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Stories of the Wrongfully Convicted

Innocents in Prison News
& Views 2009

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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.

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.

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."

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

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

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

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

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.

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). . . .

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.

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. 

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. 

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."

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."

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 , Oregon Live

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.

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.

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).

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.

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.)

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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. 

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.” 

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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A Promise of Justice
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