State replies to Charles Erickson’s petition to be released from prison
The state of Missouri responded to a lawsuit Friday filed by a man who pleaded guilty to the murder of a Columbia Daily Tribune sports editor.
Charles Erickson, 34, filed the petition in Pike County in late 2018, alleging that Boone County prosecutors and Columbia police coerced him into confessing to Kent Heitholt’s death on Halloween night 2001.
The state filed a response Friday, saying that Erickson was not coerced to plead guilty. The state also claimed that nothing in the record shows that police made up evidence.
The response outlined the following three reasons for the court to deny the petition for habeus corpus:
Erickson is not actually innocent under Missouri law The claim of innocence is barred by judicial estoppel The guilty plea was knowing, intelligent and voluntary
Erickson’s attorney, Landon Magnusson, wrote in the petition about the “no-holds-barred” approach that the police and prosecution used to convince a jury.
“They withheld evidence. They fabricated evidence. And they unconstitutionally coerced Charles to falsely confess and plead guilty,” Magnusson wrote.
Erickson’s emotional and psychological frailties, which included obsessive compulsive disorder, significant drug abuse, and the fact that he could not remember the evening, contributed to that coercion, according to his attorney.
“He actually thought he committed this crime,” Magnusson previously told ABC 17 News.
Magnusson also detailed what he called the police’s “unrelenting” efforts to get Erickson to confess. He said they used the tactic of correcting Erickson’s version of events.
