Death row inmate may get new trial

FORT WORTH (AP) - Prosecutors and defense attorneys have filed documents asking for a new trial for death row inmate Michael Toney.

They say the state's lead prosecutor improperly withheld evidence in his 1999 trial. Toney was sentenced to death in the killings of three people in the bombing of a mobile home near Lake Worth in 1985.

The two sides agree Toney's trial attorneys weren't given at least 14 pieces of evidence that could have discredited state witnesses or pointed to other suspects.

The state denies it knowingly sponsored misleading testimony and denies Toney is innocent. It said it agreed with the defense that he was entitled to a new trial.

If the judge supports the attorneys' findings, he will send his recommendation to the Court of Criminal Appeals, which could order a new trial.

Defense attorneys don't expect Toney to be tried again but prosecutors say it is too soon to say.

15-year-old Angela Blount, her 44-year-old father, Joe Blount, and her cousin, 18-year-old Michael Columbus, were killed on Thanksgiving Day, 1985, when a briefcase with a bomb in it blew up on the porch of their mobile home.

Toney was indicted in December 1997 after allegedly telling another inmate in the Parker County Jail that he was paid $5,000 to put the bomb at the mobile home but put it at the wrong trailer.

(Copyright 2008 by The Associated Press. All Rights Reserved.)