Double Trouble

"Once you're convicted, it's final," Wells says. "You've got these appeals, but the appeals don't really work unless one has a very clear case that there was a violation of due process.... I think that it's a big guessing game here on the part of the court on whether the jury would have rendered the same verdict if the blood evidence pointed to another person," he says. Still, Haley has convinced one more attorney to take a shot at that guessing game.

This summer, he sent a letter to a group of University of Missouri-Kansas City law students who review cases for the Midwestern Innocence Project, which takes the cases of convicted criminals when there is considerable doubt about their verdicts.

Inaugurated in 2000, the Midwestern Innocence Project has collected thousands of appeals from prisoners in seven states around the Midwest. The organization is modeled after the Innocence Project, which was founded in 1992 by civil rights lawyers Barry Scheck and Peter Neufeld in New York; the goal of both groups is to exonerate prisoners after DNA evidence surfaces. But, the New York group's literature cautions, "The Project only handles cases where post-conviction DNA testing can yield conclusive proof of innocence." As of November, the New York group had cleared 163 wrongfully convicted men and women in its 13-year existence.

The Midwestern Innocence Project has yet to free a prisoner; seven cases are still pending.

It took only a glance through Haley's files for Phil Gibson, who until recently was the director of the Midwestern Innocence Project, to conclude that Haley was probably not the shooter.

In the coming months, lawyers with the group will file a motion in federal court to set Haley free. If that effort fails, they plan to ask the Missouri Supreme Court to grant Haley a new trial.

"We are continuing to work on Jack's case," says Ken Miller, executive director of the Missouri Innocence Project. At Smith's home in late October, his wife answers the door, cradling a newborn in her arms. She says Smith isn't home, that he's working at a new job.

"He still loves his cousin," is all she says about her husband.

Smith did not respond to the Pitch's requests for comment.

Haley is due to go before the parole board in 2011, but he knows he'll have to admit to the shooting if he wants to be released.

"I could never admit to something that I didn't do," he says. "I'm just going to go up there and sit there."

He accepts the fact that he was at fault that night, too. Haley admits that he deserves to be punished.

"I could have done some things different," Haley tells the Pitch.

"Every day, I wake up, I run everything from the beginning. I go through everything. I start from the day this all happened, and I go through every day on into the present. I try not to do it, but it's just something that happens. I rewind to 1999, October, that night, and play it all through my head, all day long. I just keep trying to figure out, what am I going to do to fix this?"