Author Archives: Nancy Petro

Tough-on-Crime Prosecutor Fights for Job After Resisting DNA Testing

Posted on May 15, 2012 | 2 comments

In dueling commentaries in the Austin (TX) newspaper The Statesman, Williamson County District Attorney John Bradley here and John Raley (eight-year pro bono attorney on the Innocence Project team that represented Michael Morton) here, are giving voters two versions of why Michael Morton spent an extra 2,400 days in prison for a crime he did not commit. At stake is an election in which Bradley is struggling to keep his job. Bradley, who has been a popular tough-on-crime prosecutor in Texas for ten years, is trying to refocus the race on anything but the issue that is dominating it: His long record of resisting a second look at the conviction of Michael Morton.

For those who have observed prosecutorial resistance to post-conviction DNA testing that eventually proved a wrongful conviction, the story is tragically familiar. Continue reading →

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Posted in Editorials/Opinion, Prosecutorial conduct (good and bad)

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The Cost of a Brady Violation: Cuyahoga County Defends $42 Million Lawsuit

Posted on May 8, 2012 | 3 comments

Cuyahoga County (OH) Prosecutor Bill Mason has hired Ned Searby, a former federal prosecutor, to defend the county and county officials in a $42 million dollar wrongful imprisonment lawsuit filed by Joe D’Ambrosio, who spent twenty years on death row before his conviction was overturned in 2006. A federal judge ruled that prosecutors had withheld evidence that might have exonerated him.

As establish in Brady v Maryland, prosecutors are obligated to turn over to the defense any evidence that might support the defendant’s innocence. Failure to do so is a Brady violation and can be reversible error, as it was in this case.

The Cleveland Plain Dealer reports here that Searby will charge the county no more than $745,000 for the defense legal fees.

D’Ambrosio, freed two years ago, was not acquitted of the murder, and the Continue reading →

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Posted in Compensation/Exoneree compensation, Prosecutorial conduct (good and bad), Uncategorized

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Wrongful Conviction Also Victimizes Victims

Posted on May 7, 2012 | 9 comments

Convicted murderer Charles Wilhite has an unusual advocate: the niece of murder victim, Alberto Rodriguez. Marialyn—who requested that the Boston Globe not reveal her last name due to safety concerns—rallied in support of Wilhite on Saturday, May 5, 2012, in Springfield, Massachusetts, because she believes Wilhite was wrongfully convicted of killing her uncle.

As reported here, a key witness in the trial now claims that a Springfield detective and the assistant district attorney pressured his testimony. The witness has recanted his identification of Wilhite as the killer. A decision on whether or not his original testimony will stand is expected today from Hampden Superior Court Judge Peter A. Velis. Continue reading →

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Posted in Editorials/Opinion, Exonerations, Prosecutorial conduct (good and bad), Victims and victim issues

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Innovative Colorado DNA Initiatives Pay Off

Posted on April 30, 2012 | 1 comment

On October 1, 2009, Colorado Attorney General John W. Suthers, announced that the state had received a $1.2 million federal grant to start a program that would seek to identify wrongful convictions through DNA testing. Today, April 30, 2012, Robert Dewey, 51, is expected to be the first person to be exonerated through the testing. He has served more than 16 years for a crime he said he never committed. A Colorado imprisoned felon is a new suspect in the case. Read about this case, reported earlier on this blog by Mark Godsey with news link here, and also here.

This exoneration is just one of the beneficial results of the Colorado Justice Review Project. Working with the Denver District Attorney’s Office, the University of Denver College of Law, the Colorado Bureau of Investigation and the Colorado Public Defender’s Office, the federally funded project has enabled review of more than 5,000 past rapes, Continue reading →

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Posted in Commissions/Innocence Commissions/Governmental Case Review Agencies, Editorials/Opinion, Exonerations

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Governors Can Make Adjustments in Justice

Posted on April 24, 2012 | Leave a comment

A long-shot for those claiming innocence who’ve run out of options in the United States is a governor’s pardon or commutation. The process, slowed by inherent political risk, usually requires persistent advocacy with credible indications of an error (or other reason for a correction), multiple advocates, and a lack of objection from key players in the justice system. In Maryland, after serving 28 years in prison, Mark Farley Grant has been granted a sentence commutation Continue reading →

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Law Schools: Add Wrongful Conviction to Core Curriculum

Posted on April 19, 2012 | 6 comments

“Like many people, I [once] accepted one of the myths,” said Jeffrey Rosen, the New Republic’s legal affairs editor and law professor at George Washington University. The Los Angeles Times called Rosen “the nation’s most widely read and influential legal commentator.” A legal book author, he is a summa cum laude graduate of Harvard College, was a Marshall Scholar at Oxford University, and is a Yale Law School graduate. One of his specialty areas is criminal procedure. Yet, he recently humbly admitted that he’d gained a new understanding about our criminal justice system, namely, that it convicts the innocent far more often then most imagine.

Continue reading →

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Posted in Book recommendations/discussion, Editorials/Opinion, Reforming/Improving the system, Scholarship

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“Ripple Effect” of Wrongful Conviction Highlighted by Judge

Posted on April 17, 2012 | 9 comments

“…For 21 years, you woke up and went to sleep knowing that an innocent man, Kenneth Ireland, was sitting in prison,” said Connecticut Superior Court Judge David P. Gold in sentencing Kevin Benefield to the maximum 60 years in prison for the 1986 rape/murder of Barbara Pelkey.

Judge Gold referenced, as reported in a New Haven Register article here, the “ripple effect” of the crime that robbed Pelkey’s four children of their mother, financial and emotional security, and their father, who Continue reading →

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Posted in Compensation/Exoneree compensation, Editorials/Opinion, Reforming/Improving the system

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Exonerated Man to Receive Payment From Police Officers Allegedly Responsible For Coerced Confession

Posted on April 16, 2012 | 3 comments

Harold Hill was exonerated in 2005, after 12 years in prison, for a rape/murder conviction based on a confession he says was beaten out of him. As reported here in the Chicago Tribune, two police officers allegedly involved in this and other similar coerced confessions will personally pay part of a $1.25 million settlement with Hill by the City of Chicago.

The officer’s payment of $7,500 each is a small part of the settlement, but it was important to Hill. Rather than receiving payment from a “faceless” government Continue reading →

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Posted in Editorials/Opinion, Exonerations, False confessions, Police conduct (good and bad), Political cases

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Exonerated Former Death Row Inmate is Living Proof of Wrongful Execution Risk

Posted on April 13, 2012 | 1 comment

Ray Krone was a former supporter of the death penalty in the U.S. when he believed that it was fair punishment for the worst-of-the-worst monsters in our society. That was before he was wrongfully portrayed by police and prosecutors as one of those monsters.

A seven-year postal worker, who had served in the military and had no criminal record, Krone was wrongfully convicted on dubious bite mark evidence of the murder of a 36-year-old Phoenix woman in a bar where she worked.  He was sentenced to death and spent more than ten years in prison before crime scene DNA proved his innocence and linked to Kenneth Phillips, an incarcerated felon who had lived near the victim.

Ray Krone, the 100th death row inmate freed due to innocence since reestablishment of the death penalty in the U.S. in 1976, now works for Continue reading →

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Posted in Capital punishment, Editorials/Opinion, Exonerations, Junk science

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Police Departments, We Have a Problem: An Erosion of Trust

Posted on April 9, 2012 | 5 comments

Aurora (IL) Police Commander Kristen Ziman was both surprised and a bit offended by praise heaped on the Aurora Police Department for its reinvestigation of a case that prompted the exoneration of Jonathan Moore. Moore had served twelve years for murder when new evidence suggested that he wasn’t the perpetrator. Ziman didn’t think the decision to reinvestigate the case was unusual. It’s the kind of integrity her department shows every day. Doing the right thing, she reasoned, should not be so exceptional as to receive widespread recognition and praise.

What garnered all of the attention? Continue reading →

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Posted in Editorials/Opinion, Police conduct (good and bad)

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Wrongful Conviction: A Worthy Topic for Continuing Legal Education

Posted on April 5, 2012 | 1 comment

The Innocence Project model—the free legal clinic that utilizes DNA analysis of crime scene evidence to prove the innocence of the wrongfully convicted—has now been widely duplicated across the United States and the globe. While most Innocence Project clinics are attached to law schools and rely upon selected law students who earn academic credit and hands-on legal experience in challenging post-conviction efforts, wrongful conviction per se is not an emphasis in the curriculum of most law schools. It’s therefore troubling but not surprising that many lawyers are unfamiliar with the primary causes of wrongful conviction, the implications wrongful convictions have had on the reliability of important forms of evidence such as eyewitness testimony and confessions, and recommended reforms that can reduce conviction error.

After all, the lessons of DNA are relatively recent. Just two decades ago most Continue reading →

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Posted in Editorials/Opinion, Events

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Wrongful Conviction Declared 179 Years too Late

Posted on April 2, 2012 | Leave a comment
“…I am as innocent ‘an an unborn child'” were the last words of Catherine Snow before she was hanged in Newfoundland after being convicted of her husband’s murder in 1833. The verdict by an all-male jury was based on circumstantial evidence, including her known infidelities, and prejudice. While she admitted that she was “a wretched woman,” she proclaimed her innocence in her husband’s death. According to a CBS News report here, the case troubled jurists for years. A modern-day jury, with new perspectives and equipped with current understandings of wrongful conviction, has reviewed the evidence and has acquitted Snow.

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Posted in Editorials/Opinion, Exonerations

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Clemency Consideration in California May Shed Light on Shaken Baby Case

Posted on March 31, 2012 | 2 comments

Shirley Ree Smith, 51, spent 10 years in a California prison after being convicted in the alleged shaken baby death of her infant grandson 15 years ago until the U.S. 9th Circuit Court  of Appeals reversed her conviction in 2006 based on a lack of “demonstrable support” of the prosecution’s theory. The U.S. Supreme Court urged the 9th Circuit to reconsider and has ordered the lower court to reinstate the conviction, but the ruling also noted that clemency—now being considered by Gov. Jerry Brown—might be appropriate for Smith, due in part to lingering doubts about her guilt.

The L.A. Times reports  here that Los Angeles District Attorney Steve Cooley has called upon three experts to review the autopsy reports, evidence and testimony Continue reading →

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Posted in Editorials/Opinion

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New Research Suggests Lack of Oversight and Consequence for Prosecutorial Error

Posted on March 30, 2012 | 2 comments

New research suggests a lack of oversight and consequence for prosecutorial error and misconduct. The research, detailed here, conducted by the Veritas Initiative—the prosecutorial accountability program of the Northern California Innocence Project—was released yesterday at a University of Texas Law School forum.

From 2004-2008 Texas prosecutors committed error in 91 cases documented in published trial and appellate court decisions. The courts “upheld the conviction in 72 of the cases, finding that the error was ‘harmless.’ In 19 of the cases, the court ruled that the error was ‘harmful’ and reversed the conviction.” From “2004 until November 2011, only one prosecutor was publicly disciplined by the Texas Bar Association.” Austin was the second stop of a national (United States) tour focusing on prosecutorial accountability organized by the Prosecutorial Oversight coalition.

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Posted in Editorials/Opinion, Prosecutorial conduct (good and bad)

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Recent Rulings Suggest Prosecutorial Immunity Has Boundaries

Posted on March 29, 2012 | 4 comments

U.S. District Court Judge Joe Billy McDade has ruled that two McLean County (IL) prosecutors are not immune from all claims of alleged misconduct in a lawsuit filed as a result of the wrongful murder conviction of Alan Beaman. Beaman served 13 years for the murder of  his former girlfriend Jennifer Lockmiller before the Illinois Supreme Court overturned his conviction. Pantagraph.com reports here that Judge McDade’s ruling is consistent with a recommendation from federal Magistrate Judge Byron Cudmore that prosecutors James Souk and Charles Reynard were immune from claims related to their prosecutorial roles but that immunity does not extend to their involvement in the case before arrest.

Beaman’s lawsuit alleges that the prosecutors conspired with Normal (IL) police officers and a McLean County Sheriff’s officer in framing Beaman for the murder. Continue reading →

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Posted in Editorials/Opinion, Prosecutorial conduct (good and bad)

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A Suggestion for Virginia: Step Up Efforts to Locate Convicted Persons Excluded by DNA

Posted on March 27, 2012 | 1 comment

Last Wednesday, James Moses Glass, 56, was indicted for the 1978 rape of a William & Mary coed. For more than 25 years this crime wrongfully defined Bennett Barbour as a rapist. He served 4-1/2 years in prison, which cost him his marriage, marred his relationship with his daughter, and labeled him a violent felon. Two years ago, as a result of Virginia Governor Mark Warner’s 2005 order to retest all DNA samples obtained from 1973 to 1988, Barbour was excluded as the rapist. The DNA instead linked James Glass to the crime. Glass was in the database due to a 1979 rape conviction in New York. But, if it weren’t for a private attorney’s pro bono efforts, Barbour might never have known that the innocence he has always claimed finally had been proven.

According to a Richmond Times-Dispatch article here 76 felons have been excluded as the source of the DNA evidence in their cases, but as of January of this year, 29 of those still assumed living had not been notified of these results. It seems that Virginia hasn’t been very successful in notifying those who would benefit most from the results (or apparently of notifying the crime victims or of reinvestigating the cases where conviction error is suspected).  Private Continue reading →

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Posted in Editorials/Opinion, Exonerations, Project Spotlights

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U.S. News Programs Explore Systemic Wrongful Conviction Issues

Posted on March 26, 2012 | 2 comments

Millions of Americans had their eyes opened to two important criminal justice issues—prosecutorial misconduct and wrongful conviction compensation—as national television news programs explored topics related to wrongful conviction last night, Sunday, March 25, 2012. Ohio Innocence Project Director Mark Godsey previously announced these programs on this blog. If you missed them, see the video link here to the 14-minute segment of CBS’s 60 MINUTES with Michael Morton, who spent 25 years in prison before DNA proved he didn’t murder his wife. The piece explores the case that has prompted a rare judicial inquiry into allegations of prosecutorial Continue reading →

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Posted in Compensation/Exoneree compensation, Editorials/Opinion, Prosecutorial conduct (good and bad), Reforming/Improving the system

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Ohio Attorney General DeWine Against Proposal to Restrict Compensation to Wrongfully Convicted

Posted on March 24, 2012 | 1 comment

A provision to deny compensation to a wrongfully convicted person if he or she had a previous felony or violent misdemeanor record does not have the support of Ohio Attorney General Mike DeWine. In fact, his office will advocate against it. The measure was submitted by his staff but he did not see or approve the restriction. In a Columbus Dispatch article here, DeWine said, “This doesn’t make sense to me.”

Governor Kasich’s spokesman said that the governor’s office would not oppose removal of the proposal from the massive budget bill.

Thanks to Attorney General Mike DeWine and Ohio Governor John Kasich for their positions on the removal of this provision, and to Ohio Innocence Director Mark Godsey for speaking out forcefully against it, noting the difficulty exonerees often have in getting compensation for years spent in prison for crimes they did not commit, “It’s too difficult as it is, ” Godsey said. “There’s only a few that have been able to do it.”

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Posted in Compensation/Exoneree compensation, Editorials/Opinion

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Innocence Project Model Highlighted at 2012 NCIP Event

Posted on March 23, 2012 | 1 comment

The non-profit legal clinic known as the Innocence Project, founded by Barry Scheck and Peter Neufeld in 1992 at the Benjamin N. Cardozo School of Law at Yeshiva University, has inspired and informed a network of 66 Innocence Projects today spanning the U.S. and the globe. The Northern California Innocence Project’s (NCIP) Fifth Annual Freedom for All Dinner last evening in San Jose highlighted this successful model. Winning post-conviction reversals of wrongful convictions requires  dedication, persistent hard work, and the leadership of Innocence Projects’ lawyers, staff, and law students, combined with important support from many others.

The NCIP utilizes its annual Justice For All Dinner to celebrate hard-won victories, raise critical financial resources, and recognize their partners in the pursuit of justice. Among last evening’s recognized colleagues… Continue reading →

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Posted in Events, Project Spotlights

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Important Court of Appeals Ruling Yesterday May Inform Other Arson Appeals

Posted on March 22, 2012 | Leave a comment

The Indiana Court of Appeals vacation of the arson conviction of Kristine Bunch, who spent 16 years in prison after a mobile home fire killed her young son, will likely be raised in other arson convictions.  More on this case here  and here. The court cited advances in fire science that discredit forensic testimony used in this and many arson cases. Bunch is now presumed innocent. Prosecutors must decide if they will re-try her. The Indiana Attorney General’s office disagrees with the ruling and has 30 days to ask the Court of Appeals to rehear the case or appeal to the Indiana Supreme Court. The Center on Wrongful Convictions at Northwestern Law and former federal prosecutor Ron Safer and his colleagues at Schiff Hardin, who worked pro bono, championed this case.

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Posted in Editorials/Opinion, Exonerations

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