|
|
|
|
|
Innocents In Prison News & Views 2007 |
|
|
|
|
|
Innocents In Prison News & Views 2007 |
|
Innocents in Prison News & Views 2007 Click Headline for Full Story December 2007
Man convicted of killing parents 17 years ago is freed after court overturns verdict
12-28-07 --A man jailed 17 years ago for killing his parents has been released after a New York court overturned his conviction. . . . Martin Tankleff, 36, walked out of court a free man, days after an appeals court overturned his 1990 conviction and ordered a new trial because of new evidence. . . . "My arrest and conviction was a nightmare, and this is a dream come true," Tankleff told reporters. . . . In throwing out Tankleff's 1990 conviction last week, an appeals court said new evidence suggested someone else might have killed Seymour and Arlene Tankleff in their Long Island home.
Jury awards Foxes $15.5 million in damages
12-21-07 -- During the 243 days he spent in jail, Kevin Fox wrote of getting "revenge on Will County." . . . On Thursday, a jury gave Fox and his wife Melissa $15.5 million worth. . . . On June 6, 2004, 3-year-old Riley Fox disappeared from her Wilmington home. The girl's body was found later that day in nearby Forked Creek. . . . Fox was arrested and charged with her murder but was released after DNA on the girl's body was shown not to be his. Fox sued Will County and five detectives, accusing them of framing him for the crime. . . . After two full days of deliberation, the jury of five men and five women reached a verdict around 2 p.m. Thursday, the 26th day of the trial. . . . Defendants Edward Hayes, Scott Swearengen and Brad Wachtl sat in the courtroom as the clerk read the nine counts against them and defendants Mike Guilfoyle, who was absent, and John Ruettiger, who passed away in April. David Dobrowski and Mary Jane Pluth, who were defendants in the lawsuit until last week, sat in the front row as the verdict was read.
Judge exonerates San Jose man who spent five years in prison By Leslie Griffy, Mercury News 12-19-07 -- A Santa Clara County judge this afternoon exonerated Jeffrey Rodriguez, who had spent five years in prison before his conviction was overturned last year. . . . Judge Andrea Y. Bryan ruled Rodriguez is factually innocent, citing new evidence from an investigation by the District Attorney's Office and his former attorney. . . . Rodriguez was set free in February. . . . Rodriguez's case was one of those featured in the Mercury News series, "Tainted Trials, Stolen Justice," as an example of how questionable conduct by prosecutors, judges or defense attorneys can increase the small but significant risk of wrongful conviction. The case illustrated a recurring but unfortunate combination: Poor lawyering, coupled with a prosecution built on eyewitness identification, can often lead to wrongful convictions. . . . Dolores Carr, who became district attorney in January, has vowed to end the "win at all cost" culture in the office.
Sex case hinged on phony lab report S.J. Officer's Ruse Became Evidence
12-17-07 -- There was one major problem with the Santa Clara County crime lab report that implicated a San Jose man of sexual assault: . . . It wasn't true. . . . The document was a fake, created by a San Jose police detective. The crime lab analyst who purportedly prepared the document doesn't exist. The number used to identify it was false. . . . Even so, detective Matthew Christian testified as though the phony report were authentic. . . . The case unraveled when the defense attorney sought the résumé of the lab analyst, only to learn there was no such person. Christian then remembered that he had concocted the report in an attempt to trick the defendant, Michael Kerkeles, 54, into admitting that he had forced a developmentally disabled neighbor into sexual acts. It was an acceptable tactic. But Christian said that by the time he was called to testify, more than a year later, he had forgotten the ruse. . . . The case, which attracted no public attention when it was dismissed last December, has raised concerns both about how the charges were handled and about how police and prosecutors responded when the fabrication and false testimony was discovered.
Prosecutor drops charges against former death row inmate
12-12-07 -- A former death row inmate was cleared of first-degree murder and robbery charges Tuesday because prosecutors believed there wasn't enough evidence to retry the case. . . . Jonathan Hoffman, who was convicted in the 1995 shooting death of a Union County jeweler, spent seven years on death row before winning a new trial in April 2004. Hoffman has been held in a maximum-security prison in Raleigh ever since, and it wasn't immediately clear when he would be released. . . . Defense attorney Joseph Cheshire said Hoffman was in disbelief when told about the dropped charges. . . . "He just couldn't believe it," Cheshire said. "He was surprised something so dramatic in his life could happen in such a low-key way."
Man Convicted in Club Death Is Acquitted at Second Trial
12-7-07 -- A man who spent nearly 14 years behind bars for killing a bouncer at the Palladium nightclub in Manhattan was acquitted yesterday by a jury at a second trial, in a case in which he claimed that he and another man had been wrongly convicted while the real killers went free. . . . The jury’s verdict, after less than two days of deliberation, followed a three-week trial marked by conflicting eyewitness accounts of the shooting. The trial also featured closed-door testimony from a former drug-gang enforcer, Thomas Morales, who testified that he and an accomplice were the gunmen on the early morning of Nov. 23, 1990, not David Lemus and his co-defendant, Olmedo Hidalgo, at the first trial. . . . The jury’s decision was a sharp rebuff for Robert M. Morgenthau, the Manhattan district attorney, who was criticized during the last election campaign in 2005 for pursuing what a judge and a jury have now said were probably the wrong men in the Palladium killing, while failing to prosecute two men who have since confessed.
Famed attorney reviews criminal cases in Harris County KHOU.com staff report 12-7-07 -- The attorney who helped exonerate dozens of convicted drug dealers in Tulia is now getting involved in a review of criminal cases in Harris County. . . . Jeff Blackburn says he’ll enlist the help of law students to review about 160 convictions. . . . This all has to do with whether problems in the HPD Crime Lab led to false convictions. . . . Blackburn has met with some of those men in prison. . . . “I already met with several of these guys just to get a representative sampling are these good cases are they bad cases can we get anywhere with them or not and you know it’s all over the map,” said Jeff Blackburn with Innocent Project of Texas. . . . In the next few months, volunteer attorneys will decide which cases are strong enough to take before a judge.
Exonerated man says prosecutor, agent withheld evidence from trial
12-3-07 -- Attorneys for an exonerated man who spent nine years in prison said that the prosecution’s key witnesses were threatened with first-degree murder charges when they considered changing their stories. . . . In a recent court filing, attorneys for Alan Gell said that the murder case’s lead investigator and original prosecutor withheld the evidence from prosecutors who tried Gell in 1998. The information was recently discovered, the attorneys said, and is in addition to the withheld evidence that led to Gell’s acquittal in 2004. . . . Gell, 33, who spent half his prison time on death row, filed a federal lawsuit against several officials involved in the murder case, including the former police chief in the tiny town of Aulander, Gordon Godwin, and former state prosecutors David Hoke and Debra Graves.
Innocent inmatesLegislation would benefit wrongly convicted
12-3-07
-- Innocence is the weakest
defense. Innocence has a single voice that can only say over and
over again, 'I didn't do it.' Guilt has a thousand voices, all of
them lies." - LEONARD F.
PELTIER Prison Writings
Putting a Price on a Wrongful Conviction
12-2-07 -- William Gregory and David Pope were both convicted of rape. Mr. Gregory served seven years in a Kentucky prison and Mr. Pope was imprisoned by Texas for 15 years before being released because of new DNA evidence. . . . Mr. Gregory, 59, now lives at the edge of a golf course, in a five-bedroom house he bought with part of the $4.6 million he received in legal settlements. Mr. Pope, 46, received $385,000 from the State of Texas. . . . To the extent that they got money, they are among the lucky ones. Of the more than 200 people released from prison since 1989 on the basis of new DNA evidence, 38 percent have received nothing for the years they spent behind bars. . . . What are those lost years worth? . .. States have been wrestling with that question in recent years as the DNA revolution upended long-held notions about the reliability of evidence. And a new question has also emerged: Is money alone enough? . . . With more than 140 exonerated prisoners released since 2000, 22 states and the District of Columbia now compensate them using formulas ranging from lump sums to calculations of lost wages.
November 2007
Former N.C. Chief Justice Takes Up Prisoner's Case Retired Jurist May Argue Before Former Colleagues on Behalf of Man Convicted With Faulty Science
11-28-07 --A North Carolina man who was convicted of murder two decades ago with the help of now-discredited FBI scientific testimony took his quest for a new trial to the state's Supreme Court yesterday -- and enlisted the court's former chief justice to argue on his behalf. . . . Lee Wayne Hunt, who has been in prison for 22 years, was convicted in 1986 of the execution-style killings of a Fayetteville, N.C., couple. The sole physical evidence linking Hunt to the crime scene came from an FBI scientist, who testified that he used bullet-lead analysis -- a chemical technique that compares the lead makeup of bullets -- to match bullet fragments from the victims to a box of ammunition from Hunt's co-defendant, Jerry Cashwell. . . . I. Beverly Lake Jr. said yesterday that he decided to take Hunt's case after learning about the problems with the FBI technique, which were disclosed last week after a joint investigation by The Washington Post and "60 Minutes." . . . "The case had very scant evidence and was very problematic in several respects," said Lake, who retired from the court last December.
3rd family may get $hot at FBI in Whitey case
11-26-07 -- A judge has left open the door for family of a third alleged victim of fugitive gangland butcher James “Whitey” Bulger to financially exact revenge on the FBI without enduring the torment of a trial. . . . Sandra Castucci, widow of slain FBI informant Richard Castucci, will have her day in court Feb. 19 when U.S. District Court Judge Reginald C. Lindsay considers her motion for summary judgment. . . . Lindsay scheduled the hearing fresh off his rebuke of the U.S. Department of Justice last week. In a rare bombshell from the bench, he declared the feds liable for the 1982 murders of Edward Brian Halloran and Michael Donahue. . . . Bulger was allegedly gunning for Halloran because rogue Boston FBI Agent John “Zip” Connolly told him Halloran was going to implicate him in a murder. Donahue was an innocent bystander. . . . The DOJ has refused to comment on Lindsay’s stern suggestion that it settle a half-dozen wrongful-death suits spun off Bulger’s reign of terror in Boston.
Convicts unaware of flawed FBI tool
First of two parts 11-17-07 -- Hundreds of defendants sitting in prisons nationwide have been convicted with the help of an FBI forensic tool that was discarded more than two years ago. But the FBI lab has yet to take steps to alert the affected defendants or courts, even as the window for appealing convictions is closing, a joint investigation by The Washington Post and "60 Minutes" found. . . . The science, comparative bullet-lead analysis, was first used after President Kennedy's assassination in 1963. The technique used chemistry to link crime-scene bullets to ones possessed by suspects on the theory that each batch of lead had a unique elemental makeup. . . . In 2004, however, the nation's most prestigious scientific body concluded that variations in the manufacturing process rendered the FBI's testimony about the science "unreliable and potentially misleading." Specifically, the National Academy of Sciences said that decades of FBI statements to jurors linking a particular bullet to those found in a suspect's gun or cartridge box were so overstated that such testimony should be considered "misleading under federal rules of evidence." . . . A year later, the bureau abandoned the analysis. . . . But the FBI lab has never gone back to determine how many times its scientists misled jurors. Internal memos show the bureau's managers were aware by 2004 that testimony had been overstated in a large number of trials. In a smaller number of cases, the experts had made false matches based on a faulty statistical analysis of the elements contained in different lead samples, documents show. Years later, conviction in doubt
Second of two parts 11-18-07 --Former Baltimore police Sgt. James A. Kulbicki stared silently from the defense table as the prosecutor held up his off-duty. 38-caliber revolver and assured jurors that science proved the gun had been used to kill Kulbicki's mistress. . . . "I wonder what it felt like, Mr. Kulbicki, to have taken this gun, pressed it to the skull of that young woman and pulled the trigger, that cold steel," the prosecutor said during closing arguments. . . . Prosecutors had linked the weapon to Kulbicki through forensic science. Maryland's top firearms expert said that the gun had been cleaned and that its bullets were consistent in size with the one that killed the victim. The state expert could not match the markings on the bullets to Kulbicki's gun. But an FBI expert took the stand to say that a science that matches bullets by their lead content had linked the fatal bullet to Kulbicki. . . . The jurors were convinced, and in 1995 Kulbicki was convicted of first-degree murder in the death of his 22-year-old girlfriend. He was sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole. . . . For a dozen years, Kulbicki sat in state prison, saddled with the image of the calculating killer portrayed in the 1996 made-for-TV movie "Double Jeopardy." . . . Then the scientific evidence unraveled. . . . Earlier this year, the state expert committed suicide, leaving a trail of false credentials, inaccurate testimony and lab notes that conflicted with what he had told jurors. Two years before, the FBI crime lab had discarded the bullet-matching science that it had used to link Kulbicki to the crime.
State Attorney General Says It's Time To Abolish Parole
11-14-07 -- No matter who you are, in jail everyone's the same: if you're found guilty of a crime, you live under the same prison roof and under the watch of the same prison guards as everyone else. . . . The procedures are basically the same for everyone, until it comes to getting out. State Attorney General Henry McMaster says it's time to change that. . . . “The Federal system did it in 1987,” he said. “We need to do it across the board, and that'll put certainty in the state system and give people confidence in the courts." . . . That will happen, says McMaster, when our state does away with the parole system. He wants every criminal offender to serve every bit of his or her sentence, with a possible 15% reduction in time for good behavior. . . . Until that change happens, he says people won't take the system seriously. . . . “The criminals don't respect it,” said McMaster, “and I'm telling you, they don't respect it now because there are too many crimes they can get away with with almost no sentence." . . . But defense attorney Joseph McCuloch says McMaster has it all wrong.
Doubts raised over 1999 murder conviction
11-9-07 -- (CNN) -- Tim Masters is no longer the slim, shaggy-haired 15-year-old he was when Peggy Hettrick was murdered, mutilated and dumped in a field near his home. . . . Goateed and bespectacled with a slightly receding hairline, Masters, now 36, sat quietly in court this week, occasionally flashing a boyish smile as his defense team worked to poke holes in his 1999 murder conviction. . . . The conviction followed a 12-year investigation that Masters' defense attorneys say is flawed because it focused on building a case against a suspect instead of solving a murder. . . . Attorneys David Wymore and Maria Liu want a judge to toss out Masters' murder conviction. . . . In hearings that began in September, the attorneys are drawing out evidence they hope will persuade Judge Joseph Weatherby to give their client another chance at justice.
Bar association urged to tackle wrongful convictions
Death Row Innocent Vouch For NC Moratorium
11-5-07 -- Gary Drinkard spent five years on Alabama’s death row for a robbery and murder he did not commit. . . . “You’re sacred to death every day,” Drinkard said. "If it had been up to the state of Alabama I'd be dead today." . . . Drinkard and 17 others exonerated from death row say there should be a moratorium on the death penalty in North Carolina. They visited Raleigh with the group “Witness to Innocence” to voice their opinion. . . . Freddie Lee Pitts was 19 years old when he was sentenced. He spent nine and a half years on Florida’s death row for the murder of two service station attendants, a crime he did not commit.
Correction officials apologize for wrongful imprisonment 11-5-07 – (AP) State court officials have apologized for a series of errors that led to the wrongful arrest and imprisonment of a New Britain woman. . . . Aracellie Delgado was subpoenaed to Hartford Family Court on Oct. 24 for a civil proceeding related to a visitation agreement with the father of her three children. Judicial Branch officials confirm that, due to a mistake, Delgado's name did not appear on the docket and she was not required to appear. . . . She filed papers to be notified of future court dates and left. However, the judge called for Delgado's appearance and when she did not appear, she was arrested at her home the next day. . . . "It was embarrassing to be led out of my own home," she said. . . . Officials took Delgado, 28, into custody without any time to make arrangements for her children, ages 1, 7 and 12, she said. The marshal allowed her to call her mother from his cell phone as she was taken to York Correctional Institution, the state's prison for women, she said. . . . "They just left my kids alone," Delgado said. . . . She was processed at the prison, ordered to shower using lye soap and dress in prison clothes. She remained incarcerated until the next morning, when she was brought to the Hartford Civil Court. October 2007 Roots of False Confession: Spotlight Is Now on the F.B.I.
10-31-07 -- This month, Abdallah Higazy managed to crawl from the landslide of forgotten history on a slow-motion journey toward the truth. . . . Mr. Higazy, now 36, was briefly — and wrongly — known as a mysterious figure who fled a hotel room directly across Church Street from the World Trade Center on the morning of Sept. 11, 2001, leaving behind a Koran, an Egyptian passport and an aviation radio that might have allowed him to communicate with the hijacked airliners that flew into the towers. A security guard reported the discovery of these items. . . . After first adamantly denying any knowledge of the aviation radio, and then sitting in solitary confinement for 10 days, Mr. Higazy finally conceded. It was his radio, he confessed. He was charged with making false statements. . . . One month after Mr. Higazy was locked up, the story took a sharp turn.
Lawyers file DNA motion in Ark. murders Attorneys seek to overturn the convictions of three young men who were found guilty of brutally killing three Cub Scouts in 1993.
Inmate wants guilty plea tossed in '93 homicide Questions raised in homicide case
10-29-07 -- Ten years ago, Charles Bogues confessed that his errant bullet struck and killed Louis D. Brown on a Dorchester Street as the 15-year-old was on his way to an after-school Christmas party for Teens Against Gang Violence. . . . Today, after a decade behind bars, Bogues is urging a state appeals court to toss out his guilty plea. And he has found an unlikely ally, Brown's mother, Tina Chery, who became a leading crusader against violence after her son's death and formed the Louis D. Brown Peace Institute in his honor. . . . "My fear is that he didn't do it," said Chery, who has forged a friendship with Bogues's mother, Doris, through a support group for the mothers of victims and killers. After reviewing evidence that she believes points toward other possible suspects, she said she has questions about whether Bogues, the son of a Boston police officer, killed her son.
Wrongly convicted man freed after 18 years sued for child support 10-25-07 -- A man who spent 18 years in a North Carolina prison for the rape of a child he never met now faces another trial: a lawsuit demanding that he pay 18 years of child support. . . . A judge ordered Dwayne Allen Dail released from prison in August after DNA showed he didn't assault the 12-year-old girl. Gov. Mike Easley pardoned him this month. . . . Dail hopes to receive $360,000 from the state, based on a law that allows him to collect $20,000 for every year he spent in prison. . . . His former girlfriend, Lori Michaels, filed a lawsuit on Tuesday in Wayne County District Court demanding that Dail pay support for their son, Chris, who was born after Dail began serving his jail sentence. . . . The lawsuit was served on Dail in Fort Myers, Fla., where he moved after his release -- and where his son now lives with him.
DNA Testing May Help in 1990 Case
10-24-07 -- Advances in DNA technology may shed new light on the 17-year-old case of a bouncer killed at a nightclub in Manhattan. . . . The killing of the bouncer, Marcus Peterson, 23, at the Palladium in November 1990 is not one of those cold cases in which detectives were stumped and never made an arrest. . . . Two men, David Lemus and Olmedo Hidalgo, were convicted of murder in 1992 and sentenced to up to life in prison in the case, but their convictions were overturned in 2005, based in part on a confession in 1994 by a member of a Bronx drug gang trying to make a deal with federal prosecutors in another case. He said he and an associate were responsible for the shooting. . . . Prosecutors continued to insist they had convicted the right men, even if others may also have been involved in the shooting. It took many years to persuade the Manhattan district attorney’s office that the evidence against Mr. Hidalgo was weak, and while prosecutors finally agreed to have his conviction thrown out, they decided to retry Mr. Lemus. His second trial is to begin soon.
Famed NY Lawyer, Founder of Innocence Project, Calls for Standards for Eyewitnesses
10-23-07 -- The founder of the Innocence Project on Monday called for standards governing eyewitness identification in Georgia criminal cases, warning that there is a greater risk of sending the wrong person to prison without them. . . . Famed O.J. Simpson lawyer Barry Scheck said that there is widespread agreement within law enforcement circles on "best practices" in conducting lineups, and that following them will reduce the chances of misidentifying a suspect, he said. . . . Scheck testified on Monday before a House study committee weighing whether to create statewide standards in Georgia, where six men were jailed for years on the strength of eyewitness IDs before being cleared through post-conviction DNA analysis. . . . Scheck's New York-based Innocence Project has helped exonerate 208 people across the country through DNA evidence.
Mich. bill would compensate people exonerated by DNA By Dawson Bell, Free Press Lansing Bureau 10-23-07 -- Michigan would join a growing number of states that offer compensation to wrongly convicted criminals who are freed on the basis of DNA testing, under legislation aired in a state House committee on Tuesday. . . . Leaders of the Innocence Project at Cooley Law School in Lansing told members of the House Judiciary Committee that under current law the wrongly convicted inmates receive far less assistance than other inmates when they are released from custody and that they are often ill-equipped to handle life on the streets. . . . The proposal calls for compensation of $50,000 for every year spent behind bars, plus repayment for expenses, lost wages and medical care. . . . The committee also heard testimony from two men, one who served eight years on death row, whose convictions were overturned based on DNA evidence that was tested after their original convictions.
Evidence of McCollum's innocence called 'powerful' Judge says Lansing man doesn't need tether while on bond
10-23-07 -- A judge on Monday said there is "powerful evidence" Claude McCollum was not involved in the 2005 rape and killing of a Lansing Community College professor. . . . At a hearing in Ingham County Circuit Court, Judge James Giddings ruled that McCollum does not have to wear an electronic monitoring device while he is free on bond. McCollum served more than a year of a life sentence for the 2005 rape and murder of a Lansing Community College professor he says he never even met. . . . "There is powerful evidence this defendant had nothing to do with (the crime)," Giddings said. . . . The Michigan Court of Appeals last month threw out McCollum's conviction at the request of Ingham County Prosecutor Stuart Dunnings III. Dunnings has reopened the investigation into the death of 60-year-old Carolyn Kronenberg. Innocence testing on back burner $8M targeted for DNA appeals gathering dust
10-12-07 -- Since 2006 the Justice Department has spent none of the $8 million set aside by Congress to test the DNA of convicts who claim they are innocent, but has spent $214 million to collect and record the DNA of convicts to add to national crimefighting database and improve crime labs. . . . "DNA evidence is such a powerful tool in proving guilt or innocence that it's inexcusable not to use it," says Sen. Patrick Leahy, D-Vt., the chief sponsor of a bill to provide more funding for what is known as innocence testing. . . . The $8 million could affect dozens of cases, says Barry Scheck, a defense lawyer who specializes in using DNA to overturn convictions. Exact costs for a DNA test vary from case to case. . . . Rules imposed by Congress have made it difficult for states to qualify for post-conviction DNA grants, says the department's National Institute of Justice, which administers the funds. Only Virginia, Connecticut and Arizona have applied. . . . The law requires a state's attorney general to certify that the state requires police departments to take "reasonable measures" to preserve biological evidence for possible future testing. . . . But attorneys general can't vouch for every police authority in their state, says John Morgan, the institute's assistant director. The rule has made it "next to impossible" for states to qualify, he says.
Easley pardons man wrongly convicted of rape
10-12-07 -- Gov. Mike Easley issued a pardon of innocence this afternoon to Dwayne Allen Dail, who spent 18 years in prison for a rape he didn't commit. . . . In 1989, a Wayne County jury convicted Dail, 38, of raping a 12-year-old girl two years before. He always swore his didn't do it and refused a plea deal which would have put him on probation for a misdemeanor offense. . . . Dail, 39, was freed in August after DNA extracted from a long-forgotten nightgown proved he was not the rapist. . . . The governor's pardon -- the fifth he's granted since taking office in 2001 -- clears the way for Dail to seek compensation for the years he paid for another man's crime. All told, Dail could collect $360,000 from the state.
Man cleared for rape granted $10 bond By Liz Austin Peterson Associated Press Writer 10-10-07 -- A man who spent a dozen years in prison for a rape he didn't commit was freed Tuesday and headed straight for City Hall to discuss shortcomings in the criminal justice system with local officials. . . . Wearing dark clothes and carrying a red mesh gym bag and a paper sack containing his belongings, Ronald Taylor greeted his family with warm embraces outside the Harris County Jail. . . . "It hasn't really sunk in. I'm just glad to see my family," said Taylor, the third Texas prison inmate to be released because of problems with the Houston Police Department's crime lab. . . . Although his plans included eating shrimp, a delicacy he missed during the 12 years he spent in a state prison, and moving to Atlanta to marry Jeannette Brown, the fiancee who has waited for him since the mid-1990s, his first stop was City Hall. . .. After receiving a standing ovation from the audience, Taylor quietly urged City Council to prevent other innocent prisoners from rotting behind bars. . . . "They don't have the finances, they don't have nobody to help them," said Taylor, 47. "I think something needs to be done about that." . . . Taylor was convicted in 1995 of raping a woman two years earlier. He was sentenced to 60 years in prison.
Editorial: Justice not denied, but certainly delayed Sherman Townsend's 10 years are not all that was lost. 10-5-07 -- Sherman Townsend walked out of Hennepin County jail this week after serving 10 years of a 20-year sentence for burglary, but it was not a time for celebration. Not for Townsend, who lost 10 years of freedom, and not for those of us who expect the criminal justice system to do better. . . . Townsend, 57, was convicted of first-degree burglary in 1998. Key to the conviction was the testimony of David Jones. Big problem: Neither the prosecutors nor Townsend's attorney were aware that Jones had criminal convictions in Illinois that could have been used to impeach his testimony. . . . The case finally unraveled in May, when Jones ran into Townsend in the food line at Moose Lake Correctional Facility and confessed to the very burglary of which Townsend had been convicted. That confession led Townsend to the Innocence Project, the organization that represents people it believes were wrongfully convicted of crimes.
Exoneration Using DNA Brings Change in Legal System
10-1-07 -- State lawmakers across the country are adopting broad changes to criminal justice procedures as a response to the exoneration of more than 200 convicts through the use of DNA evidence. . . . Dwayne Allen Dail, right, leaving a North Carolina court after DNA evidence led to the overturning of his child-rape conviction. . . . All but eight states now give inmates varying degrees of access to DNA evidence that might not have been available at the time of their convictions. Many states are also overhauling the way witnesses identify suspects, crime labs handle evidence and informants are used. . . . At least six states have created commissions to expedite cases of those wrongfully convicted or to consider changes to criminal justice procedures. One of them, the California Commission on the Fair Administration of Justice, will hold a hearing this month on remedies for people who have been wrongfully convicted. . . . Laws in several states, including Illinois, New Jersey and North Carolina, have bipartisan backing, with many Democrats supportive on civil rights grounds and Republicans generally hoping that tighter procedures will lead to fewer challenges of convictions.
Falsely imprisoned East Palo Alto man to get $2.75 million settlement
Special Report Tainted Trials, Stolen Justice 10-1-07 -- Rick Walker, the East Palo Alto man who was cleared of murder charges after serving 12 years in prison, will receive $2.75 million to settle a wrongful imprisonment lawsuit that he filed against Santa Clara County and other agencies involved in his case. . . . Attorneys for Walker and the county confirmed that the settlement received final approval from the county's insurance company today. . . . Walker, who has worked as an auto mechanic since his release from prison in 2003, said he won't consider the case settled until the money is deposited to his bank account. But he also said he hopes the settlement will be "like a pebble thrown in the water" that has a "ripple effect" in preventing future abuses by law enforcement authorities. . . . "There's a lot more people like me that are not as fortunate as I am, that are still in prison for things they didn't do," Walker said. "So ultimately, if this pebble in the water makes the county change what they are doing, that's a good thing." . . . Walker added that he has no plans to quit his job, explaining that he enjoys his work and wants to set a good example for his nieces and nephews. . . . He has also received $421,000 from the state under a law that provides compensation to those wrongfully imprisoned.
DNA test clears man, but not completely, in Dallas case
10-1-07 -- The word "bizarre" peppered news accounts of the 1982 crime spree at issue in Dallas County's most recent DNA exoneration case. . . . In a single Saturday afternoon that May, a man in a hooded gray sweat shirt that was pulled up to cover his face went to three suburban Elaine Powers Figure Salons, brandished a handgun and forced groups of women to disrobe. At one, the gunman ordered his terrified captives to climb onto the salon's vibrating exercise belts while he exposed and touched himself. . . . A day earlier, a similarly disguised man confronted 10 women in five North Dallas apartment complexes and condos. All were forced to strip at gunpoint, one was molested and one was raped while her 2-year-old son played on the other side of the bedroom door. . . . Juries in two separate trials convicted roofer Steven Charles Phillips, then 24, of burglary and aggravated rape, sentencing him to 30 years in prison. . . . Two weeks ago, Dallas prosecutors announced that a DNA test of a biological sample from the rape victim taken 25 years ago supports Phillips' long-standing claim of innocence. He likely will become the 14th man from Dallas County to be exonerated through post-conviction genetic testing. . . . Because of another twist, however, the Phillips matter is far from settled. Push for innocence panel is renewed
10-1-07 -- A state lawmaker is making a renewed push for a Texas Innocence Commission to investigate cases of wrongful conviction after the 14th exoneration of a prison inmate by the Dallas County district attorney's office. . . . Sen. Rodney Ellis said he hopes the Dallas County situation will help revive his plan to create a nine-member commission to examine innocence claims, identify problems in the criminal justice system and recommend reforms. Ellis' bill creating such a commission died in this year's legislative session. . . . "I think the exonerations are clear and convincing evidence that the system is broken," said Ellis, a Houston Democrat. "In no other sphere of public policy would rational people see this many exonerations and not be willing to be able to pull together a panel of experts to ask what went wrong and what can be learned from those cases." . . . This month, Dallas County prosecutors said DNA evidence proved that Steven Phillips, who served 25 years in prison, did not rape a Dallas woman in 1982. Since 2001, Dallas County has had more DNA exonerations than any other county in the United States. September 2007
DNA evidence may prompt new trial for DeJac, defense attorney says Man’s blood, DNA at murder scene
9-28-07 -- Blood and DNA evidence recovered from the bedroom where 13-year-old Crystalynn Girard was strangled in 1993 may result in a retrial for Lynn DeJac, the girl’s mother, who was convicted of the murder, according to her attorney. . . . Recent laboratory analysis of evidence collected from the crime scene shows the presence of the DNA of a male consistent with that of Dennis P. Donohue, DeJac’s former boyfriend, according to Andrew C. LoTempio, DeJac’s attorney. . . . Buffalo police asked that the evidence be sent to the Erie County crime lab to be processed for DNA after Donohue, a Town of Tonawanda resident, was indicted last Friday in the September 1993 strangulation of 42-year-old Joan Giambra.
Public has good reason to wonder if an innocent woman is in prison
9-24-07 -- With all due respect to the district attorney, if Erie County residents have come down with “Capozzi syndrome,” it’s for a reason. . . . The flaws in the criminal justice system have never been so obvious, with an alarming number of wrongly convicted people being exonerated across the country. Anthony Capozzi is only the most famous one here, though that might change if the conviction of Lynn DeJac falls apart. . . . Capozzi spent 22 years in prison for a crime he did not commit. DeJac has been behind bars for less time — 13 years — but while Capozzi was convicted of raping a woman he did not know, DeJac was sent to prison for murdering her own daughter. . . . In Capozzi’s case, his wrongful conviction left Altemio Sanchez, arrested as a serial killer, on the loose. Police now wonder if the same thing happened with DeJac, who has protested her innocence since her arrest in 1993. Police are looking into a possibility that DeJac’s supporters have claimed all along: that a former boyfriend, Dennis Donohue, committed the crime. . . . Donohue was charged Tuesday with the 1993 murder of Joan Giambra of South Buffalo. But police also see similarities between Giambra’s killing and those of Carol Reed of Buffalo and DeJac’s daughter, Crystallynn M. Girard, who was 13 at the time. Donohue knew them all, investigators say.
Inmate Recants Tale in "Boys Don't Cry" Murders, Says Death Row Inmate Wasn't Triggerman
9-20-07 -- (AP) _ One of two men convicted in the 1993 murder of Teena Brandon and two others that spawned the movie "Boys Don't Cry" now says he was the only attacker who shot and stabbed them. . . . Marvin Nissen's new account that he was the lone killer could reignite a case that drew national attention to the issues of transgendered people. . . . The man Nissen once blamed for the killings, John Lotter, is now on death row and has asked for a new trial. . . . Brandon was born a female but for a time lived as a man in rural southeast Nebraska. Prosecutors said the 21-year-old was killed in a farmhouse near Humboldt after reporting being raped by Lotter and Nissen. During the trial, Nissen said he had stabbed Brandon but that Lotter fired all the shots that killed Brandon and the others.
Congratulations on That "Not Guilty" Verdict,
9-11-07 -- A former Ashland man cleared of assaulting a police officer while trying to rush his pregnant fiancée to the hospital is being sent to jail by a judge. . . . A jury deliberated about 15 minutes last month before acquitting Nathaniel Gibbs, 25, after a four-day trial. But Monday, Grafton County Superior Court Judge Jean Burling nullified the verdict, ordering Gibbs to serve a suspended sentence from a previous drug conviction. . . . "I don't know how the jury made its decision. This is my own, based on the testimony that I heard," she said. . . . Burling she found by a preponderance of evidence that Gibbs' assaulted an officer and disobeyed an officer — actions that violated the good behavior requirements of the previous suspended sentence. The jury must determine guilt beyond a reasonable doubt. . . . Gibbs argued he was pulled over while rushing his fiancee to the hospital and that the officer shoved him while he was trying to get him to help. . . . Gibbs' family says the police should be prosecuted. His lawyer promises an appeal.
"He was not a saint, but this thing that he was charged with he had not done," a man's attorney says after a judge orders him released from prison after six years.
9-11-07 -- Teddy Pierries Thompson of Hampton spent the past six years in prison for a crime he didn't commit. . . . Until Monday, he was set to serve 11 more. . . . Thompson, convicted in 2001 of armed robbery charges, was set free after the man who fingered him recanted his statement, saying he had the wrong man. The Hampton Commonwealth's Attorney's Office asked to have the sentence and conviction thrown out, and Hampton Circuit Court Judge Louis Lerner did so Monday morning. . . . "I am so grateful that my son is free," said Mary Thompson, Teddy Thompson's mother, near tears as she stood outside the courthouse in downtown Hampton. "He's coming home. Thank you, Lord."
Convictions to get new scrutiny Laws establish stricter standards, and commission will review cases
9-10-07 -- North Carolina is trying to crack down on wrongful convictions in serious crimes, and it is doing so in two ways. . . . Three new laws passed by the legislature this year establish stricter standards meant to prevent innocent people from being charged and convicted. . . . Meanwhile, a special state commission, which was established last year and is just beginning its substantive work, is working to investigate claims of innocence from people who are already in prison. . . . “The criminal-justice process is run by human beings, and we’re all fallible. There are going to be errors,” said state Rep. Rick Glazier, D-Cumberland, who is an alternate member of the commission and was a chief sponsor of the three bills aimed at protecting the innocent.
Laws would help keep innocent out of prison
9-7-07 -- It's hard to imagine why someone would confess to a double murder he didn't commit. It's hard to imagine, that is, until you hear Harold Hall describe the 17 hours of intense interrogation he endured when he was 18 years old. The only way out was to tell his interrogators what they wanted to hear. Prosecutors bolstered his false confession with false testimony by a jailhouse informant. The jury convicted him and prosecutors asked for the death penalty. Hall told the jury that he was an innocent man. They spared him from the death penalty, but sentenced him to life without parole. Hall lost 19 years of his life before he was finally granted a new trial and the charges dismissed. . . . This past January, Timothy Atkins was serving a life sentence for second-degree murder and robbery. In February, he walked into the arms of his family and stood on the steps of the courthouse with his lawyers from the California Innocence Project, a free man for the first time in 20 years. Atkins was wrongfully convicted based on mistaken eyewitness identification and the testimony of an informant who had been told by Los Angeles police, "You're not going to leave until you tell us something."
Wrongly convicted man ready to live life Dwayne Dail is free after DNA test shows he spent 18 years in jail for a rape he didn't commit
9-3-07 -- After 18 years living inside a prison cell, Dwayne Allen Dail's must-do list read like the menu of a country kitchen. . . . Pork chops for Tuesday dinner at his brother's. Country ham and gravy for breakfast today. His mom promised to make him a peanut butter and molasses sandwich for a snack. . . . Dail, 39, left his youth behind in prison, paying for another man's crime. Dail was 19, a day laborer and an aspiring rock singer when Goldsboro police arrested him on charges of raping a 12-year-old girl after breaking into her home. . . . Monday, DNA evidence extracted from the girl's nightgown, forgotten since the night of her rape nearly two decades ago, proved what Dail had sworn all these years: He was innocent. . . . "I was an innocent kid and got snatched out of my life and thrown into another with dangerous people," Dail said, whispering over the table at a pizza parlor an hour after being released. "I was scared. I was accused of doing something so far out of character, something so disgusting." August 2007
Charges to be dismissed against man held on rape conviction since
'89
Former Ohio attorney general working free for convicted rapist 8-29-07 -- Former Ohio Attorney General Jim Petro has agreed to represent a convicted rapist as part of a project aimed at freeing innocent people who have been wrongly imprisoned. . . . Roger Dean Gillispie, of Fairborn, has been in prison since 1991 after he was twice convicted by Montgomery County prosecutors of kidnapping and raping three women at gunpoint in August 1988. He's serving a 16- to 50-year sentence at the London Correctional Institution. . . . Petro, a Republican candidate for governor last year, believes he is innocent. He has agreed to defend him for free as part of the Ohio Innocence Project, a privately funded legal clinic at the University of Cincinnati College of Law. . .. "My heart goes out to him. It really does," said Petro, now an attorney with Cincinnati-based Waite, Schneider, Bayless & Chesley. "Sixteen years (in prison) — oh, my god. I get choked up when I think about it."
Evidence sought for DNA tests missing
8-21-07 -- Two pieces of crucial evidence sought for DNA testing by a Kentucky Death Row inmate are missing. . . . A pair of black pants and black corrective shoes that prosecutors say place Brian Keith Moore at the scene of a 1979 murder in Louisville cannot be located. . . . In response, Moore’s attorney has asked Jefferson Circuit Judge James Shake to set aside the conviction and death sentence if prosecutors don’t find the items. . . . “In light of this, the risk that Moore is innocent currently exists and will continue to remain,” public defender David Barron said. . . . A hearing on the matter is scheduled for Thursday morning. . . . Four pieces of clothing, the pants, shoes, a shirt and a black jacket, were supposed to be taken to the crime lab for testing in May. But employees were able to find only the shirt and jacket. . . . Barron said the loss of the shoes and pants could prevent Moore from proving his innocence.
Book, DVD put spotlight on Sacco and Vanzetti execution
Bombings were terrorizing the government. Immigrants suspected of radical political leanings were being rounded up and deported, while others who had recently come to the United States were viewed with suspicion and scorn. Body bags containing dead American soldiers were coming home from war. . . . The year was 1921, and it was in this context of fear, repression and postwar patriotism that two Italian-born anarchists, Nicola Sacco and Bartolomeo Vanzetti -- a skilled shoemaker and a fish peddler -- were tried and convicted of participating in a payroll robbery and the murder of two men outside a factory in South Braintree, Mass., near Boston. After years of appeals and attempts to secure a new trial, the two men were executed 80 years ago this week, just after midnight on Aug. 23, 1927. . . . During the years they were imprisoned, Sacco and Vanzetti -- their names linked forever -- were the subject of one of the most intense protest campaigns in history. Their presumed innocence and the unfairness of their trial were proclaimed by fellow Italians, radicals, liberals and many others throughout the United States and in major cities around the world. Esteemed Harvard Law School professor and future U.S. Supreme Court Justice Felix Frankfurter wrote a widely publicized defense of the men.
Hard lives for wives of men wrongly imprisoned Ruling that frees spouses ends 30-year wait for Mass. women 8-16-07 -- For three decades, Marie Salvati and Olympia Limone essentially lived as widows, struggling to make ends meet as they raised four children on their own. Their husbands grew old behind bars after being convicted of a murder the FBI knew they did not commit. . . . Now the women hope a judge’s ruling awarding them and two other families nearly $102 million marks the end of their struggle in a long story of love, devotion and survival. . . . For many years, the two women would see each other about once a month, across the visiting room of a state prison. Their conversations were rarely more than a wave hello or a “how’s the family?” but they didn’t need words to understand each other’s lives. . . . In the days after the verdict, the two women and their husbands spoke to The Associated Press about living apart for so long, and the bonds that kept them together.
DNA evidence overturns Yakima man's rape conviction
8-15-07 -- On a fall morning 12 years ago, a woman was nursing her infant in her Yakima home when a man wearing a nylon stocking over his head broke in. He covered her face with a mask, then raped her while her baby wailed in the background. . . . Ted L. Bradford was convicted of the rape and completed a nine-year prison sentence, but did not stop professing his innocence. DNA, he claimed, would prove him right. . . . Tuesday, a state appeals court agreed, making Bradford the first person in Washington whose conviction was overturned because of DNA evidence. . . . A three-judge panel in Spokane ruled that a jury likely would have let Bradford go free had it known the DNA profile of another, unknown man was found on the mask. That ruling upholds one by a lower-court judge last year that vacated the conviction. . . . "We're just delighted that both the trial court and court of appeals found the weight of the scientific evidence would probably result in a different verdict," said Jackie McMurtrie, director of the Innocence Project Northwest, which represented Bradford. "Mr. Bradford is innocent." . . . The ruling, however, does not end Bradford's case. Kevin Eilmes, a Yakima County deputy prosecutor, said his office would likely retry him based on a confession before his trial and other evidence. . . . The prosecutor also is considering an appeal to the state Supreme Court, he said.
Innocent Man Sentenced to Death Under Cruel Texas Law
8-14-07 -- Kenneth Foster faces death for a crime he didn't commit because of a twist of Texas law that enables a jury to sentence someone to death even if he or she had no proven role in a murder. . . . Kenneth Foster's time is running out. . . . On Tuesday, August 7, in a six-to-three decision, the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals denied his final writ of habeas corpus, giving the legal green light for his execution. Foster, who is scheduled to die by lethal injection on August 30, is now at the mercy of the merciless Board of Pardons and Paroles. The odds are bad. Five out of seven board members must recommend clemency before Governor Rick Perry will consider it -- and in a state that has executed nearly 400 people in thirty years, clemency has only been granted twice. But Foster's supporters, who are spearheading a letter-writing campaign to the board and governor, are relying on one particularly salient detail to move their minds, if not their hearts: Foster didn't kill anyone. . . . Foster was convicted for the 1996 murder of Michael LaHood Jr., who was shot following a string of robberies, by a man named Mauriceo Brown. Brown admitted to the shooting and was executed by lethal injection last year. Now Foster faces the same fate. So, if Brown was the shooter, what did the 19-year-old Foster do to get a death sentence? He sat in his car, 80 feet away, unaware that a murder was taking place.
Dismissive Judge Lets Injustice Stand Judge Stanley T. Fuger proclaimed, "I don't know anything about this case."
8-13-07 -- Once again, Connecticut justice is on trial. . . . Eight years ago, I was outraged at what our Constitution State did to David Saraceno in a notorious "wrong man" case. In a 10-hour unrecorded interrogation in 1994, detectives forced the teenager to falsely confess to the $500,000 burning of the Haddam-Killingworth school bus fleet. He went to prison. When the identity of the four real arsonists surfaced, embarrassed prosecutors gave them a free pass. David was set free, but only on the condition that he plead guilty to "hindering prosecution by falsely confessing to the state police." . . . That was bad enough, but now my blood is really boiling. . . . In mid-July, I attended Richard Lapointe's hearing for a new trial in Rockville Superior Court. No forensic evidence had ever linked him to the murder of Bernice Martin two decades earlier. I knew this to be Connecticut's most shameful false confession case ever because of the accused's numerous mental and physical disabilities. The state had sought the death penalty and left a killer on the loose.
'Absurd' case?' Prosecutors think not A retrial is planned despite a scathing appeals court ruling.
8-10-07 -- An appeals court called the case against Mark O'Hara "absurd" and "ridiculous," but the Hillsborough State Attorney's Office is refusing to drop charges against the 45-year-old Dunedin man. . . . O'Hara appeared before Hillsborough Circuit Judge Ronald Ficarrotta Wednesday morning, his first time in court since his release from prison July 25. . . . During the brief hearing, prosecutor Darrell Dirks indicated his office plans to pursue a second trial for O'Hara, who was accused of drug trafficking after authorities found 58 Vicodin pills in his bread truck. He had legal prescriptions for the drugs. . . . O'Hara's lawyer, Ira Berman, said he was stunned by the decision. He told Ficarrotta he planned to ask for a dismissal. DNA exonerations: A look at the first 200 cases
8-8-07 -- Few law review articles get attention from the mainstream media even after they're formally published. . . . But one by University of Virginia law professor Brandon L. Garrett is being cited by such publications as The New York Times and The Atlanta Journal-Constitution months before its appearance in the January 2008 issue of the Columbia University Law Review. . . . The topic, "Judging Innocence," and the methodology explain the interest. Garrett analyzed the first 200 cases—from 1989 through May of this year—in which defendants were exonerated by DNA evidence from trial through appellate review to the circumstances of the exoneration and compensation, if any, for the defendants. . . . Garrett had firsthand experience with some of those cases. After graduating from Yale University and the Columbia law school, he worked in New York as an associate at Cochran, Neufeld and Scheck LLP Garrett litigating wrongful conviction, DNA exoneration and police brutality cases . . . Two partners in the firm, Peter J. Neufeld and Barry C. Scheck, founded the Innocence Project at the Benjamin N. Cardozo School of Law at Yeshiva University to assist convicts in proving their innocence through DNA testing. . . . Research for the law review article involved an analysis of appellate decisions in 133 of the cases and a review of news accounts and court records in the rest, a daunting task even with the assistance of a team of research assistants. Most of Garrett's research focused on those cases with an appellate decision. . . . All but three of the 200 convictions were for rape, murder or a murder that involved a rape. Of those cases, 79 percent had eyewitness identifications, 55 percent relied on forensic evidence, 18 percent had informant testimony, and defendants confessed in 16 percent of them. . . . Ten cases were from Virginia. Only three much more populous states—Texas, Illinois and New York—had more DNA exonerations. Son of absolved man asks for more Conviction led to 'destroyed' life
8-3-07 -- A week after a federal judge ordered the government to pay $101.7 million to four men who were wrongfully convicted of a 1965 gangland slaying, lawyers urged her yesterday to increase the sum awarded to the son of one of the men who died in prison. . . . US District Judge Nancy Gertner awarded $28 million to the estate of Louis Greco, who died behind bars in 1995 at age 78 after serving 28 years. . . . But in a motion filed yesterday, lawyers told the judge that all that money will go to his former wife, who abandoned the couple's two young boys and moved to Las Vegas after he was convicted of murder. . . . Attorneys for Greco's son, Edward, 50, who is recovering from lung cancer in a New Orleans nursing home, argued that he deserves more than the $250,000 he was awarded because "his life was destroyed" by his father's wrongful conviction and years of imprisonment.
July 2007 Blind justice often error prone
7-30-07 -- Gary Dotson and Jerry Miller are the bookends on one of the most illuminating and unsettling chapters in criminal-justice annals. . . . Dotson, released from an Illinois prison in 1989 after serving eight years for kidnapping and rape, was the first American prisoner to be exonerated by DNA testing. Last spring Miller, who spent more than 24 years in Illinois prisons for a rape he did not commit, became the 200th. . . . University of Virginia law professor Brandon L. Garrett has analyzed those two cases and all those in between, including 10 from Virginia, for patterns and lessons. His study, to be published in the Columbia Law Review in January, is a window into the hidden failings of the criminal-justice system. . . . It is sobering to note that prior to the DNA tests, the U.S. Supreme Court refused to hear appeals brought by 30 of these 200 innocent people; courts granted no legal relief in 70 percent of the cases heard on appeal; and appellate courts deemed the evidence of guilt "overwhelming" in 9 percent. . .. While there is no way to judge comparable error in the far greater number of criminal cases in which no DNA evidence exists, there's no particular reason to think such verdicts are any more sacrosanct. . . . All of which compels conscientious jurists, lawmakers, prosecutors and citizens to ask: What went wrong, and can it be fixed?
Man freed after MN series may be retried Prosecutor Revisiting Holdup At 7-11 Store
7-30-07 -- County prosecutors are taking the first steps toward retrying Michael Hutchinson, whose conviction for robbing a Milpitas 7-Eleven was overturned by a federal judge last summer. . . . Deputy District Attorney David Boyd said Friday that he had begun preparing for a retrial. Under court rules, the Santa Clara County District Attorney's Office has a 60-day window, which started July 19, to decide whether to retry Hutchinson. . . . Hutchinson's appellate attorney, Cliff Gardner, said he is "puzzled" by the action. "They had a full day in court and couldn't do anything," Gardner said of the prosecution. . . . Hutchinson, a Milpitas resident, received a 13-year sentence in 2000 for stealing $200 from the store's cash register. The prosecution's argument rested mainly on a store clerk's eyewitness account and footage from a security camera, which showed a masked man stealing the cash. . . . But when Hutchinson's appeals lawyer requested money to hire an expert who could closely examine the camera footage, the appeals court denied him. . . . The case became part of the Mercury News series "Tainted Trials, Stolen Justice," which established that questionable conduct by prosecutors, defense lawyers and trial judges often infected Santa Clara County criminal trials and that such conduct increased the small chance of wrongful convictions. . . . Hutchinson is one of seven defendants who had convictions overturned or who were released from custody in cases the newspaper examined. . . . In Hutchinson's case, the newspaper hired forensics expert Gregg Stutchman, whose testimony became critical in the appeal. Based on Stutchman's analysis, which a federal judge called "very persuasive, independent evidence," the judge ruled that Hutchinson's trial lawyer had provided an insufficient defense by failing to look into this evidence beforehand. . . . The evidence hinged on an analysis of the security camera footage. Stutchman concluded the footage showed a suspect significantly shorter than Hutchinson. US ordered to pay $101.7m in false murder convictions FBI withheld evidence in '65 gangland slaying
7-28-07 --A federal judge held the FBI "responsible for the framing of four innocent men" in a 1965 gangland murder in a landmark ruling yesterday and ordered the government to pay the men $101.7 million for the decades they spent in prison. The award is believed to be the largest of its kind nationally. . . . In a decision that was as dramatic as it was stern, US District Judge Nancy Gertner said from the bench that the FBI had deliberately withheld evidence that Peter J. Limone, Joseph Salvati, Louis Greco, and Henry Tameleo were innocent, and that the bureau helped cover up the injustice for decades as the men grew old behind bars and Tameleo and Greco died. . . . "FBI officials up the line allowed their employees to break laws, violate rules, and ruin lives, interrupted only with the occasional burst of applause," said Gertner, berating the FBI for giving commendations and bonuses to the agents who helped send the men to prison for the killing in Chelsea of Edward "Teddy" Deegan, a small-time hoodlum.
7-28-07 --This story is so bizarre and outrageous, I can hardly believe it's true. . . . Tampa's Mark O'Hara was released from prison this week. He was serving a 25-year sentence for possession of 58 Vicodin tablets. Prosecutors acknowledge he wasn't selling the drug. They acknowledge that he had a prescription for it. At his trial, two doctors testified they'd been treating O'Hara since the early 1990s for pain related to gout and an automobile accident. . . . But prosecutors inexplicably brought drug trafficking charges anyway, because as the article explains, "Under the law, simply possessing the quantity of pills he had constitutes trafficking." . . . This is simply stunning. The man was sentenced to 25 years for possessing 58 pills for which he had a legal prescription. . . . Prosecutors then argued—and the trial court agreed—that the jury was not allowed to consider the fact that O'Hara had a prescription because Florida statutes governing painkillers don't allow for a "prescription defense," as if that rather crucial fact were some mere technicality those ACLU-types are always using to get criminals off the hook.
7-25-07 -- There should be no statute of limitations, or deadlines without exceptions, when it comes to proof of innocence. No one should be forced to stay in prison or be executed, simply because the innocence issue wasn't resolved in time. How ridiculous to suggest otherwise, especially when we have a judicial system so broken that the rich guilty (and sometimes even poor guilty) can often walk, while many innocent people have been sent behind bars because they didn't have the means to prove their innocence, or were afraid to take a chance on a trial after being told they would face a harsher sentence, if they fought the charges and didn't win. The latter should never be a part of a system supposedly seeking "justice", but sadly it is. . . . I was reading, "Fight to keep Georgia man from death chamber not over", by Harry R. Weber - Associated Press Writer, on Ledger-Enquier.com (July 22, 2007), which says, "Davis, 38, was convicted of killing Savannah police Officer Mark MacPhail, who was shot twice after he rushed to help a homeless man who had been assaulted. The 1989 shooting happened in a Burger King parking lot next to a bus station where MacPhail, 27, worked off-duty as a security guard. Davis' lawyers say seven witnesses have recanted or contradicted their testimony that they saw Davis shoot the officer, saw him assault the homeless man or heard Davis confess to the slaying.
Withheld evidence casts doubt on murder conviction
7-24-07 -- Lawyers for a man incarcerated for 16 years for rape and murder say they have uncovered evidence that could exonerate him – evidence that was not turned over at his 1993 trial by a prosecutor who is now a Superior Court judge in Vista. . . . The information is the newest development in the long-running case of Samson Dubria, 44, a doctor serving a sentence of life without the possibility of parole in the killing 16 years ago of traveling companion Jennifer Klapper in a Carlsbad motel room. . . . Dubria's lawyers claim prosecutors deliberately withheld medical evidence from the defense during the high-profile trial, prompting a local judge to order the San Diego District Attorney's Office to explain why the murder conviction should not be overturned. . . . Prosecutor Tim Casserly, who became a judge three years after the trial, told jurors that Dubria gave Klapper a fatal dose of chloroform so he could rape her. Now defense attorneys say that they have evidence the 20-year-old woman had a heart problem and that the chloroform found during her autopsy could have come from contamination in the Medical Examiner's Office.
Ga. Judge Rejects Bid to Halt Execution
7-16-07 -- A judge has denied a bid to halt the execution scheduled this coming week of convicted cop killer Troy Anthony Davis, refusing to hear evidence the defense says would show he is innocent and identify another man as the killer. . . . Defense attorneys said they would appeal to the Georgia Supreme Court. . . . Davis, 38, is to die by injection at 7 p.m. Tuesday for the 1989 killing of Savannah police officer Mark MacPhail, who was shot while moonlighting as a security guard. . . . Davis insists he's innocent. His lawyers filed a motion last Monday seeking a new trial based on affidavits by witnesses from Davis' 1991 trial who now say they lied or exaggerated when they testified Davis shot the officer. . . . Davis' lawyers also say other witnesses have signed affidavits naming another man, Sylvester "Red" Coles, as MacPhail's killer. Will Georgia Kill an Innocent Man?
A young man freed after being wrongly imprisoned argues for three remedies.
7-13-07 -- Arthur Carmona testified recently in support of state legislation aimed at preventing wrongful convictions. . . . One week after my 16th birthday, I was arrested and charged with crimes I did not commit. I remained behind bars in a life unsuitable for any innocent person. After I served nearly three years of a 17-year sentence, the real facts of my case began to emerge and a judge let me go free. My life, however, will never be the same, and I am determined to change the laws that make it so easy for innocent people to be convicted. . . . On Feb. 12, 1998, I decided to visit a friend. While I was walking down a residential street, a Costa Mesa police officer stopped me at gunpoint. I was handcuffed and surrounded by other police officers with guns drawn. One officer forced a baseball cap onto my head and made me stand on the curb. I did not know it at the time, but witnesses from a robbery had been brought to identify me in what is known as an "in-field show-up," a procedure that is highly likely to produce mistaken identifications. I was arrested in connection with 13 strong-arm robberies. . . . My mother was able to gather evidence proving that her 15-year-old son was in school during 11 of the robberies. But we had no evidence to prove that, at 2 a.m. on a school night, I was home asleep while someone robbed a Denny's restaurant, and we had no proof that I was home baby-sitting my 11-year-old sister during the time a juice bar in another city was being robbed.
Judge denies gag order in Bromgard case
7-13-07 -- A federal judge this week declined for now to keep lawyers from talking to the public in a multimillion-dollar lawsuit against the state brought by a man exonerated after spending 15 years in prison on rape charges. . . . In an order issued Wednesday, U.S. Magistrate Judge Carolyn Ostby denied a request for a restraining order by attorneys for the state of Montana and lifted a temporary gag order. But Ostby said she would reconsider it if concerns persist about the right to a fair trial. . . . Ostby also warned the attorneys about their duty to follow rules of professional conduct. The rules govern statements lawyers can make about cases. . . . "All counsel in this case are experienced and capable attorneys well aware of their professional obligations as officers of this court," Ostby said. "This court is confident that, with this warning, they will henceforth refrain from taking any action which would necessitate either disciplinary action or imposition of gag orders."
Darryl Hunt aids effort for new trial 7-2-07 -- (AP) — Darryl Hunt, who served 18 years in prison for a murder he didn't commit, is helping attorneys review the case of a man he met in jail. . . . Kalvin Smith is serving a minimum sentence of almost 23 years in prison for the 1995 near-fatal beating of Jill Marker in Winston-Salem. Hunt said he talked with witnesses who may have been coerced into giving false testimony during Smith's trial. . . . "The only discussion I had with them was that we just wanted to get the truth, the truth of it," Hunt said. "Just tell the truth, don't be afraid."
Local attorney files million-dollar civil lawsuit against the HPD
7-2-07 -- Tina Andrews remembers the day she morphed from respected attorney to inmate behind bars like it was a bad dream. . . . In February of 2005, a meeting with a couple of clients over a child custody matter turned into a full-on confrontation with police at a southwest Houston townhome complex. . . . “They threw my arm behind my back and jacked me up against the wall and then proceeded to cuff me,” Andrews said. . . . “He said, ‘I am the police, you do what I say. You lawyers think you’re better than us, but you’re not.’” . . . An HPD spokesperson confirmed Officer Justin Kennedy came to the address to investigate what turned out to be unfounded reports of domestic abuse. The spokesman said the officer did arrest Andrews, but only after she failed to comply with his demands not to interfere. June 2007
Did Missouri execute an innocent man?
Findings could affect death penalty debate 6-26-07 -- To the very end, convicted killer Larry Griffin shouted his innocence to the world — through court filings, in pleas to the governor and to nearly any reporter willing to listen. . . . None of it helped. Griffin, strapped to a white gurney, was executed by injection. . . . Now, 12 years later, St. Louis’ chief prosecutor will soon release a report offering an opinion on whether Missouri put an innocent man to death. . . . The report, two years in the making, has no legal weight but could have a powerful effect on the nation’s death penalty debate. Nearly 1,100 people have been executed in the United States in the modern era that began with Gary Gilmore’s death by firing squad in Utah in 1977, and not one has been proved innocent after the fact. . . . A finding of innocence could confirm what capital punishment foes have been arguing for years: that the risk of a grave and irreversible mistake by the criminal justice system is too high to allow the death penalty. . . . Nevertheless, the findings in the Griffin case may not settle the argument over whether he committed the crime. His guilt or innocence hinges not on DNA or other powerfully persuasive forensic evidence, but on witness accounts.
Tracking wrongful convictions.
Just because a vast majority of prisoners were rightly convicted doesn't mean we shouldn't look for those who weren't.
6-11-07 -- THE FIRST innocent American defendant to be exonerated by DNA evidence was Gary Dotson of Chicago. Before his conviction was overturned on Aug. 14, 1989, he'd spent 10 years in prison and on parole. This year, on April 23, Jerry Miller obtained the 200th DNA exoneration, also in Chicago. He had served 25 years for a rape he did not commit. . . . Two hundred innocent prisoners exonerated by DNA — plus more than 200 other exonerations that did not involve DNA. That sounds like a lot. But over 18 years in a criminal justice system that sends hundreds of thousands to prison each year? How frequent are wrongful convictions? . . . The truth is, we don't know. But that hasn't stopped prominent members of the legal profession from staking out a position.
May 2007
Exonerated by DNA, guilty in official's eyes
High court hopeful's view troubles critics 5-29-07 -- In the fall of 2002, DNA tests exonerated Jimmy Ray Bromgard in the 1987 rape of an 8-year-old girl in Billings, Mont. His case was dismissed and he was freed from prison. . . . "Mr. Bromgard has spent 15 years in prison for a crime that the state is now convinced beyond a reasonable doubt he did not commit," Yellowstone County Atty. Dennis Paxinos declared. "The DNA from the room where the attack took place simply does not match his. He simply could not have committed this crime." . . . Nearly five years later, Montana Atty. Gen. Mike McGrath -- a recently announced candidate for chief justice of the state's Supreme Court -- has stated under oath that he still believes Bromgard is guilty. . . .In most of the cases where prosecutors have refused to believe in an exoneration, they have cited evidence that more than one person was involved in the crime to argue that the DNA was left by a second, unidentified offender. It is rare for a prosecutor to dispute a DNA exoneration when there is no evidence -- as in Bromgard's case -- that more than one person committed the crime.
Convicted Murderer Is Freed in Wake of Tainted Evidence Cheryl Camp 5-22-07 -- “It’s like landing on a new planet,” said Curtis E. McCarty, who was freed from death row this month after two convictions for the same murder, and 22 years in prison, 16 of them on death row. . . . Mr. McCarty, 44, had been scheduled to stand trial yet again on Monday for the killing in 1982 of a police officer’s daughter but was released based on a presumption of innocence after DNA evidence from earlier trials was destroyed. . . . “This is a real bad situation for everybody involved — for my family, for the victim’s family, for myself, for the local court system, for the people of this community,” Mr. McCarty said in a telephone interview after declining to show up Friday at a news conference at the Capitol featuring his parents and justice advocates calling for a commission to examine wrongful convictions.
Exonerations Change How Justice System Builds a Prosecution DNA Tests Have Cleared 200 Convicts
April 2007 DNA analysis clears 200th person 4-24-07 -- (AP) — DNA evidence cleared its 200th person Monday, another milestone for a technology that has not only reversed convictions but has also prompted a more critical look at flaws in the justice system -- from crime lab work to the way arson cases are investigated. . . . The details of the latest exoneration are typically nightmarish: Jerry Miller served 25 years for a rape conviction and had already been paroled when DNA tests showed he could not have been the man who attacked a woman in a Chicago parking garage. . . . What's also troubling is how common these exonerations have become since the first reversal in 1989. It took 13 years to reach the first 100 DNA exonerations, but just five to double that number. For prosecutors and judges, as well as defense attorneys, the exonerations raise a larger question: How many others, innocent of their crimes, are behind bars? States Look at Reforming Lineup Methods Exonerations highlight need for lineup changes
4-20-07 -- A continuing wave of exonerations and revelations about wrongful convictions linked to false eyewitness identification has led more states to consider reforming their lineup procedures with new guidelines and legislation. . . A key factor is the order in which lineups should be shown as more states consider whether to replace the traditional simultaneous method with the sequential procedure, during which people or photographs are shown one after another rather than all at once. . . . Another common feature of the new procedures calls for a "blind" lineup, meaning the person administering it does not know who the suspect is. A movement to reform eyewitness identification procedures has been building in momentum for the last few years. . . . A reform bill in West Virginia has been awaiting the governor's approval and was one of 16 bills on eyewitness identification proposed in 10 states this legislative session, said Scott Ehlers, state legislative affairs director for the Washington-based National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers. . . . In Illinois, a civil lawsuit over the issue was filed in February. And in New Mexico, an eyewitness identification bill was proposed for the first time this year.
A Woman Wrongly Convicted and a U.S. Attorney
4-16-07 -- Opponents of Gov. Jim Doyle of Wisconsin spent $4 million on ads last year trying to link the Democratic incumbent to a state employee who was sent to jail on corruption charges. The effort failed, and Mr. Doyle was re-elected — and now the state employee has been found to have been wrongly convicted. The entire affair is raising serious questions about why a United States attorney put an innocent woman in jail. . . . The conviction of Georgia Thompson has become part of the furor over the firing of eight United States attorneys in what seems like a political purge. While the main focus of that scandal is on why the attorneys were fired, the Thompson case raises questions about why other prosecutors kept their jobs. . . . The United States Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit, which heard Ms. Thompson’s case this month, did not discuss whether her prosecution was political — but it did make clear that it was wrong. And in an extraordinary move, it ordered her released immediately, without waiting to write a decision. “Your evidence is beyond thin,” Judge Diane Wood told the prosecutor. “I’m not sure what your actual theory in this case is.” . . . Members of Congress should ask whether it was by coincidence or design that Steven Biskupic, the United States attorney in Milwaukee, turned a flimsy case into a campaign issue that nearly helped Republicans win a pivotal governor’s race. The Supreme Court's Recent Decision in Wallace v. Kato:
Complicating the Process for Civil Rights Plaintiffs Challenging
Unconstitutional Convictions 4-9-07 -- First, the key state actors in the criminal judicial process--the prosecutor, the judge, and witnesses--are absolutely immune from damages under Section 1983, regardless of how intentional or unconstitutional their misconduct. Plaintiffs can sue only pre-trial actors, such as the police officers who arrested and interrogated the accused or the investigators (including police officers and prosecutors) who gathered evidence for presentation at trial. . . . Earlier this Term, in Wallace v. Kato, the Supreme Court held unanimously (as to the basic point) that a claim of unconstitutional wrongful imprisonment under the Fourth Amendment accrues--and the statute of limitations begins running on that claim--when the false imprisonment ends. This may occur when a wrongfully arrested person appears before a magistrate and becomes confined pursuant to lawful process. . . .
But if an individual is convicted and waits until after release from custody (often many years later) to challenge the constitutionality of the initial arrest, he may find his claim barred by the statute of limitations. . . . A federal statute - known as "Section 1983" -- allows individuals to recover damages for the deprivation of federal constitutional rights by state and local government officials. However, as I explain in this column, Wallace's holding and other legal rules significantly limit Section 1983's use as an effective remedy for unconstitutional convictions. . . . Pre-Existing Limits on Section 1983 as a Remedy for a Wrongful Conviction . . . One remedy for a wrongful conviction is obvious--immediate release from confinement. But we also need a retroactive remedy, usually monetary or other compensation for the (often lengthy) time the wrongfully convicted person endured in custody. Such a remedy not only provides the wrongfully convicted person at least some compensation for the misery of unjustly served prison time, but it deters the prosecutorial overzealousness that may produce wrongful prosecutions and convictions in the first place.
St. Louis man found innocent, freed after decade in prison 4-2-07 -- A 41-year-old St. Louis man was freed Thursday after nearly 11 years in jail when a judge found he was not guilty of the carjacking in which he had been convicted. . . . Judge Michael David told Antonio Beaver he had been exonerated of the crime, based on DNA analysis not available when the robbery was committed. Tests determined the blood at the crime scene was not Beaver's. . . . Beaver arrived in court wearing an orange prison jump suit. Just more than an hour later he was wearing a sport coat and slacks, addressing reporters during his first moments of freedom. . . . “This feels strange,” Beaver said. “I'd like to give my thanks to God, because there is a God and He knew I was innocent from the start.” . . . Beaver filed his own motion for a post-conviction DNA test in 2001. He was later assisted by The Innocence Project, a New York-based legal center that seeks to uncover wrongful convictions. March 2007
Convict pushes for DNA testing Breest sentenced in woman's 1971 slaying
-27-07 -- A man convicted in a 1971 murder is seeking another round of DNA testing, arguing that results of the first three tests were inconclusive and that a more detailed analysis could prove his guilt or innocence. . . . Robert Breest was sentenced to 40 years to life in prison in 1973 under the state's psychosexual murder law, in the death of 18-year-old Susan Randall of Manchester. Randall, who was murdered during an attempted rape, had dried blood under her fingernails. . . . Breest, now 69, was convicted before genetic testing was available. He has maintained his innocence for decades, refusing to participate in sex offender treatment that could have qualified him for parole because he would have been required to admit his guilt. . . . In 2000, he petitioned in state court for DNA tests on the dried blood. The first two rounds of testing were inconclusive, and in 2002, the state attorney general's office said the third round found Breest was a match. However, the report said about 10 percent of the male population also would have matched at the points tested. . . . Breest petitioned for a more detailed test, with the help of lawyers from the Innocence Project, which has used genetic testing to overturn dozens of murder convictions nationwide. A Merrimack County Superior Court judge turned him down, and the state Supreme Court agreed.
Man Awaiting Settlement For Time Spent In Prison
3-27-07 -- A Columbus man said Tuesday he is ready to go to trial to prove his innocence after spending 26 years in prison for a crime he claims he didn't commit. . . . Gary James will appear in court in April, despite being released from prison four years ago based on a lie detector test that he passed. . . . James now works at a Hilliard plant and said he is in limbo about his future after he already lost so much of his past. . . . "I lost my family," James said. "When I came out, I didn't know them." . . . He said no amount of money will make up for that. . . . "I want to be able to live the rest of my life comfortably," James said. . . . James' attorneys also fought for the late Tim Howard, who was convicted of the same bank robbery and murder as James. Howard received $2.5 million from the state. . . . Attorneys said talks about a bottom line settlement amount from county prosecutor Ron O'Brien's office have ended short of their expectations.
Man Exonerated After 26 Years in Prison Files Civil Rights Suit By Laura Wides-Munoz, AP Hispanic Affairs Writer 3-22-07 -- A man wrongly imprisoned 26 years for a series of South Florida rapes in the 1970s that he did not commit, filed a civil right suit Wednesday against Miami-Dade County and police, accusing them of falsifying records and other illegal actions. . . . Luis Diaz Martinez, 69, was released in March 2005, after DNA evidence excluded him as the attacker in two of the rapes and cast doubt on his conviction in all five cases. Earlier, victims had recounted their testimony in two other convictions. . . . "They railroaded this man and took 26 years of his life. They took away from him any chance of having a family, any chance for a career, and any chance he had at happiness," said his attorney Marvin Kurzban. "We are here to right that wrong." . . . Messages left for county officials were not immediately returned Wednesday. Police spokesman Carlos Maura said the department had yet to see the suit and could not comment on it. Maura said he did not know whether police were continuing their investigation to find the actual rapist.
Man Freed by DNA Found Guilty in Slaying 3-19-07 -- (AP) - A man who spent 18 years in prison for a rape he didn't commit was convicted Sunday of murdering a photographer, whose charred bones were found in a burn pit outside his home. . . . Steven Avery, 44, put his head down and shook it when the verdict was read. He faces a mandatory life prison term for killing Teresa Halbach, 25, on Halloween 2005 near his family's salvage yard. . . . Halbach disappeared Oct. 31, 2005, after going to the yard in rural Manitowoc County to photograph a minivan that Avery's sister had for sale through Auto Trader Magazine. Avery had called that morning to request the photo, testimony showed. . . . A few days later, Halbach's vehicle was found in the Avery salvage lot under branches, pieces of wood and car parts. Investigators then spent a week on the 40-acre property and found charred fragments of her bones in a pit behind Avery's garage and in a barrel, along with her camera and cell phone. . . . Two years before Halbach died, Avery was released from prison after serving 18 years for a Manitowoc County rape that DNA analysis showed he did not commit. He later settled a wrongful-conviction lawsuit against the county for $400,000 and used it for his defense.
Costs soar to fight lawsuit by ex-prisoner City spends nearly $600,000 on lawyers
3-14-07 -- The city of Boston has spent nearly $600,000 on outside lawyers to fight a lawsuit filed by a man wrongly convicted and imprisoned after Boston police concluded he shot a 12-year-old girl to death. . . . Shawn Drumgold spent 15 years in prison before the Suffolk district attorney's office acknowledged possible misconduct by police and prosecutors, and a Suffolk Superior Court judge overturned his conviction, saying "justice was not done" and the "system had failed." . . . The city has paid $540,135 to outside lawyers in the case since January 2005, and an additional $45,920 in legal fees are pending, according to figures obtained yesterday by the Globe under a public records request. . . . Drumgold was freed in 2003 after the Globe reported that police paid one witness and dropped charges against that witness, and that police didn't tell defense lawyers that a second witness had a fatal brain tumor, which could have affected her memory. A third witness said police coerced her testimony.
Records ordered released in case of wrongly convicted officer 3-14-07 -- A federal magistrate judge ordered the city of Warwick to release personnel records and other documents related to the investigation of a former police detective who was wrongly convicted of murder and later sued his former employer and the state police. . . . Jeffrey Scott Hornoff was convicted of the 1989 killing of his lover, Victoria Cushman, and was sentenced to life in prison. He served more than six years behind bars but was freed in 2002 after another man confessed to the crime. . . . Hornoff sued the city and the Rhode Island State Police in 2005, saying his civil rights had been violated and that investigators bungled the case by overlooking or destroying evidence that would have exonerated him. Power of the Internet Used in a Guantanamo Bay Case Video of prisoner's case played on YouTube
The power of the Internet, most people would agree, is awesome, but has it done what the federal courts may no longer have jurisdiction to do -- helped to free a possibly innocent man held at Guantanamo Bay? . . . The Department of Defense on Feb. 24 informed the Office of Federal Public Defender in Portland, Ore., that three of its detainee clients were now "eligible for transfer," or are eligible to leave the island prison. . . . One of those three is Adel Hamad, a native of Sudan declared an enemy combatant by the U.S. government whose life and legal case formed the centerpiece of what one Internet expert describes as a "visionary" video filmed and posted on YouTube by his lawyers in the Federal Public Defender's Office. . . . Steve Wax, head of the Portland office, said he "would only be speculating" about any impact that the video may have had on the Department of Defense's decision. Its notice, he said, does not make clear what exactly will happen to his clients.
Fee Dispute Erupts in Pro Bono Exoneration Case
3-9-07 -- An attorney who used DNA testing in a 2001 pro bono case to help exonerate two prison inmates convicted of murdering and raping a medical student is now battling the men's new attorneys for fees she says she is owed. . . . Kathleen Zellner of Chicago argued in a federal court filing this week that her pro bono work pertained only to the DNA testing motion in the case and that her two clients signed contracts in 2002 agreeing to pay her 40 percent of any recovery they might receive in the future from civil lawsuits for the wrongful conviction. . . . The two men, Larry Ollins and Omar Saunders, were convicted, along with two other men, for the murder of Lori Roscetti in 1986. They were released from prison in 2001 and pardoned by former Illinois Gov. George Ryan in October 2002. . . . Following their release, Zellner in January 2002 filed a civil lawsuit in state court against the city of Chicago and other parties for violating her clients' civil rights through malicious prosecution, false imprisonment, emotional distress and conspiracy, but Ollins and Saunders fired her from the case after a disagreement in December of that year. . . . Scott Kamin, the new lawyer for the men who filed a civil suit in federal court in 2003 against Chicago and Cook County, said there could be a settlement in the case "in the near future." Ollins v. O'Brien, No. 03cv05795 (N.D. Ill.). February 2007
Wrongly convicted say FBI was at fault Compensation urged in closing arguments
2-28-07 -- Lawyers for four men wrongly convicted of a 1965 gangland slaying argued yesterday that the FBI was squarely to blame for withholding critical evidence during their trial and urged a federal judge to order the government to compensate them for the decades they spent in prison. . . . "It was more important for the FBI to protect their informants than to protect innocent people who had families," said Victor Garo, one of the lawyers, during closing arguments in a civil suit seeking more than $100 million in damages from the government on behalf of Joseph Salvati, Peter J. Limone, Henry Tameleo, Louis Greco, and their families. "Shame on our government for doing that." . . . The discovery of secret FBI files that were never turned over during the men's 1968 trial prompted a state judge six years ago to overturn the murder convictions of Limone, who had served 33 years in prison, and Salvati, who was paroled in 1997 after serving 30 years. Exoneration came too late for Greco, who died in prison in 1995 at age 78, and for Tameleo, who died a decade earlier at age 84.
Justice for All: DNA project can only confirm faith in system OPINION Dallas Morning News 2-21-07 -- District Attorney Craig Watkins has ordered a review of all felony cases in which the convicted has requested DNA testing to prove his innocence. This is welcome news for Dallasites who believe in law and order, which can only be built on bedrock public confidence in the criminal justice system. . . . That confidence has been shaken by the DNA exoneration of 12 Dallas County felons who had been sent to jail for crimes that a jury believed beyond a reasonable doubt that they had committed. Genetic evidence proved otherwise. . . . More than 350 Dallas County felons have made formal review requests since the state passed a law in 2001 allowing convicts to apply for DNA review. Local judges turned down 90 percent of the applications at the request of former DA Bill Hill. Of the 32 tests granted, more than one-third proved that the convictions had been erroneous, and six additional tests are pending. . . . That's a disturbing record and plainly suggests that further oversight is warranted.
Fight for freedom: Innocent man recounts years in prison 2-18-07 -- The night Dennis Fritz was sentenced to life in prison, it should have been the most frightening evening of his life. . . . Yet, when the bars to his cell clanged shut, there was a sense of relief. . . . “I was in a state of shock,” Fritz said. “That evening when I was taken back to the one-man cell, the finality of it hit me. I wasn’t surprised, but I was in a state of shock.” . . . Even though there was a chance he would never see the outside world ever again or never see the smile on his daughter’s face, Fritz was not sent to death row and that meant he could still fight for his freedom. . . . But what made it unbearable for the Oklahoma native was that he knew he didn’t belong there. . . . Going to prison for a crime you didn’t commit, it’s a fear most Americans do not have to worry about. . . . . However, for Fritz it was very real. He spent 12 years locked away after being convicted of rape and first-degree murder. . . . Fritz has written a book called “Journey Toward Justice,” in which he details his arrest and subsequent imprisonment until his release April 15, 1999.
Dallas County D.A. Looking to Free the Innocent District Attorney Works With Law Students, Advocacy Group to Identify the Wrongly Convicted
2-18-07 -- Dallas County District Attorney Craig Watkins has only been on the job for six weeks — but he has taken the unusual step of turning over all his files, from every felony conviction prosecuted in Dallas dating back to 1970, because he is concerned innocent men and women may be in prison. . . . Twelve men in just the last five years have been exonerated in Dallas County. . . . "I will make sure it never happens again," Watkins says. "We are going to make sure everyone it has happened to in the past gets out of jail." . . . Dallas County leads the nation in the number of inmates who have been exonerated. . . . "My position as the new district attorney is to not only put the bad guys in jail," Watkins says, "but to also be just and fair. It is my responsibility to bring credibility to this office." Justice reclaimed After decades on death row, Kerry Cook had to learn how to live again.
2-18-07 -- Beginning in the summer of 1977, when Linda Jo Edwards was found raped, murdered and mutilated in her Tyler apartment, Smith County fought hard to kill Kerry Max Cook for the deed. . . . Tried, convicted, sentenced to die and sent to the Ellis Unit in Huntsville, Cook was raped shortly after his arrival and made a sexual slave, a commodity to be traded like cigarettes in the death house economy. Over more than two decades he endured three trials, appeals that raised his hopes and dashed them again, brutal assaults and suicide attempts, the last of which, in August 1991, included nearly severing his penis. He dipped a finger in his own blood to scrawl a final message on the wall of his cell: "I was an innocent man." The organ was reattached and Cook recovered. . . . Over and over, his lawyers argued that Cook had gotten a raw deal, railroaded to death row by prosecutors and police. Finally, the appeals court agreed with them and ordered a new trial, his fourth. At the 11th hour, prosecutors offered a deal, and Cook walked out of the Bastrop County Courthouse a free man. . . . That was eight years ago. But to borrow from Faulkner, the past is never in the past for Kerry Max Cook. . . . His case has become a rallying cry for criminal justice reform advocates and death penalty opponents. Where once his companions were the scum of humanity, he now hobnobs with Ben Stiller, Bruce Springsteen and Susan Sarandon. His tale is one of those told in the hit play "The Exonerated." He has a book coming out Feb. 27, "Chasing Justice: My Story of Freeing Myself After Two Decades on Death Row for a Crime I Didn't Commit" and a Web site, chasingjustice.com.
Judge throws out Amrine’s civil lawsuit 2-13-07 -- (AP) - A former prison inmate who spent 17 years on death row on a murder conviction that was later thrown was not framed, a federal judge ruled in throwing out the man’s civil lawsuit. . . . Joseph D. Amrine of Kansas City was freed from state prison in 2003 after the Missouri Supreme Court overturned his murder conviction and death sentence. The court said the case "presents the rare circumstance in which no credible evidence remains from the first trial to support the conviction." . . . Amrine later sued a Missouri Department of Corrections investigator, the Cole County prosecutor, a prosecutor’s investigator and a Cole County deputy sheriff, alleging violations of his civil rights, conspiracy and malicious prosecution. Amrine contended they framed him, but the judge found otherwise and ruled he had no grounds to sue.
"The Wheels of Justice are Flat" - New York Speaks Out Against the Death Penalty Four exonerated prisoners speak out against the death penalty and NY's criminal justice system
2-13-07 -- In the wake of Ronell Wilson's death sentence, four exonerated prisoners and death penalty spoke out against the death penalty and New York state's flawed criminal justice system at the National Black Theater in Harlem on February 6th, 2007. . . . The death penalty is no longer America’s sweetheart. Executions are on hold in 11 states across the country, compelled by public horror at the inhumane, drawn out deaths by lethal injection such as Stanley Tookie Williams [http://tinyurl.com/9qvud] in California and Angel Nieves Diaz [http://www.commondreams.org/headlines06/1214-03.htm]in Florida. 12 states, along with the District of Columbia, do not have the death penalty on their books. . . . In New York state, public support for the death penalty has plummeted by 20% since the 1990s. In a September 2006 New York Times-CBS poll, only 29% of New Yorkers said they favored the death penalty, while 50% preferred life in prison without parole. Yet on January 30th, U.S. District Judge Nicholas Garaufis condemned Ronell Wilson to die for killing two undercover New York Police officers in Staten Island during a sting operation in 2003, New York’s first death sentence in over 50 years. . . . The impact of Wilson’s sentencing reverberated a week later at the National Black Theater in Harlem, as four wrongfully convicted men spoke about their ordeals at a panel hosted by the Campaign to end the Death Penalty and New Yorkers against the Death Penalty. Jeffrey Deskovic, Lawrence Hayes, Alan Newton, and Yusef Salaam were all exonerated of crimes ranging from robbery to rape to murder. However, they spent anywhere from 6 to 21 years in prison, and Hayes passed 2 years of his life on death row.
Freed inmate awarded $14 million Lab report hidden in '85 murder trial
2-12-07 -- A federal court jury on Friday ordered the Orleans Parish district attorney's office to pay $14 million to a former death row inmate who claimed he was wrongly convicted for the 1984 murder of local hotel executive Ray Liuzza. . . . The verdict capped a five-day trial in 44-year-old John Thompson's lawsuit claiming his rights were violated because a prosecutor on then-District Attorney Harry Connick's staff hid information that could have helped exonerate him. . . . District Attorney Eddie Jordan, whose office will have to deal with the $14 million bill, said he will appeal because the financial burden it imposes "will seriously affect our ability to execute our present functions and serve our city. . . . Taking pains to distance himself from the case, Jordan said, "This unfortunate incident happened on Connick's watch" and "is in no way reflective of the procedures and practices of the district attorney's office today." . . . The $14 million award was viewed as vindication by supporters of Thompson, who was 22 when he was convicted of Liuzza's murder and swiftly shipped off to Louisiana's death row.
The controversial Paul House case is now in the hands of the same federal judge who was unimpressed years ago with exonerating DNA evidence
2-7-07 -- For two decades Paul House has fought to prove he’s innocent, and after countless court hearings, appeals and denials, his fate now rests with a single judge—the very same judge who upheld his conviction and death sentence years ago, despite new evidence that even the U.S. Supreme Court determined would have resulted in acquittal. . . . The controversial case was reassigned to U.S. District Court Judge James H. Jarvis last week, and on Tuesday House filed a motion asking the federal judge in Knoxville to release him from his “illegal conviction and death sentence” unless the state grants him a new trial within 90 days. . . . “I’d like to think the judge would rule quickly,” says Stephen Kissinger, the federal public defender representing House. “We are sitting around discussing whether this innocent person’s constitutional rights were violated while he is still sitting on death row.” . . . But if the history of this convoluted case is any indication, a quick resolution is optimistic at best. Although it’s unclear how long it might take the judge to rule once the state responds to House’s latest motion, when Judge Jarvis considered this case in 1999, it took him more than a year to issue a ruling. If Jarvis dismisses House’s petition this time around, Kissinger says he of course will appeal once again.
Top NY Firm's Pro Bono Effort Frees Man Wrongfullly Convicted of Murder
2-1-07 -- A Brooklyn man imprisoned for nearly six years after a wrongful homicide conviction based on false eyewitness testimony was freed Tuesday, due to a three-year volunteer effort by a team from Davis Polk & Wardwell. . . . Lonnie Jones was convicted in 2002 of second-degree murder in the late-night shooting of two people in the courtyard of a Coney Island apartment complex. He was sentenced to 37 years to life. . . . The following year, Davis Polk partner Christopher Withers took the case on appeal, in pro bono partnership with the Legal Aid Society. . . . Mr. Jones' conviction was set aside last year by the Appellate Division, Second Department, which found reversible error in failure by a former assistant district attorney to correct the eyewitness' misstatement at trial regarding police lineup identification. . . . In the new trial, Davis Polk lead attorney Carey R. Dunne brought forth three new defense witnesses who testified that the original "eyewitness" had never seen the shooting from her ninth-floor balcony because at the time she was eating frankfurters on the boardwalk.
|
|
|||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
|
|
|
|||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
|
It is better that ten guilty escape
than one innocent suffer.
The punishment of a criminal is an example to the rabble; but every decent man is concerned if an innocent person is condemned. -- Jean de la Bruyere quotes (French satiric moralist, 1645-1696) -- |
|
Victims-of-Law has
compiled this list for educational
& research purposes.
The inclusion of links to any site in no way constitutes
an endorsement by Victims-of-Law.
Due to server's technical
difficulties the numbering restarted on 6/19/06
You are visitor number
Inaugurated on January 16, 2006
Updated 03/12/2009
Harold
Wilson is the 6th Person Exonerated in Pennsylvania
