Last week, we posted quite a bit about the new National Registry of Exonerations, which details more than 2,000 wrongful convictions in the U.S. since 1989.
Now there’s a video that summarizes and outlines the findings…..It’s an excellent piece to send around to friends and supporters interested in the movement….
Video here….
Posted in Exonerations
Florida Governor puts innocence commission to death
Thomas Arthur
I previously blogged here about Thomas Arthur, a man who is awaiting execution in Alabama. He’s on my mind again, because I’m being interviewed today by the Oprah Network for an episode on the case (because I was an expert witness on the case back in 2008). The issue now is that state officials down in Alabama want to move quickly toward execution, but won’t allow Mr. Arthur the chance to exhaust all possible DNA testing avenues to prove his possible innocence.
The perpetrator in this case wore a wig that was later recovered. Years later, someone else confessed under oath to wearing the wig and committing the murder. The State says the third-party’s confession is bogus and was orchestrated by Mr. Arthur. That may very well be true. Or it may not. No one, of course, really knows but Mr. Arthur and the confessor. But a DNA test result finding the confessor’s DNA in the wig would prove the confession to be accurate and reliable. And it’s not like DNA has never proven a prosecutor to be dead wrong.
The State submitted the wig to nuclear STR testing in its own lab, and it failed to find a DNA profile. But anyone who does this type of work knows that private labs, which used more sensitive and advanced forms of DNA testing like mini-STR, frequently find DNA profiles when the state labs can’t. Just ask my client Raymond Towler. The State of Ohio in his case claimed for years it could not find any sperm or male DNA on the child rape victim’s panties. We sent the same piece of evidence to a commercial lab, which found sperm galore and developed a DNA profile that sprung Mr. Towler from prison after 29 years. I’ll never forget the call with one of the prosecutors after we got the exonerative results, wherein she expressed amazement that the commercial lab found something that the State lab had not. I wanted to say, “Are you kidding me?, this is the rule rather than the exception.”
I’m not trying to knock state labs or the good people who work for them. They are underfunded and overworked and have smart and hardworking people doing the best they can (like our state labs in Ohio, who are staffed by scientists I know and trust). But the simple fact that commercial, private labs usually have more sensitive and up-to-date technology and can often get DNA results that state labs can’t is a given to anyone in this line of work. The fact that Alabama turns a blind eye to this phenomenon, and wants to execute Arthur without seeing what a private, commercial lab can add to the equation, is egregious.
This editorial from the Atlantic says it all:
Another month, another man on death row, another excruciating case that illustrates just some of the ways in which America’s death penalty regime is unconstitutionally broken. This time, the venue is Alabama. This time, the murder that generated the sentence took place 30 years ago. And this time, there is an execution date of March 29, 2012, for Thomas Arthur, a man who has Continue reading
Ohio Innocence Project client Nancy Smith, and her quest for a pardon, has received a lot of press (Dateline, Anderson Cooper, etc.) and, as a result, nearly 125,000 people have signed her clemency petition here.
What many people do not know is that she has a co-defendant who is equally as innocent and deserving of a pardon, but who has not received the same press. Here’s a recent article describing Joseph Allen’s plight:
Bob Chatelle and Emily Horowitz
Directors, National Center for Reason and Justice
Although most of the people wrongfully convicted in the daycare sex abuse panic of the 1980s/early 1990s have been exonerated, Joseph Allen is still fighting to clear his name. Although he was acquitted in 2009, after serving 15 years in prison, in April 2011 the Ohio Supreme Court overruled the conviction. Allen, and his co-defendant, Nancy Smith, are still out of prison but they are anxiously waiting to see what will happen.
Like the other cases in the daycare panic, this case started with an accusation by a mother who believed that her child was sexually abused while at preschool. In 1993, in Lorain, Ohio, a young mother – who had been previously convicted of distributing cocaine from her home – took her 4-year-old daughter to the hospital. She claimed that the girl hadn’t gone to her Head Start program that day, because her bus driver, Nancy Smith, had driven the children on her bus that afternoon to see a man named “Joseph.” Joseph allegedly tied the girl up, taped her eyes, and molested her with a stick.
But the bus odometer showed that Smith had driven her usual route, and school Continue reading
Posted in Uncategorized
Police in New Zealand spent more than $500,000 retrying David Bain (trial ended in acquittal) who many believe is innocentPosted in Australia/New Zealand, Junk science
Arizona Diamondbacks baseball team offer recent exoneree Brian Banks a front office position
James Kluppelberg, exonerated by the University of Chicago Exoneration Project, released from prison yesterdayFrom the Dallas Observer:
If Dallas District Attorney Craig Watkins has a direct foil in the state of Texas, it’s soon-to-be-former Williamson County District Attorney John Bradley.
Watkins, actively pursuing innocence claims and making Dallas the leading county for exonerations in Texas, is an outlier, albeit one who is gaining supporters around the country for his tough-but-nice-guy legal philosophies. Meanwhile, Bradley upholds a reputation for being relentlessly tough on crime — and innocence.
But in yesterday’s primaries, Bradley, a 10-year incumbent, lost to Jana Duty, the County Attorney, by 10 percentage points, after Duty harped on the fact that Bradley worked hard to prevent DNA testing for Michael Morton, who was found innocent of killing his wife and was released after 25 years in prison.
Lawyers defending Morton allege that he would not have been wrongfully convicted if prosecutor, Ken Anderson, had not deliberately withheld evidence that pointed to his innocence. Anderson faces a Court of Inquiry in September and has denied any wrongdoing, and Bradley has been portrayed as acting in support of his predecessor by fighting DNA testing on the bloody bandana, eventually the key to Morton’s freedom.
Bradley has told the Texas Tribune he was “deeply challenged” by what he had been through in the Morton case. It seemed the experience caused him to warm up to the idea of justice for the innocence in time for the election — but it wasn’t enough to tip the scales.
In an interview before Tuesday’s election, Gary Udashen, president of the Innocence Project of Texas, made it clear that voters in Williamson County were casting ballots that would have statewide implications for the innocence movement.
“If John Bradley loses his election in Williamson county, then that’s a loud message to prosecutors all over the state is that there actually are consequences to engaging in prosecutorial misconduct,” Udashen said. He pointed to the fact that many innocence cases, both those that include DNA evidence (like Morton’s) and those that do not, include instances where prosecutors either deliberately or mistakenly withhold evidence in support of a person’s innocence.
In an NPR interview in January of 2011, the differing philosophies of Bradley and Watkins were on blast as the two top prosecutors bickered on-air, Bradley criticizing Watkins for basking in the spotlight and Watkins harping on the idea of seeking justice, not just convictions.
“I hope you remember that you have other elected prosecutors in Texas who have been doing many of these same things,” Bradley said, pointing out that just because an office doesn’t have a special division dedicated to freeing innocent prisoners doesn’t mean they don’t have traditional channels for doing so.
“You enjoy the national media, you enjoy the attention that you get. We have a lot of prosecutors who don’t seek that. They seek justice by reviewing these cases carefully and making sure that a guilty violent person is not released,” Bradley said.
Watkins response is more true today than ever: “Well obviously that didn’t work.”
From CBS.com:
Freedom is in the offing for a man wrongfully convicted of a deadly arson fire.
As WBBM Newsradio’s Bob Conway reports, it has been a long wait for James Kluppelberg, 46, who has been in prison for 24 years for a crime he did not commit.
Kluppelberg was convicted and sentenced to life in prison for setting fire to a building at 4448 S. Hermitage Ave. in the Back of the Yards neighborhood March 1984, leaving Elva Lupercio and her five children – Santos Jr. 10; Sonia, 8; Cristobel, 6; Yadira 4; and Anabel, 3 – dead, the Chicago Tribune recalled.
The initial investigation determined the fire to be accidental, but four years later, a supposed witness testified that he saw Kluppelberg at the scene, while a Fire Department investigator said the fire was arson.
A Tribune article from July 15, 1989, said Criminal Court Judge Loretta Hall Morgan found Kluppelberg guilty after a bench trial, largely on the testimony of supposed witness Duane Glassco – a convicted burglar who was Kluppelberg’s roommate.
The article said Glassco admitted to him that he had started the fire, and told him: “You know how I am when I feel I’m losing someone. I do stupid things,” the Tribune reported. But the meaning of that statement was never explained during the trial, the newspaper reported.
But defense attorneys said Glassco had an axe to grind with Kluppelberg, because his ex-girlfriend had left him for Kluppelberg a short time earlier, the Tribune reported.
Kluppelberg was mistakenly released from the Cook County Jail after being sentenced and fled to Georgia, where he was captured and returned to Illinois, the Tribune reported. A jail guard was later charged with letting Kluppelberg out in exchange for help getting cocaine, the newspaper reported.
On appeal, Kluppelberg’s defense attorneys said the fire was not an arson at all, and that advances in science since the incident had made that clear, the Tribune reported.
On Wednesday, the Cook County State’s Attorney’s office decided to dismiss the charges, on the grounds that prosecutors cannot prove guilt beyond a reasonable doubt, the Tribune reported.
Kluppelberg is expected to be released from the Menard Correctional Center later Thursday.
Posted in Exonerations, Forensic controls, Junk science
Earlier this year when Ohio considering changing the legal standard to make it more difficult for exonerees to obtain compensation, I wrote this post lamenting about how compensation is already too difficult to obtain in the first place. Fortunately, the Ohio legislature scrapped this provision upon further reflection…
David Protess just released this article, which addresses this problem better than I did:
From the Huffington Post:
A few days ago, I wrote about a new report that documented the staggering scope of wrongful convictions: over 2,000 felony exonerations nationally in the last 23 years, an average of more than one case a week of officially acknowledged mistakes. Today, I will introduce you to a Chicago man who endured the hell of unjust imprisonment — and call on you to do something simple that will make a difference for him and others who share his plight.
Jacques Rivera was legally screwed. Twice. Both times by the Cook County criminal justice system, which leads the country in exonerations.
In 1989, Rivera was tried for murder based on a single eyewitness — a 12-year-old boy. The child told police he’d seen the shooter before, a guy who played baseball at a neighborhood recreation center. He picked Rivera’s photo from Continue reading
From ESPN.com:
It’s not every day that the Washington Redskins call up a man convicted of rape and ask him if he’d agree to a one-day workout, but it happened Tuesday.
Oh, and the Kansas City Chiefs called Tuesday, too. And the Miami Dolphins. And they were three days behind the Seattle Seahawks, who will work him out on June 7.
Why are all these NFL teams eager to check out a convicted sex offender, a Continue reading
Posted in Uncategorized
On the heels of the Brian Banks exoneration, his attorney Justin Brooks tries to explain why innocent Banks originally plead guilty. And a retired judge asks “Why Do Innocent People Plead Guilty?”
From the Huffington Post:
Prison is Hell for the guilty; it is difficult to envision what it must be like for the innocent. Brian Banks is yet another story of a person not only wrongfully imprisoned, but imprisoned based upon his own “voluntary” act. He was exonerated after serving five years for a rape he did not commit. How and why do innocent people confess or plead guilty to crimes that they did not commit? Roughly 20 percent of those that have been exonerated confessed to the crimes with which they were charged and convicted. Most of those involved persons who had actually gone to trial, but we have no way of knowing how many there are who merely entered guilty pleas through bargains and never appealed as a result. Although we hear and read about criminal trials, the reality is that only about 5 Continue reading
The play My Kind of Town, about police torture and wrongful conviction, opens in ChicagoPrior coverage of case by contributing editor Justin Brooks here…Chicago Tribune article about UN action here…
David House Agency – Press Release
Posted in Latin America, Political cases
Meet the woman who profited $1.5 million for putting Brian Banks, an innocent man, in prisonPosted in Uncategorized
Full article here. Abstract states:
The direct appeal of a convicted defendant is almost never concerned with actual innocence. The system seems to privilege procedural claims, and it is extremely difficult, if not impossible, to get an appellate court to take seriously a claim of factual error such as the claim that a witness lied or was mistaken. The disconnect between appeals and actual innocence is ironic, since most jurisdictions provide funding for direct appeals, but not for collateral attacks where claims of actual innocence can be litigated. This article focuses on one aspect of appellate review that could in theory be made more likely to provide relief to the innocent through more reliable fact-finding: the harmless error analysis. It is in assessing whether an error was harmless that the courts come closest to thinking about innocence on appeal. According to the InnocenceProject, the leading cause of wrongful convictions is eyewitness misidentification, followed by “unvalidated/improper forensics,” false confessions, and informants. Current harmless error analysis runs contrary to these findings, giving undue weight to precisely the kind of evidence often implicated in wrongful convictions, and not sufficiently considering the impact of erroneously admitted evidence on the jury. This article looks at the history of harmless error analysis, how it is applied in cases where the likely causes of wrongful conviction are implicated, and what changes can be made to reinvigorate harmless error so that courts take seriously the possibility of innocence given what we have learned through DNA exonerations.
Posted in Scholarship
Ohio Innocence Project client Nancy Smith’s petition for a pardon to Ohio Governor Kasich surpasses 100,000 signeesPosted in Exonerations
Exoneration yesterday in Puerto Rico of a man, Roberto Anel Diaz Morales, who spent 10 years in prison for a murder he didn’t commitFrom news source:
Arguably the most powerful film presented at this year’s Cannes Film Festival was screened with virtually no promotion and out of competition Thursday night. The film, The Central Park Five, by Ken Burns, America’s leading documentary filmmaker ( The Civil War, Baseball, The War ) and his daughter Sara and son-in-law David McMahon, tells the story of the five teenagers who were arrested following the Central Park jogger attack in 1989 and how New York police and prosecutors employed manipulative interrogation to crack them, coerce their confessions, and send them to prison. Their convictions were overturned only after they had served their lengthy sentences, when the actual attacker, Matias Reyes, already serving time for multiple rapes, confessed and DNA evidence established his guilt. “I hope you will find this film unsettling,” Burns told the audience before the screening. And there can be little doubt that it must have raised disturbing questions about America’s criminal justice system among the international audience in attendance. It is Burns’s first feature-length documentary dealing with a contemporary controversy, and perhaps his most affecting — especially as it shines a glaring spotlight on the often racial politics of American justice and the lynch mentality of some right-wing extremists that fuels it. Reviewer David Rooney concluded in the Hollywood Reporter “As a dense procedural, this is fascinating stuff; its miscarriage of justice stokes righteous anger and its account of lost youth and irreparably damaged lives is conveyed with moving solemnity.” The film ends on a particularly rankling note. A decade after they were exonerated, it alleges, the five have received no apology — indeed police and prosecutors continue to contend that they were guilty — and no restitution.
Posted in Film/Cinema
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