j u s t c r i m

Wrongful Convictions - Reason Magazine

When Paul House was finally released from prison in 2008, he was a specter of the man who had been sentenced to death more than 22 years earlier. When I visit his home in Crossville, Tennessee, in March, House’s mother Joyce, who has cared for him since his release, points to a photo of House taken the day he was finally allowed to come home. In that photo and others from his last days in prison, House is all of 150 pounds, ashen and drawn, his fragile frame nearly consumed by his wheelchair. In most of the images he looks days away from death, although in one he wears the broad smile of a man finally escaping a long confinement.

When House’s aunt called to congratulate him on his first day back, his mother handed him her cell phone so he could chat. He inspected the phone, gave her a frustrated look, and asked her to find him one that worked. That kind of Rip Van Winkle moment is common among people freed after a long stint in prison. Dennis Fritz, one of the two wrongly convicted men profiled in John Grisham’s 2006 book The Innocent Man, talks about nearly calling the police upon seeing someone use an electronic key card the first time he found himself in a hotel after his release. He thought he’d witnessed a burglar use a credit card to jimmy open a door.

 “Paul’s first meal when he got home was chili verde,” Joyce House says. “It’s his favorite. And I had been waiting a long time to make it for him.” And apparently quite a few meals after that. House, now 49, has put on 75 pounds since his release. More important, he has been getting proper treatment for his advanced-stage multiple sclerosis, treatment the Tennessee prison system hadn’t given him.

via reason.com

[ "In 1986 House was convicted of murdering Carolyn Muncey in Union County, Tennessee, a rural part of the state that shoulders Appalachia. He was sentenced to death. His case is a textbook study in wrongful conviction. It includes mishandled evidence, prosecutorial misconduct, bad science, cops with tunnel vision, DNA testing, the near-execution of an innocent man, and an appellate court reluctant to reopen old cases even in the face of new evidence that strongly suggests the jury got it wrong...." ]

A Convict's Odyssey | Chicago Reader

One sunny March morning, freed murder convict and tireless rabble-rouser Mark Clements was getting the kind of attention that had eluded him in the nearly three decades he spent in prison. Clements was leading a small rally outside the dreary Cook County Criminal Courthouse at 26th and California. The demonstrators were celebrating the fact that Jon Burge, the notorious former Chicago police commander, would be reporting to prison in North Carolina on this particular day to begin a four-and-a-half-year sentence for obstruction of justice and perjury. Burge oversaw the torture of innumerable suspects in south-side police stations in the 1970s and '80s, and the fallout from that scandal helped Clements extricate himself from a life sentence.

Clements, who's 46 and African-American, has a broad face with full eyebrows, a thin mustache, and gapped teeth. He's balding and his back is rounded. He wore a hooded sweatshirt and dress slacks. He has a playful side, but he'd left it at home this morning. He'd alerted media to the rally, and before it began he strode across California Boulevard to meet a Fox Chicago reporter and cameraman.

"I'm an Area Three torture victim of Daniel McWeeny and John McCann," he told the reporter, a young Asian woman.

via www.chicagoreader.com

[ amazing story - ht crime report ]

Innocence Blog: Florida Inmate Released After 18 Years

Nearly two decades after a Florida man was convicted of a rape he always said he didn’t commit, the State Attorney unexpectedly released him from prison on Monday and decided not to retry the case after DNA testing excluded him as the perpetrator. For the first time in 18 years, Derrick Williams was home to celebrate the birthday of his son, who turns 29 today, reported The Bradenton Herald.Williams was convicted in 1992 after being identified by the victim who she claims removed a gray t-shirt during the attack to cover her face. He was convicted by a jury despite his alibi and a finding before the trial that a hair found on the t-shirt could not belong to Williams.Wearing a t-shirt that read “Not Guilty,” Williams addressed the media.“This is love,” he said. Williams couldn’t stop smiling as he offered his thanks in front of the media. “I want to first thank God because without him this wouldn’t be happening and I want to thank my family for believing in me,” he said. “It’s going to be a long road for me, but a sweet one.” He said when he got the news Monday morning he fell to the floor and thanked God. The Innocence Project of Florida, who represented Williams, worked on his case for more than five years and was preparing to fight for his release on bond, according to its executive director Seth Miller. Williams spent the night with his family celebrating his release and his son’s birthday and held his grandson for the first time but didn’t have much time to look to the future. “I know one thing, I need a job right now,” he said.Read the full article.Read a copy of the order Williams’ conviction.

via www.innocenceproject.org

On Order: Convicting the Innocent: Where Criminal Prosecutions Go Wrong

Harvard University Press:   Convicting the Innocent:  Where Criminal Prosecutions Go Wrong Brandon L. Garrett

"On January 20, 1984, Earl Washington—defended for all of forty minutes by a lawyer who had never tried a death penalty case—was found guilty of rape and murder in the state of Virginia and sentenced to death. After nine years on death row, DNA testing cast doubt on his conviction and saved his life. However, he spent another eight years in prison before more sophisticated DNA technology proved his innocence and convicted the guilty man.

DNA exonerations have shattered confidence in the criminal justice system by exposing how often we have convicted the innocent and let the guilty walk free. In this unsettling in-depth analysis, Brandon Garrett examines what went wrong in the cases of the first 250 wrongfully convicted people to be exonerated by DNA testing.

Based on trial transcripts, Garrett’s investigation into the causes of wrongful convictions reveals larger patterns of incompetence, abuse, and error. Evidence corrupted by suggestive eyewitness procedures, coercive interrogations, unsound and unreliable forensics, shoddy investigative practices, cognitive bias, and poor lawyering illustrates the weaknesses built into our current criminal justice system. Garrett proposes practical reforms that rely more on documented, recorded, and audited evidence, and less on fallible human memory.

Very few crimes committed in the United States involve biological evidence that can be tested using DNA. How many unjust convictions are there that we will never discover? Convicting the Innocent makes a powerful case for systemic reforms to improve the accuracy of all criminal cases.

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The Amazon.com Excerpted Reviews:

"For six years now I have worked diligently within the innocence movement, and I often hear the question: 'How do wrongful convictions happen?' Convicting the Innocent gives all the answers. It is a fascinating study of what goes wrong, and it clearly shows that virtually all wrongful convictions could have been avoided."
--John Grisham

"DNA testing is revolutionizing our system of criminal justice: this book shows why. By digging deep into the case files of exonerees, Brandon Garrett uncovers what went wrong in those cases and probably in many more we simply can't know about. Garrett makes a powerful case for how to improve criminal justice so that we dramatically reduce the number of wrongly convicted."
--Barry Scheck and Peter Neufeld, The Innocence Project

"This is an invaluable book, a comprehensive, highly readable but well-researched work examining the hows and whys of the law's ultimate nightmare--convicting the innocent."
--Scott Turow, author of Innocent

"How can we stop sending innocent people to our prisons? As you turn the pages of this important and startling book, you will come to realize that wrongful convictions are not accidents. They are the tragic result of a criminal justice system in deep need of reform."
--Sister Helen Prejean, author of Dead Man Walking

"It's common to say that DNA exonerations of innocent defendants provide a unique window on the weaknesses in our system of criminal investigation and trial. But what exactly do we see when we look through that window? Until now the answer has been pretty sketchy. Brandon Garrett has produced a far more detailed and complete picture of the lessons of DNA exonerations than anything else to date. This is an indispensable book for anyone wanting to understand or improve American criminal justice."
--Samuel R. Gross, Thomas and Mabel Long Professor of Law, University of Michigan

 

 

 

A limited DNA access plea allowed : SCOTUSblog

After seeming to close the door in 2009 to constitutional claims by convicted individuals that they were wrongly denied access to DNA evidence gathered at a crime scene,  the Supreme Court opened the door — but perhaps only slightly — on Monday.  The Court ruled that the federal courts may hear, under civil rights law, a claim by a state prison inmate that his state’s procedures for testing of biological evidence are flawed.  Although the Court majority stressed that it was not raising inmates’ hopes very high, the ruling potentially could have an impact in 48 states that do allow for some testing of DNA — evidence that sometimes provides a powerful demonstration of innocence, or of guilt.  (The federal government also allows access to DNA evidence for testing.)

The Court’s new 6-3 decision in Skinner v. Switzer (09-9000) answered a question the Court had agreed to decide, but left open, two terms ago in District Attorney’s Office v. Osborne (08-6), decided June 18, 2009.

In Osborne, the Court by a 5-4 majority ruled that prisoners do not have a constitutional right of access to DNA evidence.  That decision, however, rejected a claim only of a “substantive due process” violation in denial of access to such material.  On Monday, the Court majority in Skinner found a limited right of “procedural due process,” which the majority opinion characterized as leaving inmates “slim room” to pursue such a challenge.  It left it to lower courts to decide whether a Texas death-row inmate, Henry W. Skinner, will actually win his claim that Texas’ DNA evidence law was used wrongly to deny him a chance to test biological material — not previously tested by the state.  Police had gathered that evidence in 1993 at a house in Pampa, Texas, where a woman and her two adult sons were murdered.  The woman was Skinner’s girlfriend; he shared the house with her and her sons.

via www.scotusblog.com

Veritas Initiative

The American Bar Association states the prosecutor has a duty different from other advocates- not to simply convict, but to seek justice. While many prosecutors conscientiously do their job with the integrity, there are some that commit misconduct. Ways in which a prosecutor can commit misconduct include improperly examining witnesses, making improper arguments to a [...]

Those who have served time in prison for crimes they did not commit deserve to be compensated for their ordeal. The impact of incarceration is devastating; defendants lose much more than their freedom. In addition to the pain of separation from friends and family, imprisonment can result in loss of education, employment, job skills, earnings [...]

Over 250 people have been exonerated through the use of DNA testing. While DNA has become the golden standard, experts estimate that only 5-10% of all criminal cases involve biological evidence that could be subjected to DNA testing. This means that in 90-95% of all criminal cases, DNA testing is not an option. Therefore, law [...]

via www.veritasinitiative.org

Deep in the Heart of Texas, Death Penalty Goes on Trial - Law Blog - WSJ

Some statistics on the application of the death penalty in Texas: In the last 30 years, the state has executed 464 people, far more than in any other state.

The Lone Star state has also exonerated a dozen death-row inmates during that time period.

The question, then: At what point do the false-positives (so-to-speak) reach an unacceptable level? If 100 death-row inmates were exonerated, many would likely say without equivocation that something was seriously wrong. If only one had been exonerated, many would call it an aberration, the exception that proves the rule.

via blogs.wsj.com

Innocence Found: Texas Monthly January 2011

Why did Anthony Graves spend eighteen years behind bars—twelve of them on death row—for a crime he did not commit?

by Pamela Colloff

January 2011

via www.texasmonthly.com

[not my] confession

Confessing to Crime, but Innocent (By JOHN SCHWARTZ. Published: September 13, 2010 New York Times)

New research shows how people who were apparently uninvolved in a crime could provide such a detailed account of what occurred, allowing prosecutors to claim that only the defendant could have committed the crime.

An article by Professor Garrett draws on trial transcripts, recorded confessions and other background materials to show how incriminating facts got into those confessions — by police introducing important facts about the case, whether intentionally or unintentionally, during the interrogation.

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Garrett, Brandon L., The Substance of False Confessions (April 15, 2010). Stanford Law Review, Vol. 62, No. 4, 2010; Virginia Public Law and Legal Theory Research Paper No. 2010-11. Available at SSRN: http://ssrn.com/abstract=1280254

Abstract:  A puzzle is raised by cases of false confessions: How could an innocent on convincingly confess to a crime? Postconviction DNA testing has now exonerated over 250 convicts, more than forty of whom falsely confessed to rapes and murders. As a result, there is a new awareness that innocent people falsely confess, often due to psychological pressure placed upon them during police interrogations. Scholars increasingly examine the psychological techniques that can cause people to falsely confess and document instances of known false confessions. This Article takes a different approach, by examining the substance of false confessions, including what was said during interrogations and how the confession statements were then litigated at trial and postconviction. Doing so sheds light on the phenomenon of confession contamination. Not only can innocent people falsely confess, but all except two of the exonerees studied were induced to deliver false confessions with surprisingly rich, detailed, and accurate information. We now know that those details could not have likely originated with these innocent people, but rather must have been disclosed to them, most likely during the interrogation process. However, our constitutional criminal procedure does not regulate the postadmission interrogation process, nor do courts evaluate the reliability of confessions. This Article outlines a series of reforms that focus on the insidious problem of contamination, particularly videotaping interrogations in their entirety, but also reframing police procedures, trial practice, and judicial review. Unless criminal procedure is reoriented towards the reliability of the substance of confessions, contamination of facts may continue to go undetected, resulting in miscarriages of justice.

 

(ht Setencing)

actual innocence debate

IN RE TROY ANTHONY DAVIS.  ON PETITION FOR WRIT OF HABEAS CORPUS.  No. 08–1443.  Decided August 17, 2009.

Cite as: 557 U. S. ____ (2009).   JUSTICE STEVENS, with whom JUSTICE GINSBURG and JUSTICE BREYER join, concurring.

"JUSTICE SCALIA’s dissent is wrong in two respects.First, he assumes as a matter of fact that petitioner Davisis guilty of the murder of Officer MacPhail. He does this even though seven of the State’s key witnesses have re-canted their trial testimony; several individuals have implicated the State’s principal witness as the shooter; and “no court,” state or federal, “has ever conducted a hearing to assess the reliability of the score of [postconvic-tion] affidavits that, if reliable, would satisfy the thresholdshowing for a truly persuasive demonstration of actualinnocence,” 565 F. 3d 810, 827 (CA11 2009) (Barkett, J., dissenting) (internal quotation marks omitted). The sub-stantial risk of putting an innocent man to death clearly provides an adequate justification for holding an eviden-tiary hearing..."

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IN RE TROY ANTHONY DAVIS.  ON PETITION FOR WRIT OF HABEAS CORPUS (No. 08–1443. Decided August 17, 2009).  JUSTICE SCALIA, with whom JUSTICE THOMAS joins,dissenting:

"Today this Court takes the extraordinary step—one nottaken in nearly 50 years—of instructing a district court toadjudicate a state prisoner’s petition for an original writ of habeas corpus..."

AND:

"This Court has never held that the Constitution forbids the execution of a convicted de-fendant who has had a full and fair trial but is later able to convince a habeas court that he is “actually” innocent. Quite to the contrary, we have repeatedly left that ques-tion unresolved, while expressing considerable doubt thatany claim based on alleged “actual innocence” is constitu-tionally cognizable. See Herrera v. Collins, 506 U. S. 390, 400–401, 416–417 (1993); see also House v. Bell, 547 U. S. 518, 555 (2006); District Attorney’s Office for Third Judi-cial Dist. v. Osborne, ante, at 18..."

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Scotusblog. Innocence Claim Rejected.  Lyle Denniston | Tuesday, August 24th, 2010 1:54 pm

"Carrying out a direct order of the Supreme Court, a federal judge in Georgia made a lengthy new study of a 21-year-old murder case but then ruled Tuesday that a Savannah, Ga., man had not proved that he is innocent of killing a police officer in a fast-food restaurant parking lot.   In a 172-page opinion (issued in two parts, found here and here), U.S. District Judge William T. Moore, Jr., ruled that it would be unconstitutional to execute an innocent person, but went on to rule that Troy Anthony Davis “is not innocent...”   [emphasis added]

innocence commissions

Wolitz, David, Innocence Commissions and the Future of Post-Conviction Review (April 20, 2010). Arizona Law Review, Forthcoming; Georgetown Public Law Research Paper No. 10-22. Available at SSRN: http://ssrn.com/abstract=1593158

"weird science" | texas monthly

WEIRD SCIENCE - TEXAS MONTHLY. "What could be more terrifying than to be accused of a crime you didn’t commit? How about to be accused by a forensic expert? This doesn’t happen on popular television dramas like CSI, CSI: New York, and CSI: Miami..."

http://www.texasmonthly.com/2010-05-01/feature2-1.php

"the day after"

The Day After: What’s Next for Hank Skinner?  (Innocence Blog: March 25, 2010) - "The court’s stay is temporary, however, simply giving the justices more time to decide whether to take on a full review of Skinner’s appeal. If the court decides not to grant a review, the stay will terminate..."

death practice in texas

I've been following the Henry Skinner death warrant insanity, horror, ... ?  His last second stay by SCOTUS is a huge and improbable victory for the defense team and of course their client – And it doesn't matter that the stay may be fleeting – The only thing that matters is that this team of attorneys saved their client's life last night, absolutely.

Even if Skinner's appeal or stay or claim of actual innocence otherwise evaporates, even if he is executed one month or one week from today, the defense team saved their client's life last night within 30 minutes of execution.

What's it like to do that as an attorney?  Professor David Dow knows and he writes honestly of the torturous process of capital defense practice in Texas in his book,  The Autobiography of an Execution ... If you think the Skinner insanity is unprecedented, you would likely be wrong.  Folks with viable "actual innocence" claims get put down in Texas and other states.  Want to know what it feels like when you lose and your client is executed?  You can't know.  I can't know.  But Professor Dow's book opens a window onto the process and his death penalty team's honesty and integrity are apparent on every page.

"the real problem with the death penalty - it's terrible public policy"

"The problem with capital punishment is not that it is unconstitutional. If it were, how could dozens of federal and state judges have allowed Texas to execute 450 people over the past 30 years? The real problem with the death penalty is that it is terrible public policy...."

Rethink death penalty - Judge’s ill-timed ruling invites irrationality in public’s views about capital punishment (Adam Gershowitz. Houston Chronicle. March 20, 2010)

codification of actual innocence habeas relief | h.r. 3986

CLARIFICATION OF THE AVAILABILITY OF FEDERAL HABEAS CORPUS RELIEF FOR A PERSON WHO IS SENTENCED TO DEATH THOUGH ACTUALLY INNOCENT

H. R. 3986 - To amend title 28, United States Code, to clarify the availability of Federal habeas corpus relief for a person who is sentenced to death though actually innocent.  (IN THE HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES November 3, 2009)

texas forensic science commission | perry's massacre

Dallas News:  Perry's Actions Increasingly Suspect (Editorial; Oct 12, 2009) - Gov. Rick Perry's Saturday night massacre of the Texas Forensic Science Commission has extended into Sunday and beyond.

When the governor abruptly unseated three commission members, including the chairman, he derailed a hearing about a flawed arson investigation that led to an execution. Little more than a week later, the governor has replaced a fourth member of the forensic science panel.

that's some deficiency

Benner, Laurence A., The Presumption of Guilt: Systemic Factors that Contribute to Ineffective Assistance of Counsel in California (September, 18 2009). California Western Law Review, Vol. 45, No. 263, 2009. Available at SSRN: http://ssrn.com/abstract=1475478

" ... The most frequent deficiency in attorney performance was the failure to conduct an adequate investigation with respect to guilt or innocence..."

And that's quite a deficiency.

last words

In the preceding post, we quote from the Houston Chronicle OpEd which suggests Cameron Todd Willingham was innocent when he was put down by lethal injection ... Cameron Todd Willingham's last words are available at the Texas DOC.  Remember that this statement is being made as he is being strapped down to the gurney:

"Yeah. The only statement I want to make is that I am an innocent man - convicted of a crime I did not commit. I have been persecuted for 12 years for something I did not do. From God's dust I came and to dust I will return - so the earth shall become my throne. I gotta go, road dog. I love you Gabby. [Remaining portion of statement omitted due to profanity.]

Error-prone death penalty system ensnares innocent

Error-prone death penalty system ensnares innocent. Houston Chronicle [By JOHN HOLDRIDGE and CHRISTOPHER HILL HOUSTON CHRONICLE Sept. 18, 2009]

"Cameron Todd Willingham's unthinkable story has shocked the conscience of many Americans. The state of Texas executed Willingham in 2004 for supposedly murdering his three children by setting their house on fire. His conviction was based in substantial part on testimony by the state's arson experts about the cause of the fire. A recent report by a fire expert hired by Texas condemns the state's arson testimony as bogus and unscientific. In other words, Willingham almost certainly was innocent — as he desperately maintained until his last dying breath..."

IN RE TROY ANTHONY DAVIS

"Justice SCALIA, with whom JUSTICE THOMAS joins,dissenting -- Today this Court takes the extraordinary step—one nottaken in nearly 50 years—of instructing a district court toadjudicate a state prisoner’s petition for an original writ of habeas corpus. The Court proceeds down this path even though every judicial and executive body that has examined petitioner’s stale claim of innocence has been unpersuaded, and (to make matters worst) even though it would be impossible for the District Court to grant any relief. Far from demonstrating, as this Court’s Rule 20.4(a) requires, "exceptional circumstances" that "warrant the exercise of the Court’s discretionary powers," petitioner’s claim is a sure loser. Transferring his petition to the District Court is a confusing exercise that can serve nopurpose except to delay the State’s execution of its lawful criminal judgment. I respectfully dissent..."