Attorneys for a former Katy football coach convicted of murdering his wife are accusing the former Harris County prosecutor of hiding evidence. Now that former prosecutor is speaking out as David Temple demands a new trial.
This is part of a rough and tumble courthouse maneuver to get a convicted killer out of prison. The allegations of prosecutorial misconduct have been raised before and the prosecutor has come out clean. The prosecutor tells Eyewitness News she didn't hide anything and she says some of the alleged new evidence is made up by defense attorneys.
David Temple has been in prison nearly five years.
"Find the defendant, David Mark Temple, guilty of murder," read the judge at the time.
In November 2007, a jury convicted the 44-year-old father of killing his pregnant wife, Belinda. On Tuesday, Temple's lawyers were back in court claiming Temple is innocent and demanding another trial.
"We're gonna be back tomorrow," said Dick DeGuerin, Temple's lawyer.
This is their fifth attempt at an appeal on a case DeGuerin can't or won't let go of. This, after the first appeal in 2008.
"I made a pledge to David Temple that I will never give up," DeGuerin said back on January 14, 2008.
Temple's legal team says now, as they've said in the past, that prosecutor Kelly Siegler was too aggressive in her prosecution of Temple and hid evidence key to his defense.
"I am always aggressive, but as far as withholding evidence, exculpatory information, Brady evidence, that did not happen," Siegler told us.
The defense claims to have uncovered new evidence pointing to an old suspect -- Riley Joe Sanders, Temple's teenage neighbor. The defense says a witness came forward this summer saying, "Sanders admitted committing the burglary of the Temple home on January 11, 1999, and admitted to shooting his shotgun during the burglary."
Sanders testified in the first trial and the jury still convicted David Temple, but the defense now says they "did not know that (a) detective told a grand jury that Sanders was one of two suspects in the murder investigation... the other suspect was Temple."
"It didn't happen," Siegler said.
Now David Temple is in prison for life. Siegler has since retired from the DA's office. The teenage suspect has a new lawyer and new allegations to fight. And a case that was supposed to be settled by a jury verdict five years ago, isn't even close to settled.
"There were hundreds of little pieces of evidence that pointed toward one person and one person only, and that's David Temple," Siegler said.
On Wednesday morning, Temple's lawyers will lay out their new evidence to the judge who will eventually decide on the new trial.
At the same time, we're told the investigator working with the DA's special prosecutor has already sought to question suspects implicated by the new evidence. Suspects Siegler says were cleared years ago.
