United States v. Hill, No. 12-5176 (10th Cir. 2013)
Annotate this Case
Defendant Vernon Hill was convicted for bank robbery. He appealed the denial of his motion for a new trial. The government changed its theory about defendant's two brother's involvement in the robbery; the government prosecuted defendant and Stanley Hill as the two masked men who committed the robbery. The jury convicted defendant but could not agree on Stanley. Stanley was later retried and convicted. Several months after the trial, the government obtained cell-phone data and other evidence, and charged defendant and DeJuan Hill with conspiring to commit other robberies. In presenting this new case to a grand jury, an FBI agent called to testify revealed that the government's understanding of the bank robbery had changed, and that Stanley was not one of the robbers but the getaway car driver- the two that committed the robbery were defendant and DeJuan. Defendant then moved to set aside his prior conviction based on the FBI agent's testimony. The Tenth Circuit disagreed with defendant's contention that he was entitled to a new trial because the testimony was wrong constituted, and that the cell phone data was new, exculpatory evidence. The Court concluded that the FBI agent's admission that the two-robbers theory was wrong was not admissible evidence, and nothing else defendant described in his appeal was newly discovered evidence. As such, the Court affirmed the district court's denial of his motion for a new trial.
Some case metadata and case summaries were written with the help of AI, which can produce inaccuracies. You should read the full case before relying on it for legal research purposes.
This site is protected by reCAPTCHA and the Google Privacy Policy and Terms of Service apply.