmienski's "murderous premeditation."
"Paul made a huge mistake by using drugs and associating with people who used and sold them back in 1983," McInnis said. "He is paying an enormous price for errors in judgment he made 26 years ago."
However, the attorney said: "There was never any evidence he stood to gain financially from any cocaine deals between the victims and his killers or that Paul played any part in their murders."
McInnis says jurors should have had the option of convicting Kamienski of hindering apprehension, a much lesser change than murder that carries a much lighter sentence. Prosecutors never wavered, however, and the judge didn't question it.
Supervising Assistant Ocean County Prosecutor Sam Marzarella said more than enough evidence in the record points toward Kamienski's guilt.
"The real question," he said, "is whether Mr. Kamienski is guilty of the crime and not whether the state's citations are wrong."
Local boy turned bad
The son of a World War II glider pilot, Kamienski grew up and went to school in Passaic before attending the University of Miami. From 1957 through 1970, he spent summers at his parents' Jersey Shore getaway.
Kamienski later moved to Garfield and eventually took over his family's funeral business -- begun exactly 100 years ago -- after his parents died.
His father was grand marshal of the contingent from Passaic, Garfield and Wallington who marched in New York City's Pulaski Day parade in the 1950s. Paul was granted the same honor in 1979.
A 1981 Memorial Day boating accident with him at the helm killed his fiancée and, in Kamienski's words, "marked the beginning of the end for me." He later turned to cocaine to numb himself, he says on releasepaulnow.com.
"As I became even more out of control, I allowed myself to befriend and associate with people that a sober, sensible person would never associate with," Kamienski adds.
Marzeno, a career criminal who owned a New Orleans restaurant, died in 1991 in Trenton State Prison while serving two consecutive life sentences for the killings. Alongi, who was part of the Emmy-winning "Scared Straight" television documentary, remains imprisoned.
The federal appeals judges didn't say when they planned to decide the case. Kamienski, who is in a Cumberland County prison, isn't eligible for parole for another 10 years.
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