University of Baltimore takes on Maryland Innocence Project

Posted: September 5, 2008 3:14 pm

The Baltimore Sun reported yesterday that the University of Baltimore will be taking over the Innocence Project unit of the Maryland Office of the Public Defender, after the heads of the unit approached the university’s law school.

Under the auspices of the university, six law students have been assigned to work on three potential wrongful conviction cases, while 20 more will review innocence claims to see if they can take them on. Since helping Bernard Webster get exonerated by DNA testing in 2002, the Public Defender’s Office has received over 700 requests for help. They have successfully filed 15 motions for DNA testing, with one more pending.

The new project will be directed by the head of the original unit, Michele Nethercott, and Steven Harris, who was a state public defender for 14 years. They will announce the new project at a press-conference today along with Barry Scheck, Co-Director of the Innocence Project.

Law School Dean Phillip J. Closius said he "didn't hesitate" when the public defender's office approached him with the idea for the transfer.

"It's a great idea for us," he said. "It benefits students because they get to work on criminal cases with DNA evidence, and it benefits society because we can help free the unjustly incarcerated."

Read the full story.

Tags: Maryland

 

Friday roundup

Posted: September 5, 2008 3:07 pm

New projects and investigations launched this week by innocence organizations, law schools, prosecutors and attorneys general across the country show the momentum nationwide to overturn wrongful convictions and address the root causes of wrongful conviction to prevent future injustice. Here’s this week’s roundup:

Questions were raised about standards of DNA collection and preservation in Massachusetts after improper procedures were revealed in a high-profile case. Mass. is one of 25 states without a DNA preservation law.

The Mississippi Attorney General said this week that the state is underfunding DNA tests and DNA collection and a new task force is examining the state problem.

San Jose opened California’s largest crime lab, training began in Maryland before a new law expanding the state’s database took effect and cutbacks in Georgia led to furloughs for prosecutors and could cause lab closings.

The Midwest Innocence Project this week launched an investigation into a 1988 fire that killed six Kansas City firemen and led to the conviction of five people who say they’re innocent. The North Carolina Innocence Inquiry Commission, a first-of-its-kind panel dedicated to investigating cases of possible wrongful conviction, finished reviewing its first case, deciding that there wasn’t enough evidence to overturn the conviction of Henry A. Reeves. And  Dallas District Attorney Craig Watkins asked county officials to allow filming in his offices in coming months for a Discovery Channel documentary.

Some of the best policy analysis and research to help improve our criminal justice system comes, of course, from our nation’s law schools – and now many of those schools have blogs. Marquette University Law School launched a new faculty law blog, and a post by Keith Sharfman finds that “blogging’s potential as a medium for serious legal discourse can no longer be doubted.” 

A column on Law.com asks: “Is the future of legal scholarship in the blogosphere?”

Here at the Innocence Project, we read law school blogs everyday. Among our favorites are Crim Prof Blog and Evidence Prof Blog

New York University Law School has formed a new Center on the Administration of Criminal Law, which will seek to promote “good government practices in criminal matters.”

Tags: California, North Carolina, Georgia, Kansas, Maryland, Massachusetts, Mississippi, Texas, Innocence Commissions, Crime Lab Oversight, Evidence Preservation, Access to DNA Testing, DNA Databases

 

Execution date set for Georgia man

Posted: September 4, 2008 3:58 pm

Troy Davis has been on Georgia’s death row for 17 years for a murder he has always maintained he didn’t commit. Last year, he came within 24 hours of execution before receiving a last-minute stay. In March of this year, the Georgia Supreme Court ruled 4-3 against granting him a new trial. Now, a new execution date has been set for September 23rd.

Davis was convicted almost entirely based on eyewitness testimony. Since his conviction, all but two of the 13 witnesses who testified against Davis at trial have recanted, many of them saying they were coerced to offer false eyewitness and snitch testimony by police officers.

Read more about Davis’ case and send a letter to the Georgia Board of Prison and Parole asking them to stop the execution so Davis can get another day in court.

Read about the role of eyewitness misidentification in more than 75 percent of wrongful convictions later overturned by DNA testing.

Tags: Death Penalty

 

Ninth anniversary of NY exoneration

Posted: September 4, 2008 3:50 pm

Monday marked the ninth anniversary of the day Habib Wahir Abdal walked out of a New York prison after serving 16 years for a crime he didn’t commit. Abdal was convicted in 1983 of a rape he didn’t commit, based partly on eyewitness misidentification.

In 1982, a woman was attacked in a nature preserve by an African-American man in a hooded sweatshirt. She was blindfolded by the attacker. Abdal was picked up by police four months later and police conducted a “show up,” where they brought the victim to Abdal and asked if he was the attacker. Police officers told the victim before the show up that Abdal was the suspect, but she did not identify him at first as the perpetrator. She then viewed a four-year-old photo of Abdal, returned to the show up, and identified him as the perpetrator.

Although forensic evidence pointed to his innocence and Abdal didn’t match the victim’s initial suspect of the attacker, he was convicted by a jury and sentenced to life in prison. He sought DNA testing to prove his innocence starting in 1993, but tests were inconclusive. It would be six more years before conclusive DNA testing proved Abdal’s  innocence and led to his exoneration.

Abdal’s case is an example of one where advancing DNA science led to exoneration after earlier tests were inconclusive. Other cases like this include the exonerations of David Gray and Rickey Johnson.

Tags: Habib Wahir Abdal, David A. Gray, Rickey Johnson

 

St. Louis man freed after 24 years behind bars

Posted: September 3, 2008 3:05 pm

Darryl Burton was convicted of committing a 1984 St. Louis shooting murder based on little more than the word of two unreliable witnesses. He was freed yesterday after an eight-year investigation by New Jersey-based Centurion Ministries uncovered strong evidence of his innocence.

"I've got 24 years behind the eight ball; it was hell on Earth," Burton said Tuesday at a news conference in Kansas City, where he plans to live with cousins. "Prison's a stressful place, especially when you're innocent and no one believes you."

Read the full story here. (St. Louis Post-Dispatch, 09/03/08)

One of the alleged eyewitnesses was a jailhouse snitch who testified in a 2007 that he lied at Burton’s trial in exchange for sentence reductions. The other witness, who is now deceased, was at least a block away and could not have seen the shooter. In addition, Centurion uncovered two actual eyewitnesses from the crime scene who told police that Burton was not the shooter. Police ignored their testimony during the investigation. Centurion’s investigation also pointed to another man, also deceased, who may have been the actual killer.

Learn more about Centurion Ministries on the group’s website.

 

Mississippi task force will study evidence preservation

Posted: September 3, 2008 3:00 pm

A group of officials from across Mississippi’s criminal justice system has begun work reviewing the state’s evidence preservation practices and may recommend a state law requiring law enforcement agencies or the state crime lab to store evidence.

Most evidence is currently kept by court clerks, and court basements are often crowded, messy and poorly secured. Mississippi Innocence Project Director Tucker Carrington is the chairman of the new task force, and he says the group may recommend a centralized storage facility at the state crime lab.

Mississippi was jarred into action by the release earlier this year of two Noxubee County men wrongly convicted in separate child murder cases. One of the men was on death row.

Mississippi's 82 counties handle DNA evidence in different ways. Some may not collect DNA in every investigation because it is too costly.

The task force will recommend statewide standards for identification, collection and preservation of DNA, as well as training for law enforcement officers and others.

Read the full story here. (Jackson Clarion-Ledger, 09/03/08)

Does your state preserve crime scene evidence? View our interactive map to find out.

Tags: Mississippi

 

New innocence clinic takes root at UNLV

Posted: September 2, 2008 4:28 pm

After learning about the exoneration of Ronald Cotton in North Carolina, University of Nevada Las Vegas law student Lucy Flores pushed the school to create an innocence clinic, where students could work to overturn wrongful convictions. This year, she got her wish.

The new innocence clinic at UNLV’s Boyd Law School recently opened its doors, with students reviewing six cases of possible wrongful conviction. The group is working closely with Utah’s Rocky Mountain Innocence Center to identify and investigate the cases.

"The fact is there are a lot of innocent people in prison," Flores said.

Read the full story here. (Las Vegas Review-Journal, 09/02/08)

Tags: Nevada

 

Friday roundup – crime labs in the news

Posted: August 29, 2008 3:26 pm

Plenty of forensic issues are making news around the country this week.

•  The longtime director of the Baltimore crime lab was fired this week after officials learned that crime scene evidence had been contaminated with the DNA profiles of lab analysts. Defense attorneys and forensic experts said this news could call thousands of cases that had been tested in the lab into question.

•  Prosecutors and Sheriffs in South Georgia said the proposed closure of two crime labs would hurt both crime victims and defendants. Meanwhile, the Georgia Bureau of Investigation is eliminating its staff forensic anthropologist.

•  Officials planned to destroy piles of evidence from a Texas courthouse in September unless defense attorneys or prosecutors claimed the evidence and stored it themselves.

•  Arizona lawmakers expressed concern this week that a proposal to require police departments to pay lab costs would strain law enforcement budgets and underfund the labs.

•  Indianapolis lab analysts are experimenting with DNA collection from guns.

•  A California state crime lab was criticized for losing evidence in a murder case.

Tags: Crime Lab Oversight, Crime Lab Backlogs

 

Compensation bill for California man is on governor’s desk

Posted: August 29, 2008 2:38 pm

James Ochoa served 10 months in California prison, and 5 months in jail awaiting trial, for a carjacking DNA proves he didn’t commit. He was exonerated in 2006, but to date he hasn’t been compensated under California’s law – which pays exonerees $100 per day of wrongful imprisonment. As we’ve reported here before, Ochoa was initially denied access to compensation because he pled guilty – after a judge told him he could get 25 years to life in prison if he went to trial and lost. He was given a two-year sentence after pleading guilty.

The California compensation statute reads that, in order to receive compensation, the exoneree must not have “contribute(d) to the bringing about of his arrest or conviction for the crime with which he was charged." California officials first said the law excluded Ochoa because he pled guilty. But members of the state assembly took action to rectify this situation, and a bill to pay Ochoa $31,700 was passed earlier this month. The bill now awaits a signature by Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger.

A blog in the OC Weekly last week said it took a group of heroes in the capital and around the state to pass this bill.

“As a society we have a responsibility to make that [injustice] right,” Republican Assemblyman Todd Spitzer said in an August 18 floor speech regarding a proposed and legally sanctioned $100-per-day fee to Ochoa for time spent locked in prison” … “To be wrongfully charged, to sit in prison for 10 months and also Orange County Jail [for an additional five months] for $31,700? That's unconscionable.”

Read the full blog post here.

An improvement to California’s compensation law – which would eliminate the loophole that almost denied Ochoa’s compensation and increase the amount of compensation by a cost-of-living adjustment each year – is also awaiting the Governor’s signature, and Innocence Project supporters in California are sending letters to Gov. Schwarzenegger this week urging him to sign the bill into law. If you’re in California – send your own letter to the Governor today. Otherwise, please forward the action to your friends and family in California.

Tags: California, James Ochoa

 

Dallas exoneree reconnects with his son

Posted: August 28, 2008 5:28 pm

While Patrick Waller languished in a Texas prison for a crime he didn’t commit, he always thought about his children. After DNA testing proved his innocence and led to his release on July 2, he reunited with son Chris, who was two years old when Waller went to prison and is 18 today.

Mr. Waller, 38, the 19th man in Dallas County since 2001 exonerated by DNA evidence, spent many sleepless nights pondering his life, while tossing and turning on a thin mattress in a 9 ½-foot by 15-foot jail cell.

At times, rage filled him. Other times, frustration consumed him. Sometimes, disappointment engulfed him.

But he never lost hope.

He couldn't. His four children needed him.

"Of all the things that happened to me, the worst is missing out on my kids' lives," said Mr. Waller, who has a relationship with two of his children and expects to meet his 16-year-old son this week.

"I can't get that back." Read the full story here. (Dallas Morning News, 08/28/08)

Waller , who is represented by the Innocence Project of Texas, is still awaiting a ruling from the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals that will make his exoneration official. We’ll post here on the Innocence Blog when that happens.

Read more about Waller’s case here.