Marlon Kiser found himself in trouble with the law when he was arrested for the killing of a police officer in Tennessee. Hamilton County Deputy Donald Bond had been brutally slain while on duty – but Kiser vehemently denied ever pulling the trigger that ended the cop’s life. Nevertheless, he was found guilty and sentenced to death – but while on death row, Kiser came up with a plan that he thought would prove his innocence.
Kiser demanded that the police run a fingerprint test to see if his print matched the one related to the crime scene. Kiser’s story revolved around how his former roommate, Michael Chattin, framed him for the murder of the police officer. And so, he decided to push as hard as he could to get the law to honor his request for a fingerprint test to prove his innocence once and for all.
Kiser even created a website, FreeMarlonKiser.com, to promote his agenda and get support from people in public. His website reads, in part:
“… James Michael Chattin had discovered that a Hamilton County Sheriff’s Deputy named Donald Kenneth Bond Jr. was seemingly having an affair with Tina Chattin, who was Mike Chattin’s wife. On several different occasions, Mike Chattin has stated to several different individuals that his wife was seeing a cop and that he was going to kill him, and in the early morning hours of September 6th, 2001, that is exactly what Mike Chattin did.
“And then, to throw suspicion off of Mike Chattin, he ran to police pointing his finger at me because I had a pending police brutality lawsuit against the Chattanooga Police Department since 1998, which was scheduled to be heard on September 17th, eleven days after Deputy Donald Bond’s death.”
According to the death row inmate’s story, he learned about Chattin’s drug habit and asked him to leave. That was the straw that broke the camel’s back.
“In Mike Chattin’s perry old mind, he could not allow me to leave because I knew entirely too many secrets about him,” Kiser wrote, claiming that Chattin previously wanted to kill the police officer.
However, the fingerprint test proved something unexpected – Marlon Kiser was the one who killed the officer. As part of a post-conviction relief petition, his attorneys requested authorities test palm and fingerprints to see if they matched those found on Bond’s flashlight and police car. The results were irrefutable. Kiser’s print matched the one at the crime scene. Previously, Kiser had been linked to the officer’s brutal murder by fibers that were found on Deputy Bond’s clothes.
Nevertheless, Kiser has refused to give up his fight against his inevitable end on death row. He created a petition with the goal of receiving one thousand signatures asking for him not to be executed by the state of Tennessee. The petition earned several hundred signatures.
“Marlon Kiser is on death row because of police corruption and police ineptness,” one person who signed the petition wrote in the comments section. “Marlon knew about Mike Chattin’s criminal activities, and therefore Marlon was a liability to Mike Chattin.”
Do you think this man should remain on death row?