Archive for May, 2010

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Memorial Day Innocence Network Roundup

Seth — May 31, 2010 @ 9:00 AM — Comments (0)

We would be remiss if we didn’t highlight a number of important victories by members of the Innocence Network in the last few weeks:

[Defense Counsel] uncovered exculpatory evidence, including the fact that the only witness who identified Cole at the crime scene fabricated his testimony. There was also evidence that the same witness may have actually been the shooter. Furthermore, none of the forensic evidence at the crime scene, including DNA and fingerprints, implicated Cole.

  • Earlier this month, the Duke University’s Wrongful Convictions Clinic achieved the exoneration of Shawn Massey, who spent twelve years in prison for an armed robbery and kidnapping he didn’t commit.  Like the Cole case above, this was not a DNA case but a case where the students at the clinic successfully proved that Massey was misidentified.  This case is a good lesson on how simply proving a misidentification should be enough to get back into court and prove innocence.  From a local newspaper:

The case turned on the students proving that Massey, at the time of the crime, had short hair, not long hair styled in corn rows as the victim described. “We had to teach people about corn rows,” said Theresa Newman, the other co-director of the clinic. “We’re saying corn rows and they’re thinking braids. They didn’t understand that you need very long hair for corn rows, and Shawn’s hair was never long.”

  • Just this week, The Maryland Innocence Project won a hard fought case involving faulty Gun Shot Residue evidence.  Tyrone Jones was misidentified as the shooter in a 1998 Baltimore murder.  The jury acquitted him of murder but convicted him of conspiracy.  The judge, recognizing the dubious nature of the prosecution, still sentenced him to life.  Jones won a new trial when a previously undisclosed report came out with a key witness statement that was different than that same witness’s identification of Jones as the perpetrator.  With the weakness in the GSR evidence and the crippled witness ID, the prosecution agreed to drop all charges.  For a fuller story, see the Baltimore Sun.  Congratulations to Michell Nethercott at the Maryland Public Defender’s Office for this great victory.

exoneration,


EMPLOYMENT ALERT: IPF Is Looking for A Developement Coordinator

Seth — May 28, 2010 @ 2:31 PM — Comments (0)

The Innocence Project of Florida is looking for a motivated, creative person who can build a strong development foundation to support all of IPF’s important work.  We look forward to meeting some great candidates.  Here is our listing, which you can also find on Idealist.org:

The Innocence Project of Florida, Inc. (IPF) seeks a candidate for a full-time Development Coordinator position beginning immediately in its Tallahassee, Florida office. The Innocence Project of Florida is a 501(c)(3) non-profit legal defense organization dedicated to representing Florida prison inmates who can prove their innocence through the use of DNA testing and other newly discovered evidence. IPF is the premier criminal justice organization in Florida and has helped secure the release of numerous individuals who collectively spent over 150 years in prison for crimes they didn’t commit.

Essential Functions of Position:

The Development Coordinator will be responsible for generating revenue to support IPF’s litigation, social service, and policy activities. The selected candidate will be expected to develop and implement a comprehensive annual giving campaign, work with our esteemed Board of Directors to identify potential donors for small and major gifts, identify, cultivate, solicit, and steward donors through all forms of contact, including in-person visits, maintain a donor management system, and coordinate annual fundraising events. In addition, the successful candidate will assist existing staff in developing and implementing outreach and communication strategies, including use of emerging new media technologies to increase awareness and support of IPF’s mission.

Qualifications:

All candidates must have a Bachelor’s degree. Preferred candidates will have at least two years of experience as a development professional. Prior experience in a non-profit and/or criminal justice setting is a plus, but not required. The selected candidate must have superior organizational, oral communication and writing skills. The ideal candidate must be adept at the nuances of donor relations and understand the unique issues involved with fundraising in support of criminal justice issues. In order to be an effective Development Coordinator and advocate for the Innocence Project of Florida, candidates absolutely must have a strong commitment to public interest law in general and IPF’s core mission of finding and freeing innocent people in Florida’s prisons.

Benefits:

Besides being afforded the opportunity to work in an exciting, dynamic and collegial small-office environment, the Development Coordinator will receive a generous public interest salary commensurate with their level of experience; full health benefits; life insurance; and a generous vacation and sick time allowance.

How to Apply:

No later than June 18, 2010, please send a cover letter, resume, list of references and salary requirements to:

Innocence Project of Florida, Attn: Development Coordinator Position, 1100 E. Park Ave., Tallahassee, FL 32301.

You may also fax to 850-561-5077 or email to Seth Miller at smiller@floridainnocence.org.

Innocence Project of Florida, Uncategorized, , ,


Alaska, Welcome to the Club

Seth — May 28, 2010 @ 2:30 PM — Comments (0)

We forgot to document an important story that happened a few weeks ago.  Alaska, then only one of three states left without a DNA access law which would allow for postconviction DNA testing, finally passed such a law.  Out of all places, the Dallas Morning NEws Crime Blog covers it:

On May 14, Alaska Gov. Sean Parnell signed a new state law allowing prisoners to seek post-conviction DNA testing in cases where it can prove innocence. The groundbreaking new law will help Alaska prisoners fight injustice and leaves only Oklahoma and Massachusetts without such measures.

Passed this month with unanimous support in both houses of Alaska’s legislature, the critical reform came about thanks to years of work by a coalition of advocates including the Alaska Innocence Project and the Innocence Project. Among other provisions, it provides for state funding in cases where a judge decides that DNA testing could prove innocence and requires the state to preserve biological evidence from crime scenes as long as a defendant is in prison (or for 50 years in unsolved crime).

Congrats to the One-Man Innocence Project, Bill Oberly, director of the Alaska Innocence Project and the folks at The Innocence Project for making this a reality.  Now what is the matter with Oklahoma and Massachusetts, the last holdouts?

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Late May Innocence Commission Roundup

Seth — May 25, 2010 @ 4:00 PM — Comments (1)

There has been a lot of action in the media related to the prospect of an Actual Innocence Commission in Florida that would study the cases of known wrongful convictions and make recommendations for policy reforms that would help prevent wrongful convictions in the future.  As you may recall, the budget with the appropriation for the Innocence Commission is sitting on Gov. Crist’s desk.  Well, he is getting some advice from Florida’s major newspapers:

Again, we will just wait and see what the Governor does but the pressure is clearly on for the creation of the Commission.

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CNN Follows Up On Jamie Bain

Seth — May 25, 2010 @ 8:49 AM — Comments (0)

You can read the article by Rich Phillips at CNN.com.

Innocence Project of Florida, exoneration, , ,


No Life Sentences Without Parole for Some Juveniles

Seth — May 20, 2010 @ 9:13 AM — Comments (0)

ON Monday, the Supreme Court of the United States issued an anticipated ruling in a Florida case that has once again put the nation’s focus squarely on our Sunshine State.  As with most things good and bad, Florida is always a leader and trailblazer.  In this case, we are talking about having the most juveniles sentenced to life without parole in the country and more than half of all such individuals are locked up on Florida prisons.  In a 6-3 decision as it relates specifically to the case of Terrence Graham’s and in a 5-4 decision as it applies to all juveniles in Graham’s positions, the Court held:

[T]hat juveniles who commit crimes in which no one is killed may not be sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole. . . . Five justices, in an opinion by Justice Anthony M. Kennedy, agreed that the Eighth Amendment’s ban on cruel and unusual punishment forbids such sentences as a categorical matter.

“A state need not guarantee the offender eventual release,” Justice Kennedy wrote, “but if it imposes the sentence of life, it must provide him or her with some realistic opportunity to obtain release before the end of that term.”

The ruling marked the first time that the court excluded an entire class of offenders from a given form of punishment outside the context of the death penalty.

You can view the opinion here.  Kennedy drafted the majority opinion, joined by Ginsberg, Stevens, Sotomayor, and Breyer.   Chief Justice Roberts agreed with the majority’s holding only as it applied to Graham’s case.  Thomas authored a dissent, which was joined by Scalia and Alito.  In his dissent, Thomas, (of course) tries to apply the framer’s original intent on this matter, noting that criminal penalties during the colonial times were limited to fines, whipping, public shaming, and death.  He refers to incarceration as some sort of intermediate punishment, but glosses over the fact that early Americans did not keep incarceration as a regular arrow in their punishment quiver because they may have disfavored incarceration as a cruel and inhumane punishment.  As the folks at Sentencing Law and Policy note, “Patrick Henry famously cried ‘Give me liberty or give me death!’”

In response to Thomas noting that a death sentence could be given to someone as you g as 7 years old in the 18th century, Stevens retorted in a concurrence joined by Justices Ginsburg and Sotomayor:

“[Justice Thomas’s] static approach to the law” did not allow for societal progress and would entail unacceptable human consequences. “Justice Thomas would apparently not rule out a death sentence for a $50 theft by a 7-year-old,” Justice Stevens wrote. “Knowledge accumulates,” he wrote. “We learn, sometimes, from our mistakes.”

In any event, the companion case, that of Joe Sullivan, Court did not issue a eparate opinion, but he would also be entitiled to relief under the Graham opinion.  This case is a step forward for Florida, as we have a tendency to lock people up and hide them in remote places so we don’t have to see them, even those folks such as children who likely have the best chance at redemption and rehabilitation.

Does Charlie Crist commute the sentences or does the legislature create some sort of narrow parole procedure for the children (most now adults) who are effected by his decision, so they may have an opportunity to demonstrate rehabilitation as required by the court ruling? We will just have to look out for what Florida does in these cases.

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It’s all up to the Gov.

Seth — May 18, 2010 @ 6:08 PM — Comments (1)

The Florida Actual Innocence Commission survived attempts to strip its $200,000 appropriation out of the budget at the end of the legislative session.  Now it is all up to Governor Crist, as the budget sits on his desk and he can choose to veto individual appropriations in the bill.  On Sunday, the St. Pete Times wrote:

[The Innocence Commission] will be money well spent.

As envisioned, an innocence commission would audit Florida’s cases of wrongful conviction the way the National Transportation Safety Board examines plane crashes. Each detail of what went wrong would be studied to determine whether new procedures should be adopted to prevent similar errors in the future.

Florida needs this. People like Alan Crotzer and Wilton Dedge spent years behind bars before DNA evidence confirmed they actually were innocent of the crimes they were convicted of committing. But there are plenty of cases where there is no DNA to resolve guilt or innocence with such certainty. Preventing wrongful convictions in the first place is often the only way to avoid miscarriages of justice for those crimes with no possibility of DNA exoneration.

The ongoing case of Leo Schofield, in prison 21 years for the murder of his wife, illustrates how hard it is to uncover potential wrongful convictions without DNA. Schofield has always maintained his innocence, even rejecting a plea deal that would have had him out of prison about a decade ago. Still, Schofield was convicted without physical evidence linking him to the murder. Only recently, after fingerprints found in his wife’s abandoned car were matched to that of a convicted murderer, is Schofield being considered for a new trial.

If you would like to contact the Governor and politely  ask him to support this import effort by siging budget WITH the Innocence Commission appropriation in the bill, you can contact him at 850-488-7146 or Charlie.Crist@MyFlorida.com.

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Wisconsin Man Fully Vindicated

Seth — May 17, 2010 @ 4:00 PM — Comments (0)

Last week, Robert Lee Stinson cleared his name when the unknown DNA profile found on the murder victim’s body was matched to another person who then confessed, in detail, to the murder.  Stinson was exonerated in 2009 of a 1984 murder after the Wisconsin Innocence Project presented evidence that the DNA found on the victim didn’t match Stinson’s and that the bite marks — the sole and primary piece of evidence against him — also didn’t come from Stinson.  That DNA profile was put into the national DNA database and it produced a “hit” to the real perpetrator.  IN over 40% of the cases where someone has been wrongfully convicted and later exonerated through DNA testing, the DNA database is employed and the real perpetrator is found.

As for Stinson, he has been out almost a year and has not gotten any sort of compensation.  The Wisconsin State Journal has the goods:

Donnell’s firm, Loevy & Loevy, is representing Stinson in his federal civil rights lawsuit against Milwaukee and in his request for the maximum $25,000 compensation for wrongful conviction from the State Claims Board.

Stinson’s conviction was overturned last year after prosecutors decided not to oppose the motion to free him. Lichstein said Price’s confession and the positive DNA match provide the final proof that Stinson was wrongfully convicted.

“Though nothing can make up for the 23 years he lost, our system should do what it can to make this right,” Lichstein said. “Lee has been out for more than a year and has received nothing. He should be compensated as much as possible under the law, as soon as possible.”

Congratulations to Mr. Stinson on clearing his name and to the folks at the Wisconsin Innocence Project for all their hard work.  You can learn more about Stinson’s case here.

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Federal Judge Lays Down the Law on State of Forensics in Courts

Seth — May 17, 2010 @ 9:52 AM — Comments (0)

I wanted to point out a recent speech by federal Judge Harry T. Edwards in Washington, DC to a group of DC judges this morning. The speech addresses the admissibility of or limits on the testimony of forensic examiners for any discipline other than nuclear DNA. ON of my colleagues characterized the speech as “forceful and unambiguous” and it “directly refutes several common government arguments” against the value of the National Academy of Sciences Report regarding the sorry state of forensics in America.

Judge Edwards makes a number of bold statements that are worth mentioning:

  • On page 5 and 6 he addresses the notion that courts should just follow precedent for the sake of following precedent, stating that the new information provided by the NAS report should be taken into account by every prosecutor who considers using forensic evidence and every court considering admitting such evidence. He concludes that “[i]f courts blindly follow precedent that rest on unfounded scientific premises, this will lead to unjust results.”
  • On p. 11 he notes that his “concern is that some forensic practitioners may not know what they do not know about the limits of their discipline. They will have to be taught this so that they can be appropriately circumspect in their testimony.”
  • Also on page 11 he notes that “[e]very forensic laboratory in the United States . . . should use appropriate protocols and employ highly skilled practitioners, but that [r]ight now. . . this is merely an aspiration, not a reality” and the judiciary must “do all that we can to help the forensic science community get its house in order.”

In Florida, we often rely on the way we have done things to guide us on how we should move forward.  Our rules for dealing with new evidence, particularly the Frye test in the scientific evidence context, make it difficult, if not impossible, to revisit old determinations about what was reliable and reevaluate those determinations based on new, more up to date information.  When we fail to have the flexibility built into the law to revisit outmoded determinations, we sacrifice reliability and accuracy for the sake of preserving a broken process.  At the intersection of forensics and criminal trials, the potential consequences of this is a wrongful conviction or, in the case of Cameron Todd Willingham, being executed even though you are innocence.

We have discussed the NAS Report here, here and here.

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New Innocence-Related Book

Seth — May 07, 2010 @ 4:00 PM — Comments (1)

Our friends at the Innocence Project of Texas let us know about a new book that just came out called A Plea for Justice: The Tim Cole Story.  Tim was recently posthumously exonerated through DNA testing after he died in prison of an asthma attack.  He had his life stolen from him as a college student when he was convicted of a brutal rape.  If you would like to purchase the book, you can do so at Amazon.com.

IN the meantime, here is the foreward by IPOT’s Jeff Blackburn:

In 1985, Tim Cole, a college student at Texas Tech University in Lubbock, was arrested on a brutal rape charge. A decent young man with his whole life ahead of him, he was convicted, sentenced, and sent to prison, where he died during an asthma attack. He was entirely innocent of the crime of which he was accused.

Those of us who work to free the innocent in Texas confront a great many problems: the legal system is a stacked deck; there is no real funding for the work; there are too many people who have been framed in this state; and too few volunteers to work at getting them released.  The worst problem of all, however, is the lack of public support.

As the founder of, and chief counsel for, the Innocence Project of Texas, I travel all over the state trying to garner support for our movement.  From Rotary clubs and rallies, church groups and caucuses, I’ve learned that freeing the innocent is not a popular cause. I’ve come to realize that most people believe very few of their fellow citizens are falsely convicted.  They think the problem, such as it is, is being handled by the system. Finally, they’re convinced that nothing like this could ever happen to them.

A Plea For Justice: The Timothy Cole Story demonstrates how misguided such thinking is. Objective and detailed, the book reveals the facts of this tragic case. McKinley’s authorial voice is not overheated, rhetorical, or angry, and he grinds no political axes.  Instead, he sets out a balanced account of just what happened. By telling the story as an honest reporter, McKinley has done more to reveal the flaws of the Texas system than any reform advocate or “movement person” ever could.

More than once, those of us who worked on Tim’s case said someone should tell the true story of what happened to him.  We knew that if the story, which was far deeper than the one described by headlines and thirty-second TV spots, could just get out there, more people would come to understand that what happened to Tim Cole was by no means a rare aberration.  We knew that if all the facts of this case were revealed, the public might have a lesson in injustice and what it takes to fix it.

As it turns out, Fred B. McKinley is the writer who has told the story. Anyone who wants to know the truth about how our criminal justice system really works should read this book. Anyone who wants to know what the system does to its victims should also read it.  When told well, as in these pages, truth has the power to change people’s minds.

Until that day, some of us will keep fighting for the Tim Coles of the world, but now, armed with this book, we’ll do so with more faith than we had before.

exoneration, , , , ,

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