Category Archives: Exonerations

Connecticut Considers Eyewitness ID Reform As DNA Proves Another Eyewitness Wrong…

Posted on March 16, 2012 by | Leave a comment

From the Connecticut News Junkie:

As lawmakers on the Judiciary Committee consider a bill to change how criminal lineups are conducted Friday, they may also want to consider the case of Hubert Thompson, who may be the latest Connecticut inmate to be exonerated by DNA evidence.

A judge allowed Thompson to walk out of prison Monday after serving five years for a rape that DNA evidence now suggests he didn’t commit.

Thompson was arrested after a victim picked his face out of a photo lineup, according to his lawyer William Koch, Jr.

According to a petition for a new trial filed in Continue reading →

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Posted in Exonerations, Eyewitness identification, Legislation, Reforming/Improving the system

Lawsuits continue in wake of infamous “Beatrice Six” wrongful convictions

Posted on March 16, 2012 by | Leave a comment

Sometimes an outrageous injustice prompts legislative steps toward reform. In the U.S., the state of Nebraska’s first DNA exoneration was the infamous case of the so-called “Beatrice Six.” Five falsely confessed (in exchange for lighter sentences) to the brutal 1985 rape-murder of 68-year-old Helen Wilson in Beatrice, NE. The sixth, Joseph White, insisted he was innocent, was convicted, and sentenced to life. After losing on appeal, he battled the state for years for the right to test the crime scene DNA. When finally tested in 2008, it excluded all six and linked to the true perpetrator.

Nebraska Attorney General Jon Bruning proclaimed the Beatrice Six “100 percent innocent.” They had served more than 76 years in prison. Publicity about Continue reading →

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Posted in Compensation/Exoneree compensation, Editorials/Opinion, Exonerations, False confessions, Police conduct (good and bad)

Virginia Has DNA Results Proving its Prisoners Innocent, But is Keeping it Quiet….

Posted on March 14, 2012 by | 2 comments

Here’s an unbelievable and must-read story from Slate.com about Virginia’s project, dating back to 2005 and Governor Warner, to test the DNA in all old cases where convictions were obtained prior to the advent of DNA testing.  So far the project has excluded the person convicted and in prison nearly 70 times, but only a handful of those inmates have been informed and exonerated.  This includes Bennett Barbour, who wasn’t informed by the state that they had proved his innocence until more than 2 years after the exonerative DNA test.

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Posted in Exonerations, Police conduct (good and bad), Prosecutorial conduct (good and bad)

Monday’s Quick Clicks…

Posted on March 12, 2012 by | Leave a comment

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Posted in Australia/New Zealand, Exonerations, United Kingdom

What should Americans expect of public officials AFTER a wrongful conviction?

Posted on March 10, 2012 by | 9 comments

In most endeavors a costly mistake results in immediate efforts to identify what went wrong and how it can be prevented. Curiously, in the criminal justice system, officials too often respond to the tragic error of convicting an innocent with defensiveness and denial. Such miscarriages of justice should prompt important improvements in the system, but these will be derailed or hard won until Americans clarify our expectations of officials after justice stumbles.

Following a wrongful conviction, public officials can go a long way toward restoring trust in the system by following a 7-step process—mandated by both decency and public relations 101—that includes (1) honestly acknowledging that a Continue reading →

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Posted in Editorials/Opinion, Exonerations, False confessions, Reforming/Improving the system

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Five men have murder convictions overturned: police misconduct to be investigated.

Posted on March 8, 2012 by | Leave a comment

Five men have today had their convictions for murder overturned in the English Court of Appeal. Convicted of murdering Kevin Nunes, killed in 2002, the case was referred back to the Court of Appeal after a re-investigation of the case by the Criminal Cases Review Commission. See news articles here…. and here….  The misconduct of a number of police officers is now to continue being investigated.

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Posted in Exonerations, Police conduct (good and bad), United Kingdom

Wednesday’s Quick Clicks…

Posted on March 7, 2012 by | Leave a comment

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Posted in Exonerations, Film/Cinema, Uncategorized

Exoneration in Illinois Murder Case: Jonathan Moore Walks Free After 10 Years in Prison

Posted on March 6, 2012 by | 2 comments

Congrats to Larry Golden and the Downstate Illinios Innocence Project, who walked client Jonathan Moore out of prison today a free man after prosecutors dropped all charges in the murder case in which he was convicted 10 years ago.

Credit goes to the police, who discovered the wrongful conviction and brought it to the Innocence Project’s attention.  From the press coverage:

“It’s just incredible,” said Larry Golden, director of the project. “The police officers deserve tremendous credit. This is unheard of. I know we haven’t had a case like this.

“This is the kind of county you want to live in,” Golden said.

John Hanlon, legal director for the Downstate Illinois Innocence Project, said [Officer] McMahon “has done a very just thing and that doesn’t always happen.

“We’re so very impressed.”

More here.

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Posted in Exonerations, Police conduct (good and bad)

‘Bryan Stevenson: We need to talk about an injustice’

Posted on March 5, 2012 by | 4 comments

This 23minutes 41seconds talk by Bryan, will simply blow up and open your mind to a whole new perspective of crime, society, criminal (in)justice, mass incarceration, death penalty, ‘identity/race’ question in the United States. The opposite of poverty is injustice. In a sense therefore, this can be replicated mutatis mutandi whether in the United States, Europe or Africa. It demonstrates clearly, there is work to be done. It was also striking to know that there is no death penalty in Germany. The entire footage can be viewed here.

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Posted in Exonerations, Reforming/Improving the system

Defense attorneys sometimes are a hindrance to investigations

Posted on March 1, 2012 by | 3 comments

In the course of investigating a possible wrongful conviction, it’s not surprising to be stonewalled by police and prosecutors while attempting to gather case documents and evidence. But it is surprising how often  original defense attorneys also stonewall post-conviction investigators.

 It is well established in the United States, at least, that a client’s file is the client’s property. If a former client requests his or her file, the former attorney is obligated to turn it over. But that rule is frequently ignored if the former client is in prison.
 
 In the past year, I have had four defense attorneys fail to turn over their former clients’ case files after submitting information releases signed by the former client. My experience with a West Virginia attorney fit a familiar pattern. My inmate-client and his outside supporter had told me they had made several requests for access to the case file in the dozen years since his conviction but the attorney had never responded.

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Posted in Defense lawyering (good and bad), Exonerations

Capital Murder Conviction Overturned in Federal Habeas in Virginia…

Posted on February 29, 2012 by | 10 comments

Congrats to Shawn Armbrust and the Mid-Atlantic Innocence Project on a big win in federal court yesterday.  The U.S. District Court for the Western District of Virginia threw out the 2001 murder conviction of Michael Hash, holding that the state had failed to turn over deals it had cut with States’ witness, and that Hash’ attorneys had been ineffective.  The 64-page decision is here.  News account of the case here.

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Posted in Defense lawyering (good and bad), Exonerations, Prosecutorial conduct (good and bad)

Witnesses ‘bullied’ into lying in miscarriage of justice want convictions overturned

Posted on February 28, 2012 by | 1 comment

The fallout from the infamous ‘Cardiff 3’ miscarriage of justice in Wales continues. After the collapse of the trial against eight police officers when vital evidence went ‘missing’ before being found later, the witnesses in the original trial who have since been convited of perjury, now want their convictions overturned as they too were ‘victims’. see BBC story here:

Lynette White trial: witnesses want convictions quashed

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Posted in Exonerations, Police conduct (good and bad), United Kingdom

The Innocence Record

Posted on February 27, 2012 by | Leave a comment

Everyone should be aware of the Innocence Record, if you are not already familiar with it.  From the Innocence Record website:

The Innocence Record is a collection and collation of available public documents concerning the nearly 300 persons who have been wrongfully convicted and later exonerated through DNA evidence. The circumstances of each exoneree’s wrongful conviction is profiled on the site, along with information concerning the court proceedings and participants. The available and collected public records, as well as case abstracts summarizing key information from those documents are available for the first time in searchable form over the World Wide Web.

This document database and website are the products of a unique collaboration between Winston & Strawn LLP and The Innocence Project. The public records and court files were gathered through the cooperation and perseverance of more than 700 volunteers, including attorneys, court personnel, paralegals and law students. Once obtained, the files were then digitally imaged and carefully reviewed Continue reading →

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Posted in Exonerations

How to reduce fingerprint errors

Posted on February 24, 2012 by | 1 comment

 Before the advent of DNA testing, fingerprint comparison was considered the  best way to identify criminal perpetrators. To hear the FBI and other law-enforcement agencies tell it, there was virtually no chance of misidentifying someone because every fingerprint is supposedly unique and their highly trained examiners never made mistakes.

Although false fingerprint identifications were known to have contributed to wrongful convictions, the errors seemingly occurred because of fabrication and misconduct, not actual error.  The case of Portland, Oregon, attorney Brandon Mayfield helped change that perception.

Continue reading →

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Posted in Defense lawyering (good and bad), Exonerations, Forensic controls, Police conduct (good and bad), Reforming/Improving the system, United Kingdom

Great Infographic on the U.S. DNA Exonerations

Posted on February 24, 2012 by | Leave a comment

…from forensicscience.org…. Click to open and enlarge….

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Posted in Exonerations

Gordon Wood exonerated in Australian murder case

Posted on February 24, 2012 by | 3 comments

ImageGordon Wood, convicted in 2008 of murdering his girlfriend in 1995 by throwing her from a cliff, has had his conviction overturned in Sydney, after serving 3 1/2 years of his 13 year sentence. The judges at appeal decided that there was sufficient doubt about the expert evidence in the case, that Wood should win his appeal and he was freed later that day. Read more about the appeal here….

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Posted in Australia/New Zealand, Exonerations

Is the Wrongful Conviction Rate 5%?

Posted on February 24, 2012 by | 2 comments

D. Michael Resinger, a law professor at Seton Hall, has an article that all should read, if you haven’t already.  It’s entitled Innocents Convicted:  An Empirically Justified Wrongful Conviction Rate on SSRN.com.  The abstract states:

That would make the error rate [in felony convictions] .027 percent – or to put it another way, a success rate of 99.973 percent.

– Justice Antonin Scalia, concurring in Kansas v. Marsh, June 29, 2006 (quoting Joshua Marquis)

The news about the astounding accuracy of felony convictions in the United States, delivered by Justice Scalia and Joshua Marquis in the passage set out epigrammatically above, would be cause for rejoicing if it were true. Imagine. Only 27 factually wrong felony convictions out of every 100,000! Unfortunately, it is not true, as the empirical data analyzed in this article demonstrates.

To a great extent, those who believe that our criminal justice system rarely convicts the factually innocent and those who believe such miscarriages are rife have generally talked past each other for want of any empirically-justified factual innocence wrongful conviction rate. This article remedies at least a part of this problem by establishing the first such empirically justified wrongful conviction rate ever for a significant universe of real world serious crimes: capital rape-murders in the 1980’s.

Using DNA exonerations for capital rape-murders from 1982 through 1989 as a numerator, and a 406-member sample of the 2235 capital sentences Continue reading →

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Posted in Exonerations, Scholarship

The polygraph and false confessions

Posted on February 23, 2012 by | 13 comments

False confessions are a leading cause of wrongful convictions. According to the Innocence Project, about 25 percent of the documented DNA exoneration cases involved incriminating statements, full confessions or guilty pleas by innocent suspects.

The polygraph is an important tool in the extraction of false confessions. Despite the well-documented inaccuracy of the polygraph, police in North America (less so in Europe and other areas) still rely heavily on the “lie detector” and its even less accurate cousin, the voice stress analyzer, in the investigative process.  If an innocent suspect fails the polygraph exam, police will use the results to persuade him or her that they must be guilty. In some cases, police will tell the suspect that they failed the exam even when they didn’t in an attempt to obtain a confession.

Given the polygraph’s inaccuracy and record of being used to obtain confessions, I am continually amazed to come across cases in which defense attorneys Continue reading →

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Posted in Defense lawyering (good and bad), Editorials/Opinion, Exonerations, False confessions, Inquisitional and adversarial systems of justice, Junk science, Police conduct (good and bad), Uncategorized

U.S. Federal Judge Denies Prosecutorial Immunity

Posted on February 22, 2012 by | 1 comment

Federal Judge Elaine Bucklo has denied prosecutorial immunity to former Illinois Assistant State Attorney Mark Lukanich in a law suit brought by Ronald Kitchen who spent 21 years in prison for a crime he didn’t commit. Kitchen’s confession was extracted during the reign of disgraced imprisoned former Chicago Police Commander Jon Burge, notorious for torturous interrogations. Kitchen says that Lukanich was aware of his torture because he was nearby during the interrogation. The judge has ruled that Lukanich’s alleged role was part of the investigative part of the case and therefore not covered by prosecutorial absolute immunity.

Nearly a year ago, as reported by the Chicago Tribune, Judge Bucklo wondered aloud why the City of Chicago had sent an army of lawyers to fight the law suit brought by Kitchen. “I don’t understand this case. Why don’t you settle? [Kitchen] was declared innocent. Burge is in jail. Have you tried to settle this?” she asked. The Tribune editorialized that the longer Chicago refuses to settle multiple cases relating to the coerced confessions, the more the reputation of the city would suffer.

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Posted in Exonerations, False confessions, Police conduct (good and bad), Political cases, Prosecutorial conduct (good and bad), Uncategorized

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Gallery

Wrongful Conviction in a Financial Crimes Case?

Posted on February 21, 2012 by

It appears there may have been a wrongful conviction in a U.S. federal financial crimes case involving a Goldman Sachs computer programmer.  You don’t see claims of wrongful conviction too often in financial crime cases.  The 2nd Circuit federal appellate … Continue reading →

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