Jeffrey MacDonald was an Army physician, a captain in the Medical Corps stationed at Fort Bragg, North Carolina, when his wife Colette and his two daughters died there on February 17, 1970. The Army investigated him, charged him with the three deaths in May 1970 and then dismissed the charges in October of that year. A federal grand jury indicted him in January 1975, and in August 1979 a jury in Raleigh found him guilty of one count of first-degree murder and two counts of second-degree murder. He received three consecutive life sentences.
The case did not end there. It reached the Supreme Court in 1978 and again in 1982 on whether the delay before his federal indictment had violated his right to a speedy trial, and it produced decades of post-conviction litigation over new evidence and claims of innocence. The federal courts rejected each effort, most recently in 2021, when a federal judge in North Carolina denied his motion for compassionate release. He has consistently denied that he committed the killings.
On February 17, 1970, his wife and his two daughters died at Fort Bragg, the military reservation in North Carolina. The Army Criminal Investigation Division took charge of the inquiry.
On April 6, 1970, the Army Criminal Investigation Division told MacDonald that he was a suspect and confined him to quarters. On May 1, 1970, the Army formally charged him with the three murders.
An officer appointed under Article 32 of the Uniform Code of Military Justice then held a hearing at which 56 witnesses testified. The Article 32 process is the military's preliminary inquiry into charges before any court-martial, and the officer recommended that the charges be dismissed. On October 23, 1970, the commanding general dismissed the military charges. On December 5, 1970, the Army granted MacDonald's request for an honorable discharge on grounds of hardship.
The discharge did not close the matter. At the request of the Department of Justice, the Army investigators continued their work. In June 1972 they forwarded a 13-volume report that recommended further investigation, and further reports followed in November 1972 and August 1973. In August 1974 the Justice Department presented the case to a federal grand jury in the Eastern District of North Carolina.
On January 24, 1975, the grand jury returned an indictment charging MacDonald with three murders. Federal jurisdiction rested on the location of the deaths, since Fort Bragg is a federal military reservation.
The defense moved to dismiss on the ground that the years between the dismissal of the Army charges and the indictment had violated the Sixth Amendment right to a speedy trial. The pretrial litigation of that motion went on for several years and included an interlocutory appeal. In 1978 the Supreme Court, in United States v. MacDonald, 435 U.S. 850, ruled that MacDonald could not appeal the denial of his speedy-trial motion before trial. The trial itself did not begin until July 1979.
The trial was held at the federal courthouse in Raleigh. The government's position was that MacDonald had killed his wife and daughters. MacDonald denied the charges and told the court that intruders had attacked his family. The defense questioned how investigators had handled the scene and the evidence and argued that the material evidence was consistent with the presence of intruders.
The jury found MacDonald guilty of first-degree murder in the case of one daughter and of second-degree murder in the cases of his wife and his other daughter. On August 29, 1979, the court imposed three consecutive life sentences.
MacDonald appealed. In 1980 a divided panel of the Fourth Circuit held that the delay before the indictment had violated his Sixth Amendment right to a speedy trial and dismissed the indictment. The court denied rehearing en banc by an evenly divided vote, and the government went to the Supreme Court.
In 1982, in United States v. MacDonald, 456 U.S. 1, the Supreme Court reversed. It held that the time between the dismissal of the military charges and the later civilian indictment may not be considered in deciding whether the delay violated the right to a speedy trial under the Sixth Amendment. The case was remanded. On remand the Fourth Circuit addressed MacDonald's remaining contentions and affirmed the convictions, so the three life sentences were restored.
MacDonald began his collateral challenges soon afterward. His first motion, brought under 28 U.S.C. § 2255 and Rule 33, was denied in 1984, and the Fourth Circuit affirmed in 1985. A second motion was rejected in 1990 as lacking merit and as procedurally defaulted, and the Fourth Circuit affirmed the default ruling in 1992 without reaching the merits.
In 1997 he asked the district court to reopen the earlier proceedings and to order DNA testing. The district court refused both requests. The Fourth Circuit denied authorization for a successive § 2255 motion and affirmed the denial of the reopening request, but it granted DNA testing and remanded. The testing results became available in 2006. In January 2006 the Fourth Circuit granted him authorization to file a successive § 2255 motion raising a claim of prosecutorial misconduct based on newly discovered evidence from a former deputy U.S. marshal.
In April 2011 the Fourth Circuit remanded the misconduct claim and a DNA-based claim of actual innocence to the district court for further proceedings, finding that the lower court's reading of the "evidence as a whole" had been too restrictive. The district court held a seven-day evidentiary hearing in September 2012 and received further written submissions. In July 2014 it ruled that MacDonald had not made the evidentiary showing needed to pursue either claim through a successive § 2255 motion and that he had also not established the merits of either claim. In August 2014 it denied a separate motion for additional DNA testing under the Innocence Protection Act, and in March 2016 the Fourth Circuit affirmed that denial.
On December 21, 2018, the Fourth Circuit decided the appeal from the July 2014 ruling in United States v. MacDonald, 911 F.3d 723. The court wrote: "Pursuant to the foregoing, we affirm the judgment of the district court denying MacDonald's successive 28 U.S.C. § 2255 motion." The final disposition line reads "AFFIRMED." The court denied his petition for rehearing en banc on February 19, 2019. MacDonald filed a petition for a writ of certiorari on May 20, 2019, and on October 7, 2019, the Supreme Court denied it.
In November 2020 MacDonald filed a motion for compassionate release and a reduction of his sentences. The government opposed it, and the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of North Carolina held a hearing on March 11, 2021. On April 9, 2021, the court ruled: "For the foregoing reasons, defendant's motion for compassionate release [DE 403] is DENIED." The court held that it lacked authority to consider the motion because 18 U.S.C. § 3582(c)(1)(A) does not apply to defendants whose crimes predate November 1, 1987, and so it did not reach the facts behind the motion.
MacDonald appealed to the Fourth Circuit. On September 16, 2021, that court dismissed the appeal at his request, with the consent of the United States. The Acting U.S. Attorney for the Eastern District of North Carolina said in a statement the next day that the order would stand and that MacDonald would remain in prison. As of September 2021, he was serving three consecutive life sentences in the federal system.
MacDonald has never accepted the verdict. His account at trial was that intruders attacked him and his family. The government's position was that he had committed the killings.
The courts addressed one part of that account in detail. The woman MacDonald described was identified in the proceedings. She made varying remarks at different times to acquaintances, police and others, sometimes suggesting she had been present and sometimes denying involvement, and she gave further statements after the trial, among them statements to her lawyer. The trial court excluded most of the earlier remarks as unreliable hearsay. At the 2012 hearing the district court permitted disclosure of the later statements to her lawyer, finding that exceptional circumstances justified setting aside attorney-client privilege. In 2018 the Fourth Circuit wrote that it accepted that she had made the statements attributed to her, so that it could weigh them without deciding her credibility, and it still affirmed the denial of relief.
DNA testing was litigated at length. The Fourth Circuit ordered testing in 1997, the results became available in 2006, and the courts then considered the results together with the other evidence under the standard for successive motions. The district court in 2014 and the Fourth Circuit in 2018 each concluded that the claims did not meet that standard and failed on the merits.
February 17, 1970: his wife and two daughters die at Fort Bragg, North Carolina.
April 6, 1970: Army investigators tell MacDonald he is a suspect and confine him to quarters.
May 1, 1970: the Army charges him with three murders.
October 23, 1970: the commanding general dismisses the military charges after an Article 32 hearing.
December 5, 1970: the Army grants his request for an honorable discharge.
August 1974: the Justice Department presents the matter to a federal grand jury.
January 24, 1975: indictment on three murder counts.
1978: Supreme Court, 435 U.S. 850, rules his speedy-trial motion could not be appealed before trial.
July 1979: trial begins at the federal courthouse in Raleigh.
August 29, 1979: three consecutive life sentences.
1980: the Fourth Circuit dismisses the indictment on speedy-trial grounds.
1982: Supreme Court, 456 U.S. 1, reverses and remands; the convictions are later affirmed on remand.
1984 and 1985: first § 2255 motion denied; Fourth Circuit affirms.
1990 and 1992: second motion denied; Fourth Circuit affirms the default ruling.
1997: Fourth Circuit grants DNA testing.
April 2011: Fourth Circuit remands two claims to the district court.
September 2012: seven-day evidentiary hearing.
July 2014: district court rules against him on both claims.
March 2016: Fourth Circuit affirms denial of further DNA testing.
December 21, 2018: Fourth Circuit affirms denial of the successive § 2255 motion.
October 7, 2019: Supreme Court denies certiorari.
April 9, 2021: district court denies compassionate release.
September 16, 2021: Fourth Circuit dismisses his appeal at his request.