Killer in Lauren Giddings murder files new appeal, claims prosecutors ‘stole’ info
Stephen Mark McDaniel, who is serving a life sentence in the strangulation and dismemberment murder of Lauren Giddings at their Coleman Hill-area apartment complex a decade ago, filed a new appeal this week in federal court.
McDaniel, who could be eligible for parole as early as 2041, contends that his constitutional rights were violated in the wake of his arrest in Giddings’ June 2011 slaying. He also claims, as he has unsuccessfully done past appeals, that his lawyers were incompetent and offered him “misadvice.”
The handwritten appeal, filed Wednesday in U.S. District Court here, notes that three years after he pleaded guilty to killing Giddings that he “discovered evidence demonstrating the State had stolen Defense Trial Preparations and that Defense Attorneys knew and did nothing, as well as that Defense Attorneys possessed evidence proving the falsity of vital State testimony but allowed” that testimony “to go unchallenged.”
McDaniel, 36, has had previous appeals denied or refused to be heard by Georgia’s highest court and by the U.S. Supreme Court.
Questioning the police search
McDaniel and Giddings were fellow 2011 graduates from Mercer’s law school who lived next door to one another at an apartment complex on Georgia Avenue across the street from the school.
McDaniel’s latest appeal claims that in helping prepare his defense while in jail awaiting trial in Bibb County, he researched “the illegality of a police search” of his apartment.
The appeal claims that a jail official, after speaking with then-District Attorney Greg Winters, removed “legal information request forms from the mail without lawful authority, copied them, and emailed them to D.A. Winters, who was handling the prosecution.”
The appeal further notes, “D.A. Winters spread the stolen Defense Core Opinion Work Product throughout his Office for use in preparing for the case against” McDaniel.
The appeal does not elaborate.
Neither Winters nor McDaniel’s former attorneys could immediately be reached for comment Friday.
McDaniel’s contention regarding his challenge to the validity of the search of his apartment is that, had previous courts ruled in his favor, probable cause would have been “removed” and thus suppressed “virtually all evidence” against him.