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Stories of the Wrongfully Convicted

Innocents in Prison News
& Views 2009-10

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March 2010

NEW YORK  

Prosecutor in Manhattan Will Monitor Convictions

By John Eligon, New York Times    

03-04-10 -- The Manhattan district attorney, Cyrus R. Vance Jr., announced Thursday that he would start a program to safeguard against wrongful convictions, addressing one of the most talked-about topics during his campaign for the office. . . . Known as the Conviction Integrity Program, the effort will be led by Bonnie Sard, a veteran assistant district attorney, who will monitor cases that raise red flags and oversee reinvestigations. The program will also include a panel of 10 of Mr. Vance’s top assistants to review cases and the office’s prosecutorial practices, as well as a panel of outside experts to advise on policy. . . . While Mr. Vance said he believed the office had long tried to make sure that it did not make mistakes, he said a structured system would take the approach one step further. . . . “I think this will help lawyers do better what they already were doing, and with more consistency,” Mr. Vance said in an interview.

TENNESSEE

Man Accused of Medically Impossible Murder

Autopsy Report Points to James Suttle's Guilt, but 'Body Farm' Experiment Says He's Innocent

By Geoff Martz & Rashida Johnson, ABC News

03-02-10 -- When James Suttle was arrested for first-degree murder in January 2001, it was a dramatic turnaround for a man who until that moment seemed to be living a golden life. . . . Suttle left the town of Pulaski, Tenn., as a teenager and headed to Las Vegas, where he became a high-stakes professional gambler and entrepreneur. He hadn't been back to Pulaski in nearly 20 years, but he returned in part to see his cousin Stevie Hobbs. . . . "Me and Stevie were inseparable," Suttle, 49, said. . . . But during his October 1998 visit, Suttle was awakened by Hobbs, who rushed into his bedroom and appeared to be having some kind of attack. . . . "The first thing I remember was him trying to call my name," Suttle said. "He couldn't get my whole name out." . . . Suttle said his cousin had his hands in the air and spun in a full circle, before ultimately falling backward on top of a glass coffee table. When the table broke, one of the shards of glass entered Hobbs' back, apparently killing him. . . . Suttle called 911. But over the next few days, Suttle said he sensed police didn't believe his story. . . . "I could tell that they were trying to pin this off on me as a murder," he said.

February 2010

TEXAS

Texas Board of Pardons and Paroles recommends clemency for Tim Cole

By Mitch Mitchell, star-telegram.com

02-28-10 -- More than a decade after his death and nearly 25 years since his arrest, the Texas Board of Pardons and Paroles is recommending clemency for a Fort Worth man who died in prison after being wrongfully convicted on rape charges. . . . The board sent a letter to Tim Cole's attorney at the Innocence Project of Texas on Friday saying that it had voted to recommend clemency and forwarded its decision to Gov. Rick Perry for his signature. . . . It would be the state's first posthumous pardon, and Perry has indicated that he would sign an order clearing Cole's name if recommended by the board. . . . "Gov. Perry looks forward to pardoning Tim Cole pending the receipt of a positive recommendation from the Board of Pardons and Paroles," Perry spokeswoman Allison Castle wrote in an e-mail to The Associated Press on Saturday. . . . Cory Session, who has been fighting to clear his brother's name for years, said he anticipates that the governor will sign Cole's pardon in March during a ceremony in Fort Worth. . . . "To say that the wheels of justice turn slowly would be an understatement," Session said Saturday. . . . "The question is: How many more Tim Coles are out there?"

NEW YORK

This case was a crime: DAs must learn tough lessons from false rape conviction

New York Daily News Editorial

02-26-10 -- Five years after crying rape and sending a man to prison for a crime that never happened, Biurney Peguero has been slapped with a one- to three-year sentence for committing perjury. . . . She deserves that much - and more. Peguero should have been required to spend at least as much time behind bars as did William McCaffrey, the innocent man she locked away. . . . That Peguero eventually admitted fabricating her account of a brutal assault by McCaffrey and two other men does not mitigate her offense. Nor was hers garden-variety perjury of the kind that witnesses perpetrate to, say, dodge an indictment. . . . Peguero's sworn words stole the freedom of a blameless individual as surely as if she had kidnapped and held him hostage for 50 months. Her eligibility to apply for parole in a year pales in comparison. . . . She also played the criminal justice system - the police, the Manhattan district attorney's office, a judge and two juries - for fools. They bought a story that in the clear light of hindsight had grounds for doubt. . . . And, so, the Peguero case must serve as an object lesson for law enforcement authorities and judges as to the makings of a wrongful conviction. It should also reinforce for them the need for speedy reconsideration when there is substantial evidence that an injustice has been done.

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NEW YORK  

Woman who falsely accused man of rape, sending him to prison for 4 years, gets 1-3 years jail

By Rich Schapiro, Daily News Staff Writer

02-23-10 -- A Manhattan judge on Tuesday excoriated a young woman who falsely accused a man of rape - sending him to prison for nearly four years - then tossed her behind bars. . . . "What happened in this case is one of the worst things that can happen in our criminal justice system," Manhattan Supreme Court Justice Charles Solomon said before sentencing Biurny Peguero to one to three years. . . . "She testified that an entirely innocent person committed an extremely heinous crime. ... It's hard for me to imagine how she could do that."

Landlords’ Convictions Overturned in Deaths of 2 Firefighters

By Sam Dolnick,  New York Times 

02-23-10 -- A Bronx judge on Tuesday overturned the convictions of the owner and former owner of a building where two firefighters leapt to their deaths from a fourth-floor window to escape advancing flames. . . . A jury convicted the defendants of criminally negligent homicide and reckless endangerment a year ago; prosecutors had argued that they knew about the illegal partitions that had turned the apartment building into a dangerous maze that helped disorient the firefighters as the flames quickly spread. . . . But Justice Margaret L. Clancy of State Supreme Court took the unusual step on Tuesday of overturning the verdict because, she said, prosecutors had failed to prove that the defendants — the company that owned the building, and Cesar Rios, its former owner — knew about the partitions. . . . “An individual or entity cannot be convicted of a crime without evidence of actual knowledge,” Justice Clancy said. . . . On the frigid morning of Jan. 23, 2005, firefighters were called to a blaze in a building at 236 East 178th Street in Tremont. Tenants had built partitions inside apartments on the third and fourth floors that created small, windowless rooms cut off from the fire escape and the hallway. . . . Six firefighters trapped in the warren of rooms were forced to jump 50 feet from the building to escape. Firefighter John G. Bellew and Lt. Curtis W. Meyran died; the other four suffered serious injuries.

NEW YORK  

Appeals Court Reverses Homicide Conviction for Leaving Overdose Victim on Lawn

Mark Fass, New York Law Journal

02-22-10 -- An upstate New York appeals panel has thrown out the negligent homicide conviction of a man who, after a woman overdosed on heroin and passed out in his car, dropped her off on the lawn of a trailer park. . . . The woman, who was unconscious but breathing when defendant Carl Erb pulled her from his car, died in a hospital after she was discovered two hours later. . . . The unanimous Appellate Division, 4th Department, panel found that the woman was no worse off on the lawn than in Erb's car. . . . "We agree with defendant that the evidence failed to establish that his acts in any way caused the death of the victim. Defendant did not procure or inject the drugs that caused the death of the victim, nor did he place her in a location that made her less likely to obtain medical assistance," the panel found in its unsigned opinion, People v. Erb, 138. "There is no evidence that removing the victim from the vehicle or leaving her outside contributed to her death."

NORTH CAROLINA  

State commissions would cut years innocents found guilty serve

By Joe Sommers,  Kansas State Collegian

02-22-10 -- Last week, a man in North Carolina was released after a panel of judges ruled he had been wrongfully convicted of murdering a prostitute. . . . Gregory F. Taylor, who had been in jail since 1991 after receiving a life sentence, was released after a special commission discovered he had been convicted on what the judges decided was flawed evidence and unreliable testimony. . . . The reason this case is noteworthy is not just because a wrongfully imprisoned man was freed, but also because it was made possible through the North Carolina Innocence Inquiry Commission. . . . The eight-member commission, which was created in 2006, investigates post-conviction claims and decides if there is sufficient new evidence to overturn the conviction. It then hands the case over to a special three-judge panel that gives an official ruling. . . . The commission is currently the only one of its kind in the United States, which is something that needs to change.

NORTH CAROLINA

Prosecutor Reflects On Taylor Case

Written by Mike Raley/David Horn, North Carolina News Network  

02-19-10 -- Friday marked the second full day of freedom for Greg Taylor, declared innocent by a three-judge panel on Wednesday of the murder of a prostitute in Raleigh in 1991. Wake County Prosecutor Colon Willoughby's office was in charge of the original case. . . . Willoughby said he prosecuted the case based on the evidence available.  "I think that what we need in the criminal justice system is all of the information that is available about particular pieces of evidence," said Willoughby.  "In this case I think neither the defense or the prosecutor were aware of information that later appeared to be very important."

NORTH CAROLINA

Unique Innocence Commission in North Carolina Frees Murder Defendant After 17 Years

Death Penalty Information Center

02-18-10 -- In an historic decision, a panel of judges outside of the state's court system unanimously voted to exonerate and release Gregory Taylor, a North Carolina man who was imprisoned for nearly 17 years for first-degree murder.  In April 1993, Taylor was convicted of the 1991 murder of Jacquetta Thomas, a prostitute found dead at the end of a cul-de-sac in Raleigh. Police arrested Taylor after finding his SUV about 100 yards from the crime scene, even though there was never any physical evidence linking Taylor to the victim.  Taylor became the first person in the state to be exonerated by the North Carolina Innocence Inquiry Commission, the only state-run agency in the United States with the power to overturn convictions based on claims of innocence. Earlier, the eight-member Commission had voted unanimously to send Taylor's case to the next level of review before the panel of  three judges.

COLORADO   

Attorney: Masters can move forward

By Nate Taylor • The Coloradoan

02-17-10 -- With his civil court battle partially over against those he claims conspired to wrongfully imprison him, Timothy Masters is finally able to begin to move on with his life, his attorney David Lane said. . . . "Tim can now begin to put this behind him, and the financial pressure is behind him," Lane said in a phone interview Tuesday. . . . Larimer County commissioners approved a $4.1 million settlement with Masters Tuesday, but his suit continues against the other defendants, the city of Fort Collins and its current and former officers. . . . Lane said he believes the police were more culpable in his client's conviction and wrongful imprisonment in the 1987 slaying of Peggy Hettrick than prosecutors Jolene Blair and Terence Gilmore. . . . A visiting judge in 2008 overturned Masters' conviction, and he was set free.

FLORIDA

Wrongfully convicted Broward man to be compensated

By Diana Moskovitz, MiamiHerald.com

02-17-10 -- Convicted of a robbery he didn't commit, Leroy McGee's life consists of two parts: before prison and after prison. . . . Before prison, McGee was a young man with a family, four children and big dreams. . . . After prison, three years and seven months later, McGee was divorced, living with his mother and working three jobs to get by. . . . On Tuesday, with a few strokes of a pen in Fort Lauderdale, the 42-year-old signed the papers that will deliver compensation from the state for his lost years: $179,000. The amount will be spread out over at least 10 years. . . . He could have signed the papers six months ago, said his lawyer, David Comras. . . . Instead, McGee waited to draw attention to what he and several lawyers called flaws in the current laws that could exclude from compensation most people who have been wrongfully convicted.

TEXAS

Family requests pardon for man wrongly convicted of rape

Jeff Carlton, The Associated Press, Dallas Morning News

02-17-10 -- Attorneys for a man who died in prison after he was wrongly convicted of rape have filed for a pardon with the Texas Board of Pardons and Paroles. . . . Tim Cole's pardon application was mailed this week to Austin by The Innocence Project of Texas. . . . Cole, an Army veteran, died behind bars in 1999 at age 39. He was convicted of a 1985 rape of a Texas Tech student in Lubbock. . . . A 2008 DNA test cleared Cole and implicated convicted rapist Jerry Wayne Johnson, who confessed in several letters to court officials that date back to 1995. . . . Cole's family has been asking for a pardon from Gov. Rick Perry, who was sympathetic but maintained he legally could not issue a posthumous pardon. . . . Last month, Attorney General Greg Abbott ruled that the Texas Constitution limits pardon power only in cases of treason or impeachment.

FLORIDA

Fort Lauderdale man to get $179,000 under new law

He unjustly spent 3 years, 7 months in prison

By Jon Burstein, Sun Sentinel

02-14-10 -- A Fort Lauderdale man who spent three years and seven months in prison for a robbery he didn't commit will become the first wrongfully convicted person to receive compensation under a new Florida law. . . . Leroy McGee, 42, plans to sign legal papers on Tuesday that will allow him to start receiving $179,000 under the state's Victims of Wrongful Incarceration Compensation Act. The father of five is the first to apply for and receive compensation — $50,000 for every year unjustly spent in prison — under the law that took effect in July 2008. . . . McGee became eligible for the money in July 2009 but had refused to sign all the paperwork. His reluctance stemmed from the state's refusal to pay the legal costs he racked up in his fight for compensation. He said he feared that if the state refuses to cover such costs, other wrongfully convicted people would be unable to hire attorneys to seek reparations. . . . But McGee, a carpenter with the Broward School District, said last week that because of the uncertain economy and his desire to help his kids and move out of his mother's house, it's time to sign the papers. . . . "I still want to fight the fight," he said. "If you are willing to pay knowing I didn't do this crime, why wouldn't you pay the legal fees also?"

MINNESOTA

Defense Attorney in Fatal Crash Case Wants Toyota Vehicle Re-Examined

The Associated Press, Law.com

02-12-10 -- The attorney for a man imprisoned after a fatal car crash says he'll seek to have the man's Toyota re-examined in light of the automaker's recent recall over accelerator issues. . . . Koua Fong Lee is serving eight years in prison for a high-speed crash in Minneapolis that killed three people in 2006. . . . Accident reconstruction experts estimated Lee was going 72 to 91 mph when he left Interstate 94 and repeatedly pumped what he believed were the brakes before slamming into another car and killing three people.

KANSAS

Wrongfully Convicted: He spent 10 years in prison for a rape he didn’t commit; now he’s getting $7.5M

By Shaun Hittle, Lawrence Journal World

02-11-10 -- Over the past 30 years, Eddie Lowery has been a soldier, a convicted rapist, an ex-convict, a registered sex offender, a husband and a father. . . . But Lowery, 50, is also an exonerated man who spent 10 years in a Kansas prison for a rape he didn’t commit. . . . After nearly three decades, Lowery’s struggle with the criminal justice system is almost complete. . . . “I feel now that justice is coming full circle,” he said in a recent interview. . . . Lowery has reached a $7.5 million settlement with the Riley County officials who worked to wrongfully convict him. And, last week, officials in the Kansas attorney general’s office announced they had arrested the man they believe actually committed the crime. . . . “Who could ever imagine a story like this?” Lowery said.

MISSOURI   

Man convicted of statutory rape may get new trial after DNA report

By Mark Morris, The Kansas City Star

02-10-10 -- A Jefferson City man convicted of the statutory rape of a 12-year-old girl won a key court ruling Wednesday in his push for a new trial. . . . The reason: New DNA evidence proves that the girl lied. . . . Antoine Terry was 17 at the time he allegedly impregnated the girl, who testified at Terry’s 2008 trial in Cole County that he had to be the father of her unborn child. He was the only man with whom she’d had sex in the summer of 2007, she said. . . . But DNA testing after the child’s birth showed that Terry was not the father, court records say. . . . The Missouri Supreme Court ordered a lower court Wednesday to consider a new trial.

NORTH CAROLINA  

Editorial: Pressing for justice

Salisbury Post Editorial

02-10-10 -- North Carolinians have been up in arms about a court order that threatened to release dozens of convicted murderers and rapists after serving only 30 years of their life sentences. . . . In addition to keeping the guilty behind bars, fair-minded citizens should also be passionate about freeing the innocent. It's in their interest to follow the work of the North Carolina Innocence Inquiry Commission. . . . This week in Raleigh, a three-judge panel is hearing the case of Greg Taylor, 47, of Cary. Taylor has been in prison almost 17 years for a murder he says he didn't commit — the beating death of a prostitute whose body was found near his abandoned car. . . . The North Carolina Innocence Inquiry Commission pressed for this hearing after putting Taylor's case through a rigorous screening process. The commission's staff reviews public records and court records, conducts field investigations, contacts witnesses, evaluates new evidence and takes a case through a formal inquiry and a commission hearing before it can go to a three-judge panel — the stage where Taylor's case is now. The burden is on Taylor's lawyers to prove his innocence by clear and convincing evidence.

How Many More Are Innocent?

America's 250th DNA exoneration raises questions about how often we send the wrong person to prison.

Radley Balko, Reason.com

02-08-10 -- Freddie Peacock of Rochester, New York, was convicted of rape in 1976. Last week he became the 250th person to be exonerated by DNA testing since 1989. According to a new report by the Innocence Project, those 250 prisoners served 3,160 years between them; 17 spent time on death row. Remarkably, 67 percent of them were convicted after 2000—a decade after the onset of modern DNA testing. The glaring question here is, How many more are there? . . . Calculating the percentage of innocents now in prison is a tricky and controversial process. The numerator itself is difficult enough to figure out. The certainty of DNA testing means we can be positive the 250 cases listed in the Innocence Project report didn't commit the crimes for which they were convicted, and that number also continues to rise. But there are hundreds of other cases in which convictions have been overturned due to a lack of evidence, recantation of eyewitness testimony, or police or prosecutorial misconduct, but for which there was no DNA evidence to establish definitive guilt or innocence. Those were wrongful convictions in that there wasn't sufficient evidence to establish reasonable doubt, but we can't be sure all the accused were factually innocent.

January 2010

ILLINOIS  

Ill. man sues police, lawyers he says framed him

By David Mercer, Associated Press Writer, Chicago Tribune

01-27-10 -- A Rockford man who spent 13 years in prison before his murder conviction was thrown out is suing investigators and two prosecutors in central Illinois whom he claims disregarded and hid evidence that could have cleared him. . . . Lawyers for Alan Beaman filed a federal lawsuit Tuesday in Peoria against the five former police officers, the prosecutors -- current McLean County Judges James Souk and Charles Reynard -- the city of Normal and Mclean county. . . . Beaman, who is now 37, was convicted in 1995 and sentenced to 50 years in prison in the death of Illinois State University student Jennifer Lockmiller, his ex-girlfriend. The state Supreme Court threw out the conviction in 2008. . . . "They tried the case on the premise that Alan Beaman was the only person in a small circle of possible suspects with the motive and the opportunity to commit the crime; that was a false premise," Beaman's attorney, Locke Bowman, said Wednesday after a news conference in Bloomington announcing the lawsuit.

MICHIGAN  

Professors, students to attack murder case at hearing today

By Joe Swickard, Free Press Staff Writer

01-27-10 -- Law professors and student of the University of Michigan Innocence Clinic will continue their attack on the murder case against Dwayne Provience in a hearing this morning at the Frank Murphy Hall of Justice. . . . The clinic succeeded in getting Provience’s 2001 murder conviction tossed out last year saying key evidence was improperly withheld in the first trial, but Wayne County prosecutors are pressing to retry the case. . . . After the last hearing in December, Larry Wiley – the only witness to name Provience as the killer – said he was not at the scene and that police squeezed and coached him to testify against Provience.

NEW YORK

Man released from prison to speak at forum

Poughkeepsie Journal

01-25-10 -- Dewey Bozella, a Dutchess County man released from prison after a judge ruled he had been wrongfully convicted of murder, will take part in a panel discussion on prison issues Sunday at a Town of Poughkeepsie church. . . . Bozella will share his prison experiences at the Justice for All Speakers Forum at the Poughkeepsie United Methodist Church on New Hackensack Road. The event will start at 4 p.m. . . . Bozella, 50, was convicted in two separate trials of murdering 92-year-old Emma Crapser in 1977 during a robbery at the woman’s home in the City of Poughkeepsie. . . . Last year, acting Dutchess County Court Judge James T. Rooney ruled evidence that could have convinced a jury to find Bozella not guilty had not been made available to Bozella’s attorneys.

CALIFORNIA  

9th Circuit: Police Can Be Sued for Coercive Interrogation of Teenage Murder Suspect

Cheryl Miller, The Recorder

01-15-10 -- A 9th Circuit panel on Thursday reinstated many of the legal claims of a Southern California man, who, as a 14-year-old boy, falsely confessed to killing his younger sister after a series of grueling and coercive interviews with police. . . . Writing for a unanimous three-judge panel, Judge Sidney Thomas said authorities' marathon questioning of Michael Crowe and his accused accomplice, Aaron Houser, "shocks the conscience."(pdf) . . . "Michael and Aaron -- 14 and 15 years old, respectively -- were isolated and subjected to hours and hours of interrogation during which they were cajoled, threatened, lied to, and relentlessly pressured by teams of police officers," Thomas wrote. "'Psychological torture' is not an inapt description."

FEDERAL COURT

3rd Circuit Revives Suit, Opening Door to DNA Evidence

Shannon P. Duffy, The Legal Intelligencer

01-14-10 -- An Erie, Pa., man who was sentenced to 75 years in prison for three rapes he claims he did not commit has won an important victory in the 3rd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in his battle for access to DNA evidence that he says will prove his innocence. . . . A unanimous three-judge panel revived the case, Grier v. Klem, and ordered new hearings on the issue of whether Pennsylvania's rules on DNA testing can have unfair results (pdf) by barring access to DNA evidence whenever a defendant has already confessed to the crime. . . . The panel found that a lower court erred in tossing out Emmitt Grier's §1983 civil rights suit on the grounds that it violated the Heck rule. Named for the U.S. Supreme Court's 1994 decision in Heck v. Humphrey, the rule bars state prisoners from bringing a civil rights suit "if the success of that claim would undermine the prisoner's conviction or sentence, unless that conviction or sentence has already been called into question."

FEDERAL COURTS

Ex-Banker Begins 3-Year Prison Term Wondering Why

Commentary by Ann Woolner, Bloomberg   

01-08-10 -- One of the perks of wearing the robe of a federal judge is that you don’t have to explain yourself. . . . But when a judge sends to prison for three years-plus the man who pointed U.S. tax collectors to billions of dollars of untaxed American wealth, who tore open the veil of secrecy surrounding Swiss banking, he ought to say why. . . . If Bradley Birkenfeld hadn’t blown the whistle on his former employer, UBS AG, thousands of Americans would still be evading taxes instead of paying them on some $20 billion they had stashed away overseas at the bank. Switzerland wouldn’t have been forced to agree to make banking more transparent. . . . And hundreds of suspected tax evaders wouldn’t now be under investigation, spawning guilty pleas and multimillion-dollar recoveries for the national treasury. . . . “Without Mr. Birkenfeld walking into the door of the Department of Justice in the summer of 2007, I doubt as of today that this massive fraud scheme would have been discovered by the United States government,” Birkenfeld’s chief prosecutor, Kevin Downing, told the sentencing judge in August. . . . So, why is Birkenfeld headed to a federal prison in Pennsylvania today? . . . U.S. District Judge William Zloch gave no explanation in August when he sentenced him to 40 months, 10 months longer than prosecutors recommended. A transcript shows Zloch was silent on the point.

CALIFORNIA

Santa Clara County judge orders man freed

By Tracey Kaplan, mercurynews.com

01-07-10 -- In a stunning rebuke to the Santa Clara County District Attorney's Office, a county judge on Wednesday ordered a man who had been sentenced to 38 years to life freed on the grounds the trial prosecutor in the child molestation case committed "numerous acts of misconduct,'' including giving false testimony. . . . The ruling by Superior Court Judge Andrea Y. Bryan means Augustin Uribe, 66, will be released within several days after spending four years behind bars for a crime that even the alleged victim says he did not commit. . . . The decision casts a shadow over the career of Deputy District Attorney Troy Benson and further tarnishes the reputation of the District Attorney's Office, which has come under fire in recent years for alleged prosecutorial misconduct.

TEXAS

Texas attorney general says governor can pardon man exonerated by DNA after dying in prison

Jeff Carlton Associated Press Writer, Los Angeles Times

01-07-10 -- With a pardon for her dead son finally possible, the mother of a Texas man wrongly convicted of rape said she knows what to do now: take flowers to his grave and share the news. . . . An attorney general's opinion Thursday cleared the way for Gov. Rick Perry to issue a posthumous pardon for Tim Cole, an Army veteran and innocent man who died behind bars in 1999 at age 39. The opinion brings Cole's family a step closer to ending a 25-year effort to clear his name. . . . "He knows," Ruby Session said of her son. "I am sure he probably knew before the rest of us." . . . A sympathetic Perry embraced a tearful Session last year but said he did not have the power to issue a posthumous pardon, citing a 45-year-old attorney general's opinion. Current Attorney General Greg Abbott overturned that, saying the Texas constitution limits pardon power only in cases of treason or impeachment.

IOWA

Prosecutor conduct case before Supreme Court is settled

Two Iowa men freed after spending 26 years in prison for murder had sued, saying prosecutors framed them. With justices signaling they might favor the men, the county settles for $12 million.

By David G. Savage, Los Angeles Times

01-05-10 -- Reporting from Washington - A Supreme Court case testing whether a prosecutor can be sued for framing suspects for a murder ended Monday when an Iowa county agreed to pay $12 million to two men who were freed after spending 26 years in prison. . . . In the past, the high court had said prosecutors could not be sued for doing their jobs, even if they sometimes convicted the wrong defendant. And in November, an Obama administration lawyer argued on behalf of Pottawattamie County, asserting that there is no constitutional "right not to be framed." . . . But several justices said they found that argument appalling. They signaled they were not prepared to shield prosecutors who knowingly fabricated a case against a suspect. . . . Over the holidays, the county and its lawyers offered to settle the case by paying $12 million to Terry Harrington and Curtis McGhee, who were convicted as teenagers in 1978 of murdering a night security guard. Both men are black. . . . On Monday, the Supreme Court said it was dismissing the case because it was settled. . . . "We're delighted to have this settled. It has been a long time coming for them," said Doug McCalla, a lawyer who sued on behalf of Harrington. "Cases like Terry's make it very clear that we need the powerful remedies provided by this country's civil rights statutes."

WISCONSIN   

Brown County District Attorney John Zakowski confident he convicted the men who murdered Tom Monfils

By Paul Srubas • greenbaypressgazette.com

01-03-10 -- Brown County District Attorney John Zakowski, who prosecuted the 1995 case against six paper mill employees accused of killing co-worker Tom Monfils, said a new book on the case does not raise any issues that were not covered during the trial. . . . The book, “The Monfils Conspiracy,” claims that six men were wrongly convicted of beating Monfils and dropping him alive into a paper pulp vat at the former James River paper mill. His body was found the next day, a 40-pound weight tied to his neck. . . . Authors Denis Gullickson and John Gaie wrote the book with the help of Michael Piaskowski, Gaie’s former brother-in-law and one of the six convicted men. . . . Piaskowski was released from prison when a federal judge ruled there had been insufficient evidence to convict him.

florida

The Age of Innocents

Opening Statements

By Mark Hansen, ABA Journal

01-01-10 -- Barney Brown should have listened to his mother that fateful day in 1970 when she told him to stay home while she was at work. . . . But Brown, then 13 and living in Hollywood, Fla., did what many teens do: He ignored his mother and snuck out with friends. . . . “I thought I’d be back before she got home,” he says. But Brown didn’t come home for 38 years. . . . While out with his friends that day, police stopped the car in which he was a passenger. Brown, an African-American, was arrested for raping a white woman and robbing her husband. . . . Police then held the teen without charges for four days, during which time, Brown claims, they brutally beat and interrogated him while trying to force a confession. His parents weren’t notified that their son was in police custody, even though they had called police to report him missing. . . . Despite Brown’s repeated protestations of innocence—and numerous lineups in which the victims failed to identify him—prosecutors tried him as a juvenile for rape and robbery. After an acquittal, prosecutors used a quirk in the law to retry Brown as an adult. He was convicted and sentenced to life in prison. . . . Brown was released from prison in September 2008 after lawyers persuaded a judge that the second prosecution violated the constitutional protection against double jeopardy.

December 2009

NEW YORK  

David Lemus gets $1.25M from city after spending 14 years in jail for murder of Palladium bouncer

By Alison Gendar, Daily News Staff Writer

12-30-09 -- The city will pay $1.25 million to a man who accused the NYPD and Manhattan district attorney's office of letting him rot in prison for a murder he didn't commit. . . . David Lemus contends that cops and prosecutors knew as early as 1994 that two other men killed bouncer Marcus Peterson outside the Palladium nightclub in 1990. . . . The E. 14th St. hot spot has since been knocked down and replaced with an NYU dorm. . . . After 14 years behind bars, Lemus was acquited in a 2007 retrial. . . . A former Manhattan prosecutor acknowledged he helped Lemus' defense team with the second trial because he was convinced Lemus was innocent, regardless of Lemus' confession to police or incriminating statements made to his girlfriend. . . . Lemus sued the city for $50 million last year.

OREGON

Freed man says officials passing buck

Cannon plans to file civil lawsuit about his imprisonment

By Alan Gustafson • Statesman Journal

12-30-09 -- A Salem man who recently won his freedom after spending more than 10 years in prison for the fatal shootings of three people reacted strongly Tuesday to a state report that concluded authorities lost or destroyed evidence used to convict him. . . . "Boy, contradictions and passing of the buck, if you ask me," Philip Scott Cannon said. "The whole thing is a who's who of incompetency. The way everybody is passing the buck right now, I kind of get the impression they're all about damage control and nothing else." . . . Cannon, who has maintained his innocence in the triple-murder case, said he plans to pursue a federal civil lawsuit against yet-to-be-named defendants. A civil suit could seek financial compensation for his legal debts, estimated at more than $200,000, and years of imprisonment. . . . The law firm of Gerry Spence, a defense lawyer based in Wyoming, has expressed interest in representing him, Cannon said. . . . "After the first of the year, I'll be getting back in touch with them," he said. "They've already inquired with my local attorney, and they're interested." . . . Less than two weeks after gaining his freedom, Cannon said he's adjusting to life after prison.

MASSACHUSETTS   

Man freed in rape case settles suit for $3.25m

By Jonathan Saltzman, Boston Globe Staff

12-29-09 -- Ulysses Rodriguez Charles, who spent about 18 years in prison after being wrongfully convicted of raping three women in a Brighton apartment, has settled a federal civil rights lawsuit against the City of Boston for $3.25 million, according to a city lawyer. . . . Charles and lawyers for the city reached the settlement earlier this month, averting a trial in US District Court in Boston, William F. Sinnott, the city’s corporation counsel, said yesterday. . . . The deal came eight months after a state jury in a civil trial cited “clear and convincing evidence’’ in declaring that Charles was innocent of the 1980 rapes and was entitled to $500,000 under the state’s wrongful conviction compensation law.

Studies: Innocence Network Exonerations 2009

Death Penalty Information Center

12-28-09 -- Twenty-seven people were exonerated and released from prison this year, including some who had been on death row, according to a new report from The Innocence Project, a national litigation and public policy organization dedicated to exonerating wrongfully convicted people.  The 27 exonerees served a combined 421 years in prison for crimes they did not commit.  The exonerations occurred through the work of the Innocence Project Network, which consists of 54 organizations, including 45 in the U.S.  The Innocence Project concentrates on wrongful convictions and uses DNA testing, while also promoting reform of the criminal justice system.  (Click on the thumbnail to access full text of the report.)  The most recent person exonerated was James Bain, who was imprisoned for 35 years before DNA testing revealed that someone else had committed the crime that led to his conviction. Read more

CONNECTICUT  

700 Connecticut Inmates' Cases Eligible For Possible DNA Review

‘OPERATION INNOCENCE’

By Dave Altimari, Hartford Courant

12-27-09 -- Nearly 700 Connecticut prisoners, many of them serving long sentences for murder or sexual assault, are getting letters from a team of defense attorneys, prosecutors and forensic experts offering them the chance to see if there's any DNA evidence that could exonerate them. . . . The state, using a $1.5 million grant from the U.S. Department of Justice, will spend the next 18 months reviewing post-conviction cases for any such evidence. . . . "Everyone in prison always says they are innocent and, as we have seen in Connecticut, some of them actually are, and this will be an opportunity to look at some older cases with new technology," said New Haven prosecutor James Clark, who is overseeing the team. . . . Seven people are working full time on what some are dubbing "Operation Innocence." Besides Clark, the others are Karen Goodrow, executive director of the Connecticut Innocence Project; an attorney and investigator from her office; a state inspector; and a DNA analyst and a criminologist from the State Police Forensic Laboratory.

TEXAS  

Texas Man Freed by DNA Sues Over 'Excessive' Attorney Fees

Jeff Carlton, The Associated Press, Law.com

12-24-09 -- A wrongly convicted man freed by DNA evidence is suing his civil lawyer and an Innocence Project of Texas official, saying they want too large a chunk of the nearly $1.3 million he received for spending 16 years in prison. . . . Patrick Waller, wrongly imprisoned from 1992 to 2008, is on an expanding list of Texas DNA exonerees upset over what they call excessive attorney fees. His lawsuit filed this week is the second in a month as a formerly feel-good story about freedom and delayed justice devolves into a battle over turf and money. . . . Waller recently received a seven-figure lump sum under a new state compensation law that attorney Kevin Glasheen lobbied for on behalf of his 13 wrongly convicted clients. . . . Waller said he paid Glasheen $650,000 in fees, and Glasheen in turn will pay a $130,000 referral fee to Jeff Blackburn, the chief counsel for the Innocence Project of Texas. . . . Glasheen dismissed Waller's lawsuit as "a weak claim" Wednesday. Blackburn declined to comment, saying he hadn't yet seen the lawsuit. . . . Waller agrees Glasheen should be paid for his lobbying work, but contends he hired a lawyer, not a lobbyist. He also said he was shocked to learn about Blackburn's fee, even though Blackburn's innocence group was involved in Waller's case.

DISTRICT OF COLUMBIA  

Justice delayed

Washington Post Editorial     

12-18-09 -- "I DIDN'T KILL her. I never saw her. I am sorry she died, because her death has ruined my life." The truth of those words -- spoken 27 years ago by Donald E. Gates as he was being sentenced to life in prison for the murder of a D.C. woman -- was confirmed this week. Mr. Gates is finally free, but what the judge called the "absolutely appalling" circumstances of this case merit further investigation. **** What appalled Judge Ugast is that information discrediting Mr. Malone surfaced as early as 1997 but that neither he, as the original sentencing judge, nor the defense was informed. Particularly damning is a Jan. 22, 2004, letter from the Justice Department informing prosecutors that Mr. Malone's lab report in the Gates case was not supported by his notes and advising them to determine whether the defense should be notified, as legally required under Brady v. Maryland. The U.S. attorney's office said it only recently became aware of the letter and is conducting an investigation to determine whether it was actually received and, if so, why it wasn't given to the appropriate officials. A better question is why the government -- as a matter of policy -- didn't alert the defense to doubts raised in 1997, when the inspector general concluded that Mr. Malone had provided false testimony, or in 2002, when it determined his work was material to Mr. Gates's conviction.

DNA sets free D.C. man imprisoned in 1981 student slaying

By Keith L. Alexander, Washington Post Staff Writer

12-16-09 -- A District man who was incarcerated for 28 years in the rape and murder of a Georgetown University student in Rock Creek Park was ordered released Tuesday by a D.C. Superior Court judge after DNA evidence revealed that another man committed the crime. . . . Donald Eugene Gates, now 58, had maintained his innocence from the start. He was to board a bus from a prison in Arizona on Tuesday afternoon and head to a new home -- and a new life -- in his home town of Akron, Ohio. . . . Although the judge's ruling frees Gates, it does not exonerate him. There will be a separate hearing to make that determination after more DNA testing is completed. . . . "This is very exciting and beautiful," Gates said as he tried to figure out how to operate the cellphone belonging to his Arizona-based attorney. Gates said he was trying to "process everything" now that he had been released from a life sentence.

NEW YORK  

Judge drops rape charges against William McCaffrey after accuser admits to perjury

BY Oren Yaniv , Daily News Staff Writer

12-10-09 -- A deeply apologetic judge officially dropped all charges Thursday against an innocent man he sent to prison for rape. . . . "I want to convey to you my personal regret in having participated, though unknowingly, in the injustice committed to you," Manhattan Criminal Court Judge Richard Carruthers told William McCaffrey, calling the wrong conviction "a catastrophe both for [McCaffrey] and for the criminal justice system." . . . McCaffrey's accuser, Biurny Peguero, 27, took back her damning rape allegations in August and confessed to perjury. . . . "Given the startling turn of events, I now recant what I said about you when I sentenced you for 20 years in prison for a rape we now know you did not commit," said the judge, who had called the alleged assault "horrific" and "disgusting" when he sent McCaffrey upstate in October 2006. . . . "It's terrific," said McCaffrey, 32, who has been out on bail since September. "I'm just glad it's over. I've been waiting for this for a long time."

NEW YORK  

Biurny Peguero Says Gang Rape Was Hoax;
Man She Put in Jail 5 Years Isn't Laughing

Story Contributed by CBS Affiliate WCBS-TV. (CBS/WCBS)

12-09-09 -- Five years ago, New Jersey resident Biurny Peguero said she was visciously gang-raped by three men in a van after a night of drinking in upper Manhattan. Her testimony sent William McCaffery to jail despite a lack of DNA evidence linking him to the crime. . . . Now, on the advice of her priest, Peguero has admitted it was all a hoax. On Monday in a Manhattan court, she pled guilty to perjury charges and could face seven years in jail. As a result of her new testimony McCaffery, the man convicted of raping her in 2005, was released from prison and is now awaiting final dismissal of the charges. . . . Peguero, 27, first told her new story in May to a priest at St. Anthony of Padua Roman Catholic Church near her home in Union City, N.J. The priest helped her contact an attorney who brought the case to the Manhattan DA's office. . . . Peguero's attorney, Paul Callon, called it "an awful situation of someone telling a lie, then being locked in the lie as the system proceeded."

VERMONT  

Woman Sentenced for Sending Innocent Man to Jail

WCAX

12-08-09 -- Tuesday was sentencing day for a former Norwich University student who framed an innocent man and sent him to prison for three months. . . . Prosecutors wanted Kellye Stephens to serve at least three months behind bars to balance the scales of justice. Prosecutors admit they may never know why Kellye Stephens lied to police to frame a man whose only crime was to fall in love with her after one date. The prosecutor indicated he believes she was lying again as a last minute ploy to avoid going to prison. . . . Washington County Prosecutor Tom Kelly wanted the judge to send 23-year-old Kellye Stephens to prison for 92 days, matching the jail time served by Rick Anderson, the innocent man she framed with lies to police. . . . Anderson and Stephens met at a function at Norwich University when she was a senior 21 months ago. . . . They dated once, and he fell in love with her and they exchanged a series of text messages and e-mails. . . . But she now admits she created phony e-mails supposedly from Anderson, containing death threats, which was the evidence that got Anderson jailed without bail for 92 days until investigators realized she was the culprit.

November 2009

MARYLAND   

Legislative fight brews on 'innocence' law

Prosecutors, lawmakers differ on rules for delayed appeals

By Tricia Bishop | Baltimore Sun  

11-29-09 -- A battle is brewing between Maryland's 24 state's attorneys and the legislature over a law that went into effect last month, allowing court hearings for people convicted of any level crime - at any time - who claim to have fresh exculpatory evidence. . . . Both sides agree the new law, meant to protect innocent people from unjust punishment, needs changes, it's too broad, and doesn't give prosecutors or victims' families a guaranteed opportunity to be heard. Each has drafted new versions, intending to submit them during the coming legislative session. But they differ on just how much needs to be amended. . . . The lawmakers want fewer changes: excluding district court misdemeanors from eligibility and requiring that notice be sent to particular parties. Prosecutors, concerned that a flood of expensive court filings will ensue, have a laundry list of alterations, including time limits and a promise that people who've pleaded guilty won't be qualified to petition for hearings.

TEXAS  

Father putting his life back together after daughters recant stories of molestation

By Diane Jennings / The Dallas Morning News

11-27-09 -- "Paul Parks" spent almost three years in prison for molesting his two young daughters. He spent another 15 years living with the stigma of being a registered sex offender. . . . All because of what they now say is a lie. . . . Last year his now-adult daughters changed their story and he was exonerated. Such recantations are not unusual, but being declared innocent by the courts is rare. . . . For Parks, who requested a pseudonym as he pulls his life back together, his moment came when a Dallas judge concluded that his daughters' recantations were credible. In April, the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals set the convictions aside "on actual innocence grounds." . . . The 54-year-old father of nine, paroled in 1994, got a call at work last spring telling him that after 25 years of hoping and praying, his name was cleared. . . . "It feels like I've got my life back, like I was suffocating and I came back to life," he says. . . . "I didn't want to die with a lie." . . . Once a lawyer, now a truck driver, he celebrated by asking his boss for time off to attend the wedding of one of the two daughters who accused him of molesting them. . . . Parks' case is every man's nightmare: to be accused of molesting your own daughters and to have no way to prove you didn't do it. Even now, he's aware that without conclusive evidence, like in the flurry of DNA exonerations in recent years, some people will always wonder if he's guilty.

NEW YORK  

Judge To Exonerate Man Wrongly Jailed For Rape

Gothamist  

11-24-09 -- A judge announced on Monday that he will likely throw out the conviction and dismiss the indictment of a Bronx man who was incarcerated for four years on rape charges that his accuser has admitted were made-up. Though he didn't immediately clear William McCaffrey's name, State Supreme Court Justice Richard D. Carruthers said "it seems from what I hear, the case against William McCaffrey should be dismissed," according to the Times. . . . McCaffrey, a 32-year-old former construction worker, was sentenced to 20 years in prison after Biurny Peguero Gonzalez, 27, claimed he and two other men raped her at knife-point in a van in Manhattan. After a religious conversion, Gonzalez has since confessed that she blamed McCaffrey to cover up for her girlfriends, and DNA tests revealed that the bite marks on her arm and shoulder did not contain evidence of a Y chromosome — meaning they weren't made by a man.

ARIZONA

Wrongfully Convicted Get Second Chance

Sarah Buduson, Reporter, KPHO.com

UPDATED: 9:52 am MST November 20, 2009

11-20-09 -- The Arizona Justice Project is making headway clearing wrongfully convicted felons, according to DNA Project Manager Lindsay Herf. . . . So far this year, the project has helped get DNA evidence tested in five rape cases and one murder case. . . . Herf said 40 more cases are under review. . . . “Cases continue to come in the door,” she said. . . . The project was set up to help overturn wrongful convictions. . . . The Innocence Project, a national organization dedicated to exonerating innocent convicts, has estimated 2 to 5 percent of convicts are innocent.

NEW YORK

Wrongfully jailed for 18 years, Fernando Bermudez is now a free man

By Kevin Deutsch and Larry Mcshane, Daily News Writers

11-20-09 -- After 18 years of clinging desperately to the truth, exonerated killer Fernando Bermudez walked out of Sing Sing prison Friday and wrapped both arms around his wife. . . . The wrongly convicted inmate, cleared last week in a 1991 murder, pumped his first and beamed at his spouse, Crystal, before the teary embrace that launched his new life as a free man. . . . The 40-year-old emerged from the infamous prison's sliding Gate 18 at 2:10 p.m., breathing in the fall air after spending nearly half his life behind bars for a crime he did not commit. . . . "Justice is possible for those who fight," said an ecstatic Bermudez. "Justice is possible for those who hope." . . . Bermudez was released eight days after his murder conviction was overturned. He had already served most of a 23-year-to-life sentence.

Appeals Court Voids ’93 Murder Convictions

By John Eligon, New York Times

11-20-09 -- New York State’s highest court on Thursday overturned the murder convictions of two men imprisoned for 19 years, ruling that a Manhattan prosecutor had misled the jury and improperly withheld information from defense lawyers at their trial. . . . In a unanimous decision ordering a new trial, the Court of Appeals ruled that the assistant district attorney prosecuting the men, Danny Colon and Anthony Ortiz, misled the jury about the extent of the help she gave to the prosecution’s main witness in exchange for his testimony. . . . The prosecutor, who was not named in the decision but was identified as Margaret J. Finerty in other court documents, also failed to give defense lawyers notes from interviews with two witnesses who identified other men as the killers, said the ruling, written by Associate Judge Victoria A. Graffeo.

UTAH

Prison term might earn state payout

New law » Freed 56-year-old could get $160,000 for 4½ years behind bars.

By Lindsay Whitehurst, The Salt Lake Tribune

11-20-09 -- The first person to ask the state to pay for wrongful imprisonment under a new Utah law has won what his attorney called a "tremendous victory" in the Utah Court of Appeals. . . . "It's also a tremendous victory for anyone who might find the themselves in the same situation," said Andrew McCullough, who represents 56-year-old Harry Miller. . . . Miller spent 4½ years in prison for a robbery before charges against him were dropped two years ago. Thursday, the appeals court ruled he should get a new hearing to prove his innocence, which would make him eligible for about $160,000 in compensation from the state. . . . The Utah Attorney General's Office has challenged Miller's claim, saying he has not shown there is new evidence to prove his innocence, and the office could still appeal Thursday's decision.

TEXAS  

Law firm files suit to stop compensation owed to Dallas County DNA exoneree

Jennifer Emily/ Dallas Morning News Reporter

11-19-09 -- A law firm this week sued the state comptroller to stop compensation owed to a Dallas County man who was wrongly convicted and then exonerated by DNA testing. . . . The state owes Steven Charles Phillips about $4 million for the nearly 25 years he spent in prison. Half will be paid in one lump sum, and the rest will be paid in yearly installments. . . . Kevin Glasheen, one of the attorneys who filed the suit in Travis County on behalf of the firm Glasheen, Valles, Inderman & DeHoyos, said that he is not asking the state to stop all payments. Glasheen said he just wants the court to hold onto the approximately $1 million in dispute. . . . Glasheen said Phillips owes the money for legal representation.

CALIFORNIA  

"Witch Hunt" DA Retires, Leaving Lurid Legacy and Shattered Families

By Garance Burke | The Associated Press | New York Lawyer

11-17-09 -- The molesters drank blood, the children said, and hung them from hooks after forcing them to have sex with their parents. They murdered babies, prosecutors told jurors, and snapped photographs as the horror unfolded. . . . Ed Jagels, renowned as one of California's toughest district attorneys, built his career on the Kern County child molestation cases of the 1980s, putting more than two dozen men and women behind bars to serve decades-long sentences for abusing children. . . . Appellate judges now say most of those crimes never happened. . . . Still, generations of voters have embraced the crusading prosecutor's tough-on-crime agenda in this blue-collar basin just a mountain range north of Los Angeles.

NEW YORK  

After 18 Years in Prison, Man's Murder Conviction Is Upset

Daniel Wise, New York Law Journal

11-13-09 -- A man has been imprisoned for 18 years for a murder he did not commit, a judge in Manhattan found Thursday morning. . . . Acting Supreme Court Justice John A. Cataldo ruled that Fernando Bermudez had proven by clear and convincing evidence that he was actually innocent of a 1991 murder. . . . After releasing his opinion, Cataldo apologized to Bermudez "on behalf of the criminal justice system," Alan R. Kaufman, one of Bermudez's pro bono lawyers, said in an interview. . . . All four eyewitnesses to the slaying had recanted their 1992 trial testimony, and no forensic evidence tied Bermudez to the crime.

UNITED STATES SUPREME COURT

No refuge when innocent are framed

Des Moines Register Editorial   

11-9-09 -- Some U.S. Supreme Court members reacted with confusion bordering on dismay at arguments for dismissing a suit against former Pottawattamie County prosecutors accused of conspiring to put two men in prison for 25 years for a murder they did not commit. Other members of the court, however, were troubled at the prospect of a ruling that might expose every prosecutor in the country to personal liability every time a defendant is convicted. . . . There is a process for holding accountable prosecutors who manufacture evidence to convict an innocent defendant while protecting honest prosecutors from unnecessary suits: It's called the court system. If the U.S. Supreme Court doesn't trust trial courts to sort out frivolous claims from substantive constitutional violations, the judicial system in this country is in serious trouble. . . . The Iowa case argued before the high court last week deserves to go before a jury.

UNITED STATES SUPREME COURT

High Court Justices Weigh Tradition of Prosecutorial Immunity Against Potential Civil Rights Violations

Tony Mauro, The National Law Journal

11-5-09 -- U.S. Supreme Court justices appeared torn Wednesday over whether prosecutors deserve total immunity from lawsuits for their official acts, even when they fabricate evidence in pursuit of a murder indictment and conviction. . . . The Court heard arguments in Pottawattamie County v. McGhee and Harrington, brought by two men who were freed after serving 25 years in prison for murdering a retired Iowa policeman. Based on recently obtained police files, Curtis McGhee and Terry Harrington sued prosecutors for violating their civil rights by coercing and coaching witnesses to falsely accuse them of the crime, even when evidence pointed toward another suspect.

October 2009

FLORIDA  

Fla. justices respond to death penalty confusion

By Bill Kaczor, Associated Press Writer, MiamiHerald.com  

10-29-09 -- The Florida Supreme Court revised standard jury instructions for death penalty cases Thursday in ways the justices hope will reduce widespread confusion among jurors disclosed by an American Bar Association survey. . . . An ABA team studying Florida's death penalty process three years ago found large percentages of jurors misunderstood the law and their role in deciding death cases. . . . About 35 percent didn't realize they could consider any evidence - not just examples cited in the instructions - that would mitigate against a death sentence. More than 36 percent wrongly believed they had to recommend death if they found a defendant's crime was "heinous, vile or depraved." . . . Also, 25 percent had the misconception they must recommend death if they thought a defendant would be a future danger to society. In reality, that's a factor they cannot consider.

CALIFORNIA

Attorney General's Office blasts Kevin Cooper's innocence claims in petition response

Will Bigham, Staff Writer, The Contra Costa Times

Online Extra: View the state Attorney General's 39-page response to Death Row inmate Kevin Cooper's U.S. Supreme Court petition

10-28-09 -- The state Attorney General's Office responded this week to Death Row inmate Kevin Cooper's petition to the U.S. Supreme Court, and urged the court to deny Cooper's September request for intervention in his decades-old case. . . . In their opposition filing, state attorneys detail evidence pointing to Cooper's guilt in the 1983 slaying of four people in Chino Hills, and assail Cooper's claim that he's had in insufficient opportunity to review evidence he claims will prove his innocence. . . . "(Cooper's) inability to prove his innocence stems from the fact that he is so plainly guilty," state attorneys write. "Further review of (Cooper's) highly fact-bound case is unwarranted." . . . Following numerous unsuccessful appeals, Cooper was scheduled to be executed in 2004. But on the day of the scheduled execution, the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals granted a stay to allow Cooper an opportunity to conduct forensic testing on a T-shirt and hair evidence.

NEW YORK

Unyielding in His Innocence, Now a Free Man

By Peter Applebome, New York Times

10-28-09 -- SEVERAL times over the 26 years he spent in prison for the 1977 murder of a 92-year-old woman, Dewey Bozella was dealt a potential get-out-of-jail card. . . . In multiple plea-bargain offers during his trial in 1990 and in four subsequent parole hearings, confessing and expressing remorse for the crime could have given him a chance to go free. He did not bite. . . . “I could never admit to something I didn’t do,” said Mr. Bozella, 18 at the time of the crime, 50 now. “I realized that if I was going to die in prison because of saying I’m innocent, well that was what was going to happen.” . . . He said these things on Wednesday afternoon, outside the Dutchess County Courthouse, rain cascading down, finally a free man after a judge threw out his conviction.

ILLINOIS  

Shameful Illinois prosecutors go after student investigators

What did Northwestern's journalism students get for their death penalty muckraking? A subpoena from the prosecutor

Editor's note: This column originally appeared on the blog Dissenting Justice.

By Darren Hutchinson, Salon

10-26-09 -- Students in the Medill Innocence Project at Northwestern University investigate claims of innocence and wrongful conviction by inmates. Over the course of a decade, the Medill project has helped secure the release of 11 innocent persons, five of whom were slated for execution. . . . Rather than applauding the students for their difficult and compelling work, prosecutors have hit them with a low blow. In a current case involving a claim of innocence by Anthony McKinney, Cook County prosecutors have served the Medill project with a shocking subpoena. According to the New York Times, the subpoena demands "the grades, grading criteria, class syllabus, expense reports and e-mail messages of the journalism students themselves." . . . The subpoena is highly inappropriate / The subpoena raises several red flags. First, the information the prosecutors seek is completely unrelated to the question of McKinney's guilt or innocence. Second, student grades are normally protected from disclosure by federal law. Third, the program is operated by the school of journalism and likely qualifies for protection by state journalism shield laws and the First Amendment.

TEXAS

2 men wrongly convicted in 1997 Dallas murder to be exonerated

By Diane Jennings / The Dallas Morning News

10-21-09 -- A confession by a man already in prison for another crime will lead to the exoneration of two men wrongly convicted for a 1997 capital murder, the Dallas County district attorney's office said today. . . . Claude Alvin Simmons, Jr., 54, and Christopher Shun Scott, 39, who are both serving life sentences for the April 7, 1997, shooting death of Alfonso Aguilar, will both be released after convicted robber Alonzo Hardy gave authorities a detailed confession implicating himself and another man in the murder. . . . Hardy, 39, has been in prison since 1999, serving a 30-year sentence for a robbery committed a year after the Aguilar slaying.

KENTUCKY

Prosecutor and defense attorney weigh in on wrongfully convicted man's case

By Lindsay English, Posted by Charles Gazaway, WAVE

10-14-09 -- Fourteen years after his conviction, a Louisville man has a clean criminal record, but it could have been a very different outcome. Tuesday, a Jefferson Circuit Court judge overturned Edwin Chandler's conviction, but WAVE 3 found that he was the only man wrongfully convicted by the same prosecutor. . . . When Chandler went to trial in 1995, Steve Schroering was an Assistant Commonwealth's Attorney and the lead prosecutor in the case. . . . "Circumstantial evidence was strong and then there was an admission on the part of Mr. Chandler that he had been involved," Schroering said. "So on a personal level, I was certainly comfortable going forward with the prosecution." . . . But new evidence, including an unmatched fingerprint on a beer bottle, cleared Chandler of the crime Tuesday, 16 years later.

IOWA

Flores case is unlikely to end regardless of ruling

By Lee Rood, Des Moines Register

10-14-09 -- Terry Harrington spent 25 years behind bars before the Iowa Supreme Court decided he had been wrongfully convicted. Free now, the Omaha man is waiting for the U.S. Supreme Court to decide this fall whether he can sue the prosecutors who put him behind bars. . . . David Flores has served 13 years of a life sentence at the Fort Madison prison in a murder case that legal experts say is strikingly similar to Harrington's. Some lawyers believe the new evidence in Flores' alleged wrongful conviction appeal is as compelling as the evidence that set Harrington free in 2003. . . . A ruling in the Flores case is expected in the next month. . . . Yet even if a Polk County judge takes the rare step of ruling in Flores' favor, he could face an uphill battle to win his freedom. . . . Despite several witnesses coming forward to say Rafael Robinson, not Flores, murdered Phyllis Davis in 1996, the ultimate decision of whether a convicted murderer will receive a new trial often is left to Iowa's Supreme Court - and can go as high as the U.S. Supreme Court, legal experts say.

KENTUCKY

Man's conviction set aside in 1993 shooting death

By Jessie Halladay • and Jason Riley Louisville Courier-Journal 

10-13-09 -- For 16 years, Edwin Chandler faithfully believed the day would come when everyone would know he wasn't the man who shot Brenda Whitfield in the head during a 1993 robbery at the Chevron station where she worked. . . . That day finally arrived Tuesday, when Jefferson Circuit Judge Fred Cowan vacated the manslaughter and robbery charges against Chandler after prosecutors and police announced they had convicted the wrong man. . . . “All I can do at this point is apologize to you on behalf of the criminal justice system,” Cowan said. “You area free man. God bless you, sir.” . . . Though they were the words Chandler always hoped he would hear, to hear them out loud in a Louisville courtroom was overwhelming and he crumpled on the table next to his attorney, his body wracked with sobs of relief.

Books: That Bird Has My Wings: The Autobiography of an Innocent Man on Death Row

Death Penalty Information Org.

10-9-09 -- "That Bird Has My Wings" is a new book by Jarvis Jay Masters, an inmate on San Quentin’s death row in California. In this memoir, Masters tells his story from an early life with his heron-addicted mother to an abusive foster home. He describes his escape to the illusory freedom of the streets and through lonely nights spent in bus stations and juvenile homes, and finally to life inside the walls of San Quentin Prison. Using the nub and filler from a ballpoint pen (the only writing instrument allowed him in solitary confinement), Masters chronicles the story of a bright boy who turned to a life of crime, and of a penitent man who embraces Buddhism to find hope.  Masters has written this story as a cautionary tale for anyone who might be tempted to follow in his footsteps, and as a plea for understanding about the forgotten members of society. (From publisher's description). . . .  Read more

TEXAS

Dallas inmate set to be freed after buried evidence found

By Steve McGonigle and Jennifer Emily / The Dallas Morning News

10-8-09 -- Dallas County jurors who sent Richard Miles to prison for 40 years never knew another man had been implicated in the same shooting incident. . . . It took 14 years and detective work by a prisoner advocacy group to unearth reports in police files that suggested others could have committed the murder and attempted murder that sent Miles to prison. . . . That discovery is set to get Miles released on Monday. . . . Dallas County prosecutors have agreed to dismiss his 1995 convictions because police failed to turn over exculpatory evidence. . . . State District Judge Andy Chatham is expected to release Miles on bond pending a final decision from the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals. . . . Miles' defense attorney, Cheryl Wattley, said she was optimistic he would not face a second trial.

OKLAHOMA

Two More Exonerations From Death Row: 137th and 138th Persons Freed in Oklahoma

Death Penalty Information Org.

10-6-09 -- Two men who were charged with murder in a 1993 drive-by shooting were released on October 2 after spending nearly a decade on Oklahoma’s death row. District Attorney David Prater dropped charges against Yancy Douglas (left),35, and Paris Powell (right), 36, after deciding the state's key witness was unreliable.  "Ethically, and on my duty, I could not proceed in this case and had to dismiss it," Prater said. Derrick Smith, a rival gang member to the defendants and the state's main witness, was one of the apparent targets in the shooting. A federal appeals court in 2006 found that Smith had received a deal from the prosecutors that was not revealed to the defense and overturned the convictions. Smith testified against Powell and Douglas in their 1997 trial, but later admitted he never saw who shot him, that he was drunk and high that night, and that he testified only because prosecutors had threatened him with more prison time. . . .  Read more

TEXAS

Michael Toney, Recently Exonerated from Death Row in Texas, Dies in Car Crash

Death Penalty Information Org.

10-6-09 -- Michael Toney, who recently became the 136th person exonerated and freed from death row since 1973, died in a car crash on October 3 in East Texas.  He had been released from jail one month ago on September 2 after the state dropped all charges against him for a 1985 bombing that killed three people.  Toney's conviction was overturned on December 17, 2008 by the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals because the prosecution suppressed evidence relating to the credibility of its only two witnesses against him. The Tarrant County District Attorney’s Office subsequently withdrew from the case based on the misconduct findings. In September 2009, the Attorney General's Office, which had been specially appointed to the case in the wake of Tarrant County’s withdrawal, dismissed the indictment against Toney.  He had consistently maintained his innocence.  The case had gone unsolved for 14 years until a jail inmate told authorities that Toney had confessed to the crime.  The inmate later recanted his story, saying he had hoped to win early release. The state said it is continuing its investigation into the murders.  Read more

TEXAS

Studies: Errors by Texas Medical Examiners Led to Wrongful Convictions

Death Penalty Information Org.

10-2-09 -- A recent investigaton by the Fort Worth Star-Telegram uncovered a series of mistakes by medical examiners in Texas. “Medical examiners have goofed up eye color and gender. They’ve made mistakes on the locations of scars or tattoos, described gallbladders and appendixes that had long since been removed – even confused one body for another,” noted the story.  Webb County Chief Medical Examiner Corinne Stern was criticized for an autopsy she performed on an infant while she was working in Alabama. Her report indicated that the infant was suffocated, but other experts concluded “her finding was based on junk science and that the [baby] was stillborn.”  Following the experts' report, the capital murder charge against the baby’s mother was dropped. . . . In 2007, former Travis County medical examiner Roberto Bayardo recanted his original testimony that helped convict Austin baby-sitter Cathy Lynn Henderson of capital murder and placed her on death row for the death of a baby. Twelve years earlier, Dr. Bayardo had testified that the baby’s cause of death was from receiving intentional blows. His new testimony said it was unclear what had happened and Henderson may have accidentally dropped the child.  "The work of the medical examiner's office is just so slipshod," said Tommy Turner, the former special prosecutor who put a Lubbock medical examiner behind bars for falsifying autopsies.  Read more

TEXAS

Texas pardons longest-serving inmate freed by DNA

By Jeff Carlton (AP)

10-1-09 -- A Texas man who spent more time in prison than any other inmate before being exonerated by DNA evidence was pardoned by Texas Gov. Rick Perry on Wednesday, clearing the way for him to collect millions of dollars from the state. . . . James Woodard's conviction was set aside 18 months ago after DNA testing showed he didn't commit the 1980 murder for which he had spent nearly three decades in prison. The Innocence Project said his 27 years behind bars edges out Charles Chatman, a Dallas man also cleared by DNA evidence, for the record. . . . Woodard was the boyfriend of the victim, who was found sexually assaulted and strangled. One of two eyewitnesses recanted her testimony, and subsequent DNA testing showed Woodard did not commit the sexual assault.

September 2009

TEXAS

Hightower: Justice has gone to the dogs

By Jim Hightower/ Guest columnist, MetroWest Daily News

9-30-09 -- Two criminal cases in Texas have raised quite a stench about a smell test that prosecutors nationwide have been using to toss a lot of folks in jail - folks who turn out to be innocent. . . . The tactic is called a "scent lineup." Rather than the common police lineup that asks eyewitnesses to pick out a criminal, this method goes to the dogs. Literally. . . . Trained dogs sniff evidence from the crime scene and are then brought into a line up to detect crime-scene smells on the suspect. The dog-sniff results have been called "hopelessly imprecise," but courts across the country allow them as evidence. . . . In the two recent Texas cases, dogs put one fellow in jail for two months, before a DNA test exonerated him of a robbery and sexual assault, while dogs in the other case almost got the suspect nailed for murder - until another man confessed. . . . "This is junk science," said an attorney for the Innocence Project of Texas. Then he corrected himself: "This isn't even science. This is just junk."

MARYLAND

Putting politics over criminal justice in Md.

Dan Rodricks, Baltimore Sun

9-29-09 -- Politics does not belong in criminal justice, but Maryland's most recent Democratic governors, still suffering Willie Horton nightmares, have injected it freely to convince voters they were not soft on crime. . . . .Early in his two-term tenure, Parris N. Glendening said "Life means life" and refused to consider parole for lifers, no matter how old or docile they got, unless they were terminally ill. Gov. Martin O'Malley feels much the same way, and in the matter I've written about recently -- convicted murderer Mark Farley Grant -- neither Mr. O'Malley nor his legal counsel have bothered to read the clemency plea sent to their desks more than a year ago by the Innocence Project at the University of Maryland School of Law. . . . The Innocence Project has uncovered new evidence that would almost certainly exonerate Mr. Grant, who has been in prison for more than 26 years. Mr. O'Malley's spokesman said last week that the governor would read the report at "the appropriate time," whatever that is. This is a dereliction of duty. . . . Governors have the power to consider and reconsider cases, to grant clemency when convinced that a man or woman was wrongly convicted, that a sentence was too harsh, that time served was adequate punishment, or that an inmate had exhibited stellar behavior while in prison. Contrast Mr. Glendening's and Mr. O'Malley's approach -- particularly O'Malley's -- with a far more honest and courageous approach taken by the Republican who served between them, Robert L. Ehrlich Jr.

Congress Conducts Hearings on the Innocence Protection Act

Death Penalty Information Org.

9-23-09 -- On September 22, the House Subcommittee on Terrorism, Crime and Homeland Security of the Judiciary Committee held hearings on the re-authorization of the Innocence Protection Act.  Among those making presentations were noted defense attorneys Stephen Bright (pictured), President of the Southern Center for Human Rights in Atlanta, and Barry Scheck, Co-Director of the Innocence Project in New York.  Mr. Bright emphasized that the best way to prevent wrongful convictions is to provide defendants with adequate representation:  "The best protection against conviction of the innocent is competent representation for those accused of crimes and a properly working adversary system.  Unfortunately, a very substantial number of jurisdictions throughout the country do not have either one."  He noted that DNA testing is no substitute for good lawyers, especially since such evidence is not available in most cases: "Some people believe that we can rely on DNA testing to protect the innocent, but DNA testing reveals only a few wrongful convictions. In most cases, there is no biological evidence that can be tested. In those cases, we must rely on a properly working adversary system to bring out all the facts and help the courts find the truth." Read more

TEXAS  

Exonerated man fights $1 million payout to lawyer

By Mitch Mitchell, Fort Worth Star Telegram

9-23-09 -- A man freed from prison by DNA evidence has asked a judge to stop his former lawyer from taking more than $1 million in fees out of his expected $4 million in state compensation. . . . Lawyers for Steven C. Phillips, 51, filed a petition in state district court in Dallas asking the judge to declare an agreement with his former lawyer "unconscionable and thus unenforceable." . . . That contract with his former lawyer obligated Phillips to give up one-fourth of his award from the state for the 24 years he spent incarcerated for a string of sexual assaults the courts now say he did not commit. . . . "I’ve got kids and grandkids out here," Phillips told the Star-Telegram. "That’s what I’m fighting for now. I’ve seen a lot of unfairness in my life. If now I get a chance to stand up against some of that unfairness, well I’m going to." . . . Phillips’ previous attorney, Kevin Glasheen, said he and his firm worked on behalf of Phillips and nearly a dozen other exonerees to win increased payments from the state in exchange for a cut of the proceeds. He said his firm worked diligently to increase the payments by steering a new bill through the Legislature.

CALIFORNIA

Bruce Lisker won't be retried for 1983 slaying of his mother

The San Fernando Valley man, now 44, walks free after more than 26 years behind bars. 'How can you put this into words? It's unbelievable,' he says.

By Matt Lait and Scott Glover

9-22-09 -- A San Fernando Valley man whose murder conviction was overturned last month walked out of court Monday a free man after prosecutors announced they would not retry him for his mother's 1983 slaying. . . . "How can you put this into words?" said Bruce Lisker, 44, after a judge formally dismissed the murder charge during a hearing in a Los Angeles courtroom. "It's unbelievable." . . . In requesting the dismissal, Head Deputy Dist. Atty. Patrick Dixon said much of the physical evidence had been lost or destroyed and some witnesses have died. Though he said he remained convinced that Lisker was guilty, he acknowledged that he lacked sufficient evidence to bring the case to trial.

MASSACHUSETTS   

Lawyer Who Got JD to Represent Brother Wins $10.7M in Wrongful Conviction Case
By Martha Neil, ABA Journal

9-18-09 -- A high-school dropout with two children who went on to get her general educational development certificate, graduate from college and earn a juris doctor degree so that she could represent her brother in a wrongful conviction case has now won $10.7 million in damages from a federal judge in Massachusetts. . . . But the award by U.S. District Judge George O'Toole Jr. was a bittersweet win for Betty Anne Waters. She sued as the executrix of the estate of her brother, Kenneth, who died in an accident only six months after his murder conviction was vacated in 2001, reports the National Law Journal in an article reprinted in New York Lawyer (reg. req.).

TEXAS

New results of autopsy spur plea

Woman sent to prison in baby’s death based on doctor’s report is seeking release

By Lise Olsen, Houston Chronicle

9-14-09 -- The Harris County Medical Examiner's office has quietly rewritten the results of a 1998 autopsy, prompting renewed innocence claims on behalf of a baby sitter sent to prison nearly a decade ago for allegedly shaking a 4-month-old infant hard enough to cause fatal injuries. . . . The original autopsy classified the baby's death as a homicide and was used by prosecutors as a key piece of evidence against Cynthia Cash, now 53, a former nurse convicted of fatal injury to a child after 4-month-old Abbey Clements died after being rushed to the hospital from Cash's home. . . . But the modified autopsy report made public in a new appeal calls the cause of death “undetermined” and found no evidence of “trauma” in the postmortem exam. Those changes came five years after local officials announced a review of problematic autopsies conducted by a former Harris County associate medical examiner, Dr. Patricia Moore. Moore, who declined requests for comment, left Harris County in 2002 but still works for Southeast Texas Forensic Center, a Conroe-based company that provides forensic work for six counties.

FLORIDA

DNA to free man jailed for 26 years

Anthony Caravella, whose rape and murder conviction has been contradicted by DNA evidence, is scheduled to be released Wednesday.

By Paula McMahon,Sun Sentinel

9-9-09 -- The Broward State Attorney's Office asked for Anthony Caravella to be temporarily released Tuesday. And a Broward Circuit Court judge ordered him freed immediately. . . . But after close to 26 years in prison for a 1983 rape and murder that his attorney says he has been exonerated of by DNA testing, a last-minute hitch meant Caravella had to spend another night in the Broward County Jail. . . . DNA results, released last week, excluded Caravella, 41, as the source of forensic evidence found on the victim, Ada Cox Jankowski, 58, who was slain in Miramar. . . . But because he is still technically a convicted sex offender, the Florida Department of Children & Families had to conduct an evaluation of him under the Jimmy Ryce Act, a law used to monitor released sex offenders.

TEXAS

Trial by Fire

Did Texas execute an innocent man?

by David Grann, A Reporter at Large, The New Yorker 

9-07-09 -- The fire moved quickly through the house, a one-story wood-frame structure in a working-class neighborhood of Corsicana, in northeast Texas. Flames spread along the walls, bursting through doorways, blistering paint and tiles and furniture. Smoke pressed against the ceiling, then banked downward, seeping into each room and through crevices in the windows, staining the morning sky. . . . Buffie Barbee, who was eleven years old and lived two houses down, was playing in her back yard when she smelled the smoke. She ran inside and told her mother, Diane, and they hurried up the street; that’s when they saw the smoldering house and Cameron Todd Willingham standing on the front porch, wearing only a pair of jeans, his chest blackened with soot, his hair and eyelids singed. He was screaming, “My babies are burning up!” His children—Karmon and Kameron, who were one-year-old twin girls, and two-year-old Amber—were trapped inside. . . . Willingham told the Barbees to call the Fire Department, and while Diane raced down the street to get help he found a stick and broke the children’s bedroom window. Fire lashed through the hole. He broke another window; flames burst through it, too, and he retreated into the yard, kneeling in front of the house. A neighbor later told police that Willingham intermittently cried, “My babies!” then fell silent, as if he had “blocked the fire out of his mind.” . . . Diane Barbee, returning to the scene, could feel intense heat radiating off the house. Moments later, the five windows of the children’s room exploded and flames “blew out,” as Barbee put it. Within minutes, the first firemen had arrived, and Willingham approached them, shouting that his children were in their bedroom, where the flames were thickest. A fireman sent word over his radio for rescue teams to “step on it.”

NORTH CAROLINA

Man cleared by DNA evidence goes free

By Michael Hewlett | Journal Reporter

9-2-09 -- Joseph Lamont Abbitt is a free man. About 2:30 this afternoon, Abbitt walked out of the Forsyth County Jail, surrounded by family members, after a judge set aside his conviction. . . . At a hearing in Forsyth Superior Court Judge A. Moses Massey vacated the life sentence that Abbitt had been serving for raping two teenage sisters after DNA evidence determined that he was not the attacker. . . . Abbitt, of Winston-Salem, was convicted on June 22, 1995, of two counts of first-degree rape, one count of first-degree burglary and two counts of first-degree kidnapping in connection with the 1991 sexual assaults of a 16-year-old girl and her 13-year-old sister. . . . Outside the jail today, Abbitt said he hoped the DNA evidence would "reveal the perpetrator who really did this to those two young girls. . . . "I do not blame them for nothing that happened to me, and I still pray for them every day," Abbitt said. . . . The Forsyth County District Attorney's Office and the N.C. Center on Actual Innocence filed a motion to vacate the convictions against Abbitt after DNA evidence collected in the case was retested by the State Bureau of Investigation and LabCorp of Research Triangle Park. The genetic profile the scientists generated "conclusively eliminated the defendant as the offender."

TEXAS  

Texas Justice: Where wrongful convictions are the norm

Desiree Evans, Facing South

9-2-09 -- There's growing evidence that Texas executed an innocent man in 2004. . . . A nationally-known fire expert told a Texas state commission on forensics last week that the arson investigations that put two Texas men on death row were poorly conducted and the forensic evidence couldn't be supported by science, reported the Dallas Morning News. . . . One of the cases now in question is that of Cameron Todd Willingham, who was executed in February 2004 for setting his house on fire and killing his 2-year-old daughter and 1-year-old twins. According to the study, Texas fire investigators had no basis to rule that the house fire was arson, a finding that led to Willingham's murder conviction and execution. Willingham always maintained his innocence, and according to the New York Times, "refused to accept a guilty plea that would have spared his life, and insisted until his last painful breath that he was innocent."

August 2009

'Actual innocence' as a constitutional right

by Ofer Raban, guest opinion

8-28-09 -- In 1989, an off-duty police officer was murdered after responding to the beating of a homeless man in a parking lot. Troy Anthony Davis was soon charged with the crime. Davis admitted that he was present at the scene, but claimed it was one of his companions who had shot the officer. He was convicted and sentenced to death. . . . Last week, the U.S. Supreme Court issued a three-sentence decision, sending his case back to the lower court with instructions to hear testimony and make a determination on whether newly discovered evidence clearly established Davis' innocence. . . . (Among other things, seven of the nine witnesses implicating Davis in the crime have since recanted their testimony.) Justice Antonin Scalia, joined by Justice Clarence Thomas, filed a dissent, claiming, correctly, that "This Court has never held that the Constitution forbids the execution of a convicted defendant who has had a full and fair trial but is later able to convince a habeas court that he is 'actually' innocent."

Reaping Innocents: Grim Justice

American Justice Is Not Blind, It's Sick
by Dave Lindorff, Pacific Free Press

Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia and Federal District Court Judge Fernando Gaitan of the Missouri Western District Court have at least two things in common: they are both appointees of President Ronald Reagan, and they both think it’s just fine for the US to execute innocent people. The same can be said for Judge C. Arlen Beam of the 8th Circuit Court of Appeals. . . . In a recent dissent in a 6-2 Supreme Court ruling ordering a habeas hearing in federal court for Georgia death row inmate Troy Anthony Davis, a man slated to die after being convicted for the murder of an off-duty Savannah police officer, Scalia wrote, “This court has never held that the constitution forbids the execution of a convicted defendant who has had a full and fair trial but is later able to convince a habeas court that he is `actually’ innocent.” (Justice Clarence Thomas, as usual, signed on to Scalia's dissent.) . . . For his part, Judge Gaitan, in Missouri, had two shots at considering the case of Joseph Amrine, a death-row inmate slated to die for the killing of a fellow prisoner in a Missouri state prison. Amrine (see my article Dead Man Walking Home in Salon, May 1, 2003) had been convicted of the knife slaying on the basis of the testimony of three alleged eyewitnesses—all of them fellow prisoners.

MASSACHUSETTS

FBI loses appeal of $101.7m verdict

Circuit court cites ‘trauma’ to 4 sent to prison

By Jonathan Saltzman, Globe Staff 

8-28-09 -- A federal appeals court upheld yesterday a landmark verdict for four men framed by the FBI in a gangland slaying, although the appellate judges said the $101.7 million damage judgment awarded by a lower court was “at the outer edge of the universe of permissible awards.’’ . . . The US Court of Appeals for the First Circuit said the 2007 damage judgment to the families of Peter J. Limone, Joseph Salvati, Louis Greco, and Henry Tameleo, believed to be the largest of its kind nationally, was considerably higher than any of the three appellate judges would have ordered. . . . “But when we take into account the severe emotional trauma inflicted upon the scapegoats,’’ the appeals court wrote of the wrongly imprisoned men, “we cannot say with any firm conviction that those awards are grossly disproportionate to the injuries sustained.’’ . . . Limone, now 75, of Medford, spent more than 33 years in prison as a result of his wrongful conviction in the 1965 murder. Salvati, now 76, of the North End, was in prison for more than 29 years. The other two men, Greco and Tameleo, died in prison after decades of imprisonment.

CONNECTICUT  

DNA Test Frees Long-Serving Convict

Hartford Courant Editorial

8-21-09 -- The system that stole 20 years of Kenneth Ireland's life gave him back his freedom earlier this month, in yet another dramatic demonstration of DNA testing's ability to deliver justice. . . . Mr. Ireland, of Wallingford, was sentenced in 1989 to 50 years in prison for the rape and murder of Barbara Pelkey, a mother of four. The 20-year-old defendant was convicted at a trial at which witnesses testified that he had confessed. He claimed they lied to collect a $20,000 reward. . . . New DNA testing proved that he could not have committed the crimes. Based on the new evidence, he was granted a new trial by Superior Court Judge Richard Damiani on Aug. 8. On Wednesday, the judge dismissed the charges. Mr. Ireland is the third Connecticut prison inmate freed in the past three years on the basis of DNA testing.

CALIFORNIA  

Wrongfully convicted San Jose man to receive $1 million settlement from Santa Clara County

By Tracey Kaplan, San Jose Mercury News

8-15-09 -- Locked up for an armed robbery he didn't do, East San Jose resident Jeffrey Rodriguez spent five years dodging violent prison inmates and praying to be rescued. . . . His wish eventually came true — the charges were dismissed and a judge found him factually innocent. But no one in the criminal justice system ever made amends — until this month, when he'll get the closest thing to an apology: $1 million in taxpayer money from Santa Clara County. . . . The pending settlement brings the total paid by the county for wrongful convictions by the District Attorney's Office since 2005 to more than $4.6 million. . . . The money won't make up for missing five years of his 11-year-old son's life, getting beaten up in jail or losing his girlfriend. But after paying attorney fees, Rodriguez hopes to have enough left to buy property in the Central Valley, help out family members who sold a home to pay his legal expenses, and open a barber shop.

LOUISIANA

A divided appeals court affirms jury's $14 million award to a former death-row inmate

by Gwen Filosa, The Times-Picayune

8-10-09 -- In a tied vote that means a mandatory affirmation of the lower court's ruling, the U.S. 5th Circuit Court of Appeals today upheld the $14 million jury verdict against the Orleans Parish District Attorney's Office for misconduct in the 1985 murder trial of John Thompson. . . . The full court reviewed the case, which District Attorney Leon Cannizzaro inherited along with the office in last fall's election, and delivered a split decision over whether Thompson has the right to reap millions in compensation from the prosecution that nearly sent him to the lethal-injection table. . . . "Today's judgment raises issues that will continue to plague honest prosecutors' offices," Chief Judge Edith Jones wrote in her dissent. . . . The decision means that Cannizzaro's office remains stuck with the multi-million-dollar jury verdict, which, with interest, has grown past $15 million. His last chance is to ask the U.S. Supreme Court to accept the case for consideration.

MASSACHUSETTS

Video helps clear convict of abuse after 21 years

Evidence in accused man’s favor never shown to his attorney and jurors

Associated Press, msnbc.com

8-9-09 -- Bernard Baran lost a great portion of his life for crimes he says he never committed. . . . He was 19, working as an assistant at a day care center, when his life went completely off the rails. Now he is a middle-aged man with a smoker's cough, newly in charge of what's left of his life, working as a landscaper in Boston. . . . In the early 1980s, as an openly gay high school dropout in a blue-collar Massachusetts town, he was accused of molesting the children in his care. The country was gripped by a series of panic-fueled day care sex scandals. He was convicted and sentenced to three concurrent life terms. . . . There was evidence in his favor — hours of videotaped interviews with the children — but jurors, Baran and his attorney never saw all of them. . . . At trial, the prosecutor left out the ones in which Baran's charges said they'd never been harmed by him. . . . "You could hear the children saying I didn't do anything to them," he says.

MICHIGAN

Walking out of prison after eight years

WWMT, NEWSCHANNEL 3

8-5-09 -- A mother has been released from prison after spending eight years behind bars for molesting her adopted son. . . . Lorinda Swain was convicted in 2001, but the victim in the case has since admitted he made up the story of abuse. In July, Swain was granted a new trial. . . . In August, a judge ordered Swain free on $30,000 bond until that trial, and on Wednesday, she walked out of Calhoun County jail. . . . Newschannel 3 was there when Swain was reunited with her family, most of whom had been waiting at the Calhoun County Justice Complex since noon. It took all day for Swain to get home, but that paled in comparison to the years she spent behind bars. . . . Swain was greeted by her parents, who were clearly overwhelmed with emotion even though they knew she was going to be released. . . . Swain's family thanked everyone who had supported her, and Lorinda herself clearly wanted to be heard after finally being freed. . . . "It just didn't seem real, to be honest, I've been a heavy smoker all my life, and when it seems real it will be when I smoke that cigarette, I know it's not smart, but I'm not afraid of dying, I'm afraid of living in there," said Swain. . . . Swain's mother, Fay Johnson, remarked on the legal system that put her daughter behind bars. . . . "I haven't had no faith in the justice system here, but I got to come down and thank Judge Sindt for changing his verdict, very thankful for that and I do trust that," said Johnson.

VIRGINIA

Former Navy Seal Trainee Exonerated in 1995 Va. Beach Slaying

By Maria Glod, Washington Post Staff Writer

8-5-09 -- A former Navy SEAL trainee convicted in the slaying of a young woman in Virginia Beach in 1995 has become the first person exonerated of murder under a 2004 state law that allows convicts to try to prove their innocence by presenting new non-DNA evidence to a court. . . . The Virginia Court of Appeals on Tuesday granted a "writ of actual innocence" to Dustin A. Turner. The court's decision was based on the statements of co-defendant Billy Joe Brown, who said his conversion to Christianity led him to confess years after the crime that he alone committed the slaying. . . . Turner and Brown, friends and fellow SEAL trainees, were found guilty of murder in the killing of Jennifer Evans, a 21-year-old premedical student from Georgia whom they met at a Virginia Beach bar. . . . Initially, each man blamed the June 19, 1995, slaying on the other. But in a 2002 taped confession, Brown admitted that he "spontaneously choked" Evans while the trio were in a car parked outside a nightclub. Turner helped Brown dispose of the body in the woods. . . . In a split decision, a three-judge panel of the court threw out murder and abduction convictions against Turner, but the court found him guilty of being an accessory after the fact.

July 2009

New Resources: Documentary tells story of innocent man who spent 18 years on death row

Death Penalty Information Org.

7-30-09 --In 1984, Juan Melendez was sent to Florida's death row for the murder of Delbert Baker even though no physical evidence linked him to the crime. In 2002, he was released with all charges vacated after it was found that prosecutors had withheld critical evidence in the case. He became the 99th person exonerated in the United States since 1976, and the 20th from Florida. As of today, 135 people have been exonerated. Juan Melendez - 6446 is a documentary released as part of the HBO-sponsored 10th Annual New York International Latino Film Festival. Director Luis Rosario Albert tells Melendez' story through his own words and the words of his family, friends and lawyers - the story of a migrant Puerto Rican farm worker sent to death row for a crime he didn't commit. It also brings into play legal issues between the United States and Puerto Rico in application of the death penalty. More information, including the film's trailer, can be found here. The film will be screened on July 31st at  2 pm at the Clearview Cinemas Chelsea, Screen 8, W 23rd St. & 8th Ave. in New York City. Read more

ILLINOIS  

Illinois Defendant Pleads Guilty to Crime That Sent Two Innocent Men to Death Row

Death Penalty Information Org.

7-29-09 -- On July 28, Brian Dugan pleaded guilty to the rape and murder of 10-year-old Jeanine Nicarico in Illinois 25 years ago.  Two other men, Rolando Cruz, (pictured) and Alejandro Hernandez, were originally charged with the murder and were sentenced to death.  They were eventually exonerated in 1995 after numerous trials.  At the pleading, DuPage County State's Attorney Joseph Birkett acknowledged that there had never been any physical evidence pointing to the two men who were wrongly convicted.  Dugan was not promised a life sentence in exchange for his plea and still faces a death sentence from a jury in the fall.  He admitted that he alone was responsible for the murder.  As early as 1985, Dugan confessed his sole responsibility for the crime, but the prosecution continued its case against Cruz and Hernandez. The case contributed to a huge upheaval of Illinois' death penalty system, finally resulting in the commutation of all death row inmates in 2003 and to a moratorium on executions that continues to the present time.

New Resources: “Reevaluating Lineups: Why Witnesses Make Mistakes and How to Reduce the Chance of a Misidentification”

Death Penalty Information Org.

7-22-09 -- The Innocence Project has released a new report pointing to the problems with eyewitness identifications in criminal cases and offering recommendations for making the system more reliable.  The report, “Reevaluating Lineups: Why Witnesses Make Mistakes and How to Reduce the Chance of a Misidentification,” states that over 175 people (including some who were sentenced to death) have been wrongfully convicted based, in part, on eyewitness misidentification and later proven innocent through DNA testing.  But DNA testing is not a solution to the problem since it is only available in 5-10% of all criminal cases, according to the report.  The findings in the report included: . . . • In 38% of the misidentification cases, multiple eyewitnesses misidentified the same innocent person. . . . • Fifty-three percent of the misidentification cases, where race is known, involved crossracial misidentifications. . . . • In 50% of the misidentification cases, eyewitness testimony was the central evidence used against the defendant (without other corroborating evidence like confessions, forensic science or informant testimony). Read more

MASSACHUSETTS   

Ayer to pay $3.4m for unjust conviction

DNA test freed man after 18 years in jail

By Jonathan Saltzman, Boston Globe Staff /

7-15-09 --The town of Ayer and five of its insurers have agreed to pay $3.4 million to settle a civil rights lawsuit filed by the estate of the late Kenneth Waters, who spent more than 18 years in prison for a murder he did not commit before his sister earned a law degree and helped free him through DNA evidence. . . . Barry C. Scheck, a founder of the Innocence Project based at the Benjamin N. Cardozo School of Law in New York and one of the lawyers representing the estate, disclosed the amount of the settlement yesterday after a brief hearing in US District Court in Boston about the status of the case. . . . The lawsuit, which was scheduled to go to trial next week, accused Ayer police of coercing false testimony to convict Waters and withholding evidence that could have cleared him. A sixth insurance company, Western World Insurance Group, has declined to settle, but negotiations are continuing. . . . Waters’s sister, Betty Anne Waters, whose crusade on behalf of her brother is the subject of a recently completed movie in which she is portrayed by two-time Academy Award winner Hilary Swank, said the agreement vindicated her years spent fighting to free Kenneth Waters.

NEW YORK  

High Court Judge Vows "Serious" Effort on Preventing Wrongful Convictions in NY

By Joel Stashenko | New York Law Journal | New York Lawyer

7-15-09 --As a lawyer representing criminal defendants, Theodore T. Jones Jr. said he was sure that people "occasionally" got convicted of crimes they did not commit. . . . Now, the Court of Appeals judge is co-chairing a new state task force on wrongful convictions. He is convinced all participants in the criminal justice system recognize the high price the system pays for mistakenly convicting and imprisoning defendants. . . . "There is absolutely no disagreement on the fact that one of the most horrendous results we can conjure up is to wrongfully convict a defendant," Judge Jones said in an interview yesterday. "Equally troubling is the fact that when that happens, the true perpetrator is still out there. …If the public loses faith in the integrity of criminal convictions, then we have lost control of our entire system."

June 2009

TEXAS  

Federal Jury Awards $5M to Texas Man Convicted on Bad Crime Lab Evidence

By Martha Neil, ABA Journal

6-25-09 -- After wrestling with the concept of deliberate indifference, a federal jury in Texas today awarded $5 million to a man wrongfully convicted in a kidnapping and rape case more than two decades ago. . . . George Rodriguez, 59, was incarcerated for 17 years, based on false testimony by an employee of the troubled Houston Police Department crime lab, before DNA evidence exonerated him, reports the Houston Chronicle. . . . Although satisfied with the verdict, Rodriguez tells the newspaper: "No money could replace what I have lost." . . . After deliberating for about six hours, the five-woman, three-man jury sent U.S. District Judge Vanessa Gilmore a note yesterday. It said they couldn't decide whether police chief Lee Brown was deliberately indifferent to a lack of training and supervision at the lab and the consequent possibility that a suspect's constitutional right to a fair trial would be violated, the newspaper reported in another article. . . . It isn't clear how the jury got past this impasse.

INDIANA

Lawmakers & Lawyers Help Wrongly Imprisoned Valley Man

Reported by: Patrick Fazio, MyWabashValley

6-18-09 -- There are new developments since our reports in March on the Valley man still convicted of a 1984 murder. David Scott was freed from prison last year after DNA evidence linked someone else to a . . . Vigo County woman's murder. But now Scott's getting help from lawyers and lawmakers. After our reports on David Scott, Terre Haute law firm Wilkinson, Goeller, Modesitt, Wilkinson & Drummy came forward to help exonerate him. They're working for free to try to clear Scott's name and help him get on with life. . . . Scott and his sisters had already tried unsuccessfully to get a pro-bono attorney. Even Indiana's ACLU declined. The only lawyers who were interested in working for free just wanted to sue for money. . . . . Before he can even sue for wrongful imprisonment compensation, Scott needs to get his felony murder conviction off his record. But as Scott's experiencing, prosecutors in Indiana are not required to clear convictions after they free inmates based on DNA evidence. . . . One of David's lawyers Will Frankel says, "You still have this conviction hanging over you."

CALIFORNIA

Justice denied by a clue?

A matchbook found near the scene of a killing in L.A. sent two men to prison. Is it really evidence or is it just a coincidence?

By Jack Leonard, Los Angeles Times 

6-15-09 -- A gold-and-black matchbook has been at the center of a murder mystery for 17 years -- a piece of evidence that is either a smoking gun or a diversion that caused a terrible miscarriage of justice. . . . Months before its discovery, a security guard patrolling a downtown Los Angeles parking structure stumbled across the body of a young East Indian American business consultant. He had been stabbed 19 times, once in the heart. . . . Following up on a lead, Los Angeles Police Department detectives later picked up two homeless men. One of them had the half-used matchbook. Emblazoned on the front, in a mix of cursive and print lettering, was the name of a Woodland Hills restaurant: Shalimar Cuisine of India. . . . How had a homeless man wound up with a book of matches from an Indian restaurant 30 miles away? . . . To detectives, there was a logical explanation. Given the victim's heritage, he must have been carrying the Shalimar matchbook when he was set upon and robbed, and it ended up in the hands of his assailant. . . . The two men were charged with murder. They were found guilty and sentenced to prison for the rest of their lives. . . . In the years that followed, however, new details about the matchbook emerged, offering a sharply different story of how it might have traveled from the neighborhoods of the San Fernando Valley to the crime-plagued streets of skid row.

NEW YORK  

Guy Who Got 16 Years to Life for Filching Broken Toy Gets New Trial Over NY Lawyer's Miscues

By Joel Stashenko | New York Law Journal, New York Lawyer

6-8-09 -- An upstate appeals court has ordered a new trial for a defendant, now serving 16 years to life for stealing a PlayStation, due to "recurring errors and omissions" by his trial attorney. . . . In a separate ruling, another panel of the Appellate Division, Third Department, invalidated a judge's order that a defendant had to pay the cost of his extradition as part of restitution for crimes related to the theft of his father-in-law's identity. . . . The record of burglary defendant Bernard F. Miller's case is "replete" with instances where his court-appointed attorney provided ineffective representation, a unanimous panel ruled last week in People v. Miller, 100982.

May 2009

TEXAS

Dallas' 20th DNA Exoneration

Bill Zeeble, KERA News

5-27-09 -- Dallas County says a record-setting 20th inmate is about to be exonerated for a 1986 crime which DNA shows he did not commit. KERA's Bill Zeeble has more. . . . In this afternoon's court hearing for 47 year old Jerry Lee Evans, DNA results will show no match between him and the DNA gathered 23 years ago from the victim of a sexual assault with a deadly weapon.

ALABAMA

Exonerations: Jury Acquits Former Death Row Inmate of All Charges

Death Penalty Information Center

5-19-09 -- Daniel Wade Moore was acquitted of all charges by a jury in Alabama on May 14.  Moore was originally found guilty of the murder and sexual assault of Karen Tipton in 2002.  The judge overruled the jury’s recommendation of a life sentence and instead sentenced him to death in January 2003, calling the murder one of the worst ever in the county.  A new trial was ordered in 2003 because of evidence withheld by the prosecution.  A second trial in 2008 ended in a mistrial with the jury deadlocked at 8-4 for acquittal.  (Moore is the 133rd person to be exonerated and freed from death row since 1973, according to DPIC's record of exonerations.) Read more

COLORADO

Justice not on city's to-do list

By Susan Greene, Denver Post Columnist

5-17-09 -- How many city officials does it take to screw in a light bulb? . . . The joke crossed my mind after reporting on a mom from Sterling thrown behind bars on a Denver warrant intended for a suspect who is seven years younger and 90 pounds lighter. . . . It has festered since other victims have come forward after also being snatched erroneously and thrown in jail. Those include a student forced to spend eight days behind bars answering to the name of another man, a retiree mistaken for a suspect who was long dead and a black man locked up on a white man's warrant. . . . Safety officials pledged to fix their policies. And city brass promised to mend their ways.  . . . "We are committed to preventing this type of situation from happening again," Mayor John Hickenlooper said in January. . . . Bull. . . . Because nine months after the latest batch of victims sued over the screw-ups, the city hasn't bothered to clear some of their names from the criminal database. Piling recklessness upon recklessness, Denver still hasn't set the record straight.

TENNESSEE

Prosecutor drops charges; House's family 'on Cloud Nine'

By Jamie Satterfield, Knox News

5-12-09 -- A prosecutor today dismissed murder charges against Paul House, 24 years after Union County killing for which he was sentenced to death row. . . . Eighth Judicial District Attorney General Paul Phillips told Senior Judge Jon Kerry Blackwood at a hearing this morning in Union County Circuit Court that "new evidence raises a reasonable doubt that (House) acted alone," and Blackwood approved Phillips' request to dismiss the charges. . . . "I guess they handled it pretty bad," House said in a phone interview. "I could say all kinds of things, but I will keep my mouth shut." . . . Phillips said evidence including DNA testing not available when House was first accused of killing Carolyn Muncey in July 1985 raises "the possibility that others were involved in the crime."

NEW JERSEY

Man wrongly convicted, jailed in 1985 Plainfield slayings files lawsuit

By Mark Spivey • Staff Writer Mycentraljersey.Com

5-11-09 -- A former city resident who served more than two decades in prison for two gruesome murders he did not commit has filed a lawsuit against the city, the county and current and former members of the Plainfield Police Division and Union County Prosecutor's Office. . . . Byron Halsey, 48, was convicted of the 1985 slayings of his former girlfriend's two small children, Tyrone and Tina Urquhart. Prosecutors sought the death penalty during the 1988 trial, but a jury settled on two life sentences plus 20 years for Halsey, who was lodged in Trenton's New Jersey State Prison. . . . Halsey had his convictions thrown out in May 2007 after an advanced DNA test proved he was not responsible for the crimes and instead implicated Clifton Hall, a neighbor who testified against Halsey during his trial. That development left open a possibility of Halsey being retried for the crime, but the Union County Prosecutor's Office announced three months later that it was dropping all charges. . . . Defendants named in Halsey's lawsuit include nine former or current members of the Plainfield Police Division and Union County Prosecutor's Office in addition to 20 John Does and the city and county.

MICHIGAN

Righting the wrongfuls

DNA lessons guide proposed laws

By Sandra Svoboda Detroit Metro Times 

5-7-09 -- A national movement to prevent, reverse or remedy wrongful convictions has swept into Michigan's Legislature this term with six bills that would reform police investigations, change DNA testing procedures, compensate those improperly imprisoned and clear their records. . . . If passed, they could make Michigan among the most progressive states in terms of breadth and depth of criminal justice reforms related to "innocence" issues. . . . "This is something in the criminal justice system that's so much more compelling than a lot of the issues we've seen over the years," says Marla Mitchell-Cichon, co-director of the Innocence Project at Cooley Law School in Lansing. "We'll move forward if people are willing to keep an open mind and make it a better system." . . . Rep. Steve Bieda (D-Warren) sponsored or co-sponsored all of the measures. He's unsure of their prospects for passage but he does think bipartisan support for such efforts has grown. . . . "It's been a process of legislators understanding what the issue is," Bieda says. . . . The first of the bills would make permanent the Michigan law that expires in 2009 allowing for post-conviction DNA testing in certain cases and would expand other opportunities for testing. Another would provide for expunging a prisoner's record if they are exonerated by DNA evidence.

ILLINOIS  

Man freed at 30 'trying to stick his toe into real world'

'Never Gave Up Hope' | Arrested for murder at 13, he spent more than 16 years in prison for crime he didn't commit

By Rummana Hussain, Criminal Courts Reporter

5-5-09 -- When Thaddeus "T.J." Jimenez walked out of prison a free man last week, the 30-year-old held a cell phone for the first time. . . . "He was talking into a BlackBerry and someone said, 'Why don't you just send a text?' He had no clue what a text was," said Steve Drizin, Jimenez's attorney. "Slowly but surely, he's trying to stick his toe into the real world." . . . Jimenez, described by his lawyers as the youngest person in U.S. history to be wrongly convicted and exonerated, was cleared of the gang-related shooting of Eric Morro, 19. . . . His release came after witnesses to the 1993 slaying recanted their statements and investigators analyzed a recording of a man admitting to the shooting.

VIRGINIA  

Bid to fight wrongful conviction puts focus on strict evidence rule

By Frank Green, Richmond Times Dispatch

5-4-09 -- In many states, newly discovered evidence of innocence can be taken years later to the same court in which an inmate was convicted so his name can be cleared. . . . That's what happened on Sept. 10, 2007, in Hampton Circuit Court after prosecutors learned that Teddy P. Thompson was innocent of a 2000 robbery. The conviction was tossed out, and Thompson was freed the same day. . . . But in Virginia, you don't have years -- just 21 days. As a result, experts and advocates say it appears that Judge Louis R. Lerner lacked the authority to vacate Thompson's 2001 conviction. . . . While it remains to be seen if anything will happen to Thompson -- no one contends, in the moral sense, that Lerner erred in clearing him -- the case is drawing attention again to the state's 21-day rule, still the toughest in the country. . . . "It's one of those things that need fixing, but because nobody knows how to fix it . . . they pretend it's there sometimes, and other times they ignore it," said David P. Baugh, a criminal-defense lawyer now with the Virginia Indigent Defense Commission. . . . "Everybody's got problems with it," said Baugh of the 21-day rule. "It is still a glaring problem, and nobody wants to talk about it," he said.

FLORIDA INNOCENCE PROJECT

Lawyers Look for Innocents in Prison

Day after day, convicts' pleas are sifted through; many are rejected, but some cases are found worth fighting for.

By Leonora Lapeter Anton, St. Petersburg Times

5-3-09 -- The letters come, sometimes eight to 10 a day, filled with everything from indignation to outrage to humble pleas for help. . . . Amy Kochanasz, a 25-year-old graduate student, retrieves them from her mail slot in the laid-back law office where she works. She admires the flashy, graffiti-like handwriting of some; thinks others would make good movie scripts; wonders about the ones who try to sound like lawyers. . . . "I believe that I am totally innocense, and it's further believed that I was set up," one convict wrote. . . . It's up to Kochanasz and others at the Innocence Project of Florida to figure out whether that's true. . . . The Innocence Project was founded in 1992 by New York defense lawyers Barry Scheck and Peter Neufeld. It has since expanded into a network of more than 50 groups across the country. . . . For years these lawyers specialized in using DNA evidence to exonerate people wrongly convicted of crimes from rape to murder. They have exonerated 237 people across the country, including 10 in Florida. . . . Lately the organization has branched out into cases involving bullet analysis, glass comparisons, palm prints and evidence-sniffing dogs.

NEW YORK

Another turn at justice

A Journal News editorial

5-3-09 -- New Chief Judge Jonathan Lippman of the New York Court of Appeals is quickly moving to address the kind of mind-numbing legal travesty that cost Peekskill's Jeffrey Deskovic much of his youth and liberty, and gave the criminal justice system in Westchester a black eye. Intervening where the slow-moving Legislature had been content to slumber, Lippman is forming a permanent task force to examine wrongful convictions and recommend ways to minimize them. . . . The initiative is a long overdue reply to a steady string of exoneration cases in New York, most often brought to light by the do-gooder lawyers group the Innocence Project. Aided by ever-improving DNA technology, the New York City-based group played a critical role in securing the 2006 exoneration of Deskovic, who served more than 15 years in prison for the 1989 rape and murder of Peekskill High classmate Angela Correa. DNA testing ultimately ordered by District Attorney Janet DiFiore, who entered office in 2006, led to the stunning revelation that someone else had killed Correa.

April 2009

MICHIGAN

Case of Detroit man wrongfully convicted shows flaws in state’s public defender system

Swift, who spent 26 years behind bars, will discuss his miscarriage of justice Friday at a symposium focused on reforms aimed to fix Michigan's 'constitutional crisis.'

By Minehaha Forman, Michigan Messenger

4-30-09 -- When Walter Swift walked out of state prison after serving 26 years, he forgot what freedom felt like. Swift said he was “terrified” to face a world he had not seen in nearly three decades because most of his adult life was spent behind bars. . . . Due to an untrained public defender and a hurried investigation, Swift was convicted of a rape he says he didn’t commit. Last year, a judge set him free, citing major problems with his prosecution. . . . Before the conviction in 1982, Swift was a 21-year-old Detroit man with a two-year-old daughter and a fiancé. When police picked him up from his construction job for a lineup involving a rape case, he thought nothing of it because he knew he was innocent. “I had faith in the criminal justice system,” Swift told Michigan Messenger in a recent interview. But that faith would quickly dissolve when he was found guilty and sentenced to 55 years in prison. . . . Swift’s story exemplifies the problems with Michigan’s underfunded and strained public defense system, which has deteriorated to such a poor condition that a study conducted by the National Legal Aid and Defender Association in cooperation with the State Bar Association of Michigan labeled it a “constitutional crisis.”

NEW YORK  

Top Judge Plans a Task Force on Wrongful Convictions

By Nicholas Confessore, New York Times

4-30-09 -- In one of his first major initiatives as the state’s top jurist, Jonathan Lippman, the chief judge of New York’s Court of Appeals, said he would create a permanent task force to examine wrongful convictions and recommend ways to minimize them. . . . Members of the task force, who are being selected by Judge Lippman, will include prosecutors, defense lawyers, scientists and lawmakers. They will have a broad mandate to examine police procedures, court rules and other issues involved in wrongful convictions. . . . “We’re going to take the raw material from all the cases here in New York and, for that matter, around the country, and see what we need to do to change the criminal justice system so this doesn’t happen,” Judge Lippman said in an interview on Wednesday.

TEXAS

Houston man freed after 22 years in prison

By Ron Trevino / 11 News & Associated Press

4-30-09 -- Gary Alvin Richard was looking forward to having dinner with his family Thursday for the first time in 22 years. . . .Richard was sent to prison in 1987 for a kidnapping and rape that he says he didn't commit. . . . A judge ordered Richard freed on bond because of problems with the evidence used to convict him. . . . He was greeted by more than a dozen family members and friends. . . . "I'm glad to be out here," Richard said. "I just wanna thank everybody that -- my family, attorneys, everybody that was getting me out of here, it's a blessing."

FLORIDA

Destroyed evidence surprises Manatee lawyers

By Todd Ruger, Herald.com

4-29-09 -- A single strand of hair might have been the key to freedom for convicted Manatee County rapist Derrick Williams, whose case was recently taken up by the Innocence Project. . . . .Believing the hair could exonerate Williams, the group that opens old criminal cases asked the Manatee County Sheriff's Office to allow it to run DNA tests on the hair found at the scene of the 1992 rape. . . . .But the Sheriff's Office responded with bad news. . . . .The hair, it turns out, was destroyed in 2003 along with evidence in about 3,600 other Manatee County criminal cases after a water leak flooded an evidence storage facility in a vault at a former bank building. . . . .Manatee sheriff's officials incinerated the evidence years ago, but longtime members of the legal community now say they were not aware of the evidence destruction until the Innocence Project of Florida pushed to examine the hair in Williams' case this year.

TEXAS

New tests show man jailed in 1987 attack is innocent, defense attorney says

By Roma Khanna Houston Chronicle

4-24-09 -- A 53-year-old Houston man is innocent and should be released from prison after serving 22 years for a rape and robbery, his lawyer said Friday, because faulty forensics and false testimony from the Houston crime lab secured his conviction. . . . A jury convicted Gary Alvin Richard in a 1987 attack on a nursing student in a trial based largely on blood-typing evidence from the Houston Police Department crime lab. But, prosecutors and the defense attorney agree, new tests completed Friday show that an HPD analyst misled jurors at Richard’s trial and failed to report evidence that may have helped him. . . . Based on the new tests, both sides will ask a judge next week to release Richard on bond while they sort out what happened in his case. . . . “This is a new chapter, among many, of mistakes that were made, of sloppy work at the crime lab,” said Bob Wicoff, Richard’s lawyer. “Most troubling are the results that were not passed on to people who needed them.”

Attorney: Change needed to avoid more wrongful convictions

Innocent men share stories of time behind bars

By Courtney Potts, Observer-Dispatch

4-20-09 -- Kirk Bloodsworth and Darryl Hunt were convicted in separate cases, but with many similarities. . . . Both men were charged with rape and murder. Both crimes took place in 1984. And both men served about 19 years in prison before proving their innocence and being released. . . . The men spoke Monday about their experiences in prison at a luncheon sponsored by The Art of Innocence and the Oneida County Bar Association. . . . Bloodsworth said he still remembers the moment a Maryland judge found him guilty of the rape and murder of a 9-year-old girl. . . . “The gavel came down on my life, and the courtroom broke into applause when I was given death,” he said. . . . Both men said they have dedicated their lives to speaking about their experiences and assisting others trying to prove their innocence. . . . Bloodsworth, especially, said law enforcement officials and prosecutors need to focus on properly conducting lineups and interrogations, and collecting and preserving DNA evidence according to the highest possible standards.

In order absolving dead man, judge criticizes police

Timothy Cole died in prison after convicted of 1985 rape.

By Steven Kreytak, American-Statesman Staff 

4-8-09 -- In releasing a written order formally exonerating the now-deceased Timothy Cole in the 1985 rape of a fellow Texas Tech University student, state District Judge Charlie Baird on Tuesday blasted the work of the Lubbock police and called on the Legislature to pass criminal justice system reforms. . . . Lawyers think the case is Texas' first posthumous DNA exoneration. Baird, who sits in Travis County, took the case after a judge in Lubbock declined to hear it. He called it the "most important decision" of his judicial career. . . . After a two-day hearing in February, Baird announced that he was convinced that Cole did not commit the crime.

March 2009

GENERAL

Grisham Says Wrongful Conviction Still Haunts Him

Author will be in Atlanta on April 7 to raise funds for Georgia Innocence Project

R. Robin McDonald, Fulton County Daily Report, Law.com

3-30-09 -- When author John Grisham immersed himself in the story behind the capital murder conviction -- and eventual exoneration -- of a minor league baseball player who became the subject of his only nonfiction work, "The Innocent Man," he said he had "never spent five minutes thinking about wrongful convictions." . . . But after 18 months researching and writing the story of the Oklahoma murder investigation that sent two innocent men -- former ballplayer Ron Williamson and his friend, Dennis Fritz -- to death row for more than a decade, Grisham began raising money for the Innocence Project network. . . . "I've just become concerned about the number of wrongly convicted people ... who have been sent to death row," he said in a telephone interview Thursday with the Daily Report. "It's become my favorite cause. ... There is a direct correlation between the amount of money you can raise and spend and the number of innocent people you can get out of prison." . . . Grisham, who sits on the board of the Innocence Project of New York, will be in Atlanta on April 7 to raise funds for the Georgia Innocence Project and speak about "The Innocent Man," and his new legal thriller, "The Associate."

NEW YORK

Settlement for Man Wrongly Convicted in Palladium Killing

By Benjamin Weiser, New York Times

3-30-09 -- New York City and State have agreed to pay $2.6 million to a man who served almost 14 years in prison before he was cleared in the 1990 Palladium nightclub shooting that left a bouncer dead, the man’s lawyer said on Monday. . . . The city will pay $2 million to the man, Olmedo Hidalgo, to settle a federal civil rights lawsuit he filed against the Manhattan district attorney’s office, the Police Department and other defendants, said the lawyer, Irving Cohen. . . . He said that the state would pay an additional $625,000 to resolve a case filed in the Court of Claims. . . . Mr. Hidalgo, who was cleared by the district attorney’s office in 2005, is one of two men who were convicted and sent to prison in the killing. The other, David Lemus, was retried in 2007 and acquitted; he has a lawsuit pending.

PENNSYLVANIA  

Clean Slates for Youths Sentenced Fraudulently

By John Schwartz, New York Times

3-26-09 -- The Supreme Court of Pennsylvania on Thursday ordered the slate cleaned for hundreds of youths who had been sentenced by a corrupt judge. . . . The young people had been sent to privately run detention centers from 2003 to 2008 as part of a judicial kickback scheme that shocked Pennsylvania and the nation. The judge in the cases, Mark A. Ciavarella Jr. of Luzerne County, is one of two who pleaded guilty last month to wire fraud and conspiracy for taking more than $2.6 million in kickbacks. . . . The exact number of records to be expunged was not stated in the court’s order; a special master is investigating the cases. . . . Judge Ciavarella and the other judge, Michael T. Conahan, admitted that they had agreed to send teenagers to two privately run youth detention centers that paid them for the business. Under their agreements, the judges will serve 87 months in federal prison and will resign from the bench and from the bar.

NEW YORK

Vindicated, but Still Not Freed From Court’s Injustice

By Michael Powell, NY Times

3-24-09 -- He has lived in the shadow of this monster for 21 years, serving time in a maximum security prison, and — even after his conviction was overturned and he was released in 1992 — carrying the taint that comes with being accused of child abuse. . . . This week, the State Court of Claims recognized his decades of suffering and awarded him a large settlement. . . . But he still has not seen his daughter, and so he has not fully regained his former life. . . . Amine Baba-Ali, a father wrongly convicted of raping and molesting his 4-year-old daughter, is the first person ever held by a state court to have satisfied every facet of the unjust-conviction law that he sued New York State under, according to the court’s decision. His lawyers proved that the Queens district attorney’s office fraudulently prosecuted him for a crime he did not commit. The court awarded him $2,093,428. . . . But Mr. Baba-Ali, 52, cannot shake the sense that this case will haunt him for a lifetime, not least because his daughter, now 26, was forever removed from him once he was convicted. He has not seen her for two decades, and has no idea where she is living. . . . “Though I am thankful, the fact of the matter is that I’ve lost my daughter,” Mr. Baba-Ali said in an telephone interview from his Manhattan apartment on Tuesday. “I’ve lost the most important part of my life.”

Have the Eyes Had It?

Is our eyewitness identification system sending innocents to jail?

By Dahlia Lithwick, SLATE

We are able to find everything in our memory, which is like a dispensary or chemical laboratory in which chance steers our hand sometimes to a soothing drug and sometimes to a dangerous poison. —Marcel Proust

3-14-09 -- Describe the last person who served you a coffee. What if I helped refresh your memory? Showed you some photos of local baristas? Pulled together a helpful lineup? Cheered exuberantly when you picked the "right" one? Now imagine that instead of identifying the person who made your venti latte last week, we had just worked together to nail a robber or a rapist. Imagine how good we would feel. Now imagine what would happen if we were wrong. . . . Last month, a Texas judge cleared Timothy Cole of the aggravated sexual assault conviction that sent him to prison in 1986. Although his victim positively identified him three times—twice in police lineups and again at trial—Cole was ultimately exonerated by DNA testing. The real rapist, Jerry Wayne Johnson, had been confessing to the crime since 1995. Unfortunately, Cole died in prison in 1999, long before his name was cleared.

The American Criminal Injustice System

By Paul Craig Roberts, VDare

3-10-09 -- Ronald Cotton spent 11 years in prison because Jennifer Thompson provided eye witness testimony that he was the person who raped her.  On March 9, National Public Radio revisited the story. . . . It turned out that Thompson was completely wrong,  DNA evidence indicated that it was not Cotton but another man who had bragged about the rape. . . . Thompson asked Cotton for forgiveness, and he gave it.  The two became friends and have collaborated on a book.  On NPR Thompson said that eye witness testimony is incorrect 70 percent of the time. . . . I am familiar with psychological studies that conclude that eye witness accounts are wrong half of the time.  That is enough to discredit eye witness testimony as evidence; yet, police and juries always bank on it. . . . Rape victims tend to be angry, and they want someone to pay.  When shown mug shots or a lineup, they tend to pick someone, naively believing that if it is the wrong person the police investigation will clear the person.  . . . Witnesses to crimes who are not themselves victims want to be helpful to the police.  Consequently, they also tend to deliver up the innocent to justice. . . . And then there is the purchased "witness" testimony that prosecutors pay for with money and dropped charges in order to close a case.  A favorite trick is to put a "snitch" in the cell with a defendant.  The snitch then comes forward and reports that the defendant confessed. . . . Law and order conservatives think that the only miscarriages of justice are effected by liberal judges and liberal parole boards who can’t wait to release dangerous criminals to prey on the public.  . . . The absurd idea that the justice system doesn’t make mistakes about those it convicts, except when they are let off by liberals, has made it impossible for innocent people wrongfully convicted to be paroled. . . . To be paroled, a person must admit to his crime and go through rehabilitation. Of course, only the guilty admit their crimes, and so only the guilty qualify for parole.  Innocent people tend to maintain their innocence.

February 2009

ALASKA

Alaska's refusal to use a DNA test for true justice is shameful

By Robert Morgenthau

2-27-09 -- In 1994, William Osborne was convicted in Alaska of a kidnapping and brutal rape. . . . Based on my reading of the case, he very likely is guilty. Among other things, he was identified by the victim. Witnesses saw him shortly before the attack with the co-defendant whose gun was fired during the crime, and whose car contained a stain matching the victim's blood. A relatively primitive DNA test was conducted on the contents of a condom left at the crime scene. The test showed that Osborne could have produced the semen - along with about one-sixth of the male African-American population. Given the evidence, one could hardly fault the jury for convicting. . . . But Osborne has consistently insisted that he is innocent. DNA testing was becoming more sophisticated even before his trial, and he directed his attorney to request that a new and conclusive test be done before trial, on the semen - but his attorney refused. Since 1997 Osborne has complained of his attorney's choice and asked his prosecutors to test the evidence. A test might cost about $2,000; a nonprofit group, the Innocence Project, has offered to pay for it.

CALIFORNIA

LA judge throws out 1980 murder conviction

The Associated Press

2-27-09 -- A judge on Friday threw out a 29-year-old murder conviction after he determined that three Los Angeles County prosecutors withheld evidence that a key witness had confessed to the fatal stabbing. . . . The judge said defendant Adam Miranda was denied "significant rights" at his trial when his defense attorneys were not told that witness Joe Saucedo claimed he stabbed a drug dealer in September 1980. . . . "A competent defense attorney would have had a field day with Mr. Saucedo on the witness stand," Los Angeles Superior Court Judge David S. Wesley wrote. . . . It was not immediately clear if prosecutors planned to refile the murder charge. However, Miranda will remain in prison serving life without the possibility of parole for another murder.

Solicitor General Won't Disavow Bush Position in Controversial DNA Case

Tony Mauro, Legal Times

2-23-09 -- The solicitor general's office has turned down a request by the Innocence Project to disavow a Bush Administration stance on prisoners' access to DNA evidence in post-conviction proceedings. As a result, on March 2, Neal Katyal will make his debut as deputy solicitor general by arguing before the Supreme Court in support of the state of Alaska's view that prisoners have no constitutional right to obtain DNA evidence that might help them prove their innocence -- even if the prisoners pay for the DNA testing themselves. The case is District Attorney's Office for the Third Judicial District v. Osborne. . . . The decision to maintain the same position as the Bush administration in the case has caused deep disappointment among innocence advocates, especially in light of President Barack Obama's strong support of access to DNA evidence while a state senator in Illinois, where many of the early successes in exonerating innocent inmates through DNA evidence took place.

MISSOURI  

Wrongful convictions prompt questions about Mo. criminal justice system

By Allison Retka, Missouri Lawyers Weekly

2-23-09 -- Last Tuesday, as word flew across the state about a 45-page ruling clearing defendant Joshua Kezer of the 1992 murder of a young southeastern Missouri woman, one person remained in the dark. . . . Kezer sat in his cell at the Jefferson City Correctional Facility, going about his usual routine. . . . For several hours after Cole County Circuit Judge Richard B. Callahan's opinion came down, Kezer had no idea the judge had exonerated him and dismissed the evidence from his 1994 trial as "extremely weak. " . . . His Bryan Cave attorneys, who had been working on his case for three years for free, dialed him at the prison as soon as they heard about the ruling, but prison officials wouldn't put the call through. . . . Finally, Bryan Cave lawyer Charlie Weiss made contact with his client. . . . "We've got great news," Weiss said he told Kezer, who has been sitting in prison for 16 years. Not only had Callahan set aside his conviction on constitutional grounds, blasting police and prosecutors for withholding evidence and endorsing the lies of jailhouse snitches. But the judge went a step further and granted Kezer's actual innocence claim.

MASSACHUSETTS

Mass. grandmother vindicated after 10 years in prison

Alison King, NECN –

2-19-09 -- In 1999 a fire ripped through a triple-decker in Lynn, Massachusetts killing five people including three little girls. . . . Days later Kathleen Hilton, a 51-year old grandmother was arrested for arson and murder. She was sent to prison while her case was being battled in the court. . . . On Wednesday -- after 10 years awaiting trial -- Hilton was released -- acquitted of all charges. . . . Michael Natola is Hilton’s attorney. . . . Michael Natola: What happened in this case was a battle of what can only be described as of monumental proportion over the suppression of the confession that Mrs. Hilton gave to police. . . . Prosecutors argued that Hilton had set the fire, where her son's girlfriend lived, because she was angry the girlfriend wouldn't let her son see his two children. Hilton had allegedly told police she had lit the fire on the porch and walked away. . . . And after her arraignment, Hilton allegedly said to a court officer: I hope my son forgives me, I could have killed my grandchildren. . . . "Laws that forbid the carrying of arms ... disarm only those who are neither inclined nor determined to commit crimes... Such laws make things worse for the assaulted and better for the assailants; they serve rather to encourage than to prevent homicides, for an unarmed man may be attacked with greater confidence than an armed man."

MISSOURI  

Mo. Judge: System Failed at All Levels in Teen’s Murder Conviction

By Martha Neil, ABA Journal

2-17-09 --"The Missouri justice system failed at all levels as an apparently innocent teen was charged, convicted and found guilty as well on appeal in a college student's 1992 murder, a state-court judge ruled today. . . . Saying that particular doubt was cast on the conviction of Joshua Kezer by the fact that an ex-boyfriend's DNA was found under the fingernails of Angela Mischelle Lawless, Cole County Circuit Judge Richard Callahan granted a habeas corpus petition and ordered Kezer freed within 10 days unless the state opts to retry him, reports the Associated Press. . . . Callahan criticized special prosecutor Kenny Hulshof, who subsequently served six terms as a Republican congressman from Columbia before losing the 2008 governor's race, for withholding key evidence from Kezer's counsel and embellishing the facts in his trial closing.

TEXAS

Editorial: Punish those who wrongfully convict

Dallas News Editorial

2-10-09 -- Timothy Cole died in prison an innocent man, victimized by a gross miscarriage of justice. Although a judge in Austin cleared Cole's name last week, work still awaits the Legislature to ensure that such a travesty never occurs again. . . . Like most of the 32 other wrongfully convicted men in Texas who were subsequently cleared, Cole was black. He was attending Texas Tech in 1985 when fellow student Michelle Mallin was raped. Prosecutors had another strong suspect in the case, Jerry Wayne Johnson, a black man already charged in two other rapes. But they kept that information from Mallin and disregarded it as they constructed a case against Cole. He received a 25-year prison sentence.

High court to hear Alaska man's DNA appeal

By Lisa Demer, AND.com

2-7-09 -- Even the defense says it was a brutal crime. . . . . On a cold night in March 1993, a Spenard prostitute got into a red Nissan with two men and agreed to oral sex at a spot nearby. Instead, she was taken to Earthquake Park, where she was raped, beaten, shot, buried in the snow and left for dead. . . . . An Anchorage jury convicted two Fort Richardson soldiers of rape, kidnapping and assault. . . . . All these years later, one of the men, William Osborne, continues to fight for a sophisticated DNA test his lawyers say could prove him innocent. . . . . That type of DNA test can prove identity beyond doubt, but wasn't available during his trial in 1993.

KANSAS

Overland Park man fuming over jail sentence error

Commentary By Mike Hendricks, The Kansas City Star

2-2-09 -- Imagine spending a month in jail because of a paperwork mix-up. Then after you get out, they bill you $875 for the fine accommodations. . . . That’s what happened to A.J. Moreno, he contends. Now, more than a year later, the 45-year-old construction worker is still fighting Overland Park over that seeming injustice. . . . “I was supposed to do two days, but I ended up doing a month,” Moreno told me. “They jacked up the paperwork, and now I’m in a Catch-22 situation.” . . . Let’s stipulate at the outset that Moreno — the A in A.J. stands for Adolph — is no saint. Over the past 15 years, the Shawnee man has been arrested in Johnson County a few times on misdemeanors. . . . Right now, he’s a free man, but he faces more jail time, in part for his failure to pay Overland Park $4,221. . . . Some $1,500 of that was his original fine for driving on a suspended license in 2006.

January 2009

ILLINOIS

Illinois Supreme Court Reverses 15-Year Old Convictions in Double Murder Trial of a Juvenile

The Illinois Supreme Court reversed a juvenile's 15-year old first and second degree murder convictions and remanded the case for a new trial in a unanimous opinion.

(PRWEB)

1-30-09 -- On January 20, 1994, sixteen-year-old Terrance Walker appeared in court for his double murder trial only to learn that his court appointed attorney failed to prepare to represent him. The trial judge, Judge Morrissey, refused counsel's repeated requests to continue the case, deeming counsel's lack of preparedness "irrelevant," and a "dirty shame." The trial that followed lasted less than half an hour. Defense counsel failed to present an opening statement, failed to raise a single objection, and asked only 16 questions on cross-examination. Defense counsel failed to move for a directed verdict, bolstered the prosecution's case by eliciting damaging evidence from a State's witness, and failed to ask for a ruling on a motion to suppress statements that was at the heart of the State's case. Judge Morrissey found Terrance guilty on one count of first degree and one count of second-degree murder, and sentenced the juvenile to 60 years in prison. Defense counsel failed to file a motion for a new trial, or a notice of appeal. . . .Twelve years later, attorney Robert M. Stephenson, of Oak Park, Illinois, learned of the case, and agreed to represent Terrance pro-bono. At the time, no court in Illinois had jurisdiction to hear substantive arguments concerning the convictions. Mr. Stephenson filed a Motion for Supervisory Order in the Illinois Supreme Court asking the court to remand the case to the circuit court for proper admonishments concerning the right to appeal, and to allow Terrance to file an appeal. The Illinois Supreme Court granted that order. . . . On appeal, in the Illinois First District Court of Appeals in Chicago, Illinois, Attorney Stephenson raised two issues on Terrance's behalf. First, that the trial judge abused his discretion in failing to give defense counsel a short continuance. Second, that defense counsel, based on her admitted failure to prepare, failed to provide Terrance with the type of representation envisioned by the Sixth Amendment to the United States Constitution. The appellate court, without hearing argument and in an unpublished order, affirmed Terrance's convictions.

WISCONSIN

Wis. man freed after conviction questioned

Associated Press

1-30-09 -- A Milwaukee man sentenced to life in prison for a 1984 killing has walked out of prison a free man. . . . Forty-four-year-old Robert Lee Stinson had his conviction vacated Friday morning. . . . The Wisconsin Innocence Project used DNA evidence and bite-mark technology to argue that Stinson wasn't the killer. . . . Stinson walked out of prison in street clothes about 1 p.m. Friday. He walked straight to his sister, hugging her for about a minute as she cried.

NEBRASKA

Five Innocent People Exonerated in Nebraska;
Defendants Were Threatened with Death Penalty

Death Penalty Information Center

1-28-09 --Five people in Nebraska were recently pardoned for a 1985 murder after new DNA evidence excluded their participation in the crime.  The group was also known as the “Beatrice Six.”  The sixth man, the only one who had insisted on a jury trial, was exonerated in October 2008 when prosecutors declined to seek a new trial. The State Board of Pardons voted unanimously on January 26 to pardon the five people who had pleaded guilty or no contest in relation to the rape-murder.   Nebraska Attorney General Jon Bruning said, “They are 100 percent innocent,” after DNA tests, not available in the 1980’s, found no evidence that any of the six were present or involved in the slaying, and instead pointed to a now-deceased suspect not prosecuted for the crime.  The defendants who were pardoned had confessed to the crime to escape the threat of the death penalty.  “We were all scared of it.  They were all threatening us with it,” said James Dean, one of the five who was exonerated.  Ada Joann Taylor, another defendant, said, “They told me they wanted to make me the first female on death row."  Their confessions were used to convict the sixth defendant, whose fight for his exoneration led to the DNA testing that freed all six.  Read more

Law Reviews: Convicting the Innocent

Death Penalty Information Center

1-26-09 --A new article in the Annual Review of Law and Social Science entitled “Convicting the Innocent” by Prof. Samuel Gross of the Universiry of Michigan Law School explores the rate of false convictions among death-sentenced inmates and examines the demographical and procedural predictors of such errors.  Prof. Gross noted that earlier research showed the exoneration rate to be 2.3% for inmates who had been on death row at least 15 years and a similar rate for those who had been on death row for at least 20 years.  He further noted, “This figure–2.3%--is the actual proportion of exonerations for death sentences imposed in the United States between 1973 and 1989.”  He concludes that this error rate is probably a low estimate of the true rate of mistaken convictions: “The proportion of capital exonerations is almost certainly an underestimate of the true rate of false capital convictions.”  Read more

UNITED STATES SUPREME COURT

Wrongly convicted man can't sue prosecutor

By James Vicini, Reuters

1-26-09 -- The Supreme Court ruled on Monday that Los Angeles County's former top prosecutor and his deputy cannot be sued by a man wrongly imprisoned for 24 years based on a jailhouse informant's false testimony. . . . The high court unanimously ruled that supervisory prosecutors are entitled to immunity from civil rights lawsuits that seek damages for the failure to develop proper policies to share information about informants. . . . The decision was a defeat for Thomas Goldstein, who had been convicted of a 1979 murder in Long Beach, California, on the strength of a jailhouse informant's testimony that he had confessed to the crime. . . . The informant testified in court that he received no benefit in return for his testimony, but evidence later emerged that he had struck a deal to get a lighter sentence. . . . A federal appeals court ruled that Goldstein had been wrongly convicted. He was released from prison in 2004. . . . Goldstein then sued former District Attorney John Van de Kamp and his former chief deputy, claiming that as supervisors they had a policy that relied on jailhouse informants even though it sometimes resulted in false evidence. . . . The Supreme Court held in 1976 that prosecutors acting as part of their official duties have immunity, but the ruling in Goldstein's case made clear immunity also extended to supervisory prosecutors and their managerial duties.

TEXAS

Prayer provides hope after murder conviction

Appeals court hearing case over 4-year-old's death from salt poisoning

By Bob Unruh, © 2009 WorldNetDaily

1-10-09 -- Supporters of Hannah Overton, the Texas mother who they say was wrongfully convicted of capital murder and given a life prison term for the rare salt poisoning death of a 4-year-old foster child, have this advice for others concerned about the case: Keep praying. . . . But the supporters also contend the correct resolution could be reached if the 13th District Appeals Court in Corpus Christi, Texas, overturns her conviction in an ruling that could be released at any time. . . . As WND reported, Overton was given the life term after being convicted of allegations brought by Child Protective Service workers, police officers and prosecutors – who had a multitude of interrelationships, including marriage – that she forced the 4-year-old to drink Zatarain's Cajun Seasoning. . . . Hannah's husband, Larry, later took a plea bargain that resulted in probation so that the couple's five other children would not be left with both parents in jail while her case was appealed. . . . But the case, which also has been highlighted on ABC's "20/20" television program, was decided without key evidence, according to supporter Doug Hoffman. He spoke with WND about the situation, explaining how members of the Overtons' church, which also raised hundreds of thousands of dollars for her legal fees, are taking turns helping with the children, while Hannah leads Bible studies and teaches courses in a state prison 300 miles away from her family. . . . One of the key pieces of evidence excluded from the trial was testimony from Dr. Edgar Cortes, the pediatrician who had seen the child, Andrew Burd, multiple times. Cortes also was the physician who treated Andrew when the Overton's realized something was wrong and rushed him to the hospital. . . . "I was stunned when I heard that [Hannah] had been given capital murder," he told "20/20." "I was just at a loss for words." . . . The ABC program asked Cortes how he could react that way after prosecutors convinced jurors that Hannah Overton was a stressed mother who knowingly gave the child a salty seasoning and then waited too long to take him to the hospital.

http://www.freehannah.com/

NEW YORK

It's official: Barnes exonerated on all charges

By Rocco LaDuca, Observer-Dispatch

1-9-09 -- Steven Barnes didn’t want to cry Friday morning, but he couldn’t help it. . . . “I just wanted to say this is the happiest day of my life,” Barnes said as he choked back emotion and lowered his head in silence while a courtroom packed with family, friends and news reporters anxiously looked on. . . . Moments earlier, the sound of applause greeted the announcement in Oneida County Court that 42-year-old Barnes was officially exonerated of all the murder, rape and sodomy charges he was wrongfully convicted of nearly 20 years ago in the 1985 slaying of 16-year-old Kimberly Simon. . . . “I’m glad this nightmare is over,” said Barnes as he used both arms to brace himself against a podium. “I want to thank the community and all the support I had from family and friends.”

FLORIDA  

A great day for the judicial system

By Bill Maxwell, Times Columnist
 1-4-09 -- On Dec. 16 and 17, I had the honor and the pleasure of sitting in a Marion County courthouse to see the judicial system work the way it is supposed to work. Three men – a judge, a defense attorney and a prosecutor – performed their jobs honorably to redress a gross injustice that never should have occurred. The occasion was the motion hearing for a new trial for 21-year-old William Thornton IV of Oxford. . . . In December 2004, Thornton, then a 17-year-old student at Lecanto High School, was driving home at night when he skidded through a stop sign and collided with a Chevy Blazer carrying Brandon Mushlit and his girlfriend, Sara Jo Williams. They did not wear seat belts and were ejected from the SUV. They died on the spot. Thornton was driving without a license. He was injured and was airlifted to a hospital. After being released from the hospital, Thornton went home and tried to resume as normal a life as possible. . . . The state and law enforcement took five months to build a case against the teenager and arrest him on two counts of vehicular homicide. Although he had no criminal record, Thornton was tried as an adult and sentenced to the maximum of 30 years in state prison. . . . Almost everything about the conviction and sentence was a miscarriage of justice. Citrus County Circuit Judge Ric Howard, legendary for being tough on young offenders, ignored every important mitigating factor in the accident. The stop sign at the crash site was partly obstructed and hard to see. Thornton saw the sign at the last minute at the bottom of a hill and stepped on the brakes too late. He had no drugs or alcohol in his system. The driver of the other vehicle, however, had a blood-alcohol level of 0.08, the level at which Florida law presumes impairment. After the wreck, the county put up a sign warning motorists nearing the hill that a stop sign is on the other side.

BREAKING THE RULES
Who suffers when a prosecutor is cited for misconduct?

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