Yearly Archives: 2013

LaMonte Armstrong was exonerated in North Carolina in 2012 for a murder he did not commit. He wrongfully spent 17 years in prison. His exoneration came largely as a result of the efforts of professors Theresa Newman and Jim Coleman and the Duke Law Wrongful Convictions Clinic.

Yesterday, LaMonte received a call from NC Governor Pat McCrory telling him that he had been granted a full pardon. This will allow LaMonte to seek up to $750,000 from the state of North Carolina for his wrongful imprisonment.

Read the full Raleigh News & Observer story here. And you can see the WFMY TV news story here.

From the Local:

It is probably Sweden’s worst miscarriage of justice. On Monday, officials decided that Thomas Quick will continue to receive mental treatment but with less restrictions. The Local contributor David Lindén explains how a self-confessed serial killer went on to be cleared of all eight murders.

The National Board of Forensic Medicine (Rättsmedicinalverket) has decided that Quick, who has reverted to his original name Sture Bergwall, will keep receiving treatment but not in a mental hospital. But in order to understand why he ended up standing trial for eight murders that he later said he did not commit, we need a short recap.

From 1992, the already incarcerated Bergwall began to confess to a series of unsolved murders that he, after being in therapy at Säter Mental Hospital - part of Sweden’s correctional services - remembered committing. At the time, he was taking plenty of benzodiazepines, a strong form of psychoactive drugs, to which he said he became addicted. He realized that he would get his hands on more of the drug if he confessed to further atrocities during the therapy sessions. Not all the cases were “strong” enough to go to trial. There was a score of confessions, but some would never make it to the courtroom. Bergwall, who had adopted the name Thomas Quick - a combination of Thomas Blomgren whom he “killed” in 1964 and the maiden name of his mother - was in the end convicted of eight murders.

One detail apparently failed to be examined. Bergwall could not have killed Blomgren. Bergwall was attending his Christian confirmation at the time of Blomgren’s murder. This fact, in combination with Bergwall’s drug abuse, could have illuminated the weakness of the entire case. But it would land on Bergwall’s shoulders to clear his name, not on the justice system’s.

After he quit his medication, Bergwall withdrew all his confessions. Swedish prosecutors cannot prosecute without enough evidence to reasonably secure a verdict. Without the confessions, the cases crumbled and the charges were withdrawn. This summer, prosecutors dropped the eighth and final murder charge. Bergwall has since been fighting to get a new assessment of his mental state, and said he hopes to walk free. The saga took one of its last twists this week, as the Forensic Medicine Board allowed him to receive therapy in a more open form.

For an outsider, it can seem rather strange that a junkie addicted to pills could be convicted of eight murders with the help of “hidden memories,” only accessible by therapy. There was no shortage of critics during the time the confessions played out either. Retired criminology professor, TV personality, and Sweden’s in-house crime sage Leif G.W. Persson bluntly questioned Bergwall’s supposed modus operandi, saying it would be impossible for one man “to go around like a bloody slaughter machine all over Scandinavia.”

Another critic was psychologist Ulf Åsgård, who had helped the Swedish police catch a real serial killer - “Laser Man” John Ausonius who terrorized Stockholm in 1991-1992 by shooting foreign-born Swedes with a laser-sight rifle.

Yet Persson and Åsgård were ignored.

So how could the Sture Bergwall/Thomas Quick scandal happen?

Let us speculate that there was something in the air in Sweden that made society ready for such a grizzly tale. The shelves of book stores were being filled with foreign gore (this was before the proper birth of the domestic Nordic Noir genre) - Brett Easton Ellis’ novel American Psycho, with its yuppie freak Patrick Bateman, had recently been translated to Swedish (Bergwall would later cite American Psycho as “inspiration”). Cinema-goers, meanwhile, were gripping their velvet-clad seats as Jodi Foster and Anthony Hopkins faced off in Silence of the Lambs. Reality offered its ready examples too. In 1994, British police arrested serial killer couple Fred and Rosemary West - a case widely reported on in Swedish media.

Put simply, Sweden in the early 1990s was ready for a serial killer of its own. In Thomas Quick, there was enough material to fill several horror novels: childhood abuse, necrophilia, and cannibalism. The media lapped it up.

The Swedes were also rather blue at the time - suffering a financial crisis that was considerably worse than the one that would come in 2008. So in that sense, a “real” serial killer provided a form of psychological relief, and excitement. I would argue that the Swedes were almost envious of other countries’ psychos, and wanted their own.

You cannot, however, use culture and sentiment as an excuse for what happened. What was unfurling would become one of the worst legal scandals in Swedish history. Police officers, therapists, and lawyers misinterpreted, ignored and cheated their way through the evidence-gathering, blatantly putting aside the bits that spoke against Bergwall’s own version of events. The media also played an important part in the massive hoodwink, because reporters took all the “official” truths for granted. Few were the journalists who questioned the “perfect story.”

An important question is who will pay, if at all, for allowing this to happen?

Sweden’s Justice Minister Beatrice Ask has appointed “The Quick Commission”, headed by political science professor Daniel Tarschys. He is a former member of the Riksdag and a professor of political science - he is thus not a lawyer. This could mean that that case is investigated from a political and not a legal point of view. It is unlikely that the commission will yield true power to change any structural weakness it finds to lay behind the many ill-made decisions that saw Bergwall wrongfully convicted of eight murders.

David Lindén is a PhD student in history at King’s College London and is currently a liberal political commentator for Borås Tidning (BT). Previously he was a visiting scholar at University of North Carolina. Follow him on Twitter here.

This past week, a tuxedo-clad Brian Banks walked on a red carpet, along with his amazingly supportive mother, to receive an honor he could not have imagined when he was sitting in prison for 5 years, wrongfully convicted of rape. When it was his turn to speak, a room full of some of the best current and past college and pro football players gave him a standing ovation. Then, they listened to Brian give an inspirational speech, committing to a life helping others who have been wrongfully convicted as he held the Lott IMPACT Trophy ®. , an honor given to defensive football players with both incredible personal character as well as athletic performance.

Prior winners have included David Pollack, Demeco Ryans, Daymeion Hughes, Glenn Dorsey, James Laurinaitis, Jerry Hughes, J.J. Watt, Luke Kuechly, Manti Te’o, and Anthony Barr, all great athletes, but none with a story as compelling and heartbreaking as Brian’s.

Before he was falsely accused of rape, Brian was one of the most highly recruited high school football players in the country. Before his senior year, he had already committed to play for Pete Carroll at USC, a path most likely to lead directly to the NFL. Instead, the false accusation led to five years in prison and five on parole as a convicted sex offender.

After his exoneration, Brian fought to get back his dream of playing in the NFL. I personally watched him work out day after day, determined to prove himself worthy to each team that gave him a tryout, making the most of every chance he had to get back to the game he loved. That dream was fulfilled this past Fall as he played throughout the preseason for the Atlanta Falcons.

The trophy Brian received this past week was named in honor of Ronnie Lott, a two time All-American USC football player and College Football Hall of Fame inductee. Ronnie won four Super Bowl rings with the San Francisco 49ers, took ten trips to the Pro Bowl, and earned a spot in the Pro Football Hall of Fame. He was known for his character both on and off the field.

Who knows what path Brian’s life would have taken had he not been wrongfully convicted. He might hold NFL records and titles like Ronnie, instead of holding the trophy named after him. Regardless, the past is the past and Brian’s future is bright. He is on a path with a higher calling beyond individual glory. He has already helped in two exonerations beyond his own and he will continue to help others whose lives have been taken away by our justice system.

Follow me on Twitter: @JustinoBrooks

Professor Justin Brooks
Director, California Innocence Project
California Western School of Law
225 Cedar Street
San Diego, CA 92101
jpb@cwsl.edu

For more information please see: http://lottimpacttrophy.org/about-the-trophy/, http://californiainnocenceproject.org/read-their-stories/brian-banks