12-23-08 --
he U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit
upheld a $14 million award to John Thompson, a
former death row inmate in Louisiana who was
exonerated after withheld evidence was revealed.
Thompson spent 18 years in prison, including 14
years in the solitary confinement of death row in
Angola Prison. He came within one month of being
executed in 1999 when his attorneys discovered blood
evidence that should have been turned over to the
defense years ago. The new evidence cleared
Thompson of an armed robbery conviction, which in
turn had influenced his trial for an unrelated
murder. At his re-trial on the capital murder
charge, Thompson was acquitted in thirty-five
minutes by a jury in 2003. Thompson sued the
District Attorney's Office of Orleans Parish in 2003
and won a jury verdict in 2007. The jury also
awarded $1 million for attorneys' fees. . . . The
state argued that the $14 million award was
excessive because Thompson did not suffer that
much. The 5th Circuit rejected that notion, briefly
describing his years in confinement: . . . The
evidence at trial showed that Thompson was arrested
when he was twenty-two years old and was not
released until he was forty. He spent the first two
and a half years in the Orleans Parish Prison, where
he was housed with the hard core criminals, four or
five to a cell. He witnessed multiple rapes and
lived in fear of becoming a victim himself. During
his time at the Orleans Parish Prison he received
only two visits from his family.
12-19-08 --
A Connecticut judge has granted a new trial and
ordered the release of a man who has been imprisoned
for 20 years for the 1988 killing of a Hartford
teenager. . . . Superior Court Judge David Gold's
ruling on Friday in the case of 52-year-old Miguel
Roman comes a week after another man was charged
with the killing and officials revealed that new DNA tests eliminated Roman as a suspect.
In 3 cases, Lake
County prosecutor Michael Mermel (left) is willing
to pit other evidence against genetic tests that
exclude defendants
By Steve Mills
| Tribune reporter
12-15-08 --
DNA evidence has been widely embraced over the last two decades as a
powerful forensic tool to prove a defendant's guilt
or innocence. But in LakeCounty, authorities have
sometimes pressed for convictions even when the DNA
doesn't match a suspect. . . . Consider three active
cases overseen by Michael Mermel, chief of the
criminal division for the LakeCounty state's attorney's
office: . . . When DNA evidence excluded a man convicted in the rape and battery of a
68-year-old woman, Mermel suggested the victim had
consensual sex with someone else. . . . When DNA evidence excluded
a man in the rape and murder of an 11-year-old girl,
Mermel and another prosecutor suggested that the
girl may have been sexually active. The DNA, he said, was a "red
herring." . . . And, just recently, when lawyers for
the man charged in the killing of his 8-year-old
daughter and her 9-year-old friend said in court
that DNA evidence from semen excluded him as the
perpetrator, the Lake prosecutor had another
explanation. . . . Mermel said DNA may have gotten
inside the 8-year-old's body as she played in the
woods at what became the crime scene—a place where
Mermel said some couples go to have sex. The girl
was found fully clothed.
12-12-08 --
A Houston man who spent five years in prison for the
sexual assault of an 8-year-old boy was to be freed
Friday after DNA evidence — which was collected after the 2002 attack yet never tested —
showed he didn't commit the crime. . . . A judge
approved a personal recognizance bond Friday for
Ricardo Rachell, was to be released while the
paperwork is completed to officially overturn his
conviction. Rachell, transferred from a state prison
to the HarrisCounty jail earlier this week,
did not appear at a brief court hearing where his
bond was approved. . . . Rachell, 51, had been
sentenced in 2003 to 40 years in prison. . . . "This
is a horrible mischaracterization of justice I think
on everybody's part," said Deborah Summers,
Rachell's attorney. "It's this kind of case that
really is frightening for our system."
Laws that permit
criminal-libel prosecution for online trash talk fly
in the face of the 1st Amendment.
Los Angeles
Times Editorial
12-11-08 -- In
keeping with
Shakespeare’s observation
that "he that filches from me my good name ... makes
me poor indeed," someone suing for libel ordinarily
seeks financial compensation from the person or
publication that injured his or her reputation. But
archaic laws in several states also allow libel to
be prosecuted as a criminal offense, and a Colorado
man accused of
defaming his ex-girlfriend
online now faces the possibility of 18 months in
prison. . . . The prosecution of J.P. Weichel is an
affront to the 1st Amendment, and a federal or state
court should declare Colorado's law
unconstitutional. Allowing the prosecution to
proceed any further also would encourage prosecutors
in 14 other states with criminal-libel laws to
resurrect this "crime" in response to trash talk on
the Internet. That in turn might galvanize
legislators in states without such laws to enact
them. The 1st Amendment would be the loser.
NEW YORK
After 15 Years in Prison, Innocent Man Collects $2.6
Mil
Reported by:
Sean Carroll
12-10-08 --
On Tuesday, a man from Syracuse agreed to a $2.6
million settlement with New York State after
spending 15 years in prison for a murder he did not
commit. . . . Roy Brown was convicted for the 1991
murder of a woman in a Syracuse suburb. DNA evidence eventually linked that murder to another man who had taken his
life while Brown sat in a prison cell. Brown was
exonerated and set free in 2007. . . . Brown spent
time in
Rochester when he received a liver transplant at
StrongMedical Center. He was diagnosed
with a liver disease while behind bars and wasn't
allowed on the transplant list until after he was
released.
KENTUCKY
Judge:
Clear Ky. record of former death row
inmate
By Brett
Barrouquere - Associated Press Writer
12-5-08 --
A federal judge has ordered Kentucky to clear a
former death row inmate's record in a rape and
slaying case that resulted in the state's first
death sentence after states resumed executing
inmates. . . . U.S. District Judge Danny C. Reeves's
order on Thursday eliminates 62-year-old Eugene
Williams Gall Jr.'s arrest, conviction and sentence
in the 1978 kidnapping, rape and death of
12-year-old Lisa Jansen. . . . Jansen's death and
Gall's trial sent shivers through northern Kentucky
and southern Ohio. . . . "I remember being afraid
that random people on the street would snatch you,"
said Linda Tally Smith, who was 9 years old at the
time and is now the top prosecutor in BooneCounty, where she grew up and
Gall was convicted. "It was scary."
By Shelley
Murphy, Jonathan Saltzman, and Kathy McCabe, Globe
Staff
12-4-08 --
Peter Limone, one of the men who won millions last
year in a lawsuit over their wrongful murder
convictions decades ago, has been arrested on
gambling and loan-sharking charges, law enforcement
officials said. . . . Limone, who was arrested today
at his Medford home, is accused of leading an
organization that profited from gambling,
loan-sharking, and extortion in the Greater Boston
area, the Middlesex District Attorney's office said
in a statement. . . . Prosecutors said another man
was arrested and 18 others were indicted. More
details were expected to be released at a 6:30 p.m. news conference. . . . A federal judge ruled last year that the
government should pay $101.7 million in damages for
the wrongful imprisonment of Limone and three other
men. Limone had spent 33 years in prison before he
was released. The federal government has filed an
appeal; the award has not yet been made.
11-30-08 --
Doreen Giuliano concocted an elaborate undercover
sting operation to free her son from prison,
changing her appearance and her identity to pursue a
flirtatious relationship with a man who was a juror
in her son’s trial. But legal experts said on
Saturday that she would have a difficult time
persuading a judge to overturn her son’s conviction.
. . . Ms. Giuliano, 47, secretly recorded her
conversations with the man, Jason Allo, a contractor
in Bensonhurst, Brooklyn, for several months,
beginning in October 2007. She said she recorded Mr.
Allo saying that he knew members of her son’s clique
— people who “used to abuse” his brother — but kept
the information to himself during jury selection.
She also said he told her that he guided other
jurors and that he said he never should have been on
the jury. . . . Ms. Giuliano’s son, John Giuca, was
one of two men convicted of murdering Mark Fisher, a
19-year-old Fairfield University student who was
shot five times and found on a quiet Brooklyn street
after a night of partying in New York City in
October 2003. Mr. Giuca and the other man, Antonio
Russo, were sentenced to 25 years to life in prison.
. . . Based on the recorded conversations, Mr.
Giuca’s lawyer, Lloyd Epstein, is expected to file a
motion this week to overturn the conviction.
11-29-08 --
Two years ago, authorities realized that Mashelle
Bullington was not the gun-toting burglar they
thought when they locked her away for more than
three years in prison. . . . But it was not until
last week, during a brief hearing in a Sunnyvale
courtroom, that her name was finally cleared. . . .
Victimized initially by a wrongful conviction,
Bullington then watched helplessly as her case
stayed stuck for months in a complicated legal
morass until Judge Douglas Southard finally
overturned the felony conviction. . . . The court
action resulted from the combined efforts of the
Northern California Innocence Project and Deputy
District Attorney David Angel, who wrote in court
papers that Bullington had been the victim of
"perjured testimony and false evidence" at trial. .
. . Authorities knew that much since Thanksgiving
week two years ago, when they arranged the release
of Kenneth Foley in connection with the same
incident. But Bullington's case ended up posing
bigger legal challenges than Foley's. . . . On
Wednesday, Angel called Bullington a "heroine,"
saying of the overturned conviction, ''I am so glad
we were able to accomplish this."
11-29-08 --
How could so many people admit in vivid detail to a
horrendous crime that they didn't commit? . . . That
was the question after the Central Park 5. . . .
After the Norfolk 4. . . . And now, the Beatrice 6.
. . . The murder case out of Beatrice, Neb., in
which six people were wrongfully convicted in 1989
of the slaying of a 68-year-old woman, is a new
national record for the most people exonerated in
one case by DNA evidence. . . . Two national experts who study false confessions said
the Beatrice case appears to fit patterns of other
cases: The suspects were young people with
low-esteem or mental problems who were abusing
alcohol or drugs. They were easily influenced,
easily confused and worn out by aggressive
questioning. . . . But Saul Kassin, a professor of
psychology at the John Jay College of Criminal
Justice in New York City, and Richard Leo, a law
professor at the University of San Francisco, said
the Beatrice case had an unusual aspect: the role
played during interrogations by a police
psychologist who previously had served as private
therapist to some of those being questioned. . . .
In general, false confessions, even by several
people in the same case, are not that unusual,
Kassin said. About 25 percent of the cases where
DNA evidence has led to exonerations involve false confessions.
Types of false confessions
Voluntary:
Without prompting from police, people profess guilt
to crimes they didn't commit for attention, to
protect someone else or because they suffer from
delusions.
Compliant:
A suspect confesses falsely to avoid punishment,
escape from a stressful interrogation or gain an
implied reward.
Internalized:
Vulnerable suspects, due to young age, mental
problems and other factors, exposed to highly
suggestive interrogation tactics, not only confess
but grow to believe that they committed a crime.
Sources: Saul Kassin,
psychology professor, John Jay College of Criminal
Justice; World-Herald files
11-26-08 --
Steven Barnes stood, free of handcuffs and out of
state custody for the first time in nearly 20 years,
and embraced his mother and sister. . . . A man's
voiced boomed from the back of the courtroom:
"Barnes you're home where you belong, buddy!" . . .
Barnes had spent nearly two decades in prison for a
murder he didn't commit. It took a judge just six
minutes Tuesday to set him free. . . . "Mr. Barnes,
I rule that you be released immediately," Oneida
County Court Judge Michael Dwyer told Barnes, who
had been in state prison since 1989 for the murder
of a 16-year-old girl. . . . Friends and family who
had jammed the courtroom in Utica erupted into
applause. . . . Barnes was convicted of rape and
second-degree murder in the strangling death of a
Whitesboro High School student. Tests concluded last
week showed that Barnes' DNA matched none of four samples found on Kimberly Simon's body and
clothing.
ARIZONA
Court overturns 1991 murder conviction of Arizona
teen who confessed; 8-year-old's interrogation is
similar
Johnathan Doody --
said to have slain nine at a Buddhist temple -- was
questioned at length with no adult support. This
month, so was a third-grader accused of killing his
father and a boarder.
By Carol J. Williams
11-21-08 --
A federal appeals court Thursday threw out the
conviction of an Arizona
man in the 1991 killings of nine worshipers at a
Buddhist temple, ruling that police had coerced the
then-17-year-old's confession by interrogating him
for 12 hours without a lawyer or supportive adult
present. . . . The decision could signal that
Arizona authorities might face judicial censure for
their treatment of an 8-year-old boy charged with
two counts of murder earlier this month. The boy was
subjected to interrogation with neither an attorney
nor a relative at the videotaped session. . . . In
the earlier case, Johnathan Doody was 17 when he was
relentlessly questioned and was told that others had
implicated him in the temple slayings, rendering the
confession he gave "involuntary" and insufficient to
sustain his murder conviction,
a three-judge panel of the U.S. 9th Circuit Court
of Appeals ruled.
11-20-08 --
Lawyers at Northwestern University say they have
evidence the wrong man was convicted in 1981 of
killing a security guard at a Chicago-area Masonic
Temple. . . . Anthony McKinney was sentenced to life
in prison with no parole for the robbery and murder
of Donald Lundahl outside the temple in Harvey, a
small community south of Chicago. Lundahl's body was
found in his car on the night of the Muhammad
Ali-Leon Spinks title match in 1978. . . . Karin
Daniel and Steven Drizin of the Northwestern Law
School's Center for Wrongful Convictions say Harvey
police beat a confession out of the 18-year-old
McKinney and statements implicating him in the
killing out of two witnesses, the Chicago Sun-Times
reported.
11-19-08 --
Lawyers for double murder suspect Jerry Hobbs III
said Tuesday there is new evidence in the case that
justifies releasing their client on bond. . . . But
LakeCounty prosecutors claim that
the evidence is neither new nor the key to the
jailhouse door Hobbs wants it to be. . . . Hobbs,
36, has been held without bond since his arrest in
the May 9, 2005, stabbing murders of his daughter, Laura, 8, and her friend Krystal
Tobais, 9, in a Zion park. . . . The
LakeCounty public defender's office
claims a California scientist has discovered sperm
on Laura Hobbs' body and clothing with a DNA profile
that does not match her father's. . . . In a motion
requesting a bond be set for Hobbs, the lawyers
claim the DNA is that of the real killer of the girls. . . . "The defense has
developed conclusive scientific evidence indicating
that the charged offenses were committed by a male
who has been identified by complete DNA profile," the motion reads.
DNA Reveals
Widespread Corruption in Brevard County
By Seth Miller, David
Menschel and Melissa Montle
11-19-08 --
Today, at approximately 5 p.m., William Dillon will
walk out of Brevard County Jail after being freed
pending trial. Last Friday, the Eighteenth Judicial
Circuit Court vacated his murder conviction after
DNA testing proved his innocence. The Innocence Project of Florida (IPF)
paid for the
DNA testing and drafted the post-conviction
pleadings in Dillon's case. . . . Dillon's 27 years
of wrongful incarceration equals the longest time
served by any of the 223 DNA exonerees nationwide. He will be the third man to be exonerated in
Brevard County
in recent years. . . . The State Attorney's Office
asserts that it plans to retry Mr. Dillon, though if
it could or will do so remains to be seen. "I don't
see how they could re-try this case. All they have
is a fraud, an admitted perjurer, a snitch, and a
half-blind eyewitness," said Melissa Montle, Staff
Attorney with IPF.
11-17-08 --
Antrone Lynelle Johnson twice was convicted of
sexual assault as a high school student, earning him
a life sentence. . . . Mr. Johnson, who is 31,
contends that both cases from the mid-1990s were
built on lies and prosecutorial misconduct. If a
judge agrees, he could be set free as early as
today. . . . DallasCounty prosecutors illegally
withheld evidence that might have cleared Mr.
Johnson, court records show. . . . In one of the
cases, a girl told the prosecutor that Mr. Johnson
did not rape her. In the other, the girl gave
conflicting statements about whether she had sex
with him.
11-16-08 --
The attorney for 1 of the six people wrongly
convicted in the 1985 rape and murder of a Beatrice
woman says he'll contact the six to see if there's
interest in filing a lawsuit against the state. . .
. The 1985 case was the first time in Nebraska
history that inmates have been freed based on DNA evidence. . . . Doug Stratton is attorney for Joseph White, 1 of the
six exonerated people who served long prison
sentences.
He lands in jail and
loses job over wrong ID in support case
By Pete Shellem, Of The
Patriot-News
11-16-08 --
When Walter Andre Sharpe Jr. signed for a certified
letter from Dauphin County Domestic Relations in
2001, he didn't know he was signing on for a
seven-year nightmare. . . . Since then, the
Philadelphia man has been thrown in jail four times,
lost his job, become estranged from his four
children and spent more than $12,000 to support the
child of another man. . . . It finally stopped in
May 2007 when a judge reversed a finding that he was
the father. . . . But the same judge has since ruled
that Sharpe is not entitled to any compensation, not
even the money he was forced to pay to support the
child. . . . Sharpe's attorney, Tabetha Tanner, said
the county Domestic Relations office "stole"
Sharpe's identity by exchanging his date of birth,
address and Social Security number for that of the
father. . . . The agency fought Sharpe's attempts to
have DNA testing and said it determined he was the father "after reasonable
investigation." . . . Yet it took The Patriot-News
less than an hour to track down the real father,
Andre Sharpe, who said the girl that Walter Sharpe
has been paying support for has been living with him
for the last four years.
FLORIDA
Former death row inmate, cleared by killer's
confession, now fights death penalty
By Jennifer W. Sanchez,
The Salt Lake Tribune
11-13-08 --
For almost 18 years, Juan Roberto Melendez sat on a
Florida death row. . . . His cell was infested with
roaches and rats that climbed into his bed. He
couldn't work or take any classes. He watched his
three daughters grow up in pictures. And his only
visitors - his mom and aunt - just came twice early
on because it was too painful for him to see them. .
. . His only way out: suicide. But, he said, his
belief in God kept him from hanging himself. . . .
"I don't know the language. I don't know the
system. I'm lost in there," Melendez told an
audience Wednesday at WeberState University. "I didn't know
when they were coming to get me [for execution]." .
. . After the Florida Supreme Court upheld
Melendez's murder conviction and death sentence
three times, he was awarded a new trial - in a
different county - and was found innocent. . . .
Melendez - the 99th person to be released from one
of the nation's death rows since 1973 - shared his
story with about 200 people as part of the
university's Human Rights Week sponsored by Amnesty
International.
By David Heinzmann and
Steve Mills | Tribune reporters
11-13-08 --
Lawyers for Jerry Hobbs, a Zion man accused of
murdering his 8-year-old daughter and her friend on
Mother's Day 2005, say DNA evidence has excluded him as the killer, according to court documents
filed Wednesday. . . . In a motion seeking a new
bail hearing for Hobbs, who has been
held without bail for three years, the lawyers said
forensic testing did not match him to small semen
samples recovered from Laura Hobbs' body and the
fabric of her jean skirt. . . . Hobbs has been
jailed since police say he signed a confession just
days after Laura and her 9-year-old friend Krystal
Tobias were found beaten and stabbed in BeulahPark in the far northern suburb.
11-13-08 --
Former Gage County Attorney Richard Smith is
defending his handling of a case even though DNA evidence shows six people he helped convict were wrongly imprisoned for
years. . . . Smith says that he would have been
called "nuts" for not filing the charges he did 20
years ago. He says he and others did all they could
to make sure the right people went to jail. . . .
But Nebraska Attorney General Jon Bruning released
documents today he says show questionable
interrogation and other tactics used to get the
wrongful convictions for the 1985 rape and murder of
Helen Wilson. . . . Three people have been released
from prison in recent weeks after DNA evidence showed they were not involved. The DNA evidence has proved that an
Oklahoma man who died in 1992 committed the crime.
10-21-08 --
Alan Crotzer, the man who spent 25 years in state
prison for a rape he did not commit, asked the
Governor for a fresh start Tuesday and got it.
Crotzer has already received 1.25 million for his
wrongful conviction. The Governor and Executive
Clemency Board erased two old convictions, which
will allow Crotzer to look to the future. . . . Alan
Crotzer walked into the Capitol a convicted felon.
He walked out with a clean record. Minutes earlier
he asked the Governor for a pardon. . . . “I am not
the monster that they tried to make me be. Every day
in prison I tried to prove that.” . . . At 18,
Crotzer was convicted of robbery when four of his
friends grabbed cases of beer at a convenience store
and fled. While in prison for the rape he didn’t
commit, he was charged with possessing pot. . . .
The governor decided he has paid enough. . . . “I
make the motion that we grant a full pardon and
expungement.” . . . “When someone has changed their
life, you recognize that and you give them a second
chance. I mean, the man works for the Department of
Juvenile Justice now and I’m very proud of Alan
Crotzer.” . . . With a crime free record, Crotzer
wants a college education and to work for the prison
system correcting the abuses he saw as an inmate. .
. . “Prison offers nothing but corruption and chaos
and mayhem. We can’t hardly clothe them, house them
or feed them. I go in there to give them hope and
let them know they can be inspired by me. That’s
what I do. It makes me tick.”
10-21-08 --
In July 2003, Shih-Wei Su, who had been a resident
of the state prison system for nearly 13 years, won
a big criminal case: a federal appeals court said
that a prosecutor in Queens had lied and had
tolerated lies by a witness in order to convict Mr.
Su of attempted murder for a shooting at a pool
hall. . . . He was owed a new, honest trial within
90 days, the court said, or he should be released. .
. . “After the conviction was vacated, they brought
me to RikersIsland, and the D.A.’s office
sent my Legal Aid lawyer to tell me that they would
nail me to the wall unless I made a deal,” Mr. Su
said on Tuesday. . . . He had gone to prison when he
was 17 years old. At age 30, he could practically
smell freedom from his cell. . . . “Their offer was,
‘Plead guilty, you’ll get time served, you could
walk out of here today,’ ” Mr. Su recalled. “I said
no. They kept me in Rikers until the 90th day. Then
they released me.” Last week, the City of New York
ended the matter of Mr. Su’s wrongful incarceration
by writing a check for $3.5 million.
By Jennifer Emily &
Steve McGonigle / The Dallas Morning News
10-14-08 --
The fallibility of eyewitness testimony revealed by
DNA exonerations in DallasCounty and nationwide is not a
relic of the past. Police and prosecutors still
depend on the same discredited identification
procedures to ensure convictions today. . . .
District Attorney Craig Watkins congratulates
Johnnie Earl Lindsey, exonerated in a rape case last
month after 26 years in prison. Mr. Watkins has made
righting wrongful convictions a hallmark of his
administration. . . . Police use these techniques in
a variety of crimes from murders to robberies. The
difference between today's cases and the 19
exonerations involving sexual assaults is that often
there is no DNA to ensure guilt or innocence. . . . "We've shown how unreliable
eyewitness testimony is in sexual assault cases,"
said Rob Warden, executive director of the Center on
Wrongful Convictions at Northwestern
University law school. . . . "But now the system
itself is pretending that all of these armed robbery
cases are just hunky dory when we know, if anything,
it's no doubt less reliable in an armed robbery case
than in a sexual assault case." . . . It's
impossible to estimate how many wrongful convictions
might be occurring in cases without genetic
evidence, experts say. . . . "There is no question
that there are many more mistakes that we will never
know about because there is no DNA in those cases," said Edwin Colfax, an Austin researcher
with the nonprofit reform group The Justice Project.
10-12-08 --
Michele Mallin said she was "100 percent sure" when
she identified Timothy Brian Cole as the man who
raped her. . . . Her resolve never wavered, Ms.
Mallin said, until she learned last May that DNA
testing had invalidated her 1985 identification. The
revelation came nearly nine years after Mr. Cole
died at 39 in a Texas prison from an asthma attack.
. . . "I was more shocked than I think I had ever
been in my entire life," Ms. Mallin said during a
recent lawyers workshop in Fort Worth. . . . The
Dallas Morning News is identifying Ms. Mallin
because she has chosen to speak publicly about her
rape to help Mr. Cole's family win a posthumous
pardon.
10-12-08 --
Of the 19 DallasCounty convictions overturned by
DNA testing, 18 were based on faulty witness identifications. One murder
case had no eyewitness. . . . A review of the case
files by The Dallas Morning News found that: / •
Eight of the wrongly identified men lived, worked or
socialized near the witnesses. / • Four were
suspects in unrelated crimes. / • All the cases
involved sexual assault, though not all the men were
charged with rape. / • Fourteen cases were
prosecuted during former District Attorney Henry
Wade's tenure, which ended in 1986 and was marked by
hardball trial tactics and high conviction rates. /
• Five faulty convictions were recorded during the
terms of two Wade lieutenants: John Vance, who had
four, and Bill Hill, who had one. . . . Mr. Hill was
district attorney in April 2001 when Texas prisoners won
the right to file for post-conviction DNA testing. His prosecutors opposed genetic testing in 10 cases where that
evidence ultimately invalidated the conviction.
10-10-08 --
The Attorney General's Office as well as other state
and federal agencies announced on Thursday that $1.3
million has been given through a grant for DNA testing that could overturn
convictions of innocent inmates. . . .
Representatives from the Attorney General's Office,
Arizona Justice Project and the Arizona Criminal
Justice Commission are administering the project,
which was funded by the National Institute of
Justice, an agency of the U.S. Department of
Justice. . . . "There is a common interest in the
application of justice that all of us in the
criminal-justice system share," Attorney General
Terry Goddard said. "We have no interest whatsoever
- as a prosecutor I can say this affirmatively - in
convicting someone who is innocent and sending them
to prison."
Faulty ID Procedures
At Heart of Bid to Overturn Murder Conviction
New York
Lawyer, By Thomas Adcock, New York Law Journal
10-10-08 --
The fate of Fernando Bermudez, ever hopeful of
leaving the cell he has occupied at Sing Sing since
his 1992 conviction in the fatal shooting of a teen
following a dispute at the Marc Ballroom on Union
Square, now rests with a solo practitioner who
operates from her suburban home office, backed up by
a large-firm lawyer who helped get the conviction of
Martin Tankleff overturned last December. . . . The
latest move in the matter of Mr. Bermudez, a cause
célèbre for legal scholars and the defense bar who
has maintained his innocence through years of state
and federal appeals, was last Friday's 440 motion in
Manhattan Supreme Court to reverse his conviction
for second-degree homicide. . . . Pro bono attorneys
for Mr. Bermudez - at the moment including Barry J.
Pollack, a partner in the Washington, D.C., office
of Kelley Drye & Warren, and solo Lesley C. Risinger
of Kearny, N.J. - base their motion on faulty police
identification procedures as well as the first-time
claim in any courtroom that their client is
"actually, factually innocent . . . substantiated by
abundant corroborative information, some of which is
quite new."
INDIANA
Judge faces rare disciplinary hearing
Marion County judge
and court commissioner accused of mishandling case
of man cleared of rape
By Jon Murray
10-8-08 --
A man sat in prison for nearly two years waiting to
be cleared of rape while a MarionCounty court dragged its heels,
mishandled an order that would lead to his freedom
and even lost his file. . . . Even after a judge and
his court commissioner realized the mistakes, Harold
David Buntin sat behind bars for another six weeks.
That was the last of several missteps that launched
rare disciplinary proceedings before a panel of
three judges from other counties this week. . . .
"Of the many regrets I have regarding this whole
matter, that is one of my biggest ones," former
Master Commissioner Nancy L. Broyles said Tuesday
about the final delay. "I take full responsibility
for that and regret it." . . . Broyles testified
during a two-day hearing in the action against Judge
Grant Hawkins, the elected judge overseeing the
court where Broyles handled Buntin's post-conviction
case.
10-7-08 --
A former Marlboro man who spent nearly a decade in
prison for a rape he did not commit should be paid
more than $13 million for the "terrible injustice"
he suffered, U.S. District Court Judge Rya W. Zobel
ordered this week. . . . Judge Zobel issued the
$13.6 million award for Eric R. Sarsfield on
Wednesday, after her consideration of evidence in a
one-day bench trial on Aug. 14. The award includes
the $2 million settlement the city of Marlboro
reached with Mr. Sarsfield in March. The rest of the
award, $11.6 million, will have to come from other
liable parties, if possible. . . . In her three-page
decision, Judge Zobel said Mr. Sarsfield's problems
with alcohol and drugs before his wrongful
imprisonment worsened and his "social and communal
life has been shredded." She said that the phobia
and panic disorders he suffers from are the direct
result of his incarceration.
9-25-08 --
An innocent man who blames Jeanine Pirro for his 16
years in prison is calling for a boycott of her new
television show. . . . Jeffrey Deskovic says the
"Judge Jeanine Pirro" show on the CW Television
Network "glorifies, promotes and compensates those
who have participated in human and civil rights
violations." He's calling for a boycott of the
network, its affiliates and its advertisers. . . .
Laura Mandel, a publicist for the show's production
company, would not comment. . . . The 35-year-old
Deskovic, who is suing Pirro, claims that when she
was Westchester district attorney she refused his requests to run DNA tests after he was convicted of killing a teenage girl.
Judge throws out
Durham case that put a youth behind bars
By Anne Blythe, Staff
Writer
9-22-08 --
Erick Daniels spent nearly a third of his 22 years
behind bars for crimes a judge said Friday he did
not commit. . . . When he walked free Friday
afternoon, one of the first acts as a freed man was
something he might have done as a teen: He went to
the mall with his mother to buy new underwear and
clothes. . . . Then he stepped out with his younger
brother and cousin for a haircut and a taste of the
life he has missed. . . . "That haircut might take
five days," Karen Daniel said. "You should see him.
He is so happy." . . . Erick Daniels screamed
"Mommy" in December 2001 when bailiffs led him out
of a courtroom as a scared 15-year-old convicted of
burglary and robbery.
9-20-08 --
For the first time in more than 25 years Friday,
Johnnie Earl Lindsey embraced his son – and freedom.
. . . "My son, he wasn't even 2 years old when I
left," Mr. Lindsey said. "His name is Johnnie, but
we call him J.J." . . . "Nah, it's just Jay," said
27-year-old Johnnie Cooper, his eyes red and wet
with tears as he looked at the stranger he has been
told is his father. . . . But more than a nickname
has changed since Mr. Lindsey, 56, was wrongly
imprisoned for a 1981 rape at White Rock Lake that
DNA testing showed he did not
commit. . . . The Internet, cellphone texting and
other technological advancements will be foreign to
the newly released man.
9-19-08 --
A federal judge has dismissed a libel lawsuit filed
against best-selling author
John Grisham
and two other writers over books they wrote about
the wrongful conviction of two men in a 1982 murder.
. . . The lawsuit was filed last year by former
Pontotoc County, Ok., District Attorney Bill
Peterson, former Oklahoma State Bureau of
Investigation investigator Gary Rogers and Melvin
Hett, a state criminalist. All three helped win the
original convictions in the slaying of cocktail
waitress Debbie Sue Carter. . . . The plaintiffs
alleged that the defendants conspired to commit
libel, generate publicity for themselves by placing
the plaintiffs in a false light and intentionally
inflicted emotional distress. . . . But U.S.
District Judge Ronald White rejected those claims in
his ruling Wednesday in the U.S. District Court for
the Eastern District of Oklahoma. . . . The two men
initially convicted in the slaying --
Ron Williamson
and
Dennis Fritz
-- were later cleared by DNA evidence and freed
after 12 years in prison.
9-19-08 --
After nearly 26 years in prison, Johnnie Earl
Lindsey expects to walk out of a Dallas courtroom
this morning a free man. . . . DNA test results proved that Mr. Lindsey was not the man who raped a woman
who had been riding her bike near WhiteRock Lake in 1981. . . . He is
scheduled to appear before a judge at 10 a.m. for a
hearing that could lead to his release. . . . One of
the first things Mr. Lindsey, 56, plans to do is see
his invalid mother, who is living in nursing home,
said his attorney, Michelle Moore, who is an
assistant Dallas County public defender and a board
member for the Innocence Project, a legal group that
seeks to get wrongful convictions overturned. . . .
“He’s scared to come out,” Ms. Moore said. “I mean
it’s frightening after 26 years to come out and not
have anything.” . . . Mr. Lindsey has long denied
raping the woman -- even after he was convicted and
sentenced to life. (The policy of The Dallas Morning
News is not identify sexual assault victims.) . . .
If released, Mr. Lindsey would be the 19th man
cleared by DNA testing in DallasCounty since 2001, when the
Legislature began allowing post-conviction DNA
testing.
9-18-08 --
Yesterday a federal judge in Oklahoma City
dismissed a libel suit
against bestselling author
John Grisham
and spoke in strong terms about the need to protect
free speech when it comes to analysis of the US
legal system. . . . “What two words best describe a
claim for money damages by government officials
against authors and publishers of books describing
purported prosecutorial misconduct?,” asked US
District Judge Ronald White in his ruling. “Answer:
Not plausible.” . . . The suit involved Grisham’s
book “The
Innocent Man,”
written about the 1982 killing of Debra Sue Carter,
an Ada, Okla., cocktail waitress. Two men,
Dennis Fritz
and
Ron Williamson,
were arrested and convicted of the killing, then
later freed by DNA evidence after serving 12 years
in prison. . . . Grisham’s book explores both the
killing and the subsequent investigation. Former
Pontotoc County District Attorney
William Peterson,
former Oklahoma State Bureau of Investigation
investigator Gary Rogers, and Melvin Hett, an
Oklahoma State Bureau of Investigation
criminologist, were plaintiffs in the case.
9-12-08 --
Pinellas lawyer Jay Hebert held a secret that gnawed
at him for nearly a decade. . . . In 1999, a
22-year-old client named Lesley Stewart admitted to
him that she helped bury the body of Belleair real
estate agent Rosemary Christensen. . . . Stewart
told Hebert that her boyfriend, Robert Glenn Temple,
murdered Christensen, his wife. Stewart said Temple
talked her into helping him clean up the mess and
burying the body. . . . Hebert urged Stewart to tell
authorities, but she refused and left the state with
Temple. The case was unsolved,
and Christensen's whereabouts became one of Pinellas
County's most enduring mysteries. . . . Hebert
wished he could have helped solve the case. But the
rule of attorney-client privilege — a lawyer cannot
divulge client secrets — prevented him from doing
so.
Charges dropped in
case where another man allegedly confessed
By Matthew Walberg |
Chicago Tribune reporter
9-5-08 --
A South Side man who spent more than a
quarter-century in prison for a murder that another
man allegedly confessed to won't be retried because
the Illinois attorney general's office dismissed the
charges Thursday. . . . "I've been telling everybody
for the last 26 years, 'I didn't do this,' and
finally they did the right thing," Alton Logan, 55,
said Thursday after his case was formally dismissed.
"I'm happy that I can finally get on with my life,
try to do some of the things I want to do." . . .
Logan spent 26 years in prison for the 1982 slaying
of Lloyd Wickliffe, a security guard at a South Side
McDonald's restaurant. But a judge ordered his
release on bond in April after two attorneys
revealed that a former client had confessed to
fatally shooting the guard.
Lt. Jim Gavin
testifies that he was told to drop his inquiry into
a 1985 murder conviction, and later was transferred
against his will. Officials deny any mistreatment,
pointing to Gavin's promotion.
By Scott Glover, Los
Angeles Times Staff Writer
9-4-08 --
A decorated Los Angeles Police Department lieutenant
once assigned to the internal affairs division
testified in federal court this week that he was
retaliated against by his superiors after he
unearthed evidence undermining a decades-old murder
conviction. . . . Jim Gavin is suing his department
for allegedly waging a campaign of harassment
against him and his police officer wife in the wake
of his work on the case of convicted killer Bruce
Lisker. Lisker was convicted of killing his mother
in 1985 and sentenced to 16 years to life in prison.
. . . Gavin was a sergeant in internal affairs five
years ago when he received a complaint from Lisker
alleging that he was the victim of a sloppy,
dishonest investigation by an LAPD detective. Gavin
began delving into the allegations and soon
discovered evidence supporting Lisker's claim. For
example, he found that bloody shoe prints,
presumably left by the killer and attributed to
Lisker at trial, did not match Lisker's shoes. . . .
Gavin told jurors that after uncovering the
potentially exculpatory evidence, he was ordered to
cut short his investigation by his then-boss, Lt.
Mike Williams, who has since been promoted to
captain.
8-21-08 --
An attorney for Claude McCollum in his civil case
seeking monetary damages for McCollum's wrongful
conviction said a report released Tuesday only goes
to prove that prosecutors knowingly tried to convict
an innocent man. . . . Hugh Clarke Jr. said he
hasn't had time yet to fully study the 12-page
attorney general's report, but said it's clear from
his first read that Ingham County Assistant
Prosecutor Eric Matwiejczyk knew McCollum was
innocent during trial. . . . "It's going to further
support some of the views and positions that we've
said all along and that's that he knew all along,"
Clarke said. . . . Clarke said the report likely
will feature prominently in the case going forward.
. . . The civil case is set for mediation in
October, Clarke said. If no agreement is reached, it
could go to trial.
8-19-08 --
DNA evidence could play a part in determining whether a man sitting on
death row lives or dies by lethal injection. . . .
If the state can find it. . . . Tommy Arthur was
scheduled to be executed on July 31 for the
murder-for-hire killing of his girlfriend's husband
in 1981. . . . His attorneys contend that DNA evidence would
conclusively prove whether Arthur was responsible,
but prosecutors claim that it can't be located. . .
. Across the nation, 25 states and Washington, D.C.,
have laws requiring local court clerks to preserve
evidence presented at trial. Alabama is not among
them. . . . Although the state Supreme Court and law
enforcement agencies have policies in place to
protect evidence, there is no statutory oversight. .
. . In the Arthur case, Judy Wicker claimed that an
intruder raped her at her Muscle Shoals home and
killed her husband. But three different juries
didn't believe the intruder story and found Arthur,
her boyfriend at the time, responsible. . . . Days
before Arthur was to be executed, a detailed
confession from state prisoner Bobby Ray Gilbert
gave the Alabama Supreme Court reason to delay the
execution. . . . Arthur's attorneys have asked the
Alabama Attorney General's Office to produce DNA evidence collected in the rape kit because modern analysis would
indicate whether it matched Arthur, Gilbert or an
unknown rapist. Attorneys with the Attorney
General's Office say that they cannot find this
evidence. . . . In many states, failure to keep
track of evidence in a death row case would be
against the law.
8-18-08 --
A man who spent nearly 20 years behind bars is
walking free after new evidence showed that he was
wrongfully convicted of murder in the 1988 shooting
of a motorist in Southeast Washington. . . . A judge
ordered the release of
Aaron Michael Howard
this month after the prosecutor withdrew from the
case in open court, saying he could no longer
represent the government in trying to validate the
jury's guilty verdict. . . . The case represented
another victory for the nonprofit Innocence Project
but demonstrated a weakness of the legal system. In
some cases, the Innocence Project has rescued
convicted murderers from death row, helping to fuel
political opposition to the death penalty. . . .
Attorneys for the Mid-Atlantic Innocence Project
compiled statements from witnesses that included
confessions from three other men convicted in the
crime and implicated a fourth man as the killer. He
has since died. . . . Mr. Howard agreed to plead
guilty to the lesser charge of manslaughter and was
released immediately for time served.
OHIO
Judge frees convicted Ohio rapist after DNA test
By Stephen Majors,
Associated Press
8-12-08 --
A judge freed a man Monday who had spent nearly 18
years in prison on a charge of raping a 10-year-old
girl after a lab re-examining cases across Ohio
showed that his DNA profile didn't match evidence from the crime scene. . . . Robert
McClendon, 52, was released by Franklin County
Common Pleas Judge Charles Schneider, who cited the
DNA test. . .
. "You know, you go through times where you feel it
might not happen, but you never, ever give up hope,"
McClendon said after his release. "You don't ever
use the word, 'never happen.' It's not healthy." . .
. McClendon's relatives and supporters cheered and
embraced McClendon upon his release, when he met his
20-year-old daughter Rahshea' Knaff and 9-month old
granddaughter Sa'Rai Shelton for the first time.
8-7-08 --
No relief arrived for Driggs, Idaho, developer Lynn
Moses, who reported today to a federal prison in
Oregon to begin an 18-month sentence for doing flood
mitigation work in his hometown, according to his
lawyer. . . .
WND reported earlier this week
that his attorney had filed a request with the trial
court to overturn its own conviction and sentence,
since the law appears to be on Moses' side, as does
the U.S. Supreme Court. . . . The issue is that
local officials in Driggs ordered Moses to do
drainage improvements as part of a subdivision
project on which he worked, and then, more than two
decades later, federal officials said their
regulations banned such work. . . . Bryan Fischer,
the chief of
Idaho Values Alliance,
said the "crime" for which Moses has been sentenced
to 18 months in prison was, "Protecting the city of
Driggs from flooding." . . . Moses' lawyer, Blake
Atkin of Salt Lake City, confirmed the circumstances
of the case, explaining that although the federal
government repeatedly has denied having jurisdiction
over the work involved, an opinion shared by the
U.S. Supreme Court, Moses nevertheless was convicted
on charges relating to his work on the streambed of
Teton Creek, an intermittent runoff channel that has
water in it for about eight weeks of the year.
8-7-08 --
Steven Charles Phillips walked out of the courthouse
this week in what has become something of a familiar
ritual, even a cliché. . . . A wrongfully convicted
man free at last, surrounded by joyful, tearful
relatives – a mother grown old, children grown to
adulthood. The obligatory what-will-you-do-first
questions and the sweetly sentimental answers about
fishing or home cooking or playing with the
grandkids. The corny jokes about getting used to
cellphones and the Internet. . . . Yet the
atmosphere is heavy with the awful, nearly visceral
horror of undeserved imprisonment. The story evokes
the gothic misery of a real-life Count of Monte
Cristo or the Dickensian sorrow of Alexandre Manette,
whose lost years in the Bastille set the stage for A
Tale of Two Cities. . . . And so many of these dark
stories are here, on our front doorstep, in DallasCounty. Mr. Phillips, whose
ankle monitor was still beeping during his
exoneration hearing, is one of 18 DallasCounty defendants proven
innocent through virtually incontestable DNA
evidence since 2001.
8-5-08 --
A wrongly convicted Queens man who spent more than a
decade behind bars for murder before another man was
caught on tape confessing to the crime wants the
judge to release him from prison while he awaits his
retrial. . . . Kareem Bellamy, 40, got a second
chance in June when Queens Supreme Court Justice
Joel Blumenfeld overturned his conviction for the
1994 stabbing death of James Abbott in light of the
new evidence. But the father of two was ordered to
stay in upstate Shawangunk prison while prosecutors
determine whether to assemble a new trial.
'Long-overdue
vindication' comes for 28 black soldiers cleared in
a 1944 lynching.
By Kim Murphy, Los
Angeles Times Staff Writer
7-27-08 --
It was a crime so improbable that many had trouble
believing it could have happened at all: Three black
soldiers stood accused of lynching an Italian
prisoner of war, found dangling from a wire on an
obstacle training course at Ft.Lawton in the middle of World
War II. . . . The subsequent trial of the three men,
along with 40 other black enlistees charged with
rioting, became the largest and longest Army
court-martial of the war, and the only recorded
instance in U.S. history in which black men stood
trial for a mob lynching. . . . By the time it was
over, 28 men had been convicted on rioting charges
and two of them were also found guilty of
manslaughter in connection with the 1944 hanging. .
. . Despite their protests of innocence -- and the
government's own secret investigation showing the
prosecution's case was poisonously flawed -- the men
were sentenced to hard labor and forfeiture of
military pay and benefits, and were given
dishonorable discharges. . . . Twenty-six of the men
went to their graves with the stain of wartime
dishonor still on their records. It wasn't until
Saturday, in a low-key ceremony on a wide lawn at
the Army base in Seattle, that history switched
gears. A senior Army official handed out
certificates setting aside the convictions and
converting the discharges to honorable status, in
recognition -- 64 years after the fact -- that
prosecutors' "egregious error" had resulted in a
trial that was "fundamentally unfair."
by Rick Hepp and
William Kleinknecht/The Star-Ledger
It was a hot, humid
August night a dozen years ago when two men entered
E.T.'s Sandwiches Almighty Deli in Newark, ordered
"a corn beef sandwich with everything" and shot the
owner dead. . . . Based on eyewitness accounts,
Newark detectives quickly zeroed in on a suspect,
Darrell Edwards, who lived in the neighborhood, and
arrested him on Sept. 15, 1995. After three
mistrials, a jury convicted Edwards of store owner
Errich Thomas' murder. . . . Now, attorneys with the
Innocence Project, a New York-based legal clinic
that specializes in trying to free the wrongfully
convicted, say they have DNA evidence that
exonerates Edwards, who is serving life in prison.
Vanessa Potkin, who is handling Edwards' case with
famed defense attorney Barry Scheck, who launched
the Innocence Project, said the significance of test
results is not what was found, but what wasn't
found. . . . "His DNA is not there," she said.
7-18-08 --
Award-winning court and crime reporter Laurel J.
Sweet has been featured in the ABC miniseries "Boston 24/7" and the 9-11 documentary motion picture
"Looking For My Brother." . . . Anthony Powell, who
spent 12 years behind bars for a rape he didn’t
commit, slipped nearly unnoticed into a Suffolk
Superior courtroom yesterday to see the accused
serial sex fiend prosecutors now admit he tragically
took the rap for.
. . . But
Jerry Dixon, whose DNA was recently matched to four
brutal unsolved rapes dating back to 1989, denied
Powell, 38, even a glimpse, keeping a plaid shirt
wrapped around his face as assistant
Clerk-Magistrate Connie Wong ordered him held on $1
million cash bail.
. . . Attorney
Howard Friedman, who is representing Powell in a
federal civil rights lawsuit filed last year against
the city and several Boston police officers, later
said on the quiet man’s behalf, “He really wanted to
see this person. I’m sure it was very emotional for
him.”
6-17-08 --
DNA evidence that recently exonerated one man of a 1985 sexual assault has
helped identify a prison inmate who confessed to the
crime, the
DallasCounty district attorney's
office announced Tuesday. . . . Kenneth Wayne
Woodson gave investigators an audiotaped statement
last week in which he admitted raping a 19-year-old
Richardson woman in her apartment, Assistant
District Attorney Mike Ware said. . . . Prosecutors
were led to Mr. Woodson by a match of his genetic
profile in CODIS, the state's DNA database, to physical evidence from the May 7, 1985, rape. .
. . Of the 17 DNA exoneration cases in DallasCounty since 2001, this is at
least the fifth time genetic testing has also
identified the real perpetrator. . . . "Hopefully,
today's news about who the real perpetrator is will
bring some closure to the victim," District Attorney
Craig Watkins said in a statement. . . . Mr.
Woodson, also known as Kenneth Charles Bell, is a
former South Dallas resident who is serving a
30-year sentence in a Panhandle prison unit for the
sexual assault of another woman in Dallas in
November 1986. . . . At 50, he is one year older
than Thomas Clifford McGowan, the man convicted and
imprisoned for the 1985 rape. Mr. Woodson also
resembled Mr. McGowan, according to Richardson
Police Chief Larry Zacharias.
6-3-08 --
In November 1982, Detroit native Walter Swift was
wrongly convicted of rape and sentenced to 55 years'
imprisonment. . . . Convicted at the age of 21 on
the basis of evidence that has been discredited,
Walter nonetheless languished behind bars for almost
27 years for a crime he did not commit. . . . Ten
years ago his case came to the attention of the
Innocence Project, a non-profit legal clinic founded
in New York in 1992 by Barry C. Scheck and Peter J.
Neufeld. . . . "Evidence shows that the victim's
eyewitness identification was tragically wrong",
said Olga Akselrod, an Innocence Project attorney
who was at Wednesday's hearing.
By Edward Snook
Investigative Journalist, NewsWithViews.com
[Edward Snook's Note
- Josephine County, Oregon isn’t the only place
where corrupt prosecutors and bad police officers
falsely charge the innocent and lie to accomplish
their goal. This is happening in most every
jurisdiction in this nation. Josephine County just
happens to be one place where the US~Observer has
completely exposed this corruption by making it
public, thereby offering others, in all localities,
the one and only blueprint for stopping this cancer
– Public Exposure. False prosecutions cost taxpayers
billions of dollars not to mention ruined lives of
innocent people.]
5-27-08 --
Josephine County, OR – A small town district
attorney bloated with pride and arrogance has been
exposed and humiliated for incompetence - the jury
that his office helped select voted in favor of the
defendants. The following case should never have
been brought to trial. It’s an indictment of the
Josephine County District Attorney’s Office. . . .
Shortly after 5:00 p.m. on Friday May 5, 2008, the
life altering, 1 ½-year-long attempted false
prosecution of Stanley Strange, Glen Seybold and
Louis Pombo ended when a Josephine County, Oregon
jury deliberated for a reported 13 minutes and
returned Not Guilty verdicts on all false charges
filed against the three by Josephine County District
Attorney Stephen Campbell back in October of 2006.
All three defendants were falsely charged with
Reckless Driving and Strange was also falsely
charged with Assault in the Fourth Degree. . . . As
if the false charges weren’t enough, District
Attorney Stephen Campbell forced these innocent
defendants through three full days of costly trial,
cost the jurors three days from their lives and the
taxpayers a substantial and unwarranted amount of
tax-dollars. . . . This nightmare for Strange and
his fellow motorcycle riders began back on August
27, 2006 when a car driven by Eric Harris Hill
attempted to run the three off Hwy 199, just north
of O’Brien, Oregon. Hill was driving his 1984 yellow
Mercedes accompanied by fellow cohort Alexander
Golden and Hill’s girlfriend Samantha Pettigrew. The
three were supposedly heading for the northern CA
coast for a camping trip, but information received
at the US~Observer would suggest something much,
much different. . . . Upon reaching the town of
O’Brien and after nearly being run off the road,
Strange and Seybold pulled their bikes off to the
side of 199, while Hill stopped his vehicle directly
in the middle of the southbound lane of traffic. As
Hill was backing up traffic, Strange went to the
drivers window of Hill’s vehicle and started shaking
his finger at Hill through the open window, as he
yelled, “What in the hell did you think you were
doing? Why were you riding my ass, etc.” Hill
quickly hit his electric window button trapping
Strange’s arm. According to eye witnesses, “Hill
then took off at a fast rate of speed, dragging
Strange down the Hwy about 20 ft.” Strange was able
to get his arm loose, but only after it was badly
injured, raw and bleeding. . . . Strange and Seybold
immediately went to McGrew’s Restaurant for help.
Upon entering the establishment Strange asked that
someone call 911, which they did, and when asked
what had happened Strange informed those present
that the kids in the car had been trying to run them
off the road for the past few miles.
5-20-08 --
The jury awarded $268,000, but the total costs to
the city of Seattle for the wrongful arrest
of a young man two years ago could be a lot higher.
. . . The city will spend more than $500,000 --
perhaps a lot more -- as it pays for what a federal
civil court jury found Monday was a violation of
Romelle Bradford's civil rights. . . . The jury also
found that Seattle patrol officers made a false and
unlawful arrest and used excessive force when they
detained Bradford on suspicion of obstruction and resisting arrest. . . . Plaintiff's
attorney Lem Howell says the police could have spent
half that much money, perhaps just a third of that
amount, settling the lawsuit. . . . At one point, he
said, the city offered $10,000, and later $25,000,
which Howell considered far too low for what he
called an "unseen injury" involving damage to Bradford's future by
giving him an arrest record.
5-4-08 --
STAPLES HUGHES, a North Carolina lawyer, was on the witness stand and about to disclose a secret he
believed would free an innocent man from prison. But
the judge told Mr. Hughes to stop. . . . “If you
testify,” Judge Jack A. Thompson said at a hearing
last year on the prisoner’s request for a new trial,
“I will be compelled to report you to the state bar.
Do you understand that?” . . . But Mr. Hughes
continued. Twenty-two years before, he said, a
client, now dead, confessed that he had acted alone
in committing a double murder for which another man
was also serving life. After his own imprisoned
client died, Mr. Hughes recalled last week, “it
seemed to me at that point ethically permissible and
morally imperative that I spill the beans.” . . .
Judge Thompson, of the Cumberland County Superior
Court in Fayetteville, did not see it that way, and some experts in legal ethics agree with
him. The obligation to keep a client’s secrets is so
important, they say, that it survives death and may
not be violated even to cure a grave injustice — for
example, the imprisonment for 26 years of another
man, in Illinois, who was freed just last month. . .
. A lawyer’s broad duty to keep clients’ confidences
is the bedrock on which the justice system is built,
they argue. If clients did not feel free to speak
candidly, their lawyers could not represent them
effectively. And making exceptions risks eroding the
trust between clients and their lawyers in future
cases. Experts in legal ethics are quick to point
out that the various players in the adversary system
have assigned roles and that lawyers generally must
tend to a limited one. . . . “Lawyers are not
undercover informants,” said Stephen Gillers, who
teaches legal ethics at New York University.
Indeed, said Steven Lubet, who teaches legal ethics
at Northwestern, few clients would confess to their
lawyers if they knew the lawyers might some day
choose to disclose that information.
Tests that clear
those who have been wrongfully convicted often are
not followed by tests to find the criminal
By Geoff Dutton and
Mike Wagner, The Columbus Dispatch
5-4-08 --
DNA testing shone a spotlight on the injustice suffered by Walter D. Smith,
proving the
Columbus man's innocence in 1996 and releasing him
from a 78-year prison sentence for two rapes that he
didn't commit. . . . But the public never heard
about the devastating collateral damage, the violent
chain reaction set off by sending the wrong man to
prison and leaving the real attacker roaming free. .
. . In that sense, Smith's exoneration is like
others sweeping the nation, a miscarriage of justice
that ravaged more lives than most people realize --
and needlessly left disturbing questions unanswered.
. .. The wrongfully convicted are victims,
certainly, but not the only ones and maybe not even
the most tragic. . . . Smith was in jail less than a
month, awaiting trial, when the man later identified
by prosecutors as the real rapist struck again. That
man continued to terrorize women and girls,
primarily on the Northeast Side.
By Jennifer Emily &
Steve McGonigle / The Dallas Morning News
5-4-08 --
The DallasCounty district attorney who has
built a national reputation on freeing the
wrongfully convicted says prosecutors who
intentionally withhold evidence should themselves
face harsh sanctions – possibly even jail time. . .
. "Something should be done," said Craig Watkins,
whose jurisdiction leads the nation in the number of
DNA exonerations. "If the harm is a great harm, yes, it should be
criminalized." . . . Wrongful convictions, nearly
half of them involving prosecutorial misconduct,
have cost
Texas taxpayers $8.6 million in compensation since
2001, according to state comptroller records
obtained by The Dallas Morning News. DallasCounty accounts for about
one-third of that. . . . Mr. Watkins said that he
was still pondering what kind of punishment
unethical prosecutors deserve but that the worst
offenders might deserve prison time. He said he also
was considering the launch of a campaign to mandate
disbarment for any prosecutor found to have
intentionally withheld evidence from the defense.
Convicted of a sex
crime he didn't commit, a Mattapan man imprisoned
and long shunned has his innocence proclaimed
By Maria Cramer,
Globe Staff
5-2-08 --
For the past seven years, a photo of Guy Randolph
has been posted at Boston police stations, labeling
him the most dangerous type of sex offender.
Neighbors who knew of his criminal record and the 10
years he spent in prison insulted him when they saw
him on the streets. Police ordered him away from
schools and playgrounds if he walked too close. . .
. But yesterday, in a hearing that took less than 10
minutes, a Suffolk Superior Court judge said the
wrong man had been convicted. More than 17 years
after he was first arrested in the sexual assault on
a 6-year-old girl, Randolph was exonerated of all
charges and declared innocent. . . . Afterward,
Randolph, a shy, small 50-year-old man who has
struggled for years with schizophrenia and
alcoholism, crumpled into the arms of his godmother,
who pulled him into her tight embrace. . . .
Randolph said little, but offered this: "Justice has
been served." . . . "It's over," said his mother,
Ruth Johns, as she stood with him in the courtroom.
"He's free. He's free."
5-2-08 --
A man who spent 13 years on death row in North
Carolina was released from prison Friday after
prosecutors decided to drop the charges against him.
. . . Levon "Bo" Jones was sentenced to death in
1993 for the slaying of Leamon Grady, a bootlegger
who was robbed and shot in his home in 1987. . . .
"I'm innocent, that's what I've got to say," Jones
told reporters as he walked out of the Duplin County
Jail Friday afternoon. . .. After meeting his
grandson for the first time, he said he was "a
little bit angry" about being on death row so long,
but he just wanted to go home. . . . "It's wonderful
that he's out. He's innocent, and I'm glad he's
free," said his daughter, Evette Jones. . . . A
federal judge overturned the conviction in 2006,
declaring poor attorney performance had violated
Jones' rights. Duplin County District Attorney Dewey
Hudson planned to retry Jones on May 12, but decided
to drop charges after a key witness recanted her
story. . . . Lovely Lorden, Jones' former
girlfriend, was the only witness accusing Jones of
the murder, but she admitted in an affidavit filed
last month that she “was certain that Bo did not
have anything to do with Mr. Grady’s murder” and
that she did not know what happened the night Grady
was murdered.
(Reuters) - 4-30-08 --
A man walked out of a Dallas court on Tuesday after
DNA testing overturned his conviction over 27 years ago for the murder and
rape of his girlfriend, local media reported. . . .
James Woodward, 55, spent more time in prison than
any other wrongfully convicted inmate in U.S. history who was
subsequently freed by DNA testing, local media reported. . . . He was also the eighteenth person
freed in
Dallas County based on a post-conviction DNA analysis, according to the Innocence Project, a New York-based legal
center that specializes in righting grave
miscarriages of justice. . . . That is more than any
other U.S.
county, highlighting problems in the local justice
system that include what critics have said is a
history of racism and racial profiling. . . .
Woodward is a black male -- the typical profile of
those wrongfully sent to prison in Dallas and
elsewhere in the United States.
By Peter Slevin and
Kari Lydersen, Washington Post Staff Writers
4-28-08 --
Tabitha Pollock was asleep when her boyfriend killed
her 3-year-old daughter. Charged with first-degree
murder because prosecutors believed she should have
known of the danger, Pollock spent more than six
years in prison before the Illinois Supreme Court
threw out the conviction. . . . "Should have known,"
the high court ruled, was not nearly enough to keep
Pollock behind bars. . . . Five years later, Pollock
remains in limbo, freed from prison but not free
from the snags of a wrongful conviction that upended
her life. With a felony record, she cannot become a
teacher, as she wants. She cannot collect damages
from the Illinois government. On a trip to
Australia, where customs officials questioned her
when she arrived, she learned that the murder
conviction always follows her. . . . To fully clear
her name, Pollock -- as well as a dozen or so other
former Illinois inmates who have been exonerated --
needs an official pardon, which only the governor
can give. She applied in 2002 but has received no
word.
4-23-08 --
The State Bar has charged a San Bernardino County
criminal defense lawyer with taking thousands of
dollars from clients, then abandoning them. William
Gebbie surrendered his law license after filing of
the 28-count complaint, which accused him of
allowing a client to sit in jail for months even
though he had evidence to clear the man. . . . The
Rancho Cucamonga-based attorney, who practiced for
38 years in San Bernardino, Riverside and Los Angeles
counties, declined comment on Tuesday. . . . The
State Bar says Gebbie improperly withdrew from
cases, failed to return unearned fees and collected
"unconscionable" fees, among other things. . . . The
most serious accusation involved Gebbie's handling
of a case against Donald Stephens, whose wife paid
the lawyer a $10,000 advance to handle a felony sex
case. Stephens sat in jail even though Gebbie had
evidence clearing him.
4-18-08 --
John David Mooney, who endured five years in prison
for a crime he didn't commit, believes that officers
who arrested him and the lawyer who represented him
should compensate him for all he lost. . . . Mooney
sued federal agent Todd Willard, attorney Michael
Frazier of Huntington, the firm of Frazier and
Oxley, and Huntington police officers Jeff Sexton,
Scott Hudson and Chris Jackson in U. S. district
court at Huntington on April 10. . . . Mooney's
attorney, Nicholas Preservati of Charleston, claims
economic loss, physical injury, mental anguish,
compensatory damages and punitive damages. . . .
"During his incarceration, the plaintiff's father
passed away. Plaintiff was not allowed to attend his
father's funeral," Preservati wrote. . . . "During
his incarceration, the plaintiff's mother also
passed away," he wrote. "Again, the plaintiff was
not allowed to attend his mother's funeral."
4-15-08 --
The slow turning of justice's wheels give plenty of
folks something to complain about. . . . Why do
death penalty cases take so long to wind through the
appeals process? Where's the justice for victims? .
. . All valid points, but in the case of Glen Edward
Chapman, 14 years of sitting in prison was too long
for the wrongful conviction that put him there. .
.. A judge last week released Chapman, and all
charges against him were dropped. A jury convicted
him in 1994 of murdering Betty Jean Ramseur and
Tenene Yvette Conley. His release, tragically, means
those murders are now officially unsolved. What's
worse is no one can say for sure that Chapman didn't
have anything to do with their deaths. . . . But
that makes the miscarriage of justice against
Chapman even more disturbing. Witnesses in his
original trial say they felt pressured by police and
prosecutors to testify against him. . . . Evidence
that would have cast doubt on his guilt was
suppressed by the prosecution. A lead investigator
may even have lied in court.
04-05-08 --
People who urge swifter justice on death row should
think about Glen Edward Chapman. . . . He could have
been executed long before spending 14 years on death
row, but that wouldn’t have been justice. Just the
opposite. . . . Chapman, 41, was released this week
when all charges against him were dropped. Last
year, a judge ruled he deserved new trials for the
two 1992 murders in Hickory police and prosecutors
said he committed; Wednesday, the Catawba County
district attorney said there wasn’t enough evidence
to try Chapman again. . . . The case against Chapman
was badly flawed. Evidence that would have cast
doubt on his guilt was withheld, and a lead
investigator might have lied in court. Prosecution
witnesses later recanted their testimony: "If anyone
asked me at trial, I would have testified that
police pressured me into testifying and that I did
not believe Edward killed anyone," one said in an
affidavit. . . . These aren’t technicalities but
significant issues that were recognized in Superior
Court Judge Robert Ervin’s 182-page order for new
trials. It was the state that employed
"technicalities," arguing against Chapman’s motion
on the questionable grounds that his contentions
should have been raised in earlier appeals.
Glen Chapman is free,
but his case points to the dangerous imperfections
in North Carolina's use of the death penalty
News & Observer
Editorial:
04-04-08 --
Were it not for a couple of good appellate lawyers
and Superior Court Judge Robert C. Ervin, Glen
Chapman might have been killed by the state in
Central Prison's death chamber. He had been on death
row for nearly 14 years, following a conviction for
the 1992 murders of two women in Hickory. . . .
After years of appeals, Judge Ervin ruled in
November that Chapman deserved another trial. The
Catawba County District Attorney, James Gaither Jr.,
then dismissed the murder charges against him,
saying there was not enough evidence for a retrial.
. . . So on Wednesday, the 40-year-old Chapman was
released -- from death row to freedom. . . . Ervin,
who held six hearings over five years, found that an
investigator in the case, Dennis Rhoney, lied in his
testimony about Chapman's involvement in the
murders. . . . The judge found that Rhoney had
withheld evidence from prosecutors that would have
bolstered Chapman's claim of innocence. He also
found that Chapman's trial lawyers overlooked
evidence in the deaths of Betty Jean Ramseur and
Tenene Yvette Conley and didn't investigate
thoroughly. (The appeals lawyers argued that
Chapman's trial attorneys were "excessive users of
alcohol.")
IU Law graduate to
introduce documentary about California man's
struggle for justice
04-02-08 --
Mario Rocha spent 10 years in California prisons
after weak legal representation caused him to be
convicted of murder for an incident that took place
when he was 16. . . . He is now a free man, thanks
to the efforts of a Roman Catholic nun and a legal
team headed by a graduate of the Indiana University
School of Law--Bloomington. . . . The attorney, Bob
Long, will return to IU on Wednesday, April 9, to
introduce and show Mario's Story, a documentary film
that tells the story of Rocha's fight for justice.
Directed by Jeff Werner and Susan Koch, Mario's
Story won the Audience Award for Best Documentary
Feature at the 2006 Los Angeles Film Festival. . . .
"It tells a great story about the importance of
making sure the system works right," said Long, who
earned an undergraduate degree from IU Bloomington
in 1968 and a law degree in 1971. "And it tells an
important story for law students -- that what you do
makes a difference."
Prosecutor says
office stands by eyewitness accounts in '87 slaying
By Jennifer Emily /
The Dallas Morning News
04-02-08 --
The DallasCounty district attorney's
office is likely to object to a judge's opinion that
a man convicted in a fatal aggravated robbery is
actually innocent, a high-ranking prosecutor said
this week. . . . Judge Rick Magnis said Friday in a
42-page written opinion that new evidence shows Ben
Spencer did not rob and murder Dallas businessman
Jeffrey Young in 1987. Mr. Spencer was convicted
based mainly on eyewitness testimony, which is
notoriously unreliable. . . . But First Assistant
District Attorney Terri Moore said the district
attorney's office stands by the witnesses' original
identifications of Mr. Spencer. She also said
standing by the witnesses did not contradict
questioning eyewitness testimony in other cases. . .
. "There are three witnesses that knew him well, not
as a casual acquaintance," Ms. Moore said. "Three
different people had three different vantage points.
We don't have your typical stranger identification
or cross-cultural identification."
03-31-08 -- With renewed legal
and grass-roots efforts under way to free convicted
murderer Barry Beach - whose claims of innocence
have persisted throughout his 25-year imprisonment -
the inmate’s potential path to freedom is getting
more attention, advocates say. . . . "We hope to one
day meet him on the other side of those gates," said
former Yellowstone County commissioner James "Ziggy"
Ziegler, who met Beach 24 years ago through a prison
ministry and recently helped organize a media
campaign to free the 46-year-old convict. . . .
Beach was convicted at the age of 22 on the basis of
a detailed confession he and his defense team say
was coerced by detectives in Louisiana, where Beach was
arrested for an unrelated crime and interrogated
under duress. . . . In January, a New Jersey-based
innocence group called Centurion Ministries filed a
petition seeking a new trial for Beach, basing its
legal argument on so-called new evidence - namely,
testimony that implicates a group of young girls in
the 1979 killing of 17-year-old Kimberly Nees in
Poplar. . . . Then in February, a Helena-based group
called Montanans for Justice - the most recent joist
in Beach’s support network of lawyers, elected
officials and business professionals - launched a
Web site advocating his release.
Case against Willie
Earl Green is overturned after key witness recants
testimony. Prosecutors weigh a retrial.
By Jack Leonard, Los
Angeles Times Staff Writer 03-11-08 -- A Los Angeles judge on Monday overturned the conviction of a man who
has spent the last quarter-century in prison for a
murder he insists he did not commit, concluding that
the prosecution's star witness lied. . . . The
ruling comes after the witness recently recanted his
testimony and could lead to freedom for Willie Earl
Green, a former chauffeur who was sentenced to 33
years to life in a 1983 execution-style slaying at a
South Los
Angeles crack house. . . . Los Angeles County
prosecutors must decide whether to appeal the
decision, retry Green or free him. Considering the
judge's conclusion that the star witness was
unreliable, prosecutors would probably have a
difficult task if they chose to retry the case. . .
. Legal experts say that the case underscores the
perils of relying heavily upon eyewitness
identification in criminal trials. Researchers have
found that faulty identifications are the biggest
factor in wrongful convictions. Yet judges rarely
overturn convictions based on allegations of
improper identifications.
Posthumous confession
seems to exonerate prisoner after 26 years
By Kevin Roy
03-10-08 --
(WLS) -- Alton Logan appeared in court Monday hoping the hearing was the
beginning of the end to his nightmare. Logan has spent the
last 26 years in prison for a crime he says he
didn't commit. . . . Imagine the pain of being in
prison for 26 years for a crime you didn't commit.
Imagine having information that would clear such a
person, but not being able to share it for all those
years. Attorneys say it was agonizing holding onto
the truth about Alton Logan that long -- but they
felt they were bound to silence by attorney-client
privilege. . . . Alton Logan has sat in prison for
26 years, always maintaining his innocence in the
1982 shooting death of a security guard at a South
Side McDonald's. And for most of that time attorney
Jamie Kunz had information that Logan was indeed
innocent. . . . "It bothered us, the way it bothers
any citizen, to think an innocent person is in
prison, except we had first-hand knowledge," said
Jamie Kunz, defense attorney. . . . First-hand
knowledge from his client, Andrew Wilson, who was
convicted of killing two Chicago police officers.
When Kunz and his legal partner were told by another
attorney that Wilson had actually killed the
security guard, they asked Wilson about it in
prison. . . . "We said is it true, that you were the
one with the shotgun? He said yep, that was me,"
said Kunz. . . . But Kunz says he was bound to keep
it a secret -- bound by his word and attorney-client
privilege.
Two public defenders
announced that their client, now deceased, killed a
man nearly thirty years ago, but that
attorney-client privilege kept them from telling the
world -- and allowing the wrongfully convicted
suspect, Alton Logan, to go free.
Conor Friedersdorf
Atlantic Online
03-10-08 --
It's tempting to say
that the public defenders should have come forward,
accepted disbarment, and spared Alton Logan
twenty-six years of wrongful imprisonment. Perhaps
they could have sprung Logan without appreciably
weakening clients' trust in their attorneys.
Disbarment is a severe sanction, and after all, this
case is an extreme one. Besides, what comes first --
lawyerly obligations, or human ones? . . . Better
still, though, would be for the legal system to
establish ways for lawyers to reveal certain secrets
without damaging their clients' interests. One
possibility is an "Innocence Panel" -- a closed
courtroom of appeals court judges who could grant
immunity from prosecution for confessions that (1)
are demonstrably true; (2) could free an already
convicted man from prison; and (3) reveal
information that wouldn't have come to light
otherwise. . . . Other
approaches
are
bubbling up
as
law school students
and legal bloggers
debate this
case. Meanwhile, Alton Logan remains in an Illinois
prison, waiting to argue a motion for a new trial. A
former Illinois governor once commuted 156 death
sentences, fretting that one of the convicts might
be innocent. Surely Governor Rod R. Blagojevich can
grant a single speedy pardon for one irrevocably
wronged man?
Lawyers Tell 60
Minutes They Were Legally Bound From Revealing
Secret
03-07-08 --
(CBS) Alton Logan doesn't understand why two lawyers
with proof he didn't commit murder were legally
prevented from helping him. They had their reasons:
To save Logan, they would have had to break the
cardinal rule of attorney-client privilege to reveal
their own client had committed the crime. But Logan
had 26 years in prison to try to understand why he
was convicted for a crime he didn't commit. . . .
Logan, still in jail, speaks to 60 Minutes
correspondent Bob Simon in his first interview for a
report that also includes the lawyers which will be
broadcast this Sunday, March 9, at 7 p.m. ET/PT. . .
. "Yes. Sympathize with [the lawyers’ dilemma], yes.
Understand it, no," Logan tells Simon. "If you know
this is an innocent person, why would you allow this
person to be prosecuted, convicted, sent to prison
for all these years?" asks the 54-year-old inmate. .
. . Lawyers Jamie Kunz and Dale Coventry were public
defenders when their client, Andrew Wilson, admitted
to them he had shot-gunned a security guard to death
in a 1982 robbery. When a tip led to Logan's arrest
and he went to trial for the crime, the two lawyers
were in a bind. They wanted to help Logan but
legally couldn't. . . . "The rules of conduct for
attorneys, it's very, very clear…. We're in a
position to where we have to maintain client
confidentiality, just as a priest would or a doctor
would. It's just a requirement of the law. The
system wouldn’t work without it," says Coventry.
Judge Burke dismisses
defendant from indictment after 16 months in jail.
Burke said mere presence at a crime is not criminal.
By Rochelle Olson,
Star Tribune
02-29-08 -- A Hennepin County
judge dismissed an indictment against a Minneapolis
man who spent 16 months in jail, saying he should
not have been charged with murder because he was
merely a passenger, not a player in the killing of
Carlos Hernandez Perez. . . . "To put it bluntly,
this was not the criminal justice system's finest
hour," District Court Judge Kevin Burke wrote in his
four-page order released late Thursday. . . . Jose
Manuel Saldivar-Alvillar was one of five people
charged in the gang-related killing of 17-year-old
Perez in Bloomington on April 30, 2006. The other
four have been found guilty or pleaded guilty. . . .
Saldivar-Alvillar's lawyer died shortly before the
trial was to begin, so he got a new lawyer, James
Austad, who made the motion for dismissal. . . .
Austad was heading into court on another matter and
not immediately able to comment on the case. . . .
In his order, Burke noted that the prosecutors never
sought to indict Saldivar-Alvillar, but the decision
was made by the grand jury. He said the grand jury
likely was confused about the degree of evidence
necessary to support an indictment against
Saldivar-Alvillar.
02-27-08 -- Dennis Maher's red
hooded sweatshirt was anything but lucky. He was
wearing it the day a 23-year-old woman was sexually
assaulted - and so was her attacker. Eyewitness
misidentification landed Maher in prison, where he
served 19 years of his life for crimes he did not
commit. . . . On Thursday, Feb. 14, Maher, 47,
shared his story with Suffolk in the C. Walsh
Theatre. His lecture, sponsored by the Performing
Arts Office in conjunction with their performance of
"The Exonerated," captured the audience, all whilst
wearing a t-shirt, jeans and a scruffy, graying
beard. . . . One fall night in 1983, Maher, an
average Joe from Lowell, Mass., was stopped by
police and didn't know why. "I gave them my driver's
license and they ran my name," said Maher. "Then
they searched me and arrested me for possession of
marijuana." But when Maher arrived at the Lowell
police station, he learned the real reason for his
arrest. He recalls the officer saying, "We're
questioning you about a rape that happened last
night and a rape that happened earlier today." . . .
On Nov. 16, 1983, a 28-year-old woman from Lowell,
Mass. was taking her usual walk home from work when
she was attacked. The man that accosted her had
tried to engage her in conversation before forcing
her into a nearby yard and sexually assaulting her.
The next day, a 23-year-old woman was attacked less
than 100 yards from the site of the first assault.
The second victim, who was able to escape her
attacker after a struggle, described him as wearing
a red hooded sweatshirt, a khaki military-style
jacket and wielding a knife. . . . Maher, who had no
prior criminal record and was a sergeant in the
United States Army at the time, did not fit the
vague description given by the victim but was
dressed in similar attire.
California treats
exonerated people even worse than rightly convicted
felons.
OPINION DAILY,
By Robert Greene
02-25-08 --
In November 1994, a Lodi man named Pete Rose — not
the famous baseball player — was arrested for the
kidnap and rape of a 13-year-old girl. Rose told a
judge he didn't need a lawyer, since he wasn't
guilty, but he nevertheless accepted San Joaquin
County's appointment of attorney Harry E. Hudson Jr.
to defend him at trial. It didn't help. A jury
convicted Rose, who was sentenced to prison for 27
years. . . . Nearly a decade later, students at
Golden Gate University School of Law's Innocence
Project began investigating the case and obtained a
semen sample from the rape victim's clothing; a DNA test proved that Rose was not the
assailant. After he was released, the victim read
about him in the newspaper and — according to a
law review article
on Rose's case by former Golden Gate Innocence
Project Director Susan Rutberg — told the reporter:
. . . "I was never sure. The pol . ce pressured me
to name someone. I only went along with them because
I thought they had other evidence lined up against
Rose." . . . .
In 2005 Rose, now released, was formally exonerated
and found factually innocent — a rarity in criminal
justice proceedings, well beyond a simple acquittal
— of the charges against him. He had spent 10 years
at Mule Creek State Prison, where he was incorrectly
considered a child rapist.
02-19-08--
After spending nearly 27 years buried in the vast
Texas prison system for a crime he did not commit,
Charles Chatman's first weeks of freedom have been
overwhelming. . . . Each of the six rooms in his new
apartment, including the bathroom, is larger than
any of his previous cells. The gleaming
entertainment system and sleek laptop from family,
friends and attorneys might as well be hollow props
on a movie set, because Chatman, 47, has little idea
how to operate them — testimony to more than a
generation lost behind bars. . . . Chatman was
exonerated last month by DNA testing while serving a 99-year sentence for sexual assault. His
release Jan. 3 marked the 15th such exoneration in
DallasCounty during the past five
years, the most of any county in the nation. Aside
from New York and Illinois, DallasCounty also has produced more
exonerations than any state.
02-15-08 --
The Justice Department finally has decided to appeal
a $101.7 million award in the case of four men who
spent decades in prison for a murder they did not
commit. . .. A federal judge in July found the FBI
responsible for framing Joseph Salvati, Peter Limone,
Louis Greco and Henry Tameleo for the 1965 slaying
of Edward "Teddy" Deegan. . . . The government filed
notice of appeal Friday — just four days ahead of
the deadline. . . . An attorney for one of the men
has estimated that an appeal would take more than a
year and could cost the government as much as $14
million in interest and legal fees if the judgment
is upheld.
02-13-08
-- Lawyer
Staples Hughes jeopardized his career in 2004 when
he violated one of a lawyer’s most sacred precepts —
keep secret your client’s secrets — to try to free a
man he thinks is innocent of murder. . . . His deed
was rewarded with an investigation by the N.C. State
Bar. The bar could have yanked Hughes’ license to
practice law. Instead, its Grievance Committee
considered the matter privately and decided on Jan.
24 there is no reason to prosecute Hughes. A State
Bar official cited confidentiality rules and would
not further discuss the decision. . . Hughes, who
now heads an office that handles the appeals of
indigent defendants, said he feels no vindication. .
. . “I’m very grateful to the Grievance Committee
for the decision they made and I’m glad that’s over
with,” he said. “But my situation was sort of the
tail wagging the dog. The primary, I mean the real,
the paramount, issue here is that Lee Wayne Hunt is
an innocent man and he’s locked up in prison for
something he didn’t do.”
Kennedy Brewer is 127th
Death Row Inmate Exonerated
Kennedy
Brewer, who spent 12 years on Mississippi’s
death row for the 1992 murder and rape of
his girlfriend’s 3-year-old daughter, has
been exonerated of the charges, and another
man, Justin Johnson, has been arrested for
the same crime. A 2001 investigation by the
Innocence Project found that the semen on
the victim’s body did not match Brewer’s
DNA, but did match Johnson’s. Johnson was a
suspect early in the case, and his blood was
collected and preserved in the Mississippi
State Crime Laboratory for more than 10
years. (See
Innocence and
127: Kennedy Brewer.)
02-08-08 --
More than six months after a federal judge ordered
the government to pay $101.7 million to four men who
spent decades in prison for a murder they did not
commit, the Justice Department has not informed the
court whether it will appeal. . . . As the
government weighs its options, the award continues
to grow, accruing another $100,000 in interest each
week since the judgment was formally entered in late
December, according to lawyers who represent the
plaintiffs. The interest, the lawyers say, will
continue to mount at an annual rate of about 5.1
percent until the case is resolved. . . . Charles
Miller, a spokesman for the Justice Department,
declined to comment on the case this week or on
whether the government will appeal. . . . The
government, which must notify the court by Feb. 19
if it wants to appeal, will be forced to pay the
additional $100,000 a week in interest if it loses
an appeal, the plaintiffs' lawyers said.
LeBrew Jones, above, has been in prison
since 1989 for a crime he has always
said he didn’t commit. Times
Herald-Record/Tom Bushey
02-08-08 --
Citing "a growing view that something very wrong
happened here," a formidable team of lawyers is
preparing to launch a strategy to free Lebrew Jones,
an Otisville state prison inmate serving 22 years to
life for a murder he has always maintained he did
not commit. . .. Jones had no previous criminal
record when he was convicted in 1989 for the
bludgeoning death of Michaelanne Hall, a 21-year-old
Times Square prostitute. . . . Steven A. Drizin,
director of Northwestern University's Center on
Wrongful Convictions, made a personal plea to Barry
Scheck, founder and co-director of the Innocence
Project, and to James Benkard of Davis, Polk &
Wardwell, one of Manhattan's oldest law firms, to
represent Jones for free. . . . According to Benkard,
the lawyers took an interest in Jones after reading
an investigative story on www.thr-investigations.com.
He said they share "a growing view that something
very wrong happened here."
02-04-08 -- Samuel Snow got a
check from the Pentagon after the Army announced
last October it would overturn convictions of Snow
and 27 other African-American soldiers wrongly tried
for rioting at Seattle's FortLawton in 1944. . . . The check
was for $725 — the amount of pay that Snow, now 82,
lost while serving a year in an Army lockup. . . .
Rep. Jim McDermott, D-Seattle, and Sen. Bill Nelson,
D-Fla., have introduced legislation to make the
military pay much more to Snow and the other
surviving FortLawton soldier, and to the
families of those who have died since the
convictions. . . . The legislation would calculate
the back pay in current dollars with interest. That
could change the $725 sent to Snow to about $88,000,
according to Nelson's office. . . . McDermott has
been the strongest proponent of a review of the FortLawton incident. He became
involved more than two years ago, after reading a
book by local journalist Jack Hamann, "On American
Soil," which documented the role of racism and
inappropriate tactics used by the military to
prosecute the men and stymie their defense.
02-04-08 -- For a quarter of a
century, defense lawyers Dale Coventry and Jamie
Kunz were bound by the rules of law to hold onto a
secret that now could mean freedom for a man serving
a life sentence for murder. . . . The secret —
memorialized on a notarized affidavit that they
locked in a metal box — was that their client,
Andrew Wilson, admitted that he shotgunned to death
a security guard at a McDonald’s restaurant on
Chicago’s South Side in January 1982. . . . Bound to
silence by attorney-client privilege, Kunz and
Coventry could do nothing as another man, Alton
Logan, 54, was tried and convicted instead. . . .
The two lawyers testified in court last week that
they were bound by the attorney-client privilege and
Wilson’s admonition that they only reveal his
admission after his death. Wilson, who was serving a
life sentence for the murders of two Chicago police
officers, died of natural causes Nov. 19.
01-14-07 --
BRUCE A. BARKET, a voluntarily overworked criminal
defense lawyer whose under-eye circles rival those
of any raccoon, cast a wishful glance toward the box
of Montecristo cigars nestled among the family
photos and professional citations on his office
credenza. The perfect holiday gift, as-yet unopened.
A lot like the long-awaited release of his client
Martin H. Tankleff,
who was hoping to learn on Wednesday that he would
not be retried for his parents’ murders: almost the
perfect ending. . . . “What we are left with is a
brutal double homicide that is essentially unsolved
and really was never properly investigated,” said
Mr. Barket, one of several lawyers who represented
Mr. Tankleff in his appeals. “People will say,
‘Look, the system worked for Marty!’ I say, bull: He
was in prison for 17 ½ years.” . . . Mr. Barket, 48,
wanted a Montecristo badly enough to break the law
and smoke indoors, something he confesses to doing
at times when working here alone on weekends.
1-12-08 --
Former Billings resident Jimmy Bromgard, who spent
more than 15 years in prison for a child rape he did
not commit, on Friday settled for $3.5 million his
lawsuit against the state of Montana. . . . The
settlement is the largest amount the state has ever
paid for a civil-rights violation, said Bromgard's
attorney, Ron Waterman of Helena. . . . "Indeed, it
is the most the state has ever paid to any
individual for its misconduct except in cases in
which the victim of the state's misconduct died,"
Waterman said. . . . "This has been a long journey
for Jimmy that started in 1987 with a wrongful
conviction," Waterman said. "There's no amount money
that will compensate him for 15½ years in prison.
This will start to heal the wounds."
It is better that ten guilty escape
than one innocent suffer. -- Sir William
Blackstone, Commentaries on the Laws of England --
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.
Inaugurated on January 15, 2008
Updated 01/26/2012
Kennedy
Brewer, who spent 12 years on Mississippi’s
death row for the 1992 murder and rape of
his girlfriend’s 3-year-old daughter, has
been exonerated of the charges, and another
man, Justin Johnson, has been arrested for
the same crime. A 2001 investigation by the
Innocence Project found that the semen on
the victim’s body did not match Brewer’s
DNA, but did match Johnson’s. Johnson was a
suspect early in the case, and his blood was
collected and preserved in the Mississippi
State Crime Laboratory for more than 10
years. (See
