Attorney: ‘False confession’ and evidence led to Clay County woman’s murder acquittal this week

By Matt Flener

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    CLAY COUNTY, Missouri (KMBC) — It was a false confession, and evidence proved that she had not pulled the trigger.

Those arguments won Lori Ackerman of Smithville her freedom this week, she and her attorney say, more than three years after Clay County prosecutors charged her with second-degree murder and armed criminal action.

A Clay County jury, on Monday, acquitted Ackerman of murdering her fiancé Shannon L. Tate, 48, in December of 2020.

Ackerman spoke to KMBC 9 Investigates on Wednesday, just two days after the jury found her not guilty.

They deliberated for about two hours.

“I would not ever hurt anybody like that,” she said. ” If you did not do something, don’t ever give up.”

It was December 2020 when an argument between Ackerman and her fiancé at a bar spilled over to home.

Ackerman says she eventually held a gun to her chin.

“The next thing I know, he takes it from me,” she said. ” I run down the hall, and I hear the worst sound I’ve ever heard in my life.”

From there, more than seven hours of police interviews and interrogation led to Ackerman’s confession.

The confession came under stress, she says, after police read her Miranda rights.

She was still waiting for word on her fiancé’s medical condition.

She did not ask for an attorney. She had respect for law enforcement.

She wanted them to help her after she had just lost so much.

But, after several rounds of questioning, she confessed to pulling the trigger.

When KMBC 9 Investigates asked why she confessed, she said she gave up.

“I was like, ‘I’m done fighting with this,'” she said.

However, Ackerman’s attorney, Eric Vernon, says D.N.A. evidence shows only Tate’s fingerprints on the trigger, not Ackerman’s.

Other crime scene evidence, including the direction of the entry and exit wounds of the bullet, showed detectives got details in questioning wrong, Vernon said.

“Lori Ackerman did not kill her fiancé,” he said. “And you know what? As hard as it is for people to believe. False confessions sometimes happen.”

While they respect law enforcement, Vernon said law enforcement, in this case, made a mistake.

“They made such a profound mistake that it corrupted the interrogation they conducted,” he said.

Ackerman says she wants to encourage others with her new freedom.

She says to always ask for an attorney if faced with a similar situation.

She also says to never give up on innocence.

“I knew I was not guilty all along,” she said.

The Clay County prosecutor’s office released a statement about the case:

“In every criminal trial, the justice system requires all jurors unanimously agree that each element of the charged crime is established beyond a reasonable doubt. Juries are instructed that unless they are firmly convinced a defendant is guilty of a crime, they must give the defendant the benefit of the doubt and find them not guilty.”

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