Next Ohio execution raises too much doubt

For the first time in three decades, the “Death Penalty Capital of America” goes without an execution

DA: Former prosecutor withheld key email in death row case

Experts in forensics, statistics and the law will convene for a conference at the University of Virginia School of Law on March 26 to mark the 25th anniversary of the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision in Daubert v. Merrell Dow Pharmaceuticals Inc., which reshaped how judges evaluate scientific and expert evidence.

Judge Jed Rakoff of the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York will deliver the keynote address at noon. The conference begins at 8:30 a.m. in the Law School’s Caplin Pavilion.

The Daubert ruling coincided with a surge in scientific research relevant to criminal cases, including the development of modern DNA testing that both exonerated hundreds of individuals and provided more accurate evidence of guilt.

“Leading scientific commissions have pointed out real shortcomings in the use of forensic evidence in the courtroom,” said professor Brandon Garrett, a participant in the conference and a principal investigator for the Law School’s Center for Statistics and Applications in Forensics Evidence, or CSAFE, projects. “The CSAFE collaboration, extending across four universities, including UVA, has been working with generous support from the National Institute of Standards and Technology to research these questions.”

Panelists will discuss how to develop better forensic evidence, how to analyze it more accurately in the crime lab and how to present it more effectively in criminal cases. Several contributions will be published in a special symposium issue of the Virginia Journal of Criminal Law.

The conference is sponsored by the Virginia Journal of Criminal Law and the Center for Statistics and Applications in Forensic Evidence.

The talks are free and open to the public. Attendees may contact Garrett at bgarrett@virginia.edu or (434) 924-4153 for more information.

Click here for more information on the speakers and schedule.

Citing a rise in wrongful-conviction claims by inmates, the Los Angeles County district attorney’s office is launching a unit of veteran prosecutors to review the integrity of past convictions, joining a small but growing number of prosecutorial agencies around the country devoting resources to identify innocent prisoners.

Dist. Atty. Jackie Lacey is asking county supervisors for nearly $1 million to fund the new team, which would include three prosecutors, a senior investigator and a paralegal.

In seeking the funds, Lacey’s office said it wanted to keep up with an increasing number of wrongful-conviction claims that have followed the advent of similar units around the country, a growing number of innocence projects and heightened publicity surrounding innocence claims, county spokesman Dave Sommers said.

Innocence project groups and others hailed the move, saying that it would send a dramatic statement that the office is serious about reversing injustices and could spur the creation of similar units in smaller counties across California.

“This is exactly what should happen in every district attorney’s office in America,” said Justin Brooks, director of the California Innocence Project at the California Western School of Law in San Diego. “We all have the same goal: to make sure the right people are in prison.”

Read more on the proposal here

Should lawyers share evidence before criminal trials? Va. Supreme Court considers changes to discovery rules

Kansas man wrongfully imprisoned [based on prosecutorial misconduct] for 23 years receives no compensation from state

In an announcement late Friday, Harris County, Texas, District Attorney Kim Ogg revealed that a former prosecutor had withheld a key email that could have prevented Alfred Dewayne Brown from receiving the death penalty.

As the Houston Chronicle writes, the email helped establish “a clear alibi” for Brown, who was convicted in a high-profile murder case in 2005 that landed him a death sentence.

Brown always maintained his innocence, and spent nearly 10 years on death row before his case was dismissed in 2015 and his conviction overturned. According the Chronicle, the 36-year-old Brown later sued a slew of Harris County officials, including the DA’s office, the prosecutor and police officer who handled the murder case, accusing them of hiding and falsifying evidence against him and violating his constitutional rights to due process and a fair trial.

The new e-mail, which came to light because of Brown’s lawsuit, backs up his claims, showing that the prosecutor at the time, Dan Rizzo, was aware of evidence that could exculpate Brown.

Read more about the withheld information and Brown’s case here

How a new generation of prosecutors is driving criminal justice reform outside of Congress

A Revolution of Values in the U.S. Criminal Justice System

HUNTINGTON – Newly tested DNA evidence would exonerate some men convicted in the 2002 murder of 21-year-old Deanna L. Crawford and might instead point to someone who has a history of abuse, according to documents filed with the Cabell County circuit clerk this week.

Phillip Scott Barnett, 37; his brother Nathaniel Barnett; and Justin Keith Black, 34, who are working with the Chicago-based Exoneration Project at the University of Chicago Law School and West Virginia Innocence Project, are asking their convictions be overturned and for new trials.

Crawford was found Aug. 8, 2002, in Salt Rock by two men walking along Hickory Ridge Road.

Investigators believed her death had followed an Aug. 5, 2002, party at Justin Black’s house. That evening involved drinking alcohol, playing video games and a vehicle ride that turned violent. The motivation for her death remains a mystery.

Crawford’s family then waited more than six years for an arrest.

The request for a new trial comes nearly two years after Cabell Circuit Judge Alfred E. Ferguson approved a request for possibly exonerating DNA evidence to be tested.

Read more about the trial, appeal, and DNA results here

Radio Atlantic: How Innocence Becomes Irrelevant

Some Missouri lawmakers want to privatize the public defender system. For one county, it starts March 1.

[On 2-21-18] Deputy Attorney General (DAG) Rod Rosenstein gave a plenary address at the annual meeting of the American Academy of Forensic Sciences where he outlined plans that the Department of Justice (DOJ) would be implementing regarding forensic sciences.  While short on details, his remarks renew concerns that the DOJ is backtracking on progress to ensure that forensic disciplines are guided by the best science and that safeguards were enacted to insulate practitioners from law enforcement influence.

“We’ve known since 2009 that there are problems with the scientific validity of forensic disciplines used to identify suspects with the exception of DNA evidence.  Yet after this administration shut down the National Commission of Forensic Science — the first inclusive and transparent effort to address these fundamental flaws in evidence that is used in countless prosecutions across the nation — there was no mention by Deputy Attorney General Rosenstein of how the Department of Justice plans to address this core validity problem,” said Chris Fabricant, director of Strategic Litigation at the Innocence Project, which is affiliated with Cardozo School of Law.

Read more about DAG Rosenstein’s announcement and concerns here.

I Sent an Innocent Man to Prison. A juror’s regret.

Criminal justice reformers aim big by targeting local DA races 

A former Naperville resident who spent two decades imprisoned for arson and murder in the death of his mother-in-law was acquitted of those crimes Wednesday by a DuPage County judge who called the case “fatally compromised.”

As Judge Liam Brennan was finishing reading his ruling in the retrial of William Amor, the defendant — aware he was about to be found not guilty — let his head drop and took off his glasses a moment later to wipe away tears. Lauren Kaeseberg, one Amor’s attorneys from the Illinois Innocence Project, who was seated next to Amor, quietly placed her hand on his back.

“I’ve always been hopeful. I’ve always thought essentially that the system would do the right thing,” Amor, 62, said afterward. “It’s unfortunate it took 22 years.”

Amor thanked Brennan, who vacated Amor’s 1997 murder conviction last year in the wake of advances in fire science that undercut his 1995 confession. Amor had been out on bond since May.

Following closing arguments earlier this month, Brennan set Wednesday for his ruling to give himself time to review evidence, which included testimony from three arson experts.

A prosecution expert had testified that he believed the Sept. 10, 1995, fire that killed Marianne Miceli, 40, was set using an open flame on a living room cloth chair. But the judge said that opinion presented a highly unlikely timeline of how the fire spread.

Read more about the case and junk science here

Activist Shaun King Creates New PAC That Plans To Elect Progressive Prosecutors To Help Reform The Justice System

Ken Starr, Board of Contributors: Prosecutors’ first priority is justice for all, including the accused

Prosecutors and Wrongful Convictions: ‘Pay Now or Pay Later’

When Jennifer Brown isn’t working on compliance issues like food and product safety or on environmental health issues for Seattle-based Amazon.com Inc., she’s been known to spend hours at a time scouring court documents from cases involving those held behind bars in the Pacific Northwest.

In fact, she dedicated more than 40 hours of her time last year to looking through court filings and trial transcripts from just one individual case.

Brown is one of the Amazon in-house lawyers who have volunteered their time to do pro bono work for Innocence Project Northwest, a nonprofit that provides legal services for prisoners hoping to prove their innocence.

The organization helps combat wrongful convictions in the state of Washington and, to date, has assisted in 14 exonerations. It works independently of other similar groups, including the well-known Innocence Project based in New York—though the two have similar goals.

So, how did members of Amazon’s legal team get to work behind the scenes on wrongful conviction cases that look a bit like those chronicled in famous podcasts like “Serial” or documentaries like “Making a Murderer” or “West of Memphis”?  It started at the top of the department.

Find out here →

Interview with Luca Luparia, founder of Italy Innocence Project

Blind Denial: The law is mocked

Malcolm Alexander, who was just 21 years old when he was wrongfully convicted of aggravated rape and sentenced to life in Louisiana State Penitentiary (Angola), was released from prison Monday after Jefferson Parish Judge June Darensburg overturned his conviction.

In February 1980, Alexander had a consensual sexual encounter with a white woman who asked him for money and later accused him of sexual assault.

Even though the woman’s charges were unsubstantiated and no charges were ever filed against Alexander, authorities had his photo on file.

Gretna police showed the antique-store owner Alexander’s picture, and she “tentatively” identified him as her assailant out of hundreds of photos shown to her. Three days later, police placed Alexander in a lineup, and by that time, the store owner was “sure” that he was the man who had attacked her.

This was four months after she was attacked in the dark, from behind, at gunpoint. Alexander was the only man in the lineup whose picture had also been in the photo array.

According to the Innocence Project:

Research has shown that multiple identification procedures can contaminate a witness’s memory, causing a witness to become confused about whether he or she recognizes the person from the event or the earlier procedure, while also making the witness more confident in his or her identification.

After a trial that lasted one day—during which Alexander’s attorney, Joseph Tosh, failed to make an opening statement or call any witnesses for the defense, and failed to adequately cross-examine the state’s witnesses about the identification—Alexander was sentenced to life in prison on Dec. 10, 1980.

Still, he never stopped insisting that he was innocent.

Read the rest of Alexander’s story here

BY SARAH TURBERVILLE AND LARS TRAUTMAN, OPINION CONTRIBUTORS — 02/12/18 12:10 PM EST 

Our Sixth Amendment right to counsel is one of our chief defenses against the power of the government to take the property, the liberty — and in some cases, the life — of the accused. Yet it is sadly and routinely abused by the government. The well-documented failure of state and local governments to respect this critical constitutional right has resulted in unjust convictions, hurt public safety and cost taxpayers dearly.

Unfortunately, it came to light last Thursday that Attorney General Jeff Sessions has effectively shuttered the Access to Justice Office, the very section of the Department of Justice that was created to help protect this essential constitutional right. While it is quite common for a new administration to shift priorities and reshuffle departments, the closure of this office is a real blow and should be reversed.

Each day, thousands of people are incarcerated in states, counties and municipalities without ever speaking to an attorney and in flagrant violation of their constitutional right to counsel.  For those that do get an attorney, a defendant is too often assigned a lawyer beholden to the presiding judge to secure future court appointments, or one driven by financial incentives to dispose of the case quickly. Or, she may be represented by a public defender office, which is likely to be understaffed, underfunded, undertrained and overworked, and often lacking the oversight necessary to ensure constitutionally adequate representation.

The Access to Justice Office helped preserve our Sixth Amendment rights by intervening in cases challenging the denial of effective counsel to indigent defendants. Its work on behalf of the American people led to agreements by states and counties to reform their justice systems to ensure that people accused of crimes — including children — do not lose their constitutional rights simply because they are too poor to afford an attorney.

The move to effectively close the office is shortsighted, particularly for those concerned about public safety. Poor lawyering is the chief cause of wrongful conviction in almost a quarter of the cases in the National Registry of Exonerations. When law enforcement resources are misdirected at the innocent, guilty perpetrators remain at large, free to commit new crimes and harm new victims. As such, our Sixth Amendment crisis has the potential not only to harm those directly caught up in the criminal justice system, but society at large.

Read more here →

The False Conviction of the District Attorney Turned Reality Star

Philadelphia’s DA office keeps secret list of suspect police

We need to talk about an injustice.

Denver, CO — (ReleaseWire) — 09/22/2017 –Federal prosecutors “won their case through willful failing to disclose evidence (favorable to the defendant)”, said Congressman Sensenbrenner. “If [prosecutors] had complied with the ethical and legal obligations, the jury might not have convicted [the defendant],” added Sensenbrenner.

In speaking about the same prosecutorial misconduct, Congressman John Conyers said that “If these offenses could happen to [this defendant], they could happen to anyone. Often overlooked is the fact that prosecutorial misconduct of this nature happens with alarming frequency, to the obvious harm of countless defendants…”.

“When the government conceals information in a prosecution that could undermine its case against a defendant, such concealment is fundamentally and constitutionally unfair as well as unethical, and it is illegal…” said Congressman Bobby Scott.

“The alleged prosecutorial misconduct by the Colorado U.S. Attorney’s Office in the IRP6 case, which includes unlawful obstruction and interference with favorable evidence that could undermine the government’s case, was a hundred times worse than the case mentioned above by Congressmen Sensenbrenner, Conyers and Scott,” says Lamont Banks, Executive Director of A Just Cause. “I am hopeful that after reviewing the IRP6 dossier, the DOJ, in the interest of justice, will file a Rule 48(a) motion to dismiss the IRP6 indictment to free five men of the IRP6 who continue to languish in prison after five years on a wrongful conviction,” adds Banks. “Any dismissal would probably have to be filed with U.S. Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor (who oversees the District of Colorado and 10th Circuit) because of their proven, deep-seated bias against the IRP6 which is discussed in the dossier,” contends Banks.

“The dossier lays out numerous facts and evidence that proves the IRP6 are actually innocent and shows how prosecutors and judges allegedly colluded together, taking calculated and premeditated steps to deny the IRP6 a fair trial and appeal. This was achieved by deceiving two grand juries, a trial jury, and blatantly violating a federal statute to ensure defendants couldn’t present evidence & testimony that could have exonerated them. Furthermore, forcing one of the IRP6 defendants who were representing themselves to testify in violation of their 5th Amendment rights. Concluding with destroying and/or concealing portions of trial transcripts to hide judicial threats,” adds Banks. “Absent a legitimate criminal case against the IRP6, the government secretly took allegedly unlawful steps to prosecute their Pastor and church members,” says Banks. “It’s all exposed in the dossier.”

Read more on the dossier here