Author Archives: Phil Locke

40+ Years After Epic Fire, Convicted Man to Go Free

Posted on April 2, 2013 | 1 comment

Louis Taylor has spent 43 years in prison for a crime he did not commit – setting a hotel on fire, resulting in the deaths of 29 people.

He was convicted based upon arson junk science and the false testimony of jailhouse snitches.

Two review committees determined that there is no longer enough evidence available to tell whether or not arson was in play. They said that the experts in the original trial “used methods no longer valid in the science of today.”

The Arizona Justice Project played a key role in bringing the case to resolution. Unfortunately, Louis Taylor will have to plead “no contest,” receive credit for time served, and be released on that basis.

You can read the CNN story here. Watch 60 Minutes segment here.

1 Comment

Posted in Exonerations, Junk science

Amanda Knox – Trial by Website

Posted on March 29, 2013 | 11 comments

Numerous times on this blog we have bemoaned the inappropriateness of “trial by media.” The press/media cannot possibly have an intimate understanding of all the evidence, facts, affidavits, and testimony in a criminal trial. But to gain readership, they piece together whatever bits of information they can gather, and publish stories that tend to appeal to the sensationalistic interest of the general public. This is no surprise. That’s what they do. It’s unfortunate, however, because this stuff can and does have an influence, both during and, perhaps even more so, after trial.

But nowadays, there is a new internet-age version of trial by media. I call it “trial by website.” This happens when someone becomes personally dedicated to the guilt or innocence of a particular defendant, and sets up a website to proffer their one-sided views. There are both innocence-based websites and guilt-based websites. However, my observation is that the guilt-based websites are much more vitriolic, and generally based upon much unsubstantiated, or downright false, information.

There’s been much recent discussion due to the overturning of the Amanda Knox acquittal, and the websites run by people who have dedicated themselves to her guilt are going great guns. Two of these are the Perugia Murder File (PMF) and True Justice for Meredith Kercher (TJMK).

Nina Burleigh is a journalist who actually went to Perugia, and studied all aspects of the case for over a month. She has recently published an article in TIME in which she talks about these “Knox Hater” websites. And in opining about what the outcome of any new trial will be she states, “In my opinion, the new panel will agree with the last one that the case against the students is fatally flawed.”

You can read Nina Burleigh’s article here.

11 Comments

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

Brian Banks’ Story to be Featured on CBS’s “60 Minutes”

Posted on March 22, 2013 | 6 comments

BRIAN BANKS

The Brian Banks case has been reported on multiple times on this blog. See the post covering his exoneration here.

Brian Banks’ inspiring story will be featured on this week’s episode of CBS’ 60 Minutes show (Sunday, March 24th, 7 pm PT/ET). From the 60 Minutes website: “Blindsided” – Brian Banks may yet play in the NFL, but he knows it’s a longshot after spending five years in prison on a rape charge for which he was later exonerated. James Brown reports.” Brown speaks with Banks, his family, and California Innocence Project director Justin Brooks about the case and what is says about our justice system.

6 Comments

Posted in Exonerations, Reforming/Improving the system

More Detail on the David Ranta Exoneration

Posted on March 22, 2013 | 11 comments

This is, sadly, all too typical. False eyewitness identification, bogus lineup, jailhouse snitch, police tunnel vision.

Read the full CNN story here. Below are some excerpts:

Since Ranta’s trial, another man’s widow has identified her now-dead husband as the killer; a onetime jail inmate has said he made up statements about Ranta to boost his own fortunes; and the man who, as a boy, picked him out of a lineup has come forward to say he was coached by a detective.

Menachem Lieberman was 13 years old when he identified Ranta in a lineup. In 2011, he told investigators that he identified Ranta after being told by a detective to “Pick the guy with the big nose.”

Ranta’s attorney: “The detective work that was done on this case was at best shoddy and at worst criminal. And I don’t use that word lightly,” he told CNN. “But when a closer examination is done of the detective work … It becomes clear that there were so many leads that weren’t followed, there were so many notes that weren’t taken and just a general lack of attention to an investigation that required nothing but close scrutiny of the scene, of witnesses and so forth. That didn’t happen.”

11 Comments

Posted in Exonerations, Eyewitness identification, False confessions, Police conduct (good and bad), Reforming/Improving the system

David Ranta Freed After More Than 2 Decades in Prison

Posted on March 21, 2013 | 7 comments

New York (CNN) — A New York man has been freed after serving more than two decades in prison for the killing of a rabbi during a botched diamond heist, with a judge calling his conviction a miscarriage of justice.

Interestingly, the police are “standing by” the arrest, and deny any claims that there was any “witness coaching.”

Read the full story here.

7 Comments

Posted in Exonerations, Eyewitness identification, False confessions, Reforming/Improving the system

California Innocence Project Succeeds in Freeing Daniel Larsen After a Decade

Posted on March 20, 2013 | 1 comment

Daniel Larson spent 13 years in prison for a crime he did not commit. He was a victim of California’s “three strikes” law, and was sentenced to 27 years to life.

A federal judge has declared him “actually innocent”, and he is free on bail while the prosecutor’s appeal in underway.

Read the full story here.

1 Comment

Posted in Exonerations, Reforming/Improving the system

Center for Wrongful Convictions at Northwestern Law Focuses on Wrongful Convictions of Women

Posted on March 18, 2013 | 4 comments

This from the Spring 2013 issue of the Northwestern University alumni magazine, “Northwestern.”

“Northwestern’s Center on Wrongful Convictions established the first project in the United States to identify and rectify wrongful convictions of women. CWC leaders developed the Women’s Project, because women face unique challenges when fighting a wrongful conviction.

“There is typically no DNA evidence in cases with female defendants, making their convictions harder to fight.” said Rob Warden, executive director of the CWC. “Sometimes there was not even a crime at all.”

In addition to representation of selected clients, project leaders also plan to monitor potential cases of wrongfully convicted women across the country, and educate the public about this issue.”

You can read more about the CWC here.

4 Comments

Posted in Reforming/Improving the system

Maddy DeLone, Executive Director of the Innocence Project, Speaks About Her Work

Posted on March 16, 2013 | 3 comments

Maddy DeLone is the Executive Director of the Innocence Project, a non-profit legal organization committed to exonerating the wrongly convicted through the use of DNA testing and criminal justice system reform. Since its founding in 1992, the Innocence Project’s work has resulted in many innocent people being released from prison and Death Row, many of whom had served over a decade of prison time. DeLone previously served as an attorney with the Prisoners’ Rights Project of the Legal Aid Society. A Skadden Fellow, she also worked as a staff attorney for Children’s Rights, Inc. and as a law clerk to the Honorable Robert W. Sweet.

You can see the video of her interview here.

3 Comments

Posted in Reforming/Improving the system

Steubenville, OH Rape Trial – Something’s Not Right

Posted on March 15, 2013 | 5 comments

If you’re not familiar with the situation in Steubenville, OH, in which two high school football players are accused of raping a drunk, 16-year-old girl, here is a recent news update.

It’s dangerous to try cases like this in the media. We don’t have access to the evidence or the testimony, and the outcome must ultimately be up to the jury.

However, the following sentence in the news article caught my attention:

“The trial, which is likely to stretch into the weekend, is moving quickly to accommodate the schedule of the judge. A verdict is expected by Sunday.”

This is WRONG. Very, very wrong. Justice should not, cannot, must not be placed on a schedule.

5 Comments

Posted in Editorials/Opinion, Reforming/Improving the system

Arizona Woman on Death Row for Murder of Her 4-year-old Son has Conviction Overturned

Posted on March 14, 2013 | 8 comments

Debra Milke was convicted of kidnapping, abusing and murdering her 4-year-old son. But a federal appeals judge says the prosecution was “unconstitutionally silent” on the “history of misconduct” of its key witness.

Read the full story here.

8 Comments

Posted in Capital punishment, False confessions, Police conduct (good and bad)

Budget Crises Hit Public Defenders Hard

Posted on March 13, 2013 | 2 comments

You have the right to counsel. Or do you?

Above is Clarence Gideon, whose pro se petition to the Supreme Court resulted in the 1963 Supreme Court decision in the case of Gideon vs. Wainwright, confirming a constitutional guarantee of representation by counsel.

Recent budget crises across the country have been preventing Public Defenders’ offices from adequately staffing to carry the case load with which they are confronted. Some Public Defenders are even refusing to take on cases if they don’t meet certain criteria for ‘gravity.’

See the USA Today story here.

2 Comments

Posted in Defense lawyering (good and bad), Reforming/Improving the system

Follow-up to the David Ayers Civil Rights Violation Award

Posted on March 10, 2013 | 2 comments

Here is a link to a Huffpost story with more detail about what happened and who was involved in the David Ayers case. It also contains a video of David Ayers speaking about the experience.

Link here.

2 Comments

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

Ohio Innocence Project Exoneree, David Ayers, Awarded $13.2M

Posted on March 9, 2013 | 1 comment

David Ayers was a security guard in the Cleveland Metropolitan Housing Authority building where he lived. He was convicted and imprisoned for the brutal murder of a 76-year-old woman who lived in the building.

Detectives investigating the crime quickly focused in on David, because of a number of personal biases, and never looked anywhere else.

I have met David, and heard him speak. He is truly a “gentle” man. His lack of bitterness and deeply-felt desire to make sure this doesn’t happen again is characteristic of the kind of person he is.

See the Cleveland Plain Dealer story here.

1 Comment

Posted in Uncategorized

Man Awarded $15.5M for Two Years in Solitary Confinement Without Ever Seeing a Judge

Posted on March 7, 2013 | 5 comments

This combination of two photos, both provided by the Dona Ana County Sheriff’s Department in New Mexico, show Stephen Slevin, on the left, in Aug. 2005, at the time of his arrest for drunken driving, and on the right in May 2007, shortly before being released from solitary confinement. A federal jury has awarded $22 million to Slevin, a New Mexico man who was kept in solitary confinement for two years, and was even forced to pull his own tooth after his arrest for drunken driving in Dona Ana County.

The original award was for $22M, and Slevin eventually accepted $15.5M.

Read the Huffpost story and see video here.

And what’s REALLY interesting is that no county officials have been held accountable for this!

5 Comments

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

Dog-Scent Lineups – One of the ‘Junkiest’ of the Junk Sciences

Posted on March 3, 2013 | 6 comments

A dog-scent lineup consists of matching a “scent” sample from a crime scene to a “scent” sample from a suspect by a dog. The practice has been used in several states, including Alaska, Florida, New York, and Texas. We know that dogs have an incredibly acute sense of smell, but the major problem has been with the handlers of these dogs, who have been proven to be fakes and charlatans.

The Innocence Project of Texas has published an excellent article about this practice in the state of Texas. While 71 pages in total, the actual article is only 14 pages – the rest being appended affidavits from experts. The link to the article is below:

Dog Scent Lineups-Junk Science-IPOT

The most infamous practitioner of this bogus science has been Deputy Keith Pickett of Fort Bend County, Texas. From 1994 to 2009 he traveled all over the state of Texas with his dogs, conducting dog-scent lineups. And he was always telling police and prosecutors exactly what they wanted to hear. The prosecutors loved him, and he was something of a “justice system rock star.” At one point, his status as an expert was even solidified by an appellate court decision.

The NY Times published an article about the wrongful imprisonment of Curvis Bickham in Texas. He was linked to a triple murder through bogus dog-scent lineup evidence provided by Keith Pickett and his dogs. Mr. Bickham was eventually released only because the real perpetrator confessed, and he had lost everything – his house, his cars, and his business. See the article here. And another NY Times article on the subject here. In 2009, the dog-scent convictions in Texas started being overturned. It’s about this time that Mr. Pickett “retired.” Nobody has records of exactly how may cases Keith Pickett and his dogs were involved in, but it’s believed to be as high as 2,000.

There is a similar situation in Florida with a dog handler named John Preston. See article here. To this day, nobody knows how many innocent people are still in prison as a result of John Preston’s fakery. Preston died in 2008 without ever having been charged for his fraud.

The most scientific approach to dog-scent lineups has been taken by the Dutch police, who have been establishing rigorous training & administration requirements and processes since the 1960’s. What they have found is that, even under the best of conditions and with the most rigorous processes, dog-scent lineup evidence is only 85% accurate. Dog-scent lineup evidence is not admissable in Dutch courts unless it is in conjuction with other evidence identifying the suspect. This article has more detail on the Dutch police practices with dog-scent lineups.

6 Comments

Posted in Forensic controls, Junk science, Reforming/Improving the system

Former Executioner Opposes Death Penalty

Posted on February 22, 2013 | Leave a comment

From Huffpost, 2/19/13:

During his seventeen years as an executioner in Virginia, Jerry Givens executed 62 death row inmates in the prison system. But after almost executing an innocent man, Givens quit his job and began lobbying for the end of the death penalty. Givens joined Huffpost Live’s Ahmed Shihab-Eldin to tell his story.

“They had a guy by the name of Earl Washington and he came within weeks before he was scheduled to be executed,” Givens said. After conducting another DNA test, it was revealed that Washington was innocent, just in time to save his life.

But not everyone has had that second chance at justice. After DNA testing became more prevalent, Givens found out some of the lives he had already taken were innocent.

“You sentenced a guy to be executed. You give him a trial, then you send him to me to be put to death. Then later on you [say] that this guy was innocent. You didn’t put him to death. I did. I performed the execution. So you might suffer a little. I’m going to suffer a lot, because I performed the job.”

Givens started as a correctional supervisor, where he said his job was to save lives, helping inmates to readjust to society. Transitioning to what he describes as a “so-called executioner” was a dramatic change.

“You have to get away from yourself. You have to eliminate yourself,” Givens told ABC.

“Prayer helped me,” Givens said. Before every execution, he would pray for the death row inmate and ask for forgiveness.

Watch the entire segment on Huffpost Live.

Why I Think the US Justice System is Broken – and Why It’s Not Getting Fixed

Posted on February 20, 2013 | 32 comments

I was recently made aware of a quote from the ancient Greek playwright, Euripides. “Ours is a universe in which justice is accidental, and innocence no protection.” I often feel like this describes our current justice system exactly, but it’s not supposed to be that way, and it doesn’t HAVE to be that way. As with any system established and run by “humans,” the justice system, including those who run it, is exposed to the entire gamut of human frailties – pride, ego, ambition, greed, envy, passion, deceit, prejudice, hate, intolerance, power, influence, and on and on. The situation hasn’t really changed since ancient Greece, and I don’t see the nature of humanity changing radically any time in the next few thousand years, but there are things that can be done to at least mitigate the effect of these human shortcomings on the justice system. This post will be comprehensive and quite long – so, buckle up, and here we go. I hope that those of you who have the patience to read through to the end may find it interesting, enlightening, and hopefully thought provoking.

As you might guess from the title, this post will be “editorial” in nature. I’ve been doing innocence work for five years now, and have worked with seven different Innocence Projects from across the US and one foreign country. Over that time, I’ve been exposed to the fine details of over 40 different cases. These are all post-conviction cases in which there is a belief by the associated Innocence Project in the actual innocence of the defendant, and thus belief of a “wrongful conviction” on the part of the justice system. In addition, my research in these cases has exposed me to many other additional cases in which a wrongful conviction occurred. Consequently, I’ve seen a lot of the things that can go wrong in the justice system, and have been able to make judgments about how they happen. This post will coalesce my observations into statements about why I think the US justice system is broken. I’m going to be painting a pretty dark picture, so keep in mind that my exposure has been to cases in which the justice system failed, but there are lots of them. There really isn’t any substantiated data for how many wrongful convictions occur in the US every year, but recent data says it’s between 5,000 and 10,000 per year. One is too many. At the end of the post, we’ll talk about why it’s not getting fixed.

I’m not an attorney, and some may accuse me of being a naive, optimistic idealist (which I am) or of tracking muddy footprints through the hallowed halls of justice; but I am only reporting what I have observed. And if you think I’m making some of this stuff up, I strongly recommend you read the book False Justice: Eight Myths That Convict the Innocent by Jim and Nancy Petro. (It’s available from amazon.com for $16.) Jim is a former Attorney General for the state of Ohio, and Nancy, in addition to being an author and advocate, is also a contributing editor to this blog. Now, are there good and dedicated prosecutors and police out there who are absolutely committed to seeing that true justice is served? Of course. Are there qualified and capable attorneys who will do their utmost on behalf of their clients? Of course. Unfortunately, there are also “others.”

All that being said ……..

Why I Think the US Justice System is Broken

(As a preview, we’ll touch upon Bad Lawyers, Prosecutors, Judges, Police, Juries, Junk Science Forensics, False Confessions, Shoddy Work by Medical Examiners, Testimony from Experts Who Aren’t Really Experts, Finality of Judgement, Highly Restrictive Rules for New Evidence, Eyewitness Identification, and Recantations.)

Continue reading →

32 Comments

Posted in Defense lawyering (good and bad), Editorials/Opinion, False confessions, Forensic controls, Junk science, Police conduct (good and bad), Prosecutorial conduct (good and bad), Reforming/Improving the system

Stay Granted in Georgia Execution of Warren Hill

Posted on February 20, 2013 | Leave a comment

Even though the Supreme Court denied a stay, it was granted by the US 11th Circuit Court of Appeals with less than 30 minutes left before the execution was to take place.

See full story here.

Texas Prepares to Execute Carl Henry Blue

Posted on February 20, 2013 | Leave a comment

Texas is preparing for Thursday’s scheduled execution of Carl Henry Blue. Barring a stay, it will be the 493rd execution during the modern era for Texas, where more than one-third of U.S. executions occur. Execution Watch will carry coverage and commentary, including an interview with politically engaged actor Peter Coyote. The execution watch begins.

RADIO SHOW PREVIEW
EXECUTION WATCH
Unless a stay is issued, we’ll broadcast live:
Thurs, 21 Feb 2013, 6-7 PM Central Time
KPFT FM Houston 90.1 and Online…
http://e xecutionwatch.org > Listen
Join the discussion on Facebook: Execution Watch

TEXAS PLANS TO EXECUTE:
CARL HENRY BLUE, convicted of killing his ex-girlfriend in 1995 by burning her alive at her apartment in College Station. Blue’s attorneys argued unsuccessfully that he was mentally impaired and therefore ineligible for the death penalty. He acknowledged drinking and smoking crack the night of the slaying. Background: www.executionwatch.org > Backpage on Blue.

Georgia Set to Execute Mentally Retarded Man Tonight

Posted on February 19, 2013 | 2 comments

The state of Georgia is scheduled to execute Warren Hill at 7:00 PM tonight. This would be in violation of the 2002 US Supreme Court ruling in the case of Atkins vs. Virginia, because Warren Hill has an IQ of 70. The ruling bars the execution of mentally retarded people under the 8th Amendment as cruel and unusual.

Story here and here.