Tell your story
We want to hear your side of the story.
If you have a story of in-justice to share, or know of any stories of in-justice that should be known please email your story, or a link to the story to:
NoDakWrongfullyConvicted@gmail.com
or
DaleGoeb@gmail.com
This page can barely begin to list all the stories of In-justices in the Law. It can only attempt to bring awareness to a real problem of injustice in law by offering just a few stories. You get a sample how innocent lives are ruined when justice is miscarried. Imagine if the story was You, or your loved one.
We will not edit nor censor your story. Your story you submit to us will be displayed in its original form. You do not need to include actual names. High profile cases are a dime a dozen to find.
The lesser known stories that we never hear about are especially wanted to post here. Regardless how petty the in-justice was. Were you wrongfully convicted, falsely accused, framed, coerced, etc... tell us what happened.
We always hear the victors side of the story. But, what is the other side of the story? Most often major media do not tell the full story, and most often main stream media do not tell the story at all because of its controversial nature that may go against main stream agendas.
We will not display stories that are off topic. But, we will try to include all stories presented in a decent manner. Please submit stories or links of wrongful convictions, or stories of any in-justices.
The stories presented here does not neccessarily mean we agree with, or share the same viewpoint as the stories or the people who present them. We are only trying to allow the other sides to be heard so truth and justice may prevail.
Stories with links will be displayed on the opposite column, or this column. Any story with no link will be posted in their own file listed below at bottom of this page:
ND Strategic Content @NDStories
"They ruined my family. They ruined me."
https://twitter.com/NDStories/status/1338510314443321349
"They Kidnapped me, man.
They ruined my family.
They ruined me."
An estimated 2,700 court cases since 1989 have ended in a wrongful conviction....
[2700 REPRESENT THE FEW USA SLAVES FORTUNATE ENUF TO EITHER PROVE THEIR INNOCENCE, OR PROVE THE SLAVE AUCTION OR SLAVE PATROL COMMITTED CRIMES. 2700 DOES NOT EVEN COME CLOSE TO THE ACTUAL INNOCENTS WRONGFULLY CONVICTED.]
"Better that ten guilty persons escape than that one innocent suffer."
- Sir William Blackstone, an 18th-century English jurist
"It is better one hundred guilty Persons should escape than that one innocent Person should suffer."
- Benjamin Franklin
"I didn't know what the sky looked like anymore."
-Recent Ohio exoneree Ricky Jackson
http://www.democracynow.org/2014/11/26/i_didnt_know_what_the_skywrongfulconvictionsblog.org
Man wrongfully convicted of rape never the same after unjust prison
Dougherty was acquitted after a retrial in 1997, on the basis of DNA evidence... But Dougherty's partner of 27 years, Joann Atutolu, said:
"he changed forever after the prison sentence that should have never happened.
He became less social, had alcohol problems and became depressed as he tried to cope with the trauma of the wrongful conviction. He never got over it. He was always looking over his shoulder. Although he used to drink when we met, he really went into drinking after that....
He let himself go." ...
“Injustice does not discriminate.
What happened to me can happen to anyone,
as it has already, hundreds of times over, thus far across the country
… If you don’t believe this could happen,
you’re either misinformed or in a deep state of denial,”
-Debra Milke
Wrongfully Convicted Arizona woman cleared after 22 years on death row
Tell Your Story Page 2 continues at:
https://sites.google.com/site/korruptlaw/home/tell-your-story
North Dakota Wrongfully Convicted is solely "all-volunteer", and receives absolutely no money, nor any compensation of any kind. We receive absolutely nothing in return other than satisfaction of presenting the other side of the story, exposing the "real" criminals & domestic enemies in Law & Govt, speaking out for those who cannot, and allowing Truth and Justice a voice in a corrupt society.
Time, and resources are limited so the amount of time spent on research is very limited. As time allows we add recent reports and articles so there will be lapses of time where no reports are given, and/or not all reports given so this is not a complete source of reports rather only a sample of some media reports.
By now it should be evident to the readers that Misconduct occurs regularly in Law Enforcement, and in the Judicial Process. And many civilians Lie and manufacture false crime against others for vengeance, financial, empowerment, etc.. And the Legal System Falsely Arrests, Wrongfully Convicts many citizens, and those making and enforcing Laws are to be trusted less than the average citizen because of the incentives for official misconducts.
Cass County, ND & Vicinity:
UPDATE: The West Fargo Police Department has finished their investigation and believes a sexual assault reported yesterday did not happen.
http://www.valleynewslive.com/story/24229101/update-alleged-sexual-assault-in-west-fargo-unfounded
False Arrest - Fargo
http://pccactivecases.blogspot.com/2013/01/false-arrest-in-fargo-north-dakota.html
http://www.rahul.net/falk/Nz/Documents/0208_001.pdf
Alexander Vantreece - Fargo, ND
http://justicedenied.org/issue/issue_37/rape_jd37.pdf
Dominic Gemelli - Moorhead, MN
http://www.inforum.com/event/article/id/297419/group/News
http://www.wday.com/event/article/id/40543
Wrongly Accused UND Student Will Not Return To ...
http://www.wday.com/event/article/id/10978/publisher_ID/30/
NDSU Student Arrested for False ...
http://www.kvrr.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=19544&Itemid=57
Surgeon, Acquitted Of Drugging And Raping Wife - Huffington Post
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/11/21/jon-norberg-surgeon-acquitted_n_2173564.html
A false stabbing is reported in Moorhead
http://www.wday.com/event/article/id/72129/
North Dakota:
Reddit Identifies 86-Year-Old Grand Forks Grandmother As Terrorist
http://dailycurrant.com/2013/04/19/reddit-identifies-89-year-grandmother-terrorist/
Richard LaFuente - murder on the Devils Lake Sioux reservation in North Dakota
http://www.texasmonthly.com/story/another-tale-wrongful-conviction
North Dakota woman accused of lying about stabbing incident ...
http://www.wday.com/event/article/id/75455/
ND woman who falsely accused
http://sexoffenderissues.blogspot.com/2007/11/nd-woman-who-falsely-accused-eight.html#.UWrhlVm6SSo
Accuser Is Criminally Charged with Lying to Police, But School Refuses to Reopen Misconduct Case
Regional:
***Free Sean Fisher**
https://www.facebook.com/freeseanfisher
https://sites.google.com/site/nodakwc/tell-your-story/Free%20Sean%20Fisher.rtf?attredirects=0&d=1
My Story of Gang Stalking, Corruption and Domestic Terrorism -Minnesota
https://www.facebook.com/DebMatheny
Koua Fong Lee - Ramsey County, MN
http://www.startribune.com/local/stpaul/11545131.html
http://abcnews.go.com/Blotter/koua-fong-lee-driver-rejects-plea-deal-spring/story?id=11333090
David Brian Sutherlin - Ramsey County, MN
http://www.innocenceproject.org/case/display_profile.php?id=116
http://www.mplode.com/cringefactor/archives/000154.html
Michael Hansen - Minnesota
http://ipmn.org/michael-hansen-wrongful-conviction/
Sherman Townsend - Minnesota
http://ipmn.org/sherman-townsend-wrongful-conviction/
United States & World:
The most famous case of wrongful conviction in the Christian world (Universe) would have to be the false arrest, and wrongful conviction of Jesus Christ. Origin of Christianity was a revolution against a corrupt society. Jesus led a peaceful movement to overturn corruption and bring some good into the world. Jesus and his disciples spred the message of the gospel. The gospel is truth. Liars do not believe truth rather they believe Lies. Therefore, many in that corrupt society rejected the message, especially the corrupt leaders, and they used their Power and influence to falsely accuse Jesus and the disciples so that they became falsely arrested. The Court said they found no crime commited by Jesus. Jesus was Innocent. But, the corrupt society won out by having Jesus wrongfully convicted and given the death penalty, which was crucifixion during that era. The disciples were also given the death sentence, or exiled. The story is found in the New Testament of the Holy Bible, which is the Christian Bible.
Freedom without justice
http://fairfieldmirror.com/2013/11/20/freedom-without-justice/
Imagine a concrete box called home, orange mystery slop meals, shuffling in chains until you forget how to walk without them, consistently being beaten sometimes to the point of urinating blood and denied sunlight until nearly blind.
Let’s face it: Most of us couldn’t make it one day in solitary confinement on death row in a supermax prison, but Damien Echols spent 18 years there –- all for a crime he did not commit.
Ryan Ferguson's murder conviction vacated
https://www.facebook.com/FreeRyanFerguson
Wrongful Convictions in the United States of America: The Case of Ray Krone
http://jonyorkehumanrights.blogspot.com/2013/11/wrongful-convictions-in-united-states.html
...The Snaggletooth Killer was a myth. Krone’s case showcases a number of popular causes of wrongful convictions, including faulty and/or invalidated forensic evidence, target fixation, evidence suppression, and disparate resources. There are many more, however. Many wrongful convictions can be attributed to erroneous eyewitness identifications, false confessions, snitches, misconduct, and bad lawyering too. Krone was lucky. DNA evidence was eventually available to exonerate him. However, DNA is only available in around 5% of cases. Although DNA cases are certainly not easy to resolve, the other 95% of cases, even if they display a combination of the hallmarks of wrongful convictions, are almost impossibly difficult. Inmates in this bracket of cases are not alone, though.
Exoneree Diaries
http://www.wbez.org/series/exoneree-diaries
"It’s amazing how quick they can destroy your life with a lie." Follow the stories of three Illinois exonerees through their wrongful convictions, releases and struggles to put their lives back together as free men.
Woman sues sheriff for alleged false accusation, damages
http://newportplaintalk.com/story/40031
The lawsuit also alleges that "on or about" Aug. 3, 2012, the defendant (Sheriff) and/or his agents broke into the River Chase Trail residence and "as result of the breaking into the house, the doors were damaged."
It further alleges, "That upon leaving the premises no one secured the doors or otherwise secured the house and outbuildings. That they basically left the building open to anyone who cared to enter the buildings and steal or damage the contents of the structures."
It also states that the property was unprotected from Aug. 3, when agents entered Creveling's residence through Aug. 11. The Complaint alleges "damage to the structures on her property as well as items and fixtures that were stolen from the property."
The Complaint describes the actions of the sheriff and his agents as "wanton, willful and/or grossly negligent."
Stop False Allegations of Domestic Violence
Some recent comments: These messages are published with permission of the signer.
http://www.petition2congress.com/1627/stop-false-allegations-domestic-violence/view/
Story of Wrongful Conviction of Domestic VIolence
http://corruptjusticesystem.com/files/64221244.pdf
Michael Morton - Texas
False Accusations of Domestic Violence
http://www.prisontalk.com/forums/showthread.php?t=27546
"Innocent Until Proven Guilty?" This was not the case on June 26, 2012
http://www.topix.com/forum/city/bellefontaine-oh/T88UKHGCJ6EMACEBE
http://www.newsobserver.com/2013/04/08/2811396/wrongfully-convicted-man-is-free.html
http://www.propublica.org/article/criminal-injustice-the-best-reporting-on-wrongful-convictions
http://abclocal.go.com/wls/story?section=news/local&id=9057249
http://pccactivecases.blogspot.com/
http://www.innocenceproject.org/know/Browse-Profiles.php
http://www.injustice-anywhere.org/FeaturedCases.html
http://www.injustice-anywhere.org/ProfiledCases.html
http://www.injustice-anywhere.org/Freedom.html
http://www.injustice-anywhere.org/DNAExonerationArticles.html
http://www.injustice-anywhere.org/TheExonerated.html
http://wrongfulconvictionsblog.org/category/exonerations/
http://wrongfulconvictionsblog.org/category/freedoms-heroes/
http://wrongfulconvictionsblog.org/category/life-after-exoneration/
http://wrongfulconvictionsblog.org/category/victims-and-victim-issues/
http://victimsoflaw.net/victims.htm
http://victimsoflaw.net/VictimsReview.htm
http://www.victimsofthestate.org/
http://www.injustice-anywhere.org/AdditionalResources.html
http://www.americaswrongfullyconvicted.com/stories_of_the_wronfully_convict.htm
Innocents Database Now Lists 3,640 Cases
http://justicedenied.org/issue/issue_53/innocents_database_jd53.pdf
Registry Finds More Exonerations in 2012
Innocents Database Now Lists More Than 4,400 Cases
February 11, 2014 at 11:48am
The Innocents Database linked to from Justice Denied's website is the world largest database of wrongly convicted people. It now lists 4,401 cases. All the cases are supported by sources for research. Those sources include court decisions, newspaper and magazine articles, and books.
The Innocents Database includes:
582 innocent people sentenced to death.
787 innocent people sentenced to life in prison.
1,663 innocent people convicted of murder were imprisoned an average of 9-1/2 years before their exoneration.
613 innocent people convicted of rape or sexual assault were imprisoned an average of 10 years before their exoneration.
554 innocent people were convicted after a false confession by him or herself or a co-defendant.
293 innocent people were convicted of a crime that never occurred.
165 innocent people were posthumously exonerated by a court or a pardon.
64 innocent people were convicted of a crime when they were in another city, state or country from where the crime occurred.
1,241 innocent people had 1 or more co-defendants. The most innocent co-defendants in any one case was 29, and ten cases had 12 or more co-defendants.
12% of wrongly convicted persons are women.
The average for all exonerated persons is 7-1/2 years imprisonment before their release.
31 is the average age when a person is wrongly convicted.
Cases of innocent people convicted in 109 countries are in the database.
2,527 cases involve a person convicted in the United States.
1,874 cases involve a person convicted in a country other than the U.S.
Innocents Database's homepage:
http://forejustice.org/search_idb.htm
Innocents Database -
January 18, 2015
http://forejustice.org/search_idb.htm
5,139 Cases Currently Listed in the Innocents Database
There are cases from 111 countries.
3,015 cases are from the United States
2,124 cases are from a country other than the U.S.
545 people were sentenced to death.
889 people were sentenced to life in prison.
1,862 people were convicted of a homicide related crime.
806 people were convicted of a sexual assault related crime.
173 people were posthumously exonerated by a court or a pardon.
Update on the National Registry of Exonerations
http://wrongfulconvictionsblog.org/2015/01/13/update-on-the-national-registry-of-exonerations-2/
In case you haven’t been able to check in on the National Registry of Exonerations lately, here’s an excerpt from the most recent data.
Note the total is now up to 1,512, and the trend line is definitely UP.
National Registry of Exonerations: http://www.law.umich.edu/special/exoneration/Pages/about.aspx
Wrongful Conviction Day
Thursday, October 2, 2014
The Association in Defence of the Wrongly Convicted (AIDWYC) to launch the first International Wrongful Conviction Day on October 2, 2014 to highlight the need to prevent and remedy wrongful convictions around the world.
PBS report:
What life after exoneration looks like. http://www.pbs.org/newshour/updates/life-exoneration/
Eight troubling things about death penalty in US
http://www.thestar.com/news/world/2014/12/18/eight_troubling_things_about_death_penalty_in_us.html
Wrongful convictions ... Her 1990 conviction was overturned in 2013 after she spent more than two decades on death row for being convicted ...It costs upwards of $100,000 to hire a lawyer to defend against a murder charge, ...That explains why death rows are populated by poor people who were defended by court-appointed lawyers... Since 1973, 150 inmates on death row have had their names cleared and been set free. Wrongful convictions- That has contributed to an uneasy feeling that many other innocent people have been executed... Gender imbalance: Death rows remain pretty much a men’s club. Last year, Lisa Coleman and Suzanne Basso, both of Texas, were the only women among the 35 Americans executed. Over the past four decades, 1 per cent of the inmates executed were female... In Arizona, Debra Jean Milke was the only woman sentenced to death since 1932. Her 1990 conviction was overturned in 2013 after she spent more than two decades on death row for being convicted of arranging the 1989 murder of her 4-year-old son. An appeals court ruled the prosecution had withheld evidence about how a police detective lied when he said she had confessed the crime to him.
False Confessions:
A Review of 2014
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/steve-drizin/post_8762_b_6323990.html
2014 was a landmark year in false confessions.
Here's my year-end list of highlights: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/steve-drizin/post_8762_b_6323990.html
...2014 will also be remembered as a record-breaking year in terms of the amount of money paid by state and local governments to compensate wrongfully convicted defendants who falsely confessed.
Although no amount of money can make up for losing the prime years of their lives, several defendants settled their lawsuits or won sizeable jury verdicts for their pain and suffering, including the Central Park Five, the Dixmoor Five, David Ranta, Frank Sterling, Martin Tankleff, and Jeffrey Deskovic.
As 2014 draws to a close, my thoughts are with all the innocent men and women who falsely confessed but who must spend yet another Holiday season behind bars. Here's wishing a Happy New Year to you and your families and may 2015 bring you your freedom and some measure of justice.
Eight men tell stories of innocence and fights for compensation
http://graphics.latimes.com/towergraphic-stories-innocence/
They are among the thousands of people who have been imprisoned for crimes they did not commit — robbery, rape, kidnapping and murder. First they had to prove their innocence. Then they fought to be compensated for their time behind bars. Eight men share their stories: ...
Read the story and watch the full video at: http://www.latimes.com/exonerees
Christmas in jail is worse than you can imagine.
Now imagine if you've been wrongfully convicted
http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2014/dec/25/christmas-in-jail-wrongfully-convicted
I spent 16 years in prison, wrongfully convicted at age 17 of murder and rape, despite a negative DNA test. I lost all seven of my appeals, and I was turned down for parole. Finally, at age 32, I was exonerated after further DNA testing that identified the actual perpetrator. Even though I am happy to be spending my ninth straight holiday home free, my thoughts remain with those who are still imprisoned today, for the wrong reasons.
During the holidays, a day in prison was no different for me than every other day: routines, violence, staying alert, verbal abuse by guards, tolerance of abusive guards by their co-workers and the prison administration. For company, I had a variety of other victims of injustice: wrongfully convicted prisoners; non-violent offenders serving an unseemly long sentence; drug users serving life pursuant to still largely unreformed and arcane laws; over-sentenced prisoners whose punishment was grossly disproportionate to the crime; men whose guilt or innocence was unclear but who had not received a fair trial; prisoners whose advanced age and medical condition strongly suggested they should have been released a long time ago; and people who had been denied parole, repeatedly, despite their obvious rehabilitation.
Of course there was no shortage of guilty men in prison on Christmas Day, both the repentant and the non. I hated living around real, cold-blooded prisoners over the holidays, but I had no choice – even though I was innocent, even though I was screaming out so loudly inside my head: I AM NOT SUPPOSED TO BE HERE!!!
... But there are still more innocent people spending the holidays behind bars – people who shouldn’t be – than we can even count. Every time a rogue law enforcement officer or forensic scientist gets identified, hundreds if not thousands of cases get affected, and several of those are bound to be innocent. Every time junk science gets admitted as evidence – bite marks, tire marks, footprints, bullet-lead analysis, hair comparisons, the testimony of a dog with “a good nose” – there is the chance an innocent man will spend Christmas in prison. Coerced false confessions, misidentification, informant testimony, bad lawyering, prosecutorial misconduct – all of these lead to wrongful conviction and remain largely unaddressed by state and federal legislation in the US. I believe 15-20% of the American prison population has been wrongfully convicted and remains unexonerated as of this Christmas Day.
...I still don’t trust the system. And until legislation addressing all the root causes of wrongful conviction gets passed, I never will – and nobody else should either. Merry Christmas.
A Brief History of American Executions
http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2015/06/a-brief-history-of-american-executions/392270
From hanging to lethal injection
Cruel and Unusual
http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2015/06/clayton-lockett-execution/392069
The botched execution of Clayton Lockett—and how capital punishment became so surreal
Lethal Injection 125 STORIES
http://www.nbcnews.com/storyline/lethal-injection
STORYLINE Full coverage of the death penalty and capital punishment in the United States and breaking news about prison inmate executions and lethal injection protocols
No Crime Occurred in 46% of the exonerations last year.
Exonerations hit record high in 2014
http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2015/01/27/exonerations-record-high/22358511/
An unprecedented 125 exonerations were recorded in the USA last year,
...The report linked the law enforcement involvement to the relatively recent emergence of special prosecutorial units that examine convictions based on bad evidence, false testimony, coerced confessions and other breakdowns.
..."I think there is a seachange in the thinking related to the fallibility of the criminal justice system,'' said University of Michigan law professor Samuel Gross, co-founder of the registry. "It turns out that (wrongful conviction) is a much more common problem than everybody realizes.''
...Though the use of biological evidence (DNA) has perhaps gained the most notoriety in exoneration cases, an increasing number are proved with other evidence and in cases where it has been determined no crime was committed. In 46% (58) of the 125 exonerations last year, no crime occurred, according to the report.
...many of them involving questionable police tactics used.
.."People are coming to the understanding that wrongful convictions are not only destroying the lives of people who have been wrongly punished, but they also are undermining the integrity of the criminal justice system,'' said Kings County District Attorney Kenneth Thompson .
..."Everybody knows now that innocent people get locked up,'' Blackburn said. "Prosecutors are figuring out that they need to get on the right side of this.''
Melissa Calusinski: Was a day care worker coerced into a murder confession?
A young Illinois woman is convicted of murder for a toddler in her care. After a nine-hour interrogation and dozens of denials -- is she really guilty? ...But false confessions do happen. The Innocence Project found that more than 60 percent of those convicted of homicide and later exonerated by DNA confessed to crimes they didn't commit -- often after lengthy, intense interviews. ..."People who are innocent often believe ... 'if I can confess to this crime ... down the road, it'll get sorted out, because I didn't do anything wrong,'" ...Melissa continued. "They were puttin' the words in my mouth." "But -- you said it. You're saying they're putting the words in your mouth. You didn't have to say it, did you--" Moriarty pressed. "I didn't. But see, I -- and I didn't know that. I was just -- I mean ...they wanted me to say that ... so that we could all go home," Melissa replied. ...
The Scandal of Our Criminal Justice System:
Innocence Is No Reason to Get Out of Prison
But here is a dirty little secret about the exonerated, some of whom were on death row, some just days away from execution. They were able to prove that they were wrongfully convicted, yet very, very few could show that they were actually innocent. They were—they are—innocent, but in our legal system, that all-important fact is largely beside the point.
A wrongful conviction stems from a fundamental breakdown in the legal process—what the uninitiated like to call a “technical error.” Prosecutors buried crucial evidence, witnesses lied, police coerced false confessions, defense attorneys performed so poorly that they basically failed to advocate at all. These “technical” breakdowns matter because they violate the Constitution, which guarantees all criminal defendants the right to be free from police and prosecutorial abuses, to have access to favorable evidence in the state’s possession, and to have a defense attorney who will fight for their cause.
If you are a wrongfully convicted man or woman in this country, it is extremely difficult—if not outright impossible—to win your case by advancing the simple argument that you are innocent. Sounds crazy, right? But it’s true. The Supreme Court has repeatedly declined to hold that the federal Constitution allows for so-called freestanding claims of innocence, that is, the right to be let out of prison simply because you didn’t do it, without any other “technical” violation to back up your argument. In the United States, the inmate who raises a compelling case of innocence after a constitutionally proper trial may well be doomed.
This judicial perversion started with the Supreme Court’s 1993 decision in Herrera v. Collins, a textbook example of bad facts making bad law....Rehnquist said, rested with the president or the governor of his state,...Entertaining actual innocence claims brought years after the fact were simply too “disruptive” and unfair to the state, which needed to have things settled once and for all....In 1996, things got even harder for convicted prisoners. Congress passed a law declaring that federal courts could not overturn a conviction challenged in habeas corpus petition unless the state court that heard the case first was either “unreasonable” in applying a law that was clearly established by the United States Supreme Court or the state made factual findings that no reasonable person would agree with. ...it has “never held that the Constitution forbids the execution of a convicted defendant who has had a full and fair trial but is later able to convince a habeas court that he is ‘actually innocent.’ ” It was pointless to find Davis innocent because innocence, by itself, was not a legal basis to overturn the conviction....Asked to speak his final words, Davis told the MacPhail family that he grieved for their loss. “But,” he said, “I am innocent.” He continued, “For those about to take my life, may God have mercy on your souls.”...It is an embarrassment—it is a scandal—that no such right exists when we know how often the system gets it wrong. Last year alone, 127 men and women were freed from prison after their convictions were overturned. Because of the way that our system is structured, most fall into the category of the “lucky” ones—lucky because cheating, lying, laziness, or negligence made their legal proceedings grossly unfair.
There are many more still to be freed. The most conservative estimate is that there are somewhere between 10,000 and 20,000 innocent people locked up in the United States today. ...If the execution of an innocent person isn’t cruel and unusual punishment, what is?
Death Penalty Information Center
The Truth Is in the Numbers:
Stop Wrongful Convictions
In 2014, we witnessed a record 125 exonerations. Yet this number doesn't even scratch the surface when it comes to how many wrongfully convicted prisoners are out there. Reuters reports that these exonerations occurred "in part because of efforts by prosecutors willing to admit their offices made mistakes," but as one of many innocent prisoners, I can only read that statement as a half-truth. I'm not saying that there aren't any honest prosecutors who truly seek justice -- I'm saying that exonerations themselves are an indication that prosecutors have already done everything under the sun to obtain and maintain false convictions. Whenever you see multiple "Integrity Units," at work in a prosecutor's office, remember that these units are there because of a lack of integrity among prior prosecutors.
I've had evidence supporting my innocence and corruption claims hidden from me and my lawyers by the district attorney's office for over eighteen years. This evidence includes the first eight pages of the police report filed the night of the crime for which I was convicted, which conflicts with witness testimony at trial. When the prosecution finally turned this report over, eighteen years late, my defense filed amendments to my pending appeal. With this uncovered evidence of my innocence, the prosecution could have done the right thing by releasing me or granting a new trial. Instead, they denied any wrongdoing, turning around and blaming me for not finding the evidence sooner -- evidence they'd hidden from me and my defense. So much for "integrity." Then again, they knew I was innocent for over eighteen years, so it's clear they were never seeking justice in my case, just seeking a conviction by any means necessary. I've been falsely and maliciously prosecuted from day one, when both the evidence and the law were on my side.
The only way to curb wrongful convictions is to hold the people behind them fully accountable. Personally, I feel that crooked police and prosecutors responsible for wrongful convictions should be charged with attempted murder (or in some cases, murder itself). One thing that can never be replaced is lost time. If we held the people handling criminal cases accountable for the lives that they have stolen, it would go a long way towards ensuring honest and fair proceedings going forward.
When I first started to speak out publicly about my nightmare, I was accused of "defaming" a career cop and prosecutor. Yet they are the ones who withheld key evidence for almost two decades and they are the ones continuing to fight my release tooth and nail -- even though they know I'm innocent. Where's the integrity?
I'm one of many prisoners who are completely innocent, but continue to suffer at the hands of prosecutors who represent anything but justice. We are not guilty, so we don't want sympathy. We demand justice from the legal system that has failed us. We call on that judicial system to right our wrongs. Instead of wrongful convictions declining, they are rising to record numbers. As one of many innocent prisoners, I'm asking society not only to pay attention, but to speak to the leaders you've voted into office about how they can curb wrongful convictions.
Lorenzo Johnson served 16 and a half years of a life-without-parole sentence, from 1995 to 2012, when the Third Circuit Federal Court of Appeals ruled there was legally insufficient evidence for his conviction. He remained free for 4 months, after which the US Supreme Court unanimously reinstated the conviction and ordered Lorenzo back to prison to resume the sentence.
With the help of Michael Wiseman, Esq.,
The Jeffrey Deskovic Foundation for Justice http://www.deskovic.org/ ,
The Campaign to Free Lorenzo Johnson http://www.freelorenzojohnson.org/ ,
and others, he is continuing to fight for his freedom. Sign his petition and learn more at: http://www.freelorenzojohnson.org/sign-the-petition.html Email: campaigntofreelorenzojohnson@gmail.com Twitter: @FreeRenz
Why Innocent Defendants Plead Guilty to Rape Charges
The field of wrongful conviction is filled with seeming anomalies: faulty identifications by eye-witnesses, suspects who “confess” to crimes they did not commit, and unreliable testimony from “scientific” experts. As part of our continuing examination of wrongful conviction in rape cases, we have identified another seeming anomaly: innocent defendants who pled guilty to rape....The primary focus of research in wrongful conviction has been on trial characteristics associated with convicting the innocent (false confessions, witness mis-identification, flawed scientific testimony, police and prosecution misconduct, vulnerability of ethnic minority defendants, unreliable informant testimony, and ineffective defense representation). However available data indicate only a small proportion of U.S. criminal cases proceed to trial. Some 90 percent are disposed of by plea bargain. Some defendants who accept these deals are innocent. It has been noted that despite due process guarantees, the U.S. legal system at times functions like an inquisitorial system from arrest, to accusatorial interrogation, to coercive plea bargaining.
Below are some examples culled from our study: ...
Dying vet’s ‘fuck you’ letter to George Bush & Dick Cheney needs to be read by every American
...I write this letter, my last letter, to you, Mr. Bush and Mr. Cheney. I write not because I think you grasp the terrible human and moral consequences of your lies, manipulation and thirst for wealth and power. I write this letter because, before my own death, I want to make it clear that I, and hundreds of thousands of my fellow veterans, along with millions of my fellow citizens, along with hundreds of millions more in Iraq and the Middle East, know fully who you are and what you have done.
You may evade justice but in our eyes you are each guilty of egregious war crimes, of plunder and, finally, of murder, including the murder of thousands of young Americans—my fellow veterans—whose future you stole. Your positions of authority, your millions of dollars of personal wealth, your public relations consultants, your privilege and your power cannot mask the hollowness of your character....
Eight exonerated prisoners on their FIRST WEEK ON THE OUTSIDE.
http://nymag.com/daily/intelligencer/2015/09/8-exonerated-prisoners-first-week-outside.html#
What does it feel like to get out of prison after serving decades for a crime you didn’t commit? Since 1989, 1,655 convictions have been reversed nationwide....These eight men, all of whom were wrongfully convicted of capital crimes, tell stories of their first days of freedom that expose both the depths of what was taken from them and the challenges of rebuilding the lives they once had.
Sindt leaves the bench without regrets
Calhoun County Circuit Court Judge Conrad Sindt is leaving the circuit bench after 24 years.
“You can’t arrest your way out of the drug scourge,” he said. “You can’t incarcerate your way out. There has got to be other solutions. There are so many other elements that we can’t touch like family dysfunction, poor education, unemployment and one parent homes. We can’t handle that. There is nothing that the criminal justice system can do to handle that.”
He said he supports helping people expunge a criminal conviction and also wants the system to allow more cases to continue even after a conviction.
“The law has a line about finality, and I don’t disagree with that, but you can’t lose sight of justice, either. There has to be a balance, and we have to examine the system. Just look at all the evidence of wrongful convictions with DNA testing. Thank God we don’t have the death penalty (in Michigan) because there are too many cases where there is a legitimate question along the way.”
Ian Mulgrew:
Ivan Henry will never experience ‘normalcy’
Ivan Henry remains fearful of police and the justice system after spending 27 years behind bars for crimes he didn’t commit....“I didn’t get old naturally,” Henry told his therapist. Police “stole” almost 30 years of his life and left him “to rot in prison."...Henry remains preoccupied with time lost — not a remembrance of times past, but regret for time unshared — two daughters’ childhoods, the passing of a wife and the death of a beloved mother....
Henry was pronounced a dangerous offender when he was 35 and sentenced to an indefinite prison term on Nov. 23, 1983. He was freed, declared acquitted at 63.
In an 11-page expert report, Nader said Henry emerged from the crucible of prison feeling “dehumanized” by 27 years of strip searches, assaults, being spit on, having his bed defecated on, witnessing people being killed and suicides.
Since his release, the therapist said, Henry has endured panic attacks, depression, insomnia and too often found solace in a cocktail of alcohol, marijuana and Clonazepam.....Henry fears other people are going to hurt him and struggles to trust even his most ardent supporters, including his family and lawyers.
He believes police are out to “entrap him so that they can send him back to prison … driving by his house or parking police cruisers on his street as a way of harassing him …...In terms of prognosis, Nader concluded, Henry will “likely continue to show small improvements ... but that he will always have difficulties with interpersonal relationships, trust, impaired functioning in intimate relationships, fear of the police and fear of the justice system.”....
His younger daughter, 39-year-old Kari Rietze, died in January of a prescription drug overdose. “The loss of his daughter has been a tremendous emotional blow to a man who has already suffered considerable losses in his life,” Nader said.
“Add to it that his daughter was one of his strongest advocates when he was in prison......
Exonerated Man Says Cops Forced Confession
http://www.courthousenews.com/2015/10/01/exonerated-man-says-cops-forced-confession.htm
Small-town police used "lies, deception and threats" to send a man to prison for 17 years for a rape and murder they knew he did not commit, he now claims in court.
Jamie Lee Peterson, a then-22-year-old man with depression and cognitive disabilities, says local and state police officers fed him inside information about the 1996 crime as they coerced his "confession," changing their story when DNA evidence pointed away from him......
Police went on to lie at court hearings and oppose further DNA testing that would have proven Peterson's innocence in 1997, leading to his conviction and life sentence without parole......
Intervention by the Michigan Innocence Clinic and Northwestern Law School's Center on Wrongful Convictions in 2013 won a DNA test using new technology that determined all the semen came from Jason Ryan, an early person of interest in the rape and murder.
Ryan is in custody awaiting charges for the crimes. Peterson's conviction was vacated and he was freed in 2014......
some of the officers named in the lawsuit either are, or were until recently, still working in law enforcement around Kalkaska......
he's doing "okay."
"He's not great, I mean, no one's great when they've spent 17 years in prison, but he's trying to get his life back together,"....
A Second Look:
The Exoneration of Bobby Johnson
Bobby Johnson, was exonerated and released in New Haven Superior Court on Sept. 4 after serving a substantial portion of a 38-year sentence for a murder he did not commit.
...First, this was not a DNA case. While the advent of DNA has been responsible for the now widespread recognition that wrongful convictions occur, in more than 80 percent of criminal cases there is no DNA or other biological evidence available.
...Second, this case arose from false confessions. And not just the false confession of one witness, but of three witnesses, all minors, and each of whom subsequently described the overbearing techniques used in procuring them....66 of 350 DNA exonerations (or 18 percent) involved false confessions. Minors, representing only 10 percent of total DNA exonerations, accounted for 35 percent of the false confessions cases. Notably, in every one of the 66 cases there were signed Miranda waivers, which the prosecutors and courts specifically pointed to in arguing for the supposed reliability of the confessions
...Brandon Garrett indicates, in a startling 94 percent of the false confession cases, the official written confession included "inside" details – i.e., information that was known only to the police and the actual perpetrators, and that these innocent suspects (as later shown by DNA) could not themselves have known.
...Garrett shows that in case after case the interrogating police officers had testified at trial that no information whatsoever had been fed to the defendants. The police testimony, coupled with the "inside" contents of the confessions that the prosecutors repeatedly emphasized in their closing arguments, led judges and appellate courts to repeatedly sustain the creditworthiness of these now demonstrably false confessions.
...Third, Johnson's conviction was the result of a guilty plea. Forty-seven of the 125 exonerations recorded in 2014, or 38 percent, involved guilty pleas
..., Bobby Johnson's exoneration highlights the need for improvement in the process by which we arrest, interrogate, prosecute and convict presumptively innocent people. •
"Sometimes the justice system
can get it wrong"
6,149 Days: The Story of Gregory Taylor
http://www.chargerbulletin.com/2015/10/07/6149-days-the-story-of-gregory-taylor/
“The injustice of a wrongful conviction is the greatest failure of our justice system,”......“I never believed an innocent person could be arrested or denied appeal, realistically it looked then like I would die in prison,”....“I needed someone who would argue for me, so I could get my life back,”.....
30 Years on Death Row
http://www.cbsnews.com/news/30-years-on-death-row-exoneration-60-minutes/
Stroud now admits the cards and the system were stacked against Ford from the beginning: his court-appointed lawyers had never practiced criminal law.
Bill Whitaker: What kind of law did they practice?
Marty Stroud: One individual had general civil practice, and another one did succession, wills and estates.
Bill Whitaker: In a murder trial?
....There was no physical evidence linking Ford to the crime. The main witness incriminating Ford admitted in court she'd been coerced by police to make up her testimony.
...Ford was put in solitary confinement in one of the most infamous lock ups in America: Angola. The maximum-security prison has a well-earned reputation for harsh penalties and harsher conditions. Summer temperatures on death row commonly exceed 104 degrees.
Marty Stroud: Death row, you have maybe a 5x7 foot cell. You're in there every day. You get out one hour a day to walk around and you come back in. You do that day after day, year after year, and that's it. He was basically thrown in to a cell and forgotten.
Ford would become one of the country's longest-serving, death row inmates. Stroud went on to a successful legal career.
Man files Civil Rights lawsuit after wrongful conviction
http://www.cbs46.com/story/30471845/man-files-civil-rights-lawsuit-after-wrongful-conviction
"In 1984, twenty-two-year-old Timothy R. Johnson was wrongfully imprisoned for a crime he did not commit. Over the next twenty-nine years, Johnson languished in the custody of the State of Georgia, first in the Georgia State Prison (Reidsville) and then in the Houston County Jail.
While housed in the Georgia State Prison, Johnson was subjected to inhumane and debilitating lengths of solitary confinement. For over nine years, Johnson lived in a cramped, windowless cell and was deprived of necessary human contact.
During that nine years, prison officers would storm Johnson’s solitary cell and brutally beat him, breaking his bones and his spirit. Johnson remained in this cell until the Supreme Court of Georgia awarded him a retrial in 2006.
"Inexplicably, the Houston County District Attorney took seven years to retry Johnson. While awaiting his retrial, Johnson was moved to the Houston County Jail, where he remained for seven years until a jury acquitted him on December 5, 2013.
A few years into his confinement, Houston County moved Johnson -- without explanation or disciplinary infraction -- to solitary confinement, where he remained for over four and a half more years. Johnson, an innocent man, again lived in a cramped, windowless cell and was deprived of necessary human contact while he was awaiting justice.
"On December 5, 2013, Johnson was acquitted of all charges and eventually left the custody of the Houston County Jail. Finally free, Johnson now brings this civil rights action against the persons and entities responsible for his brutal, unconstitutional treatment."
Farakhan on Donahue Show -
Black and White
Life After Death Row - CBS 60 Minutes
http://www.cbsnews.com/news/60-minutes-life-after-death-row-exoneration/
Three unjustly convicted people who spent years in prison and then were exonerated tell Scott Pelley how they are adjusting to being free
The following is a script from "Life After Death Row" which aired on Jan. 10, 2016. Scott Pelley is the correspondent. Henry Schuster, producer.
About 10 times a month now, an innocent person is freed from an American prison. They're exonerated, sometimes after decades, because of new evidence, new confessions or the forensic science of DNA. There is joy the day that justice arrives, but we wondered, what happens the day after? You're about to meet three people who have returned to life from unjust convictions. ...
Beyond Making A Murderer: 18 more true-life injustices brought to light in pop culture
http://www.avclub.com/article/beyond-making-murderer-18-true-life-injustices-wil-230471
Real-life injustices that have been documented in hopes of raising awareness among the general public. Here are some other infuriating—and compelling—examples: ...
False Confessions Video
Injustice in Alliance, Ohio - The Wrongful Conviction of David Thorne and Joe Wilkes
Wrongfully Convicted & Behind Bars
(Video) Wrongful Conviction
http://www.videondo.com/detail/wrongful-conviction-EcZqp/
The injustice system: part two – 'This could have cleared her'
Tyra Patterson was sentenced to 43 years to life when she was 20 years old, for a murder in which she carried no gun and pulled no trigger, and in which she and her co-defendants insist she played no part.
More in this series:
Chapter 1A tale of two Tyras
Chapter 2'This could have cleared her'
Chapter 3'Time to come home'
Brendan Dassey's Lawyer Recommends These 17 Books On False Confessions
Steven Drizin, the co-founder of the Center on Wrongful Convictions of Youth (CWCY)...
4 False Confessions that Led to Wrongful Convictions
http://www.thisblogrules.com/2016/01/4-false-confessions-led-wrongful-convictions.html
False Accusations Videos
http://lagulu.com/video/false-accusations.html
These 6 Wrongful Convictions In History Will Enrage You On So Many Levels
http://www.viralnova.com/wrongful-convictions/
The Salem Witch Trials, 1692.
Thomas Mooney and Warren K. Billings, the alleged
Preparedness Day Bombers, 1916.
Sacco and Vanzetti, 1921.
The Scottsboro Boys, 1931.
James Joseph Richardson, 1967.
The Kern County child abuse cases, 1980s.
Dateline 48 hours mystery full episodes
2015 Wrongful Conviction
http://pnpco.org/Dateline-48-hours-mystery-full-episodes-2015-Wrongful-Conviction%289Wwp2FcVZxQ%29
Video List from Tube Downloader - Mp3 And Video Files Downloader.
'Making A Murderer': 9 Wrongful Conviction Cases More Shocking Than The Netflix Series
While the world has been gripped by the case of Steven Avery in 'Making a Murderer', the real scale of wrongful convictions in the United States is tragically far larger then one man.
In 2015 alone there were 149 exonerations.
Wrongfully convicted Connecticut man describes prison 'nightmare'
http://news.yahoo.com/wrongfully-convicted-connecticut-man-describes-prison-nightmare-215323252.html
A Connecticut man whose wrongful conviction on rape and murder charges was reversed after 21 years in prison described his ordeal as a "nightmare" ... He said he had been subjected to daily physical and psychological abuse in prisons in Connecticut and Virginia and was "scared every minute I would die in prison." ... "Accusing me of raping and murdering a woman I didn't know and never met was the worst nightmare," Ireland told the hearing. "But I wish it were an actual nightmare ... because then I could have woken up instead of spending 21 years in a tiny cell with the most violent criminals who targeted me because I was a convicted sex offender."
... Ireland's mother, Cherry Cooney, spoke tearfully during the hearing of her son's lost years.
"My son had 21 years of his life taken away that no amount of money can ever replace," Cooney said. "To see your son in prison and watch him suffer and lose all hope he will ever be free is the worst kind of hell imaginable."
... Ireland's attorney, William Bloss, said his client was wrongfully convicted based on the false testimony of a couple who claimed Ireland told them he committed the crime after the state offered a $20,000 reward for information leading to the arrest and conviction of the killer.
Glenn Ford's First Days of Freedom After 30 Years on Death Row
Just before Glenn Ford walked out of prison late Tuesday afternoon, the state of Louisiana—which had wrongfully charged, convicted, and incarcerated him for 30 years—gave him a $20 dollar debit card for his troubles. (As recently as 2011, the state gave only $10 to inmates leaving prison.) When you combine the debit card with the balance in Ford's prison account, the total he received upon his departure from Angola was $20.04. He left, too, with some photographs and with his medicine, all in two small boxes. He left behind his headphones.
It was the first time that Ford had gone outside in seven years. Seven years. Not because he had been placed in solitary confinement, like Herman Wallace, but because prison officials had so restricted the outdoor activities of the men on death row that Ford considered the exercise futile. He is 64 years old now, remember, with bad knees and hypertension. He didn't want to be outside it if meant being outside in a tiny cage, like an animal, without shade.
... conditions of confinement at Angola that are so deplorable and inhumane that they have been declared unconstitutional by the courts.
Imagine going to sleep in 1983 and waking up this week. Imagine going to sleep every night for 30 years in an 8-foot by 10-foot cell and then suddenly sleeping in your own furnished room. Imagine having to ask permission to do anything, to do everything, and then suddenly being free to make your own choices. Today, Glenn Ford is free. Free to succeed and free to fail.
http://wrongfulconvictionsblog.org/2014/03/19/wednesdays-quick-clicks-48/
When lies lead to wrongful convictions
Hadaway says he was pressured by police to plead to a lesser crime and falsely implicate Chaunte Ott in the teenager’s murder. Ott was later exonerated by DNA evidence.
...The DNA evidence, which excluded both Ott and Hadaway as possible contributors, matched a convicted serial killer named Walter Ellis who strangled and killed at least seven women between 1986 and 2007.
...Ott was released in 2009 after serving more than 12 years in prison.
...“It includes a lying snitch, law enforcement that didn’t test DNA evidence and a false confession by a psychologically vulnerable individual,” Natapoff says. “It sums it all up in one terrible bundle.”
...“Perjury or false accusations” were a factor in 17 out of 31 exonerations in Wisconsin since 1989
...criminal informants who are compensated for their cooperation can be used at every stage — from investigation to arrest to trial — and in almost any criminal case.
...incentivized witnesses were a factor in 45 percent of wrongful convictions in death penalty cases nationwide between 1973 and 2005.
Wrongfully Convicted Man Released From Prison After 30 Years
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/12/11/stanley-wrice-wrongfully-convicted_n_4425478.html
"Judge Richard Walsh said Tuesday that two officers had lied about the way they'd treated Wrice, who testified that the officers beat him with a flashlight and a 20-inch piece of rubber. A witness testified that he, too, was beaten by the same officers until he agreed to give false testimony against Wrice at trial."
No new charges for man freed after 34 years on wrongful conviction
In a short statement to the court, Register said: "Thank you for giving me back my freedom." Afterward, he gathered outside the courthouse with a group of family and friends and a gaggle of attorneys and law students who worked on his case. "It's over with," he said, squeezing his mother, Thelma. "Now I just want to move on."
Wrongfully Convicted Grandma Freed after 21 years in prison
http://www.texasmonthly.com/story/wrongfully-convicted-grandma-freed
Doctor who used junk science at Fran Keller's trial: “While my testimony was based on my good faith belief at that time, I now realize my conclusion is not scientifically or medically valid, and that I was mistaken.”
False Accusation of Domestic Violence:
Domestic violence charges dismissed against Cleveland police officer
http://www.cleveland.com/metro/index.ssf/2013/12/domestic_violence_charges_dism.html
Domestic violence charges against a veteran Cleveland police officer were dropped Tuesday after the officer's wife told investigators she lied about the incident.
(Comment: Not only are law enforcement Liars but, so are their spouses. Is she just covering up a real case of domestic violence so he can keep his job in law enforcement, or did she Lie to gain control over him like so many women do who make false accusations of domestic violence?)
I was the victim of police brutality: How I survived my brush with death
I dedicated my breath and my voice to give people like Kelly Thomas the breath and voice that were stolen from him. Then I began to lose the fear.
This Is Where We Take Our Stand
U.S. war vets speak up against war crimes they witnessed committed by the United States during the the Iraq-Afgan war.
A documentary on video about the 2008 Winter Soldier: Iraq and Afghanistan event at the National Labor College in Silver Spring, Md., during which veterans of the Iraq and Afghanistan wars discussed their experiences.
U.S. Veterans reveal some U.S. war crimes from the routine killing of Innocent civilians to the use of weapons in violation of the Geneva Convention.
Many returning vets are given medication for PTSD. The side effects of these drugs can cause severe problems including suicide. Suicide is a major problem in the military. Is there a hidden link between suicide and war crimes? Does the military encourage use of these drugs to help silence returning vets?
Watch the video at:
www.thisiswherewetakeourstand.com
https://www.facebook.com/pages/This-is-Where-We-Take-Our-Stand/99944996505
A Wounded Warrior and honorable service member in the US Army for over 21 years he was falsely convicted of crimes he did not commit to cover up a Unit Commander’s mistake and has now lost everything because of it.
Please help me share his story
#justiceforwilliamruth http://woundedwarriorfalselyconvicted.com/
Disabled Veteran still in jail almost 1 year later for asserting his 4th AMENDMENT RIGHT....
https://www.facebook.com/pages/Justice-for-William-Desmond/330463450475144
NO Warrant.. He said no. They held him hostage for 17 hours and obtained a warrant for assaulting an office.... During the time SWAT was there...
Preston Grant Hawkins Truth and Justice
http://www.preston-grant-hawkins-truth-and-justice.com/
My name is Preston Grant Hawkins. I was only 17 years old when I was incarcerated with a capital life sentence in 1995, even though my case is clearly self-defense. Self-defense cases are considered a high risk for a defendant without proper counsel because they are heavily dependent on presenting all of the facts. By analyzing the facts presented on this website you will see how I was railroaded and quickly forgotten. A lack of sufficient resources and effective assistance from counsel has made proving my innocence an uphill battle. The purpose of this website is to allow people the opportunity to review the facts and hear my side of the story --- undistorted by sensational media, small-town politics, and a pernicious prosecution.
Stories with Petitions
Grant Clemency/Commutation of Sentence for my Father Jack Allen! Unjust Life Sentence!
Grant Clemency To My Son Edwin Walter Rubis, 480 months for marijuana is not justice.
https://www.change.org/p/pardon-my-son-edwin-walter-rubis-480-months-for-marijuana-is-not-justice
...serving a federal sentence of 40 years for a nonviolent marijuana offense.
Exonerate Lawrence McKinney who spent 32 years in prison for a crime he didn't commit.
And it’s that faith that got him through 31 years, nine months, 18 days and 12 hours of a wrongful 100-year sentence in Riverbend Maximum Security Prison. DNA evidence ultimately led a judge to overturn McKinney’s rape and burglary conviction, and he was released in July 2009. But his battle wasn’t over. The struggle to clear his record took another 5 years.
And there’s still one arduous legal step in McKinney’s path to freedom: exoneration. With it will come the final clearing of his name and a chance for compensation for his time spent in prison. Only a governor can exonerate a person, and McKinney’s application for exoneration is currently in Governor Haslam’s hands.
Petition · I AM THE VICTIM OF POLICE AND PROSECUTORIAL MISCONDUCT
On October 5, 2008, I was convicted of a murder I did not commit in an effort by police and prosecutors to protect Justin Davis, son of a Deputy Sheriff from a sizeable prison sentence. Evidence that could prove my innocence recovered by police went missing, evidence that did prove my innocence was distorted or explained away. Misconduct by the police and prosecutors went unchecked and a complete fraud was committed on the justice system, ensuring the wrongful conviction of an innocent man.
Light a candle for my dad.
https://www.change.org/p/my-dad-is-serving-life-without-parole-for-marijuana/u/11643580
To show the parole board that hundreds of thousands of people support my dad being released from prison, we're asking that you light a candle, take a photo of it, and post it on our Facebook page: https://www.facebook.com/FreeJeffMizanskey
If you can't light your own candle, just share this post:
http://on.fb.me/1MNoPct
Thank you again for your support. I'll be sure to let you know how the hearing goes!
Chris
Life without parole for marijuana
Clemency to Jeff Mizanskey:
https://www.change.org/p/my-dad-is-serving-life-without-parole-for-marijuana
Jeff Mizanskey has been in prison for 20 years and has no possibility of parole. For non-violent, marijuana-only offenses
Free Tyra Patterson
https://www.change.org/p/ohio-parole-board-free-tyra-patterson/sign
Tyra Patterson has been wrongfully incarcerated for 19 years, for crimes she did not commit. I was one of the jurors who voted to convict her of a robbery that ended in the shooting death of Michelle Lai in 1994. But new evidence surfaced that shows me the verdict was wrong. Tyra is innocent and Ohio Governor Kasich should take action to release her from prison immediately.
Petitioning United States Congress
Support the Smarter Sentencing Act
https://www.change.org/p/united-states-congress-support-the-smarter-sentencing-act
Incarceration of an individual effects much more than the person in prison. Not only do their spouses and children suffer, but their communities overall. Children whose parent is incarcerated are found to suffer from a wide range of negative behaviors and long lasting symptoms. This includes physical aggression, depression, anxiety, decreased educational performance and an increased involvement in the criminal justice system themselves.
Justice for Zachery Anderson
https://www.change.org/p/justice-for-zachery-anderson/sign
When my son Zach met a girl through an online dating app, she said she was 17 years old and lived about twenty minutes away. The two decided to meet up and had consensual sex. Zach was a typical 19-year-old studying computer science at Community College -- until he found out that the girl had lied about her age and was really 14. Though the girl admitted to lying about her age and even her parents agreed the encounter was completely consensual and that Zach didn't do anything wrong, Zach found himself convicted of fourth-degree criminal sexual conduct charges. He'll now have to be on a sex offender registry for the next 25 years. Please sign our petition to support Zach and say to the Judge, the Prosecutors office and the MDOC that the sentence given here is wrong, harsh, and unfair.
Petitioning THE UNITED STATES DEPARTMENT OF JUSTICE
Take Over The Investigation Into The Death of Sandra Bland From The Waller County, Texas Police Department.
On Monday July 13th 2015 Sandra Bland, a 28 year-old Black woman from the suburbs of Chicago was found dead in a Waller County, Texas jail cell. The circumstances surrounding her death are at best unclear and given known facts, very disturbing.Significantly - one of the other two police officers notices the unidentified pedestrian who was taking the footage and ON CAMERA immediately attempts to intimidate him and make him STOP FILMING. As you know, The Supreme Court just recently upheld the RIGHT of any United States citizen to FILM POLICE on public property (and even in some private properties). The SCOTUS judgment also specifically prohibited police from doing exactly what this police officer was shown on camera to do: attempt to intimidate & stop a private citizen from filming an arrest on public property.
Petitioning United States Department of Justice
Give back Lyndon McLellan's money.
https://www.change.org/p/give-back-lyndon-mclellan-s-money/sign
I’ve spent years of my life running L & M Convenience Mart, a small gas station, restaurant and convenience store in rural Fairmont, North Carolina. I managed to build up a little savings, but then, about a year ago, agents from the IRS came to the store and announced that they had seized everything in my bank account, totaling more than $107,000.
It took me 13 years to earn that money, but it took less than 13 seconds for them to take it away.
I hadn’t done anything wrong, and the IRS never said that I’d committed a crime—much less charged me with one. The reason they took my money was because my niece, who handles my banking, deposited cash receipts from the store in the bank in amounts under $10,000. They called that “structuring.”
Please sign the petition to pardon my dad.
My father has been in prison for nearly 30 years for a crime he didn't commit because the real criminal looked just like him.
The Truth Is in the Numbers: Stop Wrongful Convictions
www.freelorenzojohnson.org/sign-the-petition.html
Sign his petition and learn more .
A felony charge for an 11-year-old with autism?
Pardon Kayleb: An autistic 6th grader unfairly convicted of a felony
https://www.change.org/p/justiceforkayleb-an-autistic-6th-grader-unfairly-convicted-of-a-felony
Kayleb Moon-Robinson is a 6th grader in Virginia on the autism spectrum. During what was a difficult day for him, he kicked a trashcan at his middle school. A school resource officer saw him and filed a disorderly conduct charge in juvenile court against the then 11-year-old boy. Two weeks later, Kayleb was told to wait while other kids left class but disobeyed. When the same officer grabbed Kayleb to bring him to the principal's office, Kayleb says he tried to push away but the officer "slammed me down and then handcuffed me." The officer then charged him with felony assault against a police officer and another charge of disorderly conduct. Unbelievably, this autistic 6th grader was just convicted of both disorderly conduct and felony assault on a police officer.
13 years in prison for 2 joints
https://www.change.org/p/grant-clemency-to-bernard-noble-13-years-for-2-joints
Bernard is a 49-year-old father of seven, who was sentenced to 13.3 years in prison with hard labor and no possibility of parole after being convicted for possession of 2.8 grams of marijuana – the equivalent of two marijuana cigarettes ...
Petitioning Texas Criminal Court of Appeals-
Reverse the Texas Criminal Court of Appeals Suspension of Death Penalty Attorney David Dow and Reinstate Him
Texas based David Dow is one of the best and highly regarded death penalty defense attorneys in the United States. He and his team have represented over 100 death row defendants, many pro bono. Two defendants were innocent and completely exonerated. Twenty defendants sentences were commuted from death to life sentences. Dow founded Texas's oldest Innocence Project, The Innocence Network. Currently he runs the Death Penalty Clinic, staffed by law students, at the University of Houston Law Center where he is also the Cullen Professor. He has dedicated his life to representing prisoners on death row and inspires new generations to do the same. He now needs your help.
The Issue: In January 2015, the Texas Criminal Court of Appeals (CCA) suspended David Dow for a whole year for filing a petition of a stay of execution 30 minutes late, one week before the execution was scheduled. This means he can not represent death row defendants before the Court until early 2016!
The CCA's ruling prevents him from presenting the cases of, at this writing, a dozen death row clients in their courtroom. A 12 month suspension is a draconian punishment that doesn't fit the “crime,” if indeed there even is a crime. It can also have a ripple effect and deter attorneys from working on capital cases. Please sign the petition to the Supreme Court of Texas and ask them to overturn the CCA's ruling and reinstate David Dow. Let them know many eyes are upon them. It is literally a matter of life and death.
Help Me Find Answers to My Husbands Death
Myron Jenkins, was serving eight months in the Federal Detention Center in Miami. Five days before he was released, I was informed that he had died, alone, in his cell. For the last 3 months of his sentence he had been complaining to me and the corrections officers of severe pain due to a fall he suffered in prison. He said he had asked them constantly for medical treatment to alleviate the pain but all he received was Motrin. Had he gotten the medical care he required, I believe he would still be alive today. When the prison system takes custody of someone they are obligated to give that person any and all care they need to keep them healthy. According to Myron, this did not happen. Tell the Justice Department to investigate Myron’s death.
Tamir Rice
My 12-year-old cousin Tamir Rice was tragically shot to death by Cleveland police on November 22, 2014. My family needs your help to make sure that the police officers who killed Tamir don't get away with murder. Tamir was in a local park playing with an airsoft toy gun when someone called 911. The caller said that the gun was “probably fake” and that the person was likely a juvenile, but even so, two police officers rushed to Tamir’s location. The officers jumped out of their car and shot him twice at point-blank range within 1.5 seconds of arriving – we know this because the incident was caught on video. The officers then waited for more than four minutes to treat Tamir with first aid. Tamir died from the gunshots the next day. My family wants justice for our Tamir. We are demanding that the Cuyahoga County prosecutor file criminal charges against the officers who killed Tamir. Please click here to sign our petition.
A $45 apology for 30 years in prison
31 years ago, brothers Henry Lee McCollum and Leon Brown were convicted of a rape and murder they did not commit. Finally, after three decades of incarceration a judge found them innocent and ordered their immediate release. Yet despite all this, Governor Patrick McCrory has yet to grant them a pardon so they can officially strike the conviction from their records and start their lives with a clean slate. DNA testing conclusively proved they were innocent. In fact, it pointed officials to a man who was already serving life in prison for another rape and murder that happened just a month later, and only a short distance away from the original crime. There is no doubt about it, these men were wrongly convicted. When they were finally released from prison 6 months ago, the state gave them $45 dollars each for their trouble and sent them on their way to survive in a world completely different from the one they left in 1983.
Grant Alfred Robinson a new trial
https://www.change.org/p/attorney-general-eric-schneiderman-grant-alfred-robinson-a-new-trial
In 2002, my husband Alfred Robinson was convicted of a crime that he did not commit and sentenced to 33 years to life in jail. The year prior, Alfred testified in a criminal trial in which he had no involvement, but was believed to be an eyewitness. Alfred was given specific instructions by the prosecutor to say that he saw something that he did not see....Over the years, evidence has come out to prove that Alfred did not commit the crime.
My brother was sentenced to 55 years in prison for a nonviolent marijuana offense eleven years ago
https://www.change.org/p/congress-pass-the-justice-safety-valve-act
. The Justice Safety Valve Act would allow judges to sentence a person to less prison time than the mandatory minimum law requires whenever the mandatory minimum sentence is unjust or excessive. ...My brother's judge called the sentence “unjust, cruel, and even irrational.” He's not the only one. There are judges all over the country who oppose mandatory minimum sentencing ...Weldon's judge said, “If he had been an aircraft hijacker, he would have gotten 24 years in prison. If he’d been a terrorist, he would have gotten 20 years in prison. If he was a child rapist, he would have gotten 11 years in prison. And now I’m supposed to give him a 55-year sentence? I mean, that’s just not right.”
Clemency for our father, William Underwood, serving life without parole
https://www.change.org/p/clemency-for-my-father-william-underwood-serving-life-without-parole
It's been over 26 years since our Dad was sentenced to LIFE in prison without the possibility of parole under mandatory minimum sentencing as a first time drug offender. Without clemency from President Obama, he will die there. In 1990, as a first time offender, he was sentenced to 20 years on drug conspiracy charges, and life without parole. He has already completed the concurrent 20-year sentence. Today, the laws that were used against him have all been overturned but, unfortunately, because the laws have not been made retroactive, he remains trapped behind prison walls.
Pass "Bou Bou's Law"
https://www.change.org/p/georgia-state-house-pass-bou-bou-s-law
Last year, with flimsy, falsified evidence, police in Habersham County executed a “no-knock” drug raid on the wrong house -- where they severely injured, disfigured, and nearly killed a baby, Bou Bou Phonesavanh.
Please sign this petition to tell Georgia’s elected leaders that, for the safety of all of Georgia’s families, they should pass Bou Bou’s Law without delay.
Governor Nixon still hasn’t pardoned my dad.
https://www.change.org/p/my-dad-is-serving-life-without-parole-for-marijuana/u/9612061
Feb 10, 2015 — One year ago, I started a petition asking Missouri Governor Jay Nixon to pardon my father, who has spent 21 years in prison for marijuana. Since then, 385,000 people have stood for...
Chris Christie: Grant me a pardon, a mistake shouldn't ruin my future.
https://www.change.org/p/chris-christie-grant-me-a-pardon-a-mistake-shouldn-t-ruin-my-future
I was an armored guard, with plans to be a police officer until I got a felony conviction for having my legally owned service weapon in my glove box.... On September 20th, 2013, I was planning to go to the gun range with a friend, and was in the garage checking my firearm when my 6-year-old sister walked in...so I quickly shoved it into my glove compartment before picking her up and taking her back inside the house....I got in my car, with my gun still in my glove compartment. I was pulled over shortly after for a routine traffic stop....in NJ a loaded weapon must be carried in a locked trunk...I had been charged with weapons possession, a second-degree felony. Instantly my life changed. I was facing a ten year prison sentence...I was horrified by the thought of spending ten years in prison, away from my family, my girlfriend and the dreams that I hoped to one day achieve, so on my lawyer’s recommendation I took a plea of one year probation. But I am still a convicted felon. Now I can't vote, am disqualified from most jobs, and my future has been derailed.
American journalist who has been held without charges in Iranian prison for six months
Please help free my brother.
Last July, the Iranian secret police raided my brother's home and arrested Jason and his wife, Yegi. They took my brother's laptop and notes and threw him in solitary confinement, where he has been ever since. He’s set to stand trial, but they won't say what the charges are. They won't even let Jason see a lawyer.
A fair trial for Adnan
https://www.change.org/p/friends-of-adnan-syed-a-fair-trial-for-adnan
A jury convicted him of first degree murder even though there was not a shred of physical evidence against him. Adnan has been in jail for nearly sixteen years – since the age of 17 – for a murder he did not commit. Adnan was convicted solely because of the testimony of one witness.
Please sign my Change.org petition calling on the Maryland Attorney General not to oppose post-conviction relief or a new trial for Adnan Syed.
wrongful convictions without physical evidence
http://www.thepetitionsite.com/774/002/803/wrongful-convictions-without-physical-evidence/
Because there are people being wrongfully convicted without physical evidence. People are being accused of crimes and being wrongfully convicted with a fixed jury such as a juror that knows a witness and their family members . People being convicted without there being consistent reports that were made throughout investigation, and the conviction based on the prosecutions closing argument. It is wrong to hold people in jail where they are being fed leftover dinners , they go two to three weeks without clean clothes ,and have to live in a cell with 7 other people where there is black mold ,and leaking toilets and sinks.
Children assaulted in adult prison
https://www.change.org/p/pass-the-juvenile-justice-and-delinquency-prevention-act
When juveniles are placed in adult prisons, rather than juvenile facilities, they are five times more likely to be sexually assaulted – often within the first 48 hours of their incarceration. When a 16-year-old Texas boy named Rodney Hulin set a dumpster on fire causing about $500 in damage, he was sentenced to eight years in an adult prison.
In prison he was raped repeatedly by adult inmates – until he used a bed sheet to hang himself in his cell.
That was 1996. And it’s still not uncommon for boys and girls in the juvenile justice system to be placed in facilities near adults, subjecting them to both physical and sexual assaults. That’s why Congress needs to strengthen the Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention Act (JJDPA), a bill that has improved standards for juvenile justice systems around the country, reducing the number of youth who end up in adult prisons.
We started a petition asking Congress to pass the Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention Act.
HELP ACHIEVE JUSTICE FOR ANTHONY MURRAY
https://www.change.org/p/help-achieve-justice-for-anthony-murray
Anthony Murray, freed with the help of the Illinois Innocence Project after serving 14 years in prison, is still paying for a crime he didn’t commit. When Mr. Murray’s conviction was overturned he had a choice of either going through a new trial or taking an Alford Plea -- an option requiring the defendant to plead guilty to a lesser charge. As he approached the courtroom his mother asked him to come home. The plea would allow him to maintain his innocence and walk out of prison by pleading guilty to second-degree murder in exchange for his release. Anthony Murray took the Alford plea, wanting to put his 14 year nightmare behind him and be reunited with his family. Instead, he has found it difficult to rebuild his life and integrate back into his community. The only way to open the door to new opportunities is if he is granted clemency. Please join us in asking the Illinois Governor to grant Anthony Murray clemency and right this continuing injustice.
Many innocent people are forced to take plea deals when it is clear it is likely the best outcome. Although Anthony Murray completed his two years of probation and worked hard to integrated back into society,his life has been full of roadblocks. His criminal record shows he pleaded guilty in 2012 to 2nd degree murder and he hasn’t been able to get his foot into the door of a good career. Union trade and commercial truck driver training programs, to name a couple, have refused him. Even programs designed to help ex-offenders have denied employment to Anthony. UPS and the Chicago Transit Authority denied hiring Anthony through their ex-offenders program due to his “recent” conviction.
Please stand with Anthony by adding your name in support of his clemency petition.
To learn more about Anthony and IIP’s role in his case, go to: http://www.uis.edu/innocenceproject/cases/exonorees/anthonymurray/
John Kerry (Secretary of State):
Free Dr. Stacey Addison!
https://www.change.org/p/john-kerry-secretary-of-state-free-dr-stacey-addison
Dr. Stacey Addison, a Portland, Oregon veterinarian is unjustly imprisoned in the South East Asian country of East Timor. While living her dream of an around the world trip Dr. Addison had the extremely bad luck to share a hired vehicle with a stranger who committed a crime. She has been imprisoned, denied due process and can be held with no charge against her for one year.
Eric H. Holder: Please grant Clemency to my father Antonio Bascaro
https://www.change.org/p/eric-h-holder-please-grant-clemency-to-my-father-antonio-bascaro
My father, Antonio Bascaró has been in prison for over 34 years with no prior criminal record for a non-violent, first-time marijuana-only offense all for helping supply a product that’s legal in a growing number of states.
He is the longest serving marijuana prisoner in the history of the United States. Today he is 80 years old. I lost him to the legal system when I was 12 years old. I hardly remember him outside of that environment. My children barely know him.
This gentle grandfather of 8 spends his days in a wheelchair, mostly by himself, reading newspapers and listening to the news in his cell at a federal prison south of Miami.
He calls me two to three times a week to see how I am doing and staying in touch. I check on his health and we talk about plans for when he gets out hoping that on the next Christmas, birthday or summer we can be together.
My father has paid with his life (and ours) for that one marijuana offense. I think that the time he has served is more than enough punishment. He is not a threat to society and he has a large family waiting for him and ready to help him re-enter it. That’s why I’m asking President Obama to please grant him clemency.
Support Scott Dean -
urge DA Ashley Wright to grant a new trial.
https://www.change.org/p/support-scott-dean-urge-da-ashley-wright-to-grant-a-new-trial
Our daughter accused her father of a crime she has since recanted, yet my husband still sits behind bars. The Augusta area district attorney refuses to grant him a new trial. This is a grave miscarriage of justice and my family is suffering because of it. Our oldest daughter ran away and the second oldest, upset at being left behind, made allegations of abuse against my husband. He was convicted of two counts of child molestation in December of 2011.
Six months later, our daughter told her caseworker that she had lied about the abuse. Finally, in Spring of 2013 she sent letters and testified at a hearing that she had perjured herself. Her caseworker also testified under oath that her office had been aware of the false accusation for over a year and that they were confident that there had been no abuse. Still, they did nothing. Scott's request for a new trial was denied on the basis that our daughter had not been charged with perjury therefore the judge could not award a new trial.
Grant Clemency to John Knock
https://www.change.org/p/grant-clemency-to-john-knock-life-in-prison-for-marijuana
My brother John Knock is a nonviolent first time marijuana offender given two life sentences plus 20 years in a conspiracy case where no marijuana was even found. He’s been behind bars since 1996 and is now 67-years-old. Without clemency from President Obama, that’s where he’ll die.
John was prosecuted for conspiracy in a reverse sting operation in the northern district of Florida. Florida is a state where John had never lived and never worked. He was the last defendant in the case. The witnesses in his case were all government agents and co-operating witnesses testifying for their plea agreement - their testimony was the only evidence against John.
In conspiracy cases defendants can be charged for actions they did not take part in or perhaps had not been aware of. But even if John had participated, life in prison does not fit a first time marijuana offense. John is no threat to society and deserves to live the rest of his life with his family. That’s why I’m asking President Obama to please grant him clemency this year.
My brother has made the best of his time in prison. He’s completed many courses and serves as a mentor helping inmates adjust to incarceration and counseling then on use of time and productivity. He also teaches and develops continuing education classes for inmates.
Please sign my petition asking President Obama to grant my brother John Knock clemency.
Dying on death row
Petitioning Gov. Rick Perry. Let Max Soffar, an innocent man, die at home
https://www.change.org/p/rick-perry-let-max-soffar-an-innocent-man-die-at-home
After serving 34 years on death row for a crime that he did not commit, Max Soffar is suffering the last stages of liver cancer. He only has weeks to live, and should be released so he can die at home with his family and friends....Max’s ordeal began in 1980 when he was arrested for a robbery-murder at a Houston bowling alley. He was 24 years old. After being subjected to three days of aggressive, unrecorded interrogation, police convinced Max to sign a false confession, typed by the police. That false confession is the only piece of evidence linking Max to the crime.
Grant clemency to all federal prisoners sentenced under the 100:1 crack cocaine disparity
Gov. Rick Scott: Grant clemency to Lee Wollard https://www.change.org/p/gov-rick-scott-grant-clemency-to-lee-wollard
Orville (Lee) Wollard is serving a 20 year mandatory minimum sentence for protecting his family against a violent individual in his Florida home by firing a warning shot. Nobody was injured or hit. But unless Governor Rick Scott grants him clemency, Lee will be in prison until he's 73.
Clemency for Roderick Walker - Life for LSD https://www.change.org/p/clemency-for-roderick-walker-life-for-lsd
My best friend, Roderick “Rudd” Walker has been sentenced to spend the rest of his life behind bars - a life sentence without the chance of parole - for the non-violent offense of Conspiracy to Distribute LSD. He was charged with conspiracy because he was never actually found with any LSD. One of the most important things about Rudd's case is that he was never found with any drugs - he was convicted based on the testimony of others, who were themselves bargaining down their own jail time for other crimes by testifying against Rudd.
Clemency for my husband Alvin R. Bass
Temple Hills, District Of Columbia
https://www.change.org/p/clemency-for-my-husband-alvin-r-bass
My name is Deneane R. Bass. I am the wife of Alvin R. Bass, a Federal Bureau of Prisons inmate at the U.S. Penitentiary, “Allenwood” in White Deer, PA. My husband has been in prison for the past 33 years. In August of 1990 while serving a sentence in the D.C. Department of Corrections at Lorton’s Maximum Security Facility, he got himself in trouble. He was caught with a small quantity of drugs 3.1 grams of heroin.
"Ferguson police just executed my unarmed son!"
http://petitions.moveon.org/sign/ferguson-police-just
I write demanding full accountability for the police killing of 18-year-old Michael Brown. On August 9, 2014, a Ferguson police officer racially profiled and fatally shot Michael as the teen stood in the street with his hands in the air. Police subsequently failed to properly notify the family of Michael's death and callously left the young man lying deceased in the street for hours.
Pardon Kerry Max Cook, An Innocent Man I can't get a job because the state of Texas still says I'm a murderer even though DNA evidence proved I'm innocent. I was freed from jail, but I still need a full pardon to start my life again. www.change.org/petitions/pardon-kerry-max-cook-an-innocent-man
Your signature could free my dad
My dad was sentenced to die in prison for a nonviolent drug offense because of harsh mandatory minimum sentencing laws. He has already served 14 years and deserves to be reunited with his family.
https://www.change.org/petitions/my-dad-will-die-in-prison-for-a-nonviolent-drug-offense
Petition update – My brother was sentenced to life without parole for a nonviolent drug offense
There are now over 2 million signatures on Change.org petitions in support of clemency for nonviolent drug offenders like my brother Tim! This is a huge milestone...
Benton could die in prison for using medical marijuana to treat his cancer
Activists from all over Iowa have banded together to call for an end to the meaningless witch hunt against the Mackenzie family in Scott County, Iowa.
Clemency for Vietnam Veteran, Darrell Hayden, life in prison for nonviolent marijuana offenses https://www.change.org/petitions/clemency-for-vietnam-veteran-darrell-hayden-life-in-prison-for-nonviolent-marijuana-offenses
Darrell has been in prison for 16 years and has no possibility of parole for non-violent, marijuana-only offenses, my uncle has been sentenced to die in prison because of a "three strikes" mandatory sentencing policy in the state.
Life in prison for drugs
https://www.change.org/petitions/gov-bobby-jindal-please-sign-dana-jackson-s-pardon-recommendation
7 years in jail for being sexually assaulted by a cop?
https://www.change.org/petitions/freedom-leniency-and-pardon-cecily-mcmillan-now
Justice betrayed! Cecily McMillan is a young woman who was sexually assaulted and then falsely arrested by a NYC police officer! She is a committed social justice advocate with no prior criminal history, yet she was then convicted of assaulting HIM and may be sentenced to seven years in jail?
Gov. Fallin: Help bring my father home.
https://www.change.org/petitions/gov-fallin-help-bring-my-father-home
DA Jana Duty: Stop a life sentence for pot brownies
Your signature could free my dad
https://www.change.org/petitions/my-dad-will-die-in-prison-for-a-nonviolent-drug-offense
My dad was sentenced to die in prison for a nonviolent drug offense because of harsh mandatory minimum sentencing laws. He has already served 14 years and deserves to be reunited with his family.
Judiciary Chief Sadeq Larijani: Stop My Son’s Execution
https://www.change.org/petitions/judiciary-chief-sadeq-larijani-stop-my-son-s-execution
My dad will die in prison
https://www.change.org/petitions/my-dad-is-serving-life-in-prison-for-a-nonviolent-drug-offense
Release U.S.M.C. Sgt. Tahmooressi imprisoned in Mexico.
https://www.change.org/petitions/release-u-s-m-c-sgt-tahmooressi-imprisoned-in-mexico
President of the United States: Clemency for Glenn Early
https://www.change.org/petitions/president-of-the-united-states-clemency-for-glenn-early
Florida Governor: Order a Coroner's Inquest into the Death of Michelle O'Connell
I'm homeless and in college
Petitioning Judge William W. Cadwell: We would like Cyril Smith's appeal reviewed and his request to have the judgment against him reversed due to him being actually and factually innocent.
http://www.change.org/petitions/the-innocence-project-wrongfully-convicted
Comments:
Comment:
What is appalling by reading some of these cases is that the defendant is facing alot of time behind bars if convicted. If convicted the defendant's life is ruined. If the defendant is Innocent it is a big injustice of society to ruin an innocent persons life. Many of these cases involve false accusations from an accuser. Yet when it is determined that the accusation was false, or there was perjury in trial the Liar is not charged with a crime. It is treated as if nothing ever happened. Yet a person's life was almost ruined because of a Liar. That is appalling, and a big injustice. The law should proseute all misconducts in court. The Liars should be charged with making false statements to law enforcement; Perjury; Law enforcement should be charged for falsifying police records; Tampering with evidence; Failure to preserve evidence correctly; and all police misconduct; Prosecuters should be charged for any misconduct on their part; and if judges mis-use their position they also should be held accountable. After all "You" would want justice if it were your life being held by a decision of a court. Maybe if those Liars were punished it may stop alot of Lies in the future, and prevent Innocent people from being falsely punished. I mean the Law is quick to arrest and convict the most ridiculous of cases and punish people, so why not punish the truely Guilty instead of the INNOCENT.
Comment:
It makes me sic to hear these cases where that Doctors wife sits in court and Lie for self gain and revenge. That bitch should be behind bars. Equally sickening is that false claim of rape at ndsu, she gets off Scot Free. No wonder so many people Lie to the Law. Like the saying goes: "Liars Listen To Lies".
Comment:
How would those Liars feel if it were their asses on the line. Those Liars should face the same penalties for Lie-ing as the defendant would be punished for if found guilty by the Lies.
5,630 Cases Currently Listed in the Innocents Database
(5-15-2015)
http://forejustice.org/search_idb.htm
There are cases from 116 countries.
3,370 cases are from the United States
2,260 cases are from a country other than the U.S.
570 Innocent people were sentenced to death.
923 Innocent people were sentenced to life in prison.
U.S. Cases
1989 - 2015:
2,524 = Total
2,233 = Males
286 = Females
5 = Other (Businesses, etc.)
Before 1989:
825 = Total
741 = Males
64 = Females
20 = Other (Businesses, etc.)
NEO wrongfully convicted men demand justice reform
“I was locked up for a total of 27 years, six months and 20 days for a crime I didn’t commit,” Jackson said. “Somebody could just say that I did something and they could just take you and lock you up, find you guilty and imprison you for all them years just that easily." Sailor believes all witness statements need to be recorded, especially in cases where there is no physical or forensic evidence. "I did 15 years for a crime that I didn’t commit, I wasn’t even there, just because some guy said I did something," Sailor said....
Kendall-Corral said innocence claims should no longer be judged by the same county prosecutors office that earned the original conviction, that innocence claims should be sent to another neighboring county prosecutors office to create a more independent evaluation of the claim.... “It's like they don’t care, you know what I’m saying, there’s no urgency in fixing the mistakes, you know what I mean,” Jackson said. "There are too many in jail who are just waiting and waiting for the system to do the right thing."
SLAVE AUCTION MURDERS AN INNOCENT SLAVE IN ITS DEATH CAMPS. TH SLAVE REQUESTED DNA TESTING BUT THE HEAD SLAVE AUCTION SAID NO SO THEY THEY MURDERERD THE SLAVE.
13 YEARS LATER THE DAUGHTER WANTS TO TEST THE DNA BUT THE SLAVE AUCTION REFUSES SAYING ONLY THE DEAD SLAVE CAN REQUEST DNA TO BE TESTED....
State’s position on posthumous DNA test beyond the pale
Of all the preposterous legal situations we’ve read about in recent years, an effort this week to halt a DNA inquiry in a Tennessee execution review might just take the cake.
The case in question is that of Sedley Alley, whom the state executed 13 years ago despite his own request for DNA testing in 2004. Alley had confessed to killing 19-year-old Marine Lance Cpl. Suzanne Collins in Millington in 1985, but he later said the confession was coerced.
According to the Memphis Commercial Appeal, then-Gov. Phil Bredesen ordered a brief delay of Alley’s execution so that Tennessee courts could consider extra testing, which the state Supreme Court ultimately refused.
Alley’s daughter, April, recently petitioned the court for DNA testing after law enforcement officers in St. Louis contacted her attorneys about an alternative suspect. Among her attorneys is Barry Scheck, co-founder of the Innocence Project, a criminal justice reform advocacy organization for the prevention of wrongful conviction. Scheck has argued that a subsequent ruling from Tennessee’s Supreme Court, years after Alley was executed, opened the door for the testing to take place now.
The Associated Press reported that the daughter’s attorneys on Monday argued she should be allowed to petition for the testing on behalf of her father’s estate. The state’s response — in the form of Shelby County Assistant District Attorney General Steve Jones — was in part that the state’s DNA analysis law allows only the person convicted of the crime to request testing.
Sedley Alley is dead. He cannot petition the state for anything — DNA or otherwise. Jones knows that. The court knows that.
The state, of course, does not want Alley’s case reopened. If indeed Tennessee executed an innocent man, the fallout could be both financially and politically volatile.
According to the Innocence Project’s website, DNA has exonerated 367 defendants, including 130 people convicted of murder, since 1989. Among them was Paul House, a Tennessee man who served 22 years on death row before his exoneration via DNA testing in 2009.
Even the staunchest defenders of the death penalty should recognize that the potential for error means that the measure — given its irreversible finality — must be carried out only when all evidence has been exhaustively examined.
It may or may not have been in the Alley case. That’s for the courts to decide on the merits of the petition.
But Jones argued against the daughter’s petition with the position that the estate lacks the necessary standing — only her dead father would have it. Regardless of Alley’s guilt or innocence or the merits of the death penalty itself, the absurdity is mind-boggling.
If the court agrees with Jones, the state of Tennessee could be infinitely protected against post-execution revelations of innocence via DNA.
After 23 years wrongly imprisoned, Ricky Kidd is free — and using his voice
Will Florida Kill an Innocent Man?
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/12/29/opinion/james-dailey-florida-murder.html
For more than three decades, James Dailey, a Vietnam War veteran, has been sitting on Florida’s death row, condemned to die for the brutal 1985 murder of a teenager named Shelly Boggio. In October, a federal judge issued a temporary stay of Mr. Dailey’s execution. As soon as the stay expires, on Monday, Gov. Ron DeSantis can schedule a date to have him put to death. What Florida officials have so far refused to acknowledge — and what is documented in an infuriating in-depth investigation by Pamela Colloff for The New York Times Magazine and ProPublica — is that Mr. Dailey, 73, is almost certainly innocent. In fact, the local authorities in Pinellas County, on Florida’s Gulf Coast, first prosecuted someone else for Ms. Boggio’s murder — a housemate of Mr. Dailey’s named Jack Pearcy. Mr. Pearcy had a history of arrests for violence against women, was the last person to see Ms. Boggio alive and admitted to the police that he stabbed her — not fatally, he claimed.
Mr. Pearcy was found guilty, and the jury sentenced him to life in prison. That should have been the end of the matter, but Ms. Boggio’s murder had convulsed Pinellas County, and prosecutors there faced intense pressure to make sure someone paid the ultimate price for it. That’s where Mr. Dailey comes in. He acknowledged having met Ms. Boggio on the night of her murder, but he denied killing her, and no direct evidence linked him to the crime. So how did he end up on death row? Largely on the word of one man, Paul Skalnik, a jailhouse informant who told a jury in compelling detail how Mr. Dailey had confessed to him. Jailhouse informants are some of the more elusive creatures of the criminal justice system — cycling in and out of jail, always seeming to find themselves in the right place when another inmate decides to unburden himself and confess his crimes to a total stranger. They can help destroy an innocent man’s life, and yet there is virtually no mechanism within the system to hold them, or the prosecutors who quietly use them, accountable....
A Record Man's Crusade
For the past three decades, Jason Flom, the CEO of Lava Records has been fighting to get the wrongfully convicted out of prison. But his goal is to prevent the innocent from ending up in prison in the first place ... 2016, Flom launched a podcast called
Wrongful Conviction With Jason Flom https://www.wrongfulconvictionpodcast.com/
JUST MERCY and Innocence Canada Give Toronto the Chance to ‘Just Listen’ to Stories of Wrongful Conviction
The #JustMercyNOW experience is a continuation of an ongoing partnership between Innocence Canada and Warner Bros. Canada to highlight the presence of wrongful conviction in our country. ...
ABA Groups Death Penalty Representation Project Year-End 2019
Volume XII Issue 3 December 2019
Another close look at the state of the death penalty in America in 2019....
Louisville man paid millions after wrongful murder conviction faces jail again
A Louisville man paid a $7.5 million settlement by the city of Louisville after a wrongful murder conviction faces jail time again...."F your money," Porter said. "Money ain't my problem, surviving and living to see tomorrow is my problem. There's no such thing as a normal life after a wrongful conviction." The case stems from a call Porter made to 911 on Nov. 30. to report an unwanted guest in his home. "She stole money," Porter said he told the dispatcher. "She stole credit cards, she stole my phone. Get here as fast as ya'll can."
Porter says that woman was never arrested. Instead, police took him to jail for possession of a firearm by a convicted felon. Though exonerated for the murder of Tyrone Camp and paid a settlement by the city for the wrongful conviction, Porter still has other felonies — albeit non-violent — on his record from the mid 1990s. Court records say police found 15 guns in his home and at least one of them had been reported stolen. "The people who are trying to have me murdered have well over 15 guns, hand grenades and everything else," Porter said. "LMPD knows why my life is in jeopardy. The federal courts know why my life is in jeopardy. The streets know why my life is in jeopardy." Porter spent 11 years behind bars for Camp's murder and has long said Camp's real killers wanted him dead after his name was cleared. ...
Life on the outside: Indiana exonerees face challenges after wrongful convictions
The videos are emotionally gripping. Men and women once confined to prison for crimes they did not commit, released into the arms of loved ones...."I'll never forget it," she said.
New evidence proved there was no crime. A fabricated report from the Bureau of Alcohol Tobacco and Firearms (ATF) had been used to help convict Bunch. The report said accelerants were found in Tony's bedroom, when original reports showed there were no accelerants. ...While the information helped Bunch prove her case and win her freedom, nothing prepared her for life outside prison walls. Just days after her release she found herself feeling lost and distraught. "I just have to figure out if I can do this, (if I) can I make it? Can I live after everything that's happened?" she remembered thinking to herself....
Man wrongfully convicted in 1990 murder released from prison after 19 years
https://abc7chicago.com/wrongfully-convicted-man-released-from-prison-after-19-years-/5889462/
James Fletcher walked out of the Stateville Correctional Center in Joliet 19 years after he was wrongfully convicted of murder. A judge vacated his conviction Wednesday morning after a request to do so by the Cook County state's attorney....Fletcher's attorney, Jennifer Blagg, explained that the witnesses connected to a murder in 1990 were coerced by detectives to choose Fletcher in photos. Blagg represents others who were wrongfully convicted.... "They've got to fix this system, man. This system is broken.There's still a lot of innocent people that I had to leave back there, and you know, that kind of bothered me," Fletcher said....
Expensive, impractical, ineffective: The case against capital punishment in Ohio
The only reason left for execution is vengeance, which is not an element of justice or the proper business of the state.
THE STORY HOW ZIMMERMAN GUNNED DOWN AN INNOCENT BLACK CHILD FOR THE SOLE PURPOSE HE IS A GUN TOTING WHITE SUPREMACIST RACIST...
George Zimmerman Sues For $100 Million After Plot Exposed That Prose-cutors Used Fake Witness To Frame Him As Mur-derer In Trayvon Mar-tin’s Death
http://justicedenied.org/issue/issue_77/jd_issue_77.pdf
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Wrongful Conviction Podcasts
Based on the files of the lawyers who freed them, Wrongful Conviction features interviews with men and women who have spent decades in prison for crimes they did not commit – some of them had even been sentenced to death. These are their stories....
MASTA HO IS ALWAYS THE DV HOLOCAUST VICTIM. THIS IS TO PREVENT DISCOURAGING ACTUAL HO VICTIMS REPORTING ACTUAL CRIMES. THIS STRATEGY IS USED IN USA's WARS WHERE USA KILLS 60% TO 90% INNOCENT CIVILIANS IN COLLATERAL DAMAGE, AND 50% TO 90% OF ITS OWN TROOPS AND ALLIES IN FRIENDLY FIRE....
Looking Back: When People File False Police Reports
https://www.davisvanguard.org/2020/09/looking-back-when-people-file-false-police-reports/
Being falsely charged with any crime, particularly rape or any other sex offense, has many different implications and effects even after the charges are either dismissed, an acquittal is obtained, or an exoneration following conviction is secured. Reputations are damaged, names are tarnished, and futures are often unalterably changed. There will be some people who wonder whether the boys really were innocent, either openly or on a level of private thoughts within their own mind. That has both economic and social implications....
As Stalin Felipe said, “Our names were tarnished. We were rapists, we were dirt, we were dogs.”
I have written before about the subject of the role of the media in setting the stage for wrongful convictions. In that article, which is available online in my website JeffreyDeskovicSpeaks.org in the articles Jeff Wrote section, entitled “The Role Of The Media”, I referenced the Duke lacrosse players, who were crucified in the newspapers for about one year, until it came out that they had been falsely charged as well.
In many other wrongful conviction cases, it has come out, that rather than the media objectively reporting on the case, the articles are guilt presumptive oriented. It is clear, based upon many articles that I came across that were guilt presumptive, that this phenomenon continues to be a problem. Police press releases should not be taken to be absolutely true, and the word “alleged” needs to be used more....
This story has raised the issue of whether the woman who filed the false charges should be charged. There is reportedly a debate within the District Attorney’s Office about whether she should be charged, because after all, the filing of false charges is itself a crime.
On the other hand, there is concern that doing so will hinder other women who falsely file charges from coming forward, out of fear of being arrested, so that the end result will be that she sticks with the charges and people possibly could be wrongfully convicted. There is the additional concern that real rape victims could be discouraged from coming forward....
Her Lawyers Say She Was Coerced To Plead Guilty To A Crime That Never Happened
https://theappeal.org/coerced-confessions-death-penalty-wrongful-convictions/
Accused of shaking a baby to death and facing the death penalty, Amy Wilkerson says she is innocent, but pleaded guilty to spare her life....
Orange County Forensic History: The Man That Was Freed Thanks To Science
https://patch.com/california/alisoviejo/orange-county-forensic-history-man-was-freed-thanks-science
For 16 years, Kevin Green maintained he didn't do it.
It was someone else, he said, who had entered his pregnant wife's bedroom in 1979, bludgeoned her into a coma, killing the couple's unborn daughter.
When Green's wife, Dianna D'Aiello, recovered from her coma, albeit with significant memory loss, she testified in the case that helped convict her husband of attempted murder and second-degree murder for the death of their unborn child. Green was sentenced in 1980 to 15-years-to-life in prison.
Around the time D'Aiello was attacked, several other women in Orange County were sexually assaulted and brutally murdered by an assailant investigators called "The Bedroom Basher." At the time, however, the cases weren't linked and the murders in Tustin and Costa Mesa eventually ran cold.
Investigators with the Tustin and Costa Mesa continued to work the unsolved murders and, in the 1990s, learned of a new technology for genetic testing knows as Short Tandem Repeats (STR), a type of DNA analysis effective for identifying individuals. At the time, the Orange County Crime Lab was one of only three labs in the nation capable of this type of analysis.
Tustin PD and Costa Mesa PD investigators submitted DNA from the Bedroom Basher murders and the STR method was used to match DNA of convicted individuals through a computer database called CODIS (Combine DNA Index System).
They got multiple hits.
Forensic scientists matched the DNA from the Bedroom Basher murders to Gerald Parker, who was in custody for sexually assault a 13-year-old girl in Tustin.
Gerald Parker, a former Marine assigned to the El Toro Marine Corps Air Station in Irvine, confessed to attacking D'Aiello and murdering five other women in Orange County.
He was convicted in 1998 and sentenced to death in 1999. He remains on Death Row at San Quentin State Prison today.
Kevin Green was exonerated and was awarded $620,000 in restitution for his wrongful conviction and prison sentence.
2 Men file $160M wrongful conviction lawsuit against Inkster police
Wrongfully convicted of murder and imprisoned for nearly 18 years, two men — George Clark and Kevin Harrington — filed a $160 million federal lawsuit this week against two former Inkster detectives and the city....Tuesday in their Novi attorney's office, both men talked about their long prison ordeal, the toll it took on them and how they tried to cope and maintain their sense of moral clarity....
Looking Back: Mental Games I Played to Survive Wrongful Imprisonment | Davis Vanguard
Mental Gymnastics
There was always more than one dynamic in play at any given moment. Often, a variety of defense mechanisms were going on simultaneously. Looking back, I can say that with everything going on, in many ways I did a lot of my “living” within my own mind. There was always a part of me that was aware of what was going on. My life was a living hell. I was constantly fighting to keep it together mentally, and having frequent battles with depression, frustration, loneliness, and suicidal ideation. There even reached a point where it was a struggle simply not to give up. I very nearly did not make it....
For 25 Years, Jimmy Dennis Was a Death-Row Convict. Then One Day, He Wasn’t.
https://www.phillymag.com/news/2021/02/06/jimmy-dennis-musician-death-row/
The Philadelphia musician spent the prime of his life in prison for murder, until the courts said he should never have been convicted. Now he’s trying to recover what he lost — time, relationships, his sense of self — while living through a new kind of lockdown.... Twenty-five years on death row prepared Dennis to keep his circle small....
He does regular virtual sessions with a therapist who’s been helping him with the post-traumatic stress disorder that makes it difficult to sleep....“Because of my PTSD, I have panic and anxiety attacks often. A lot of the stuff that I was already dealing with, this has heightened it.”...
In the court of public opinion, Dennis was a heartless, brazen killer. Behind bars, he faced attacks and threats from guards and prisoners alike. “I had already been through some horrible ordeals,” he recalls. “I was being jumped, and I had to defend myself. And then I was being taken to court. The spotlight was on me for something I didn’t do.”...
Though there was no physical evidence, no DNA evidence, no weapon, and no known connection between Dennis and the victim, a jury found him guilty of first-degree murder.... The goal of death row isn’t rehabilitation — it’s suffering....
U.S. District Court Judge Anita B. Brody, who reviewed the case and in 2013 wrote a legal opinion overturning his conviction. In her ruling, Brody cited myriad flaws in both the case against Dennis and his defense, calling the whole affair “a grave miscarriage of justice.” Brody noted problems with the prosecution — including that it relied on “shaky eyewitness identifications,” “covered up evidence that pointed away from Dennis,” and ignored Dennis’s alibi — concluding that Dennis’s prosecution “was based on scant evidence at best.” She also cited issues with Dennis’s defense, highlighting his counsel’s failure to interview a single eyewitness in finding that the attorney “provided only a bare minimum defense.”...
Pete Coones, exonerated in Kansas City, Kansas, murder, dies after 108 days of freedom
https://www.kansascity.com/news/local/crime/article249417185.html
Olin “Pete” Coones Jr., who spent more than 12 years in prison before he was exonerated of murder 108 days ago in Kansas City, Kansas, died Sunday, his attorneys said. He was 64. Coones’ death comes three and a half months after his 2009 murder conviction was vacated by a Wyandotte County judge. While he was a free man, Coones was released “in a body that was broken,” his lawyers said in a statement.
“Though Pete was no longer imprisoned, his death — like his unjust conviction — is the result of continued state neglect and mistreatment,” said his attorneys at the Midwest Innocence Project and law firm Morgan Pilate. “The evidence suggests that he ultimately succumbed to health conditions that went undiagnosed and untreated during his time in prison.” Coones for years pleaded his innocence to anyone who would listen. He was freed after his attorneys argued he was framed in the 2008 deaths of Kathleen and Carl Schroll. They asserted the shooting was actually a murder-suicide carried out by Kathleen.
After hearing that evidence during a days-long proceeding, Judge Bill Klapper determined Coones’ trial had been marred by prosecutorial misconduct. The Wyandotte County District Attorney’s Office then moved to drop the charges against him. No physical evidence tied Coones to the crime. At trial, his daughter confirmed he was at home in the hours around the shooting. Investigators had failed to find crucial physical evidence at the crime scene, and Wyandotte County prosecutors later turned to an unreliable jailhouse informant. They hid and “manufactured” evidence to convict Coones, his lawyers said Sunday. “His life was stolen because his innocence did not matter,” they said....
Looking Back: Doing Hard Time – Part One | Davis Vanguard
https://www.davisvanguard.org/2021/02/looking-back-doing-hard-time-part-one/
I was stunned when the jury returned the verdict of, “Guilty.” The courtroom began spinning and time stood still, and I felt, that I was in Fantasyland....“The defendant is remanded to the County Jail for sentencing,”...I sat in shock and disbelief. A court officer walked by and sensed that I was going through something mentally....
Sitting in the bus just outside of the gate waiting to go into “Downstate”, which is a reception center where all prisoners must go to be processed before being sent to various prisons, I was frightened....The guards knew that being in a new environment for the first time made the prisoners feel fearful, shell-shocked and disoriented, and therefore easily alarmed. They purposely yelled a lot and acted menacingly, playing off of our fears, knowing what effect this would have....
There was plenty of violence in prison. Fights were common, as were stabbings and cuttings with homemade weapons....When an inmate has to defend himself, the incident is handled much the same way as a school-yard fight is. Both parties get into trouble for “fighting”....There were several times when I had to defend myself and got into trouble for it.
I Spent 22 Years in Solitary Confinement. Then I Didn’t Want to Leave
https://www.themarshallproject.org/2019/05/30/i-developed-agoraphobia-in-prison
Other views: Senate Bill 499 should become law
For over six years of my life, I was wrongfully incarcerated in an Oregon prison. I was convicted in Malheur County of a crime I did not commit and falsely labeled as having abused my own child. I was living a nightmare, but I couldn’t wake up.
Last year, Gov. Kate Brown granted me a pardon on the grounds of my innocence, the first time she has issued a pardon on that basis. I no longer carry the labels of “felon” or “sex offender” but the problems stemming from my wrongful conviction are far from over.
Due to my conviction, I lost the good career I had in the military and can’t go back to it. I am a combat veteran who served my country in Afghanistan, but that didn’t count for anything when the state took everything from me and sent me to prison.
Since returning to the community, I have spent thousands of dollars on polygraph tests, which my parole officer repeatedly forced me to take, assuming I was lying when I said I was innocent.
The greatest loss, though, was time with my daughters while they were growing up. During my time in prison, I was not allowed to see or talk to them at any time. I wasn’t even allowed to send them a letter.
Trying to overcome all of this has been a tremendous struggle for me and my family. The stigma of my wrongful conviction is such that every time I meet someone new, I have had to worry about what they are thinking about me. I have had to try to find words to explain that I’m not who my conviction said I was.
I’m free now, and my innocence has been recognized, but I’m still trying to rebuild my life. I had to start over when I got out of prison and the challenges I face have not come to an end just because I no longer have the wrongful conviction on my record....
Father of three seeks FG's intervention over wrongful incarceration
https://www.newtelegraphng.com/father-of-three-seeks-fgs-intervention-over-wrongful-incarceration-2/
“The judge, EFCC, company’s lawyer and my boss made me to carry the cross of Captain Samuel Adebanji Agbebi. I was convicted together with the crew for 10 years imprisonment, vessel and fund in bank accounts forfeited to federal government....
“From all indications, I am an unfortunate victim set up to take the fall for an offence I knew nothing about and in respect of which I got no benefit. It was too late before I discovered I was being used as bait by a boss I was so loyal to.
Captain Samuel Adebanji Agbabi who was in the know of the activities of the vessel and who got all the benefits of the operations of the vessel has not been arrested or prosecuted and he is walking about, a free man”...
The injustice of convicting innocent people
When we hear of innocent persons found guilty of crimes they did not commit, we have more conversations about criminal justice reform. Mr. Curtis Crosland, who was convicted of murder, is one of those innocent persons. He was incarcerated for 34 years, then released on June 24. He was not released for time served; he was exonerated. Mr. Crosland, of Philadelphia, spent 34 of his 60 years — locked up for a crime he did not commit.
The witnesses that testified against Mr. Crosland did not witness the crime. They were police informants. The informants were coerced by the police and threatened with harm to family members and jail if they did not testify. One witness gave false testimony in another homicide case. There were actual eyewitnesses to the crime, three that said Mr. Crosland was not the killer, and one that identified another subject. The evidence to clear Mr. Crosland was in the police file and suppressed by the investigators....
The Long Recovery After a Spouse Gets Out of Prison
PTSD in the formerly incarcerated has been widely studied. But what follows the “vicarious imprisonment” of their free-world romantic partners?...
The effects of PTSD in released prisoners have been widely studied. A 2013 paper in The International Journal of Law and Psychiatry found “a discrete subtype of PTSD that results from long-term imprisonment,” involving symptoms such as distressing dreams, sleep disturbances aligned with the schedules of prison, and emotional numbing...
But the enormous effects of incarceration on a prisoner’s romantic partner are less understood. ...Women who are connected to the criminal-justice system through their romantic relationship can exhibit symptoms of trauma, depression, and withdrawal that become their own kind of punishment. They may experience “social loss”...
Looking Back: Two Unusual Wrongful Conviction Twists | Davis Vanguard
https://www.davisvanguard.org/2021/08/looking-back-two-unusual-wrongful-conviction-twists/
Just when I thought that I had seen it all, as a result of which every news item would essentially be just another example or variation of a theme, I came across two most unusual items: a mentally retarded man, adjudicated incompetent to stand trial, served 14 years in a mental hospital before the charges were dismissed, and a man who was exonerated following 17 years in prison who now owes $55,500 in back child support....
ts....
HOW BAD ARE THE AMERICAN CONCENTRATION CAMPS?
SO BAD THAT EVEN THE SLAVE AUCTION IS CATCHING TYPHUS FROM THE PO'LICE...
‘Absolutely terrifying’: Deputy city attorney says she contracted Typhus
https://www.latimes.com/local/lanow/la-me-ln-city-hall-typhus-20190209-story.html
typhus. “It was absolutely terrifying,” Greenwood said, describing symptoms that included a 102-degree fever, “the worst headache I have ever had in my life,” and dizziness so severe that she needed help walking to the bathroom. Greenwood’s experience — and her willingness to speak publicly about it — was a driving factor in this week’s admission by city officials that Los Angeles’ iconic seat of government is infested with vermin....
Despite Innocence, over 95% of all defendants are forced to plead guilty rather than go to trial....
Plea deals are Catch-22 for those like Tucson man who claims wrongful conviction
A black Arizona teenager went to prison in the 1970s to serve a life sentence for a fatal fire he has always claimed he didn’t start. In 2013, experts using new science technology determined that the Tucson Pioneer Hotel fire that killed 29 people may not have even been arson. That same year, after spending 42 years in prison, Louis Taylor was freed at age 59....
The project hired fire experts from across the country to review the Fire Department’s findings. They concluded the fire was caused by the effects of flashover and had one point of origin, unlike what original investigators said. The trial expert for the defense, Marshall Smyth, also based his opinions on flashover and said the cause should be classified as undetermined, according to court records. ...
Pima County offered a plea agreement.... By taking the plea agreement, Taylor's original convictions were vacated. He plead no contest to the 28 counts, was resentenced to time served, and then released. ... there is a deeper problem: systemic injustice.
“Louis’ case had a lot of intentional misconduct by the police and by the county attorney,”...
Pleading no contest means that a person is not admitting that they are guilty — but it also means they still have a criminal record. Across the country, many people who are wrongfully convicted have accepted plea agreements in order to be released from prison. Many of these agreements can be considered “Alford pleas,” named after Henry Alford. ...
Alford was a North Carolina man charged with first-degree murder. He was offered a plea agreement if he plead guilty to second-degree murder. However, he maintained his innocence and said he only agreed to plead guilty to avoid the death penalty....
IN THE UNITED SLAVES THE CORRUPT LEGAL SYSTEM DOES NOT HAVE TO REIMBURSE AN INNOCENT SLAVE FOR CRIMES COMMITTED BY THE LEGAL SYSTEM IF THE SLAVE HAS ANY 2 PRIOR CONVCITIONS OR 1 VIOLENT FELONY.
NO WONDER SLAVE AUCTIONS WANT EVERYONE CONVICTED FOR ANYTHING REGARDLESS OF INNOCENCE. IT LETS THEMSELVES OFF THE HOOK FOR THEIR OWN CRIMES, AS WELL AS ALLOWS THE LEGAL CRIMINALS TO STEAL PROPERTY BELONGING TO SLAVES.....
Jacksonville men exonerated after 43 years in prison file compensation claims
Two men whose convictions were overturned after serving longer prison sentences than any prior exoneree in Florida history are now seeking compensation for the time they spent behind bars for a murder they didn’t commit.
In March, Clifford Williams and Nathan Myers were released from prison after a State Attorney’s Office investigation found there was no evidence the men could have committed the 1976 murder of Jeanette Williams of which they’d been convicted. Instead, the investigation found significant evidence pointing to their innocence.
Despite spending 43 years in prison, only Myers qualifies for compensation under the state’s Victims of Wrongful Incarceration Compensation Act. The act limits compensation to people who don’t have violent felony convictions or don’t have two or more convictions. Myers had no prior convictions and one conviction while he was in prison. He qualifies for payment, but Williams had two convictions and doesn’t qualify....
It’s like you're looking at somebody else but it's yourself,” said Corey Atchison.
after nearly 30 years behind bars released last week after being wrongfully convicted
"I never committed a crime,"..."If the state could give me all the world's gold, it would never replace what I've been through." ... "The public should know about what really happened. I didn't get away from a crime, I never committed the crime, that's the stark difference."... "The reality is we weren't getting away with a crime. There are people in jail that are innocent," ..."they should get the chance for their matters to be re-tried."
After 12 years of wrongful imprisonment Faruk Orman
Bronx man's name cleared decades after wrongful conviction in mother's murder2:06
https://funny-video-online.com/watch/35e3j3e434k4x2x5c344r4.html
The wrongful conviction of David Milgaard
https://funny-video-online.com/watch/35j4a4l416s37374l4j5j4.html
Man serves six months after pleading guilty to crime he couldn't have committed
Richard Joseph Catcheway pleaded guilty to a crime he couldn't have committed.
The 32-year-old indigenous man was in jail in Brandon at the time the offences occurred in Winnipeg in March 2017. Still, he wrongfully served more than six months in jail for breaking into a house before anyone realized the mistake....
Innocent West Monroe man celebrates his independence day after 41 years in prison
New DNA evidence proves they were all right and he was innocent all this time.
"I was hoping and praying that the Lord spares my life to let me see him come home and he did. And, I was so happy. I'm still happy," Susie Manning, his mother said.
His wrongful conviction took away so much he said. It took things like his opportunity to have a family of his own even graduate high school.
Reporter: "So, you didn't get you senior homecoming?"
Manning: "No"
Reporter: "Can you say that this is your senior homecoming?"
Manning: "This is greater. Family and friends, it doesn't get any better."
Though he can't get all that time back, he said he's not wasting any of his free time.
"I don't feel like I got cheated. If I can help somebody else' child that makes me feel good," Manning said.
Manning plans on spending the rest of his life educating others about his story and how not to end up behind bars for something you didn't do.
His word of advice, speak up.
Illinois inmate out of prison after decades in solitary
https://www.bnd.com/news/local/article217921700.html
As a teenager, Anthony Gay robbed a fellow teen of his hat and a dollar bill, which landed Gay in prison.
His prison odyssey spanned 24 years, during which he was locked in solitary confinement in Illinois prisons for 22 to 23 hours a day, cut and slashed parts of his own body more than 500 times in protest, was strapped naked to metal bed frames without food, and, on a grim day in 2010 during what court records state was extreme mental delirium, sliced off part of his testicle and tied it to a cell door.
Ten days ago, Gay, now 44, woke up in solitary in the prison’s mental unit. In the space of minutes, he was escorted out of his cell at the Dixon Correctional Center by a three-man “extraction team” to a dressing room, where he got out of his yellow jumpsuit and into civilian clothes. A short walk followed until he reached a final door. Then freedom.
“I felt alive again. I couldn’t believe it,” said Gay, who met his sister in the parking lot. “It’s good to be home.”...
Eastern Shore author to present true story of wrongful conviction in Frederick on Monday
After serving eight years in a Maryland prison for a murder he didn’t commit, Eastern Shore resident Kirk Bloodsworth was released and pardoned in 1993. New testing tools led Bloodsworth to become the first convicted death row inmate to be exonerated by DNA evidence. The case set the stage for thousands of wrongfully convicted Americans to seek and achieve exonerations of their own....
“I try to look at this whole story from the perspective of the investigators and how these very experienced people pointed to the wrong man. They became absolutely convinced that this innocent person was guilty of horrific crimes,” Junkin said. “One of the things that happened in this story is the authorities relied on things that were not hard science, like psychological profiles and composite drawings, and intuition. When you get away from hard science and following the actual facts, and start relying on things that are squishy, you run into real trouble. In this case, it led to catastrophe.”
Although his book was published in 2004, he said, it raises important questions about the U.S. criminal justice system.
“There have been 1,500 people from death row, and thousands of felons who weren’t on death row, exonerated,” Junkin said. “We have a major catastrophe in our criminal justice system right now.”...
Keystone Crossroads : No justice for all: Pennsylvania’s unequal access to adequate public defense : Courts & Law:
Crystal Weimer’s nightmare began in 2004, when she was arrested for a crime she didn’t commit. “When you go to jail, your whole family goes to jail,” Weimer said. “It’s just like a ripple effect — it’s just not you.” She was charged with the murder of Curtis Haith, a 21-year-old who dreamed of becoming a chef. Haith was shot in the face and beaten to death in front of his home in Fayette County, about 50 miles south of Pittsburgh. Weimer, a single mom of three young girls, couldn’t afford the $50,000 it would have cost her to hire a private attorney. So she turned instead to her only other option for counsel, the Fayette County Office of the Public Defender. As Weimer later learned, defendants in Pennsylvania who take that option often have the odds stacked against them. A months-long investigation by Keystone Crossroads found an inequitable, heavily burdened, patchwork system that leaves Pennsylvania’s most vulnerable residents at the mercy of county governments that receive zero higher oversight. Under the U.S. Constitution, if you’re charged with a crime and unable to hire an attorney, the sixth amendment ensures your right to an adequate defense....
Weimer didn’t take a plea – and then sat in jail awaiting trial for two years.
“Two years! Two years before I went to court. Before I did anything!” she said. “They call Fayette County [Prison] ‘Fayettenam’ because it’s like Vietnam. It’s so horrible there. They had me stuck in a basement. The living conditions were unacceptable.” ...
These Are Some Of The Most Heartbreaking Wrongful Conviction Stories Ever
Thanks to DNA testing and better forensic science, many people who were wrongfully convicted are getting set free. This article tells the stories of some of the most devastating wrongfully convicted people of all time....
Exonerated from death row, freedom is a 'beautiful dream' for Clemente Aguirre-Jarquin
The former death-row inmate, who was exonerated earlier this month after spending 14 years behind bars for two murders that someone else confessed to...
That chair is Aguirre-Jarquin’s sanctuary. He avoids crowds because he says he’s afraid of being once again accused of something he didn’t do. ...
“I try to be invisible,” he said. “ I don’t want to be accused of nothing.”...
But after he was convicted, sentenced to die and sent to state prison, things changed. He says the guards beat him because they thought he was only pretending not to understand their instructions.
“They emasculate you, they degrade you, and they punish you because they think you’re acting that you don’t speak English,” Aguirre-Jarquin said. “I really didn’t.”...
He blames his original lawyer for doing a shoddy job representing him at his original trial. He blames Samantha Williams, whose testimony put him in prison for a crime evidence strongly suggests he did not commit, though he’s said he’s since forgiven her. He primarily blames Seminole County Sheriff’s investigators for not considering other suspects.
“I used to hate with passion,” he said. “The hate was like a cancer. It was destroying me. ...
The government shutdown was expected to hurt the economy. It didn’t.
A frequent theme during the recent partial government shutdown was the terrible toll it was taking on the American economy... Far from suffering a grievous blow because of the 35-day standoff, the US economy had surged. A whopping 304,000 jobs were added during January,... stock prices surged by 7 percent ...
▪ 586 innocent people sentenced to death.
▪ 972 innocent people sentenced to life in prison.
▪ 2,081 innocent people convicted of a homicide related crime.
▪ 1,005 innocent people convicted of a sexual assault related crime.
▪ 773 innocent people were convicted after a false confession by him or herself or a co-defendant.
▪ 1,780 innocent people were convicted of a crime that never occurred.
▪ 219 innocent people were posthumously exonerated by a court or a pardon.
▪ 71 innocent people were convicted of a crime when they were in another city, state or country from where the crime occurred.
▪ 1,729 innocent people had 1 or more co-defendants. The most innocent co-defendants in any one case was 29, and fifteen cases had 12 or more co-defendants.
▪ 12% of wrongly convicted persons are women.
▪ The average for all exonerated persons is 7-1/4 years imprisonment.
▪ 31 is the average age when a person is wrongly imprisoned.
▪ Cases of innocent people convicted in 115 countries are in the database.
▪ 3,954 cases involve a person convicted in the United States.
▪ 2,449 cases involve a person convicted in a country other than the U.S.
How Thirty-Four Years Disappeared
http://usobserver.com/archive/april-17/how-faulty-forensic-science-stole-thirty-four-years.htm
Wrongfully convicted and imprisoned, Jimmie Gardner is seeking more justice
What it’s like to spend 22 years on death row for a crime you didn’t commit
He was stabbed, strangled, savagely beaten and came face-to-face with some of the most notorious serial killers America has ever produced, all the while knowing he was innocent....
My First Night on Death Row as an Innocent Man
By Anthony Graves
Wronged twice
TIP found that of 47 people filing claims after being exonerated since the law took effect, only four have had their claims approved by the Legislature. Only two of those have seen their settlements paid in full....
Legislative leaders argue that the money to pay the claims is simply not there. That’s understandable; every year, state agencies line up to defend budget requests while lawmakers struggle to close deficits.
However, establishing a law to compensate the wrongly convicted and then not following through with settlement funds is unconscionable.
Man Incarcerated for 6 Years Without a Trial Because He Demanded a Speedy Trial
http://reason.com/blog/2018/01/25/government-is-gutting-the-right-to-trial
Federal authorities arrested Joseph Tigano III in 2008 and charged him with running a marijuana-growing operation. Tigano entered a plea of not guilty and insisted that his case move quickly to trial. Instead he languished in pretrial detention—jail—for nearly seven years before he finally appeared before a jury, which convicted him in 2015. In an opinion issued this week, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 2nd Circuit dismissed Tigano's indictment "with prejudice" on the grounds that his "oppressive period of pretrial incarceration" violated his constitutional right to a speedy trial under the Sixth Amendment....
Bearing the burden of love
The unique experience of wrongly convicted women
https://www.innocenceproject.org/bearing-burden-love/
While the majority of exonerees are men, there are over 200 women who have been exonerated in the U.S.
Case dropped against Michigan man after 45 years in prison
https://wtop.com/national/2018/03/case-dropped-against-michigan-man-after-45-years-in-prison-2/
A Detroit man whose murder conviction was thrown out after he spent 45 years in prison was exonerated Wednesday and won’t face a second trial. Richard Phillips, 71, was upbeat, saying the criminal justice system “works — it just didn’t work fast enough.”...
Man imprisoned on wrongful conviction released after 45 years
% Exonerations by Contributing Factor
National Registry of Exonerations
April 2016
4/19/2016 Total = 1773
Since the February 2016 Newsletter:
40 exonerations have been added
23 contemporaneous exonerations
17 old exonerations that we recently learned about
Contributing Factor % of Exonerations
Mistaken Witness ID = 31%
Perjury or
False Accusation = 56%
False Confession = 13%
False or Misleading-
Forensic Science = 23%
Official Misconduct = 52%
Loss of innocence:
the experience of exonerated death row inmates
http://theconversation.com/loss-of-innocence-the-experience-of-exonerated-death-row-inmates-42968
Not until the late 1990s and 2000s did Americans begin to recognise the extent to which innocent people are convicted, incarcerated, and sentenced to death by our courts. This “discovery of innocence” was prompted, in part, by a new network of innocence projects, the use of DNA to exonerate the innocent, and a growing number of more public exonerations every year. As a result, more than 1,600 wrongfully convicted individuals have been released in the US since 1989; 154 of those innocent individuals have been released from America’s death rows. As Americans have learned more about the innocent released from death row, they have become increasingly sceptical about the death penalty. ...
A commonly believed myth is that exonerees receive compensation for their years wrongly incarcerated and assistance with reintegration. Yet, our research shows that many – if not most – death row exonerees return to their communities with little to no assistance with re-entry: no job training, no help finding housing, transportation, mental or physical healthcare, no compensation of any kind. ... They emerge into a world quite different from the one they left with limited (if any) resources to find a place to live and limited (if any) job skills to find employment. They battle with employers over their felony status as their wrongful capital convictions are not automatically expunged. They require, but often do not have access to, medical and mental healthcare to address years of physical and psychological damage. They grieve family and friends lost while they were on death row, relationships lost, time lost. They struggle to manage the lack of trust, anger and depression that has festered as they sat on death row for crimes they did not commit. ...
Wrongly convicted, Roger Olsen gets $475,000 for 2 years in Minnesota prison
http://www.fox9.com/news/87755093-story
While in prison, Olsen was "subjected to assaults and abuse by inmates who targeted him not only because of his quiet and peaceful demeanor, but because he had been falsely labeled as a child rapist," his attorney Steve Meshbesher said.
Olsen said getting compensated for being locked up from 2006 to 2008 does not right a wrong, or change the damage that's been done....
"I didn't expect to live in there. Everybody gets beat, raped, all kinds of stuff in there," Olsen said.
Olsen, of La Crescent, was released from prison in 2008 when investigators found evidence that the accuser fabricated the story. In 2007, the alleged victim, his former step-daughter, accused her mother's new boyfriend of identical sexual abuse and it raised red flags.
"As the county attorney's office that originally prosecuted Mr. Olsen has acknowledged, evidence came to light after Mr. Olsen's conviction that affirmatively proves he is an innocent man," ...
2015 Innocents Database Exoneration Report
http://www.forejustice.org/2015innocentsdatabaseexonerationreport.pdf
The database includes 6,181 cases – 3,819 U.S. cases and 2,362 international cases – that were concluded through December 31, 2015.
In 2015: 184 exonerations involved a case in which no crime was committed. That was 58% of exonerations. 25 cases Prosecution withheld evidence, 8 cases Prosecution fabricated evidence,
The most exonerations in 2015 were of a homicide related conviction, 72, followed by a conviction for nonviolent conduct, 72, and then a drug related crime, 69.
More than 51% of the people exonerated in 2015 were convicted by a jury, 20% were convicted after a bench (judge only) trial, and 29% pled guilty.
In 2015, 11% of the exonerations involved a false confession by either the exonerated person (9%) or a codefendant (2%).
Combining false confessions and guilty pleas, 40% of persons exonerated in 2015 falsely admitted guilt.
In the U.S. there are over a million felony convictions yearly in state court, and more than 125,000 convictions in federal court, so even given only a 2% wrongful conviction rate – and there are estimates the actual rate is 10% or more – there would be more than 22,000 wrongful convictions per year.
So the 316 cases in the database for 2015 is little more than 1% of that number. What is unknown and for the foreseeable future it will remain unknown – is exactly how many innocent people have had their wrongful conviction(s) overturned. Also unknown is the infinitely larger number of innocent people possibly totaling over a million – who have not, and never will have their wrongful conviction(s) overturned: those people will forever be officially branded as a criminal for a crime committed by another person, or that may not have even occurred. Thus, the known exonerations are a miniscule representation of the actual number of wrongly convicted persons.
(About 75% of all these wrongful convictions are attributable in some way to Police & Official Errors)
Table 10 Number of Exonerated People Convicted By Primary Types of Prosecution Evidence* (U.S.) Total:
Eyewitness error 856 21%
Judge’s Errors 475 12%
Police Misconduct/Perjury 418 10%
Concealed evidence 416 10%
Prosecutor Misconduct 375 9%
False Confession 354 9%
Victim ID error 353 9%
Circumstantial evidence 292 7%
Expert witness 205 5%
Informant evidence 193 5%
Drug analysis (erroneous) 98 2%
Co-defendant falsely confessed
(Defendant didn't confess) 61 1%
Innocents Database 6,403 Cases Now In Innocents Database
http://forejustice.org/innocentsdatabase.htm
The Innocents Database now includes 6,403 cases: 3,954 from the U.S., and 2,449 from 114 other ountries. The database includes 3,035 U.S. cases from 2016 to 1989, when the first DNA exoneration occurred.
The Innocents Database is the world’s largest database of exonerated persons, and it includes all entifiable exonerations in the United States, as well as internationally.
The Innocents Database includes:
National Registry of Exonerations:
http://www.law.umich.edu/special/exoneration/Documents/1600_Exonerations.pdf
1,615 Exonerations as of 6/15/15
Of the 1,600 individual exonerations from January 1989 through May18,2015:
For all exonerations, the most common causal factors that we have identified are (See Table 5):
Perjury or False Accusation (55%);
Official Misconduct (45%);
Mistaken Eyewitness Identification (34%).
Perjury or False Accusation is the leading cause of Wrongful Convictions. Over half of all Wrongful Convictions exonerated are due to Liars in the general public.
In reality this means a person(s) makes up a story, or flat out Lies about the truth to get an innocent person into legal trouble. Due to incompetency in the legal process the Liars committing perjury or false accusation is believed more by members on the Jury, or the bench. The truth from the innocent defendant is not believed. Or the Innocent defendant was maipulated to plea guilty despite being innocent.
Official Misconduct makes up nearly half of all Wrongful Convictions exonerated, and is the 2nd most leading cause of Wrongful Covictions. Law Enforcement, and Prosecuters account for the most Official Misconduct cases. Some are honest mistakes but in far too many cases, the very people who are responsible for ensuring truth and justice -- law enforcement officials and prosecutors -- lose sight of these obligations and instead focus solely on securing convictions, or malicious intent for personal goals.
In reality Law Enforcement, and/or Prosecuters flat out Lie, Fabricate, Falsify, and any possible deceptive practice to Wrongfully Convict an Innocent person of a crime he/she did not commit. In many cases a crime did not even occur. It was made-up by Law Enforcement, and/or Lies from the public.
Nearly a third of all Wrongful Convictions exonerated: The Crime Never Occurred.
70% of drug-crime exonerations: The Crime Never Occurred. Cases in which defendants were exonerated after conviction for crimes that never occurred increased from 15% to 27%.
Why should you care? Simple.
It could happen to you. An upset neighbor, angry spouse, business rival, or just any dispute with someone at the store can turn you into a Wrongful Convict. The odds are in favor that any Liar will win in Court, and that is if it makes it to Court. 95% of the time all defendants are forced to plead guilty despite your Innocence. This should concern you very much. One day living a normal life, the next day you are Wrongful Convicted criminal for doing nothing wrong.
Wrongful Conviction Statistics
http://www.talkleft.com/injustices.html
Wrongful Conviction Statistics Source
Top 10 Wrongful Convictions Overturned by DNA Evidence
http://www.listland.com/top-10-wrongful-convictions-overturned-by-dna-evidence/
It is quite frightening to think that without this DNA evidence over 325 innocent men and women in the US alone would still be behind bars, 20 of them on Death Row. In 161 of those cases the analysis of the DNA evidence has led police and prosecutors to the real perpetrators.
So why are so many innocent people judged to be guilty of crimes they did not commit? As you will see from the list below a number of reasons come to light, most often eyewitnesses get the ID wrong or forensic techniques were applied improperly. It is also not uncommon for the convictions to be the result of a false confession made at the time of arrest and subsequently retracted or due to false testimony by police informers seeking to gain advantage in their own cases.
Here is our list of 10 of the most interesting cases where convicts walked free because of DNA evidence:
Judicial errors take high toll on inmates, taxpayers, report says
http://www.sfgate.com/crime/article/Judicial-errors-take-high-toll-on-inmates-6878358.php
Carrillo holds a poster with a California map that shows the different prisons where he spent 20 years wrongly incarcerated for murder.
Man wrongly sentenced to death fights calls to reinstate penalty
“I don’t think about it every day anymore,” Keine said from his home in suburban Detroit. “What happened to me was driven by corruption, hidden evidence and made-up evidence. People say [the wrongly accused] are safer now because of science and DNA evidence. It’s not any safer now.
“The police and prosecutors, they put on blinders. They become Machiavellian, just going for the conviction. They almost never back down when the evidence shows they’re wrong.”...
Unknown is the number of innocents who were executed or still sit in prison, their lives destroyed.
Keine said truth meant nothing to prosecutors in his case because neither they nor Bernalillo County sheriff’s officers were interested in anything except convicting him and his friends. He says public employees sworn to uphold the law coached the lying witness who was central to the prosecution’s case.
2015 Innocents Database Exoneration Report:
http://www.justicedenied.org/2015idbreport.html
In the year 2015:
184 exonerations involved a case in which no crime was committed. That was 58% of exonerations.
58% OF ALL CASES NO CRIME EVER OCCURRED.
More than 51% of the people exonerated in 2015 were convicted by a jury,
20% were convicted after a bench (judge only) trial,
and 29% pled guilty.
NEARLY A THIRD OF ALL CASES THE DEFENDANT PLED GUILTY TO A CRIME HE DID NOT EVEN DO.
HALF OF ALL CASES THE JURY WRONGFULLY CONVICTED HIM.
11% of the exonerations involved a false confession by either the exonerated person (9%) or a co-defendant (2%). That is comparable to the average for the ten years from 2006 to 2015 when 10% of exonerations involved a false confession: 8.5% by the exonerated person and 1.5% by a co-defendant.
Combining false confessions and guilty pleas:
40% of persons exonerated in 2015 falsely admitted guilt.
ALMOST HALF OF ALL DEFENDANTS WERE FORCED TO ADMIT GUILT TO A CRIME HE DID NOT DO.
In the U.S. there are over a million felony convictions yearly in state court, and more than 125,000 convictions in federal court, so even given only a 2% wrongful conviction rate – and there are estimates the actual rate is 10% or more – there would be more than 22,000 wrongful convictions per year.
So the 316 cases in the database for 2015 is little more than 1% of that number. What is unknown – and for the foreseeable future it will remain unknown – is exactly how many innocent people have had their wrongful conviction(s) overturned. Also unknown is the infinitely larger number of innocent people
– possibly totaling over a million – who have not, and never will have their wrongful conviction(s) overturned: those people will forever be officially branded as a criminal for a crime committed by another person, or that may not have even occurred. Thus, the known exonerations are a miniscule representation of the actual number of wrongly convicted persons.
(Keep in mind this data were for serious crimes only. Less serious crimes and misdemeanors are not given any considerations. The wrongful convictions of lesser crimes increase exponentially.
Also consider that only 1% to 5% of all cases in the USA actually go to trial. 95% of all USA defendants are forced/coerced to plead guilty. Many are innocent to a crime they did not do.)
Wrongful Conviction with Jason Flom
http://www.revolverpodcasts.com/shows/wrongful-conviction-with-jason-flom/
Wrongful Conviction with Jason Flom is a podcast about tragedy, triumph, unequal justice and actual innocence. Based on the files of the lawyers who freed them, Wrongful Conviction features interviews with men and women who have spent decades in prison for crimes they did not commit – some of them had even been sentenced to death. These are their stories.
19 Years Behind Bars: Dennis Maher Talks Jail Wrongful Conviction
http://bcheights.com/news/2016/19-years-behind-bars-dennis-maher-talks-jail-wrongful-conviction/
Maher recounted how, just before his sentence was handed down, the judge asked him if he had anything he would like to say.
“Young army kid, of course I had something to say,” he said. “So I says to him, ‘Your honor, if you call this justice then you and your whole system are a crock of shit.’”
The judge subsequently doubled his sentence to 30 years plus a life sentence.
The U.S. Put at Least 67,000 People in Solitary Confinement Last Year
http://reason.com/blog/2016/12/01/the-us-put-at-least-67000-people-in-soli
there were at least 67,442 inmates in the U.S. locked in their cells for 22 or more hours a day in the fall of 2015... the report also found wide variance from state to state and prison to prison. The percentage of inmates held in solitary in federal and state prisons ranged ranged from 1 percent to 28 percent.
Twenty-nine percent of inmates were placed in solitary for three months or less, but there were roughly 3,000 across the country who had been held in solitary confinement for six years or longer. Of those, more than half were in Texas, dwarfing every other state and the federal Bureau of Prisons system....
In 2011, the United Nations Special Rapporteur on torture concluded that solitary confinement beyond 15 days constituted cruel and inhumane punishment. Unsurprisingly, locking human beings in tiny boxes for years at a time has negative psychological effects...
Wrongful Conviction Stories (Free Download Books)
Meet the Men and Women of the 2017 Innocence Network Conference
https://www.innocenceproject.org/2017-innocence-network-conference/
Take a look at several phenomenal portraits, by Erin G. Wesley, and stories of survivors of wrongful conviction from the weekend.
Time for Change: Spike's Docu-Series Endures Kalief Browder's Fight for Justice In a Broken System
“When they sent me to Rikers Island, I was 16. I would say it was like hell on Earth. Sometimes, you know, I feel like I’m never going to be the same. You know, I smile, and I joke a lot. But, you know, deep down, I’m a mess because like I’m 21, and on the inside I feel like I’m 40.” – The late Kalief Browder – Time: The Kalief Browder Story
Time: The Kalief Browder Story
http://www.spike.com/shows/time-the-kalief-browder-story
Wrongful Conviction with Jason Flom
Season 2, Episode 7: Sentenced to Death, Exonerated by DNA: The Wrongful Conviction of Kirk Bloodsworth
Man wrongfully convicted of rape never the same after unjust prison sentence
Dougherty was acquitted after a retrial in 1997, on the basis of DNA evidence... But Dougherty's partner of 27 years, Joann Atutolu, said he changed forever after the prison sentence that should have never happened. ...
But Dougherty didn't come without his flaws. He became less social, had alcohol problems and became depressed as he tried to cope with the trauma of the wrongful conviction. "He never got over it. He was always looking over his shoulder. "Although he used to drink when we met, he really went into drinking after that." ... "He let himself go." ...
Locked up for life for crimes they didn't commit
http://www.bbc.com/news/uk-scotland-41108765
They were convicted of crimes they did not commit and are permanently changed by spending years in prison. They face a range of serious psychiatric problems and can never return to the lives they had before.
Four exonerated prisoners - Robert Brown, Paddy Hill, Sunny Jacobs and Peter Pringle - told the BBC documentary Fallout their false convictions continued to blight their lives many years later....
In 2002, the Court of Appeal heard of a "conspiracy of corruption" within Greater Manchester Police and that one of the police officers central to the case, former Detective Chief Inspector Jack Butler, was "deeply corrupt".... Brown says: "The amount of time that I served would, in all honesty, damage anybody.
"The deprivation, the degradation, that would damage anybody." Fifteen years after his release he lives in a one room "prison cell" and struggles to sleep. "At night time I just walk up and down, your adrenaline is off the Richter scale, your heartbeat is off the Richter scale, it is a constant kaleidoscope of thoughts about what they did to me. "I go through that process until my head is that tired of thinking about it I just conk out for a couple of hours." ...
The Stolen Life of Jeffrey Deskovic
https://www.crixeo.com/jeffrey-deskovic-innocence-project/
10 Members of the Black Panther Party You Should Know
http://thesource.com/2018/02/28/10-members-black-panther-party-know/
When it comes to members of the Black Panther Party, many often recall greats such as Fred Hampton, Assata Shakur, Stokely Carmichael, and countless more as being the most influential members. But, what about those who often go unsung? Those Black Panthers who became political prisoners, social activists, or renowned figures in black history, who are they? The following list is a selection of 10 members of the Black Panther Party you should know in order to have a well-rounded knowledge of the historical collective....
When the perpetrator is a victim – jailed for a crime he did not commit
Denied bail and forced to await trial for three years behind bars before he was erroneously convicted and sentenced by Nigel Regional Court Magistrate Juan Voogt in 2015, Sehloho, 55, remains traumatised, ostracised and still guilty in the court of public opinion: ...
Madrassa says he was happily married. Now, he says he’s lost his family, his home, his job and his health. He suffers from a host of prison-acquired ailments – including diabetes, stress, hyper-tension and asthma. He mostly walks with a shuffling gait caused by diabetes-related foot-pain and is partially sighted because, he says, a gangster hit him in the eye with a steel cup during time he spent in Nigel prison.
“My life was destroyed by that magistrate. Today, my wife is living with another man in my house. I’m living with my uncle, my cousin and his two daughters in my granny’s Kwathema house and my children live with two different aunties. They’re scared of me. They don’t even want me to hug them. All they see is a man who could rape, or kill them. I’m forced to depend on my uncle for everything, even though I had to get a protection order last year when he wanted to chase me away.”...
Sehloho contended during cross-examination that the charges against him were fabricated, motivated by anger on the part of the mother because of his failure to follow through on his marriage proposal. “She influenced her daughter to lay charges against me in order to punish me,” Sehloho says. ...
“The justice system has failed me twice – first by wrongfully convicting me, then by giving me no help. There’s no consequence for magistrates who convict people wrongly and many innocent people behind bars serving time for crimes they never committed. I’m supposed to be one of the lucky ones but my problems really started when I was released. My life is destroyed. I have no income and no one trusts me. Sometimes when I’m alone I just cry….”
NIGGA IS OBSTRUCTING JUSTICE BY FALSELY CONFESSING TO A CRIME FABRICATED AGAINST HIM BY SLAVE PATROL AND GUBMINT PIMPS WHO FORCED THE SLAVE TO FALSELY CONFESS.
WHERE ELSE BUT IN THE UNITED SLAVES....
Mentally disabled man freed 20 years after wrongful conviction in pizza supply homicide case
A mentally disabled man walked free Tuesday after 20 years in jail for a killing his attorneys say he didn’t commit, beneath a plea settlement that blames him for obstructing justice by falsely confessing to the crime. In trade for his freedom, Corey Williams accepted a deal that short-circuits a possible U.S. Supreme Court docket evaluate and requires him to drop all claims towards the state of Louisiana, which initially sentenced him to loss of life.
False Confessions & Wrongful Convictions: 5 Shocking Cases That Got Overturned
http://crimefeed.com/2018/06/wrongful-convictions-false-confessions/
For most of us, it probably seems impossible to imagine confessing to a crime we did not commit — especially something as serious as assault, rape, or even murder.
Perhaps, though, that may be because most of us have never been properly accused of such grievous felonies, let alone been subjected to hyper-intense questioning, psy-will-breaking techniques, and other sensorily overwhelming elements of professional interrogation.... The following five cases prove just how devastating convictions based on false confessions are to all involved. They also chillingly suggest that such miscarriages may well be far more common than we think....
I was arrested, kept in jail for 62 days and then released after the DA finally got around to my case. I did nothing wrong.
Okay, so a few days ago I was released from county jail after being held for 62 days. I lost my job, didn't pay rent for 2 months almost 3 now and my car is in the process of being put up for auction and they won't release it.
I was arrested for felon in possession of a firearm (I'm not a felon and never have been or had anything expunged and at the time of arrest I didn't even have a firearm on me)...
DNA Cleared Me. I Still Took a Plea after 29 Years in Prison.
The Alford plea offers freedom at a costly price. While it allows one the right to maintain innocence, a criminal conviction remains visible on their record and therefore, they are not eligible for compensation from the government. VICE meets Leroy Harris, who took an Alford plea after serving 29 years in prison for a crime he has always maintained he didn't commit.
This Is What Wrongful Conviction Does to a Family
This is not a true crime whodunit. This is the story of what happens to the family of a murder victim when they find out years later that everything the criminal justice system had led them to believe was a lie. This is a story of wrongful conviction told from the perspective of Debbie’s family, how they survived one earthquake and then another, and came to the other side. It is also about Debbie’s little cousin Christy: her reckoning, her rage, her forgiveness, and her transformation into a crusader for a different vision of justice—a vision that put her at odds with her tight-knit, rock-ribbed red-state community. ...
Debbie’s murder remained unsolved for five years, until a woman arrested on fraud charges implicated Ron Williamson, a man who happened to be in jail at the same time as she was. ...Also charged was Williamson’s friend, Dennis Fritz, implicated by another jailhouse informant. With the charges of both men came an onslaught of media attention,... Williamson was given the death penalty, Fritz life in prison without the possibility of parole. What Christy felt for them, she said, was “true hatred.” She went to bed at night praying that they would suffer as much as possible....
At 25, 11 years after the verdicts, she was pregnant with her first child.... Days later, Christy learned the details for the first time sitting in the courtroom as the judge explained that there had been a terrible mistake. DNA evidence recovered from Debbie’s body matched that of one of the state’s key witnesses in the murder case, a man named Glen Gore.
Fritz and Williamson—who at one point had been five days away from being executed—were innocent. ...
Many exonerees suffer horribly—both physically and mentally—in prison. Full of anger, sadness and fear, they learn to stifle their emotions in order to survive. Decades later, they leave prison with no ready access to services or a support system that can help them re-acclimate to society. The road to obtaining money from the state, if that is even possible, can be long and arduous. The physical shackles of prison are gone, but there are invisible ones that remain firmly in place.
But the damage is not limited to the exonerees. Often forgotten are the crime victim’s family members, like Christy and Peggy, forced to relive the worst experience of their lives with the knowledge that the actual perpetrator was never caught, or caught far too late, after victimizing more people. Sidelined by a system that failed them...
NOW WHY WOULD ANYONE PLEAD GUILTY TO A CRIME THEY DID NOT DO 95% TO 99% OF ALL CASES? THIS STORY IS ONE REASON.
LOOK HOW LONG THIS SLAVE REMAINED IN JAIL WHILE HIS FAST AND SPEEDY TRIAL WAS IN PROCESS. HE LUCKED OUT BECAUSE HE RISKED WRONGFUL CONVICTION BY A JURY OR BENCH. IT COULD BE 50/50 CHANCE...
Steven Neville Will Not File Damage Suit Following Acquittal: Lawyer
http://vocm.com/news/steven-neville-will-not-file-damage-suit-following-acquittal-lawyer/
The lawyer representing Steven Neville, who was acquitted of second degree murder by a jury after more than a week of deliberations, says there will not be a damage suit filed in the case.
Neville was incarcerated for six years while the legal process, which included two trials, took nine years to wind its way through the courts...
One of America’s harshest isolation units was exposed by a desperate, handwritten account from the inside
In February 2015, a Georgia prison inmate mailed a handwritten complaint to the federal court in Macon, saying he’d been held in a windowless cell for nearly 24 hours a day for five years. The inmate, a convicted rapist named Timothy Gumm, said he’d been put there after a failed escape attempt in January 2010 and was told he’d remain there indefinitely, even after the escape charge was wiped from his disciplinary record. He lost contact with loved ones, dropped 50 pounds and was “deprived of almost any environmental and sensory stimuli and of almost all human contact,” he wrote. He saw no way out.
“I hate that I even have to trouble you and the court with this matter,” Gumm wrote in a cover letter to the court clerk.
That longshot filing, written on 11 pages of loose-leaf paper without a lawyer’s help, persuaded a skeptical judge to listen, and to eventually force Georgia to open up its isolation unit to outsiders. A social psychologist who’d studied prison conditions for 40 years was shocked at what he saw: metal cells without openings, including one smeared with blood; mentally ill prisoners screaming in anguish; and a crudely drawn sign that said, “HELP.”...
An estimated 61,000 people ─ including juveniles, pregnant women and the mentally ill ─ were held in solitary confinement in 2017,...The numbers were once even higher, ... locked up as a teen for allegedly stealing a dollar bill and ended up spending 22 years in solitary confinement in Illinois. Others react to a streak of inmate suicides...
Army veteran claims wrongful conviction
http://delrionewsherald.com/news/article_6c81c7fc-54c2-11e9-b79c-e73db4bb5c85.html
Wrongful Conviction with Jason Flom
https://blendcast.fm/shows/wrongful-conviction-with-jason-flom
Based on the files of the lawyers who freed them, Wrongful Conviction features interviews with men and women who have spent decades in prison for crimes they did not commit – some of them had even been sentenced to death. These are their stories.
I Spent 22 Years in Solitary Confinement. Then I Didn’t Want to Leave
https://www.themarshallproject.org/2019/05/30/i-developed-agoraphobia-in-prison
I spent 22 years and 36 days in solitary confinement. They sent me there on the Feb. 3, 1992...For the last five of those years in solitary, I never once came out of my cell....
They came and got me from Ely Maximum Security Prison on Tuesday, March 11, 2014. The warden, psychologist, a couple guys from the emergency response team came up to the cell. They found out I would soon be getting out of prison, otherwise I’m sure they wouldn’t have remembered me. They had to try to get me to be around people again and not hurt anybody, to be a regular person. I was basically their test case, a guy who they’d thrown away but were now picking up out of the garbage can.
When they came to my cell, I could barely speak. In my head, I knew the words I was saying, and I thought I was speaking them, but they were coming out as garbled because I hadn’t talked to anyone for so long....I got out of prison on Dec. 21, 2018, after serving 42 years, 9 months and 15 days. ...
I Was Framed By The Police And Sentenced To 50 Years To Life. Here’s How I Got Free.
https://www.huffpost.com/entry/framed-by-police-prison-jamal-trulove_n_5d0bea68e4b07ae90d9a5b3b
Although I was not sentenced to death, I was sentenced to death by incarceration ― 50 years to life....Police hid evidence. Their stories contradicted each other. They wrote notes in police files in pencil so that exculpatory notes could be erased. But I was lucky that the master file was brought to court and the pages could be held up to the light. The jury could then see what the erased notes said....I was lucky when I was awarded $13.1 million for my wrongful conviction. I was unlucky because I will never get those years back. I will never get my children’s childhood back. Our justice system should not come down to luck. One should not get to live or die based on luck. But it happens. Every day in this country, it happens....
Opera's powerful premiere ‘Blind Injustice’ explores wrongful convictions: SLIDESHOW
Nancy Smith remembers the day the police arrested her as if it were a nightmare.
The 37-year-old divorced mother of four was with her parents in Lorain, Ohio. Smith, a Head Start bus driver, was accused of molesting the small children she drove.
“I was pretty stunned,” she recalled. “They arrested me in front of my children and in front of my mom and dad. It was heartbreaking, scary and devastating.”
It became one of northeast Ohio’s most notorious child abuse cases, fueled by the national hysteria over day-care sex abuse cases in the ‘80s and early ‘90s. In 1994, Smith was convicted of a crime she did not commit. She served 15 years in prison before she was exonerated by the Ohio Innocence Project at the University of Cincinnati College of Law....
“The stories of these people are incredible, such as the East Cleveland 3 or Rickey Jackson,” said Godsey...
What they all had in common, said Robin Guarino, director and dramaturg for the production, was their shock and disbelief at being accused of crimes.
“They all used the same words – ‘we were kidnapped out of our lives,’” said Guarino, who chairs the opera department at the University of Cincinnati College-Conservatory of Music. “Clarence, on the night he was arrested, kept saying, ‘You know, I’ve got to get to work tomorrow.’ It never occurred to him that he was a suspect. You are innocent until proven guilty.”...
Initially skeptical, he soon realized that people do get wrongly convicted and that the real perpetrator is still out on the street committing heinous crimes.
It was an eye-opener. Yet he was shocked once again at the pushback from prosecutors and judges who had sent the wrong people to prison.
DNA was not used until the ‘90s, and today only a small percentage of crimes are solved using DNA. In his book, Godsey details the many ways a person can be wrongly convicted. One phenomenon is the psychology of denial, or “how people act differently in a bureaucracy – like the criminal justice system – than they would alone. They’re stripped of morality,” he said.
Some elected prosecutors and judges don’t want to be viewed as soft on crime. Memory is unreliable. There is bias, tunnel vision (ignoring evidence in pursuit of a conviction) faulty forensics, false testimony....
“When I first was incarcerated, nobody really cared about me," he said, "Once you got sentenced by a jury of your peers, you were considered guilty beyond a reasonable doubt. So, people just forgot about you. This gives people pause to think when somebody says, ‘I didn’t do it. I’m innocent.’”...
Eric Blackmon Speaks to COD Students after 16 years of Wrongful Imprisonment
Eric Blackmon’s life had barely started when he was wrongfully convicted of murder in 2004. Just 23 at the time of his conviction, Blackmon spent 16 years in prison for the murder of Tony Cox. ... After the shooting occurred, police gave two witnesses who drove past at the time of the shooting photographs two months after the occurrence, and asked them to identify a suspect. It’s not clear how or why Blackmon’s photo was selected to be among those viewed by the witnesses. But his photo allegedly is the one they identified as matching the shooter.... Blackmon’s attorney lied about the witnesses and never reached out to any of them. “That first time you hear that door slam, and know you can’t walk out, 60 years. Man, it took everything in me to get up the next morning. To eat, it’s [even] hard to breathe,” Blackmon said. ...
A Wrongful Conviction, Sixteen Years in Prison and Paying It Forward An Interview with Jeffrey Deskovic by Tony Lombardo
“How do you survive sixteen years in prison for a crime you didn't commit?”...
Wrongful Conviction with Jason Flom
https://player.fm/series/wrongful-conviction-with-jason-flom-1387140
'Sins of Detroit' true crime podcast focuses on wrongful convictions
Detroit — Darrell Siggers, who spent 34 years in prison for a murder he didn't commit, is among the exonerated Detroiters who appear in "Sins of Detroit," a new true crime podcast from The Detroit News. "The hardest time any man can do is for a crime he didn't commit," Siggers says in "Motor City Injustice," the podcast's five-episode first season.
"(My) whole case, for the most part, was based on lies," said Siggers, 55, who was convicted in 1984 and exonerated in 2018. "(Detroit police) just wanted to close this case, and I just happened to be illiterate, black, uneducated, poor, and so, I'm the perfect guy to do this to — and that's what they did." Siggers is among the record number of innocent Detroiters who have been released from prison in recent years — and The News spent hours interviewing many of them. The inaugural season of "Sins of Detroit" focuses on the wrongfully-convicted Detroiters whose cases started with investigations by the Detroit Police Department ... Also covered are the widespread errors — and, according to innocence advocates, corruption — that caused the 2008 shuttering of the Detroit Police Crime Lab. McQuade says the problems in the police department that were uncovered during a three-year federal investigation that started in 2000 included "unlawful detention of witnesses who had not committed any crimes at all; just locking up people who might have information about a suspect or a crime." David Moran, director of the University of Michigan's Innocence Clinic, says the police's practice of rounding up witnesses and leaning on them until they told detectives what they wanted to hear "led to innumerable wrongful convictions." "We will never know how many people were wrongfully convicted because witnesses were arrested and coerced into falsely implicating somebody," Moran said....
"The way the Detroit Police was operating at that time ... they didn't care whether you did it or not," Johnson said. "Somebody was getting blamed; somebody was getting charged — somebody was going to prison." "Sins of Detroit" can be heard at Google and Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Stitcher, SoundCloud, or in your podcast app of choice.
The falsely accused can never get their lives back
https://www.spiked-online.com/2019/11/19/the-falsely-accused-can-never-get-their-lives-back/
False accusers are handsomely compensated but their victims get nothing....
Of course, the detectives who dealt with the allegations against Mr Kay could have found this vital evidence in a matter of minutes – that is how long it took his sister-in-law to unearth the archived messages via his Facebook account. But the police officers didn’t seem to bother trying to verify whether or not the accuser was telling the truth – they just presumed she was. At the time of Mr Kay’s trial, the jury did not see the full, unedited messages and nor did it hear that the complainant had deliberately manipulated the evidence by deleting key sections.
Based on the new evidence, Mr Kay’s case went to the Court of Appeal where, in December 2017, his conviction was quashed. He emerged from court an innocent man. Yet, as he himself has pointed out, ‘it’s always going to smear my name… there’s always going to be people out there who have the doubt’....
In reality, there is no prospect of ‘rehabilitation’ for people who are falsely accused of sexual crimes. The allegation matters far more than the legal outcome. Even if you have never been arrested or charged, the damage done to reputations, careers and families is usually irreparable....
Victor Nealon, for instance, served 17 years in prison for a rape he did not commit. He was originally sentenced to seven years but served an extra 10 because he maintained his innocence. DNA tests exonerated him (pointing to another man) and his conviction was quashed by the Court of Appeal. But not only did the MoJ refuse to compensate him for such a blatant miscarriage of justice, it even tried to pursue him for the legal costs of his compensation claim. This is particularly sickening considering the fact that taxpayers’ cash is routinely handed out by the Criminal Injuries Compensation Authority (CICA) to false accusers, including Carl Beech and Jemma Beale, who are rarely asked to pay it back....
Exonerated after 22 years in prison, former Needham student advocates for justice
The case would fall apart when a wave of corruption allegations were leveled against the Boston police. Officers with the department’s elite Area E-5 drug unit, including Mulligan, and at least one defense attorney, were found to have coordinated faulty witness testimony as they systematically robbed drug dealers of hundreds of thousands of dollars. Three detectives who investigated Mulligan’s murder would end up facing federal corruption charges and Ellis was granted a new trial in 2015. In her 2015 ruling, Judge Carol Ball said the newly discovered evidence as a result of the corruption charges “reveals Mulligan’s involvement in a corruption scheme with detectives who were significantly involved in the [Ellis] homicide investigation.”... “the way the District Attorney’s office and the Boston Police Department handled the exoneration was disgraceful.” “They lied about the case,” she said. “And I have to say that is not uncommon. In virtually every wrongful conviction I know of, there is resistance from the people who originally processed the case.”...
BECUZ ALL MASTA HOS ARE DV HOLOCAUST VICTIM AN INNOCENT SLAVE IS SENT TO USA PRISON CAMP FOR 14 YEARS SENTENCED TO DEATH PENALTY UNTIL THE SLAVES ALLIES PROVED HIS INNOCENCE...
Former Death Row Inmate Alleges Biased Probe in Lawsuit
https://www.nytimes.com/aponline/2020/01/07/us/ap-us-inmate-exonerated.html
A former death row inmate who was in prison for 14 years before prosecutors dropped charges that he murdered two neighbors sued a Florida sheriff's office Tuesday, accusing it of conducting a biased and negligent investigation that led to his wrongful arrest and conviction.
Clemente Aguirre-Jarquin filed the civil lawsuit in federal court against the Seminole County Sheriff's Office.
“Clemente’s nightmare was the direct result of the failure of the Seminole County Sheriff’s Office to conduct a constitutionally adequate investigation, free of ethnic stereotypes and false assumptions," the lawsuit said.
Bob Kealing, a spokesman for the sheriff's office, said he was unable to comment because the office's legal team hadn't yet seen the lawsuit.
According to the lawsuit, the sheriff's office ignored evidence implicating a woman who was the daughter of one of the victims and the granddaughter of the other. The victims, Cheryl Williams and Carol Bareis, were found stabbed to death in their home in an Orlando suburb in 2004. Williams had 129 stab wounds.
The previous evening, Williams had a “ranting and raving” argument with her daughter, Samantha Williams, who had a long history of mental illness and related violence, the lawsuit said.
Aguirre, a neighbor and undocumented worker from Honduras, found the bodies just hours after the slayings.
Instead of focusing on Samantha Williams, investigators “motivated consciously or unconsciously by their bias against undocumented immigrants from countries in Central America, focused instead on Clemente, who had found the bodies of Cheryl and Carol when he went to their trailer early that morning," the lawsuit said.
Samantha Williams was a key witness at Aguirre's trial, and he was sentenced to death in 2006.
After Aguirre's conviction, his attorneys, including lawyers from the Innocence Project, asked to have crime scene blood samples tested, and the results showed blood at key locations belonged to Samantha Williams, the lawsuit said.
In 2016, the Florida Supreme Court vacated Aguirre's convictions and sent the case back for a new trial. During a deposition of Samantha Williams, she conceded that she may have killed her mother and grandmother but blocked out the memory, the lawsuit said.
The state attorney's office initially sought to retry Aguirre, but prosecutors eventually dismissed the case in 2018 and he was released from prison. Aguirre is seeking asylum in the United States.
“Clemente Aguirre’s incarceration should have never occurred," the lawsuit said.
WHY DO 95% TO 99% OF ALL USA SLAVES PLEAD GUILTY TO CHARGES THAT MANY ARE INNOCENT OF? ...
For 25 Years in Prison, He Said He Was Innocent. A Judge Just Agreed
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/01/28/nyregion/rafael-ruiz-exonerated-innocence-project.html
Four times, Rafael Ruiz recalled, he rejected offers from New York prosecutors to enter a guilty plea and admit to participating in a gang rape on a Harlem rooftop in 1984, even though it would have meant serving much less time. He was under arrest but he had good reason for turning down the deals.
“I told them,” he said, “I didn’t do nothing wrong.”
On Tuesday, a judge finally agreed with him. At a hearing in State Supreme Court in Manhattan, Mr. Ruiz was formally cleared of the crime. But the exoneration came far too late: Though he was released from prison a decade ago, he had already served 25 years.
“I feel very happy,” he said in an interview. “At least I got my life back.”...
IN THE USA IT TAKES SLAVES A LIFETIME TO PROVE HE IS INNOCENT BECUZ ALL SLAVES ARE PRESUMED GUILTY UNTIL HE PROVES HE IS INNOCENT AFTER USA SLAVES ARE FORCED TO PLEAD GUILTY TO FABRICATED CHARGES...
Exoneration of the Day: It took Lee Arthur Hester 58 years to be exonerated of murder. It took him another eight months to get a “certificate of innocence” from a Cook County, Illinois, judge so he can seek compensation from the state
On May 1, 2019, 72-year-old Lee Arthur Hester was exonerated of the 1961 murder of a Chicago elementary school teacher when he was 14 years old. The dismissal of the charges came nearly 58 years after he was convicted based on faulty forensics and a false confession coerced by Chicago police.
Pennsylvania man who wrongly spent 23 years on death row is freed
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2020/jun/05/walter-ogrod-pennsylvania-freed-death-row
A man who spent more than 23 years on death row in Pennsylvania for a crime he did not commit walked free from jail on Friday.... “We not only stole 28 years of your life,” assistant district attorney Carrie Wood told Ogrod, according to the Philadelphia Inquirer. “We threatened to execute you based on falsehoods.”...
A DNA Mix-Up Involving a Washing Machine Kept a Man in Jail for 3 Years
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/06/26/us/louisiana-dna-washing-machine.html
The Louisiana case highlights how prosecutors and crime labs withhold key documents from defense lawyers, keeping some defendants in custody for months or years.
Mr. Verret, a 54-year-old mechanic, could not remember when he had last seen Mr. Poche, with whom he had a passing acquaintance. And so, for the next three years, as he awaited trial, Mr. Verret considered the ways Mr. Poche’s DNA might have found its way to his washing machine lid. Most of his theories involved the police or the killers planting it.
“I was in jail 37 and a half months,” he said. “Other than when I was sleeping, all I could think about was this.”
This month prosecutors dismissed the first-degree murder and armed robbery charges against Mr. Verret. This followed an evidence admissibility hearing in which his lawyer offered an explanation: A crime lab analyst had mixed up two DNA samples, one from the lid of Mr. Verret’s washing machine and the other from the knife that was used to kill Mr. Poche. This theory was supported by an expert, hired by the defense to retest the material swabbed off the machine. She testified not only that the sample did not match the victim, but also that she could not confirm the presence of human blood.
This may sound like an easy catch. But proving what had happened took much longer than it should have because the crime lab was slow to turn over the documentation to the defense, said Steve Singer, a longtime public defender who took on Mr. Verret’s case. Such a wait is not unusual, he said.... In many jurisdictions, the prosecution is not even required to tell the defense that DNA evidence exists, Ms. Murphy said. This means that innocent people regularly take plea deals for rape and other violent offenses without ever learning that the police collected DNA evidence that points to a different suspect, she said....
The only identifiable source of DNA on the knife was the victim, a detail missing from the paperwork. This reinforced that the two had been switched; the washing machine had been processed as the knife....
Part 3: The Most Egregious Miscarriage of Justice You Have Never Heard About
Mike was convicted of First Degree murder at a one day bench trial … with no jury … not a single piece of evidence … where the only witness is legally blind, perhaps coached by the RPD as evidenced by her still-changing statements. Mike Crump is still in prison for that murder … and he is still innocent. At this point, I am forced by decency to ask: Is there anyone in a position to help Mike Crump that will? Because if this can happen to Mike Crump, it can happen to you, too. Please consider that as you read this final chapter....
Wrongfully Convicted In America: Failed Justice And Lost Years
https://patch.com/us/across-america/wrongfully-convicted-america-failed-justice-lost-years
Tankleff and Austin are two of 2,674 people who have been freed from prison and cleared of any wrongdoing since 1989. That equates to 23,950 years lost, according to the National Registry of Exonerations. In a criminal justice system centered on the principle that defendants are innocent until proven guilty, that's thousands of lives ruined, dreams crushed and reputations tarnished. In some cases, the person who did commit the heinous crime went roaming free. "It's easier to put an innocent person in prison than to exonerate an innocent person,"...
IMAGINE YOU SEE A VICTIM OF A CRIME IN NEED OF HELP AND YOU RESPOND. THEN SLAVE PATROL ARRIVE AND SHOOT YOU IN THE BACK. THEN TO COVER THEIR CRIME THEY FABRICATE YOU AS THE CRIMINAL. YOU GET SENT TO USA CONCENTRATION CAMP FOR LIFE OR MAYBE DEATH PENALTY. BUT YOU ARE INNOCENT. HOPEFULLY YOU ARE ONE OF THE TINY FRACTION OF USA SLAVES WHO GIT HELP. MOST INNOCENT SLAVES ARE STILL CONVICTED WITH A LIFE RECORD IN THE USA SLAVE DATABASE. SOME STILL IN USA CONCENTRATION CAMPS. SOME ALREADY MURDERED BY THE USA TERRORIST REGIME...
‘We Need a Whole New System,’ Charges Termaine Hicks After 19 Years Wrongfully Incarcerated
PHILADELPHIA – The Innocence Project, a team that exonerates those wrongly convicted through DNA testing and works to reform the criminal justice system, provided more details Dec. 16 on the release of Termaine Hicks, who was exonerated after 19 years of wrongful incarceration....Hicks’ wrongful conviction dates all the way back to 2001 in Philadelphia, where he was wrongly convicted of a rape. At the time, Hicks had been walking home to his child when he heard a woman screaming. After witnessing how badly she was beaten, Hicks reached for his phone to call the police at the same time they arrived at the scene. The police shot Hicks three times in the back, only realizing they mistook the wrong person afterwards. Not only was Hicks unarmed, but he also didn’t match the description of the attacker provided by a witness, who saw the assaulter dragging the victim into an alley. After the police recognized their mistake, the officers “conspired” to cover it up by falsely testifying at trial. They claimed Hicks had lunged at them while moving to grab his armed gun from his pocket. However, assessments by two medical experts concluded that Hicks was shot from behind, meaning he couldn’t have been lunging toward the cops when he was shot. Additionally, the gun the cops claimed was Hicks’ supposed gun turned out to belong to an off-duty Philadelphia police officer.
Based on the fraud testimonies, Hicks was convicted of rape, aggravated assault, possessing an instrument of crime, and terroristic threats in 2002. He was sentenced to 25 years in prison. According to the Innocence Project and National Registry of Exonerations, “police conduct, like this, has played a role in 35 percent of wrongful convictions resulting in exonerations since 1989.”...
Looking Back: Everyday Objects and Concerns Inside Versus Outside of Prison | Davis Vanguard
In prison, when someone dislikes you, one tactic can be to pass false information on to the authorities so as to cause an investigation. Since the investigations and “court” process in prison frequently resembles a Kangaroo court, anything can happen....
Sentenced to death, but innocent: These are stories of justice gone wrong.
“I was abducted by the state of Ohio when I was 17 years old,”...“I was a child when I was sent to prison to be killed,”Ajamu, now chairman of WTI’s board, told me....“I did not understand what was happening to me or how it could happen. At first I begged God for mercy, but soon it dawned on me that there would be no mercy coming.”...
“It’s a devastating feeling when you recognize that everything you’ve ever believed in and stood for has been taken away from you, and without just cause,” Krone told me. “I was so naive. I didn’t believe this could actually happen to me. I had served my country in uniform. I worked for the post office. I wasn’t perfect, but I had never been in trouble. I’d never even gotten a parking ticket, but here I was on death row. That’s when I realized that if it could happen to me, it could happen to anyone.”...
“I was not opposed to capital punishment until the state tried to kill me,” Drinkard said.
There have been more than 2,700 exonerations overall in the U.S. since 1989, the first year that DNA became a factor, according to the National Registry of Exonerations....
“When I was on death row, I knew I was innocent, but I still came within nine days of my first scheduled execution date,” said Keine, now 73. “I didn’t have a voice. So when I got out, I decided I was going to spend my life being a thorn” in the side of the criminal justice system. “I decided that I was going to go from dead man walking to dead man talking.”...
“When people get off death row, they feel like a piece of shit,” he said. “They don’t have any self-worth—no self-esteem, and they usually don’t have two nickels in their pocket. ...
Moving Forward After a Wrongful Conviction
https://www.edmchicago.com/moving-forward-after-wrongful-conviction/
Going to prison is an incredibly difficult prospect to face. Going to prison for a crime that you didn’t commit is a crushing injustice that can never be remedied. Even the small portion of wrongfully convicted inmates who do eventually get their sentences overturned can never get back the years that they lost behind bars.
There are over two million people incarcerated in the United States of America. According to numerous studies, conservative estimates are that at least 40,000 of those inmates are innocent. That number might be much higher. Some suggest that the real number is over 100,000.
There are many reasons that wrongful convictions occur. With numbers that high, though, it points to the overall problem being a broken criminal justice system. ...
The easiest way to overturn a case is through DNA evidence. Unfortunately, DNA evidence is an available path in less than 10% of all instances. While these organizations do work on cases without DNA evidence as well, their success rate drops dramatically.
Even those who are eventually exonerated typically spend years and sometimes decades in prison before their names are finally cleared. ...
Instead of retrying the case, the prosecutors will often come to the inmate and give them a choice. They can drop the charges for which they are currently being held behind bars if the inmate pleads guilty to a lesser charge. If the inmate agrees, they will be released based on time served.
However, a condition of this agreement is that they can no longer make a compensation claim. By pleading guilty to the lesser charge, the inmate is not considered innocent, which means they were not wrongfully incarcerated. ...
Rebuilding a life for any prisoner can be very difficult. With our rapidly evolving society, when you have spent years locked away, the world you return to is very different from the world that you left. ... Losing years of your life to prison can be very difficult to deal with on a psychological level. ... nothing can fully repair the damage done.
Looking Back: Doing Hard Time – Part Two | Davis Vanguard
https://www.davisvanguard.org/2021/02/looking-back-doing-hard-time-part-two/
Six months after being in prison I was introduced to Islam. I was very depressed and was not very far from taking my own life. I saw a man from a distance who had a look of peace on his face, despite the fact that his identification number indicated that he had 11 years in prison. I wanted that kind of peace for myself, so I struck up a conversation with him. He gave me some study materials and invited me to the prison mosque as a guest. He also read some sections of The Quran, which he explained was revealed by God to the Prophet Muhammad (peace be upon him). I can say, without a doubt, that Islam saved my life because, firstly, I would have killed myself otherwise. And, it was the reason that I didn’t lose my mind....
The grim world of pretrial detention in Texas.
https://sheddinglight.in/texas/stories/
Welcome. Here you can listen to and read over 100 first-hand accounts of the horrific conditions of pretrial caging in Texas jails from 90 people caged in nine different county jails during COVID....
Michigan man freed after wrongful conviction lost mom, dad and brother while in prison for 32 years
— For nearly 32 years, state prison was home for Gilbert Lee Poole, Jr., an innocent man. And even he'll tell you, he isn't the only one. ... As an innocent man being locked up in prison for over three decades, Gilbert Poole lost more than time; his mom, dad and brother all died while he was behind bars for a murder he did not commit. "Now I have to figure out how to navigate a world I haven't seen in 33 years," he said. ...
"I'm relying on the guardian angels around me to hold my hand, because I'm totally lost right now," said Gilbert. "Without them, I'd be sitting on the sidewalk in front of the prison. I wouldn't have a number to call." ...
Man convicted of 2000 murder could be exonerated after another man is arrested for the crime
Metro police arrested a man for a murder on Tuesday morning that another man has already served time for.
NASHVILLE, Tenn. — The Metropolitan Nashville Police Department arrested a man for a murder on Tuesday that another man has already served time for. But this time, police say they finally have the guy who did it....
But what makes Atchison's arrest so unusual is that a year after the murder, police arrested a 28-year-old tow truck driver. Paul Shane Garrett later pleaded guilty and served 15 years for the crime, even though there was no evidence or witnesses linking him to it. But police and District Attorney Glenn Funk both now say Atchison is the one who really killed Tharpe and that it was his DNA that was found all over Tharpe's body.
And, it turns out, that before Garrett pleaded guilty, detectives and the DA's office knew that the DNA evidence found on the victim did not match Garrett. And a year after Garrett went to prison, the Tennessee Bureau of Investigation notified detectives and the DA that they had identified Atchison as the DNA match.
But neither police nor the DA's Office followed up on the new information.
And, incredibly, the lead detective in the case, Roy Dunaway, repeatedly lied in court about things Garrett did and did not say.
Now, Metro cold case detectives and Funk say that the DA's office at the time and police totally bungled and botched the case....
More than 2,800 have been wrongly convicted in the US. Lawmakers and advocates want to make sure they're paid their dues.
https://www.cnn.com/2021/07/07/politics/wrongful-conviction-compensation-bill/index.html
"I had eight years taken from me. My life was completely destroyed. I lost my home, got divorced. I'm trying to rebuild my life. It's a huge adjustment trying to come back into the real world," Wirkkala told CNN. "Most people you meet in prison, they come from broken homes, no family ties, so when they come out, they come out with nothing." ...
"as a former defense attorney, I know that there are tens of thousands of Americans who are currently in prison for crimes they did not commit."...
In New Jersey, she said as an example, an individual can get compensated in the case of a false confession, but the state prohibits exonerees from compensation if they pleaded guilty to the crimes they were exonerated for....
Conviction in 2000 Nashville killing overturned after new suspect arrested, push for review
Garrett, 48, pleaded guilty in 2003 to voluntary manslaughter in the slaying. He was sentenced to 15 years in prison and was released in 2011. But a later investigation cast serious doubt on his guilt. "For Mr. Garrett and his family, this has been a long wait for justice," ... Mr. Garrett is not the first person whose wrongful conviction has been exposed, and he won't be the last." ...
"Within a month of his arrest, police knew" DNA evidence from the scene did not match Garrett, Van Dyke said in a post-conviction relief hearing on July 22. "What is a travesty is that it took 20 years to get results in this case. What we now know is that Mr. Garrett's DNA is not anywhere on the crime scene or on the victim's body. In fact, that the most probative relevant samples in this case are unequivocally tied to a different person." Much of the court case rested on alleged confessions made by Garrett in several interviews with police. But none of those confessions were caught on tape. Instead the defendant repeatedly told detectives in recorded interviews that he was innocent of the murder.
"The techniques used by Detectives ... were, at best, questionable and led the court to rely on inaccurate and misleading information," Dalton found. "This is the first proceeding in which the evidence has not been tainted by the submission of misinformation — namely the persistent submission that Mr. Garrett admitted to the murder when indeed, he did not." In 2004, the TBI identified another potential suspect after a federal index connected the evidence to an arrest by Virginia police in an unrelated case. That man, Calvin Oglin Atchison, 51, also had a history of violent assault charges on his record. Atchison was arrested in May after his indictment on a first-degree murder charge. ... Garrett, who was released from prison in 2011 after completing his sentence, has maintained his innocence. Defense attorneys believe he received bad advice from his lawyer at the time to take a plea deal. ...
AMERICA FAILS AGAIN. THE JURY SYSTEM IS A FAILURE AND SO IS THE BENCH.
AI IS THE ONLY POSSIBLE MEANS OF JUSTICE...
Lawyers for wrongfully convicted Brad Jennings were denied a second trial against a Missouri State Patrol detective
Dan Nash, left, and his legal team leave the federal courthouse in Springfield after a jury ruled in his favor on Feb. 25, 2020. A federal appeals court denied a request for a new trial sought by lawyers for Brad Jennings, a Buffalo man who spent 8 ½ years in a state prison after being wrongly convicted of murdering his wife. Jennings had sought damages from Sgt. Dan Nash with the Missouri State Highway Patrol. Nash was the main investigator and was instrumental in putting Jennings behind bars. The jury found that Nash, a longtime investigator with 26 years at the patrol, did not deliberately or in “bad faith” hide evidence that might have kept Jennings out of prison....
Missouri Circuit Judge John Beger had set aside the conviction and released Jennings after a three-day hearing in Rolla in 2007.... Jennings was convicted of murder in the second degree and armed criminal action and sentenced to 25 years in prison. His wife Lisa died of a gunshot to the head in the early morning hours of Christmas Day 2006. The couple had been married 18 years. The Dallas County coroner had ruled the death a suicide. But one of Lisa Jennings' two sisters thought Lisa was killed by her husband and eventually contacted Nash, who reviewed the case and came to the same conclusion.
Jennings' conviction set aside after gunshot residue test
Jennings did not have much of a defense at trial. Attorney Darrell Deputy made no opening argument, which many criminal lawyers consider a critical mistake, and called no witnesses. Deputy died in 2019 at age 76.
The most important witness was Nash, who testified about blood spatter and how, in his opinion, it would have been nearly impossible for Lisa Jennings to have killed herself by shooting herself in the head without there being a large amount of blood and tissue on her shooting hand. A photo showed only a single blood drop.... Nash's testimony was later refuted — but not by an expert for the defense. It was refuted by an expert hired by the office of the Missouri Attorney General, then headed by Josh Hawley, now a U.S. Senator. In fact, the expert said, in 68 percent of all suicides by gunshot, no detectable blood or tissue is found on the victim's shooting hand, according to a 2005 study later obtained by the News-Leader. Of 103 victims in the study, only 33 had "detectable and observable blood spatter."...
The linchpin for setting aside Jennings' conviction was the fact Nash had ordered a gunshot residue test of the bathrobe Jennings wore the night his wife Lisa died. A positive test result indicates the person likely had fired a gun. The test came back negative, indicating it was unlikely Jennings shot his wife, but Nash never revealed that information. He testified he never received it. He said this despite receiving two other lab reports the same day at the same fax number. These other two reports were disclosed and were used to convict Jennings. Jennings' attorneys argued that Nash had, in fact, acted in bad faith and that he had received the gunshot residue test but buried it....
Man formerly on Florida death row says Tampa police framed him, files lawsuit
TAMPA, Fla. (WFLA) — A Florida man who was on death row and exonerated 37 years later is now suing the City of Tampa, officers on the case and a forensic consultant for allegedly framing him for the rape and murder of a Tampa woman. Robert DuBoise was released from prison in 2020 following a reexamination of the case...
In August 2020, an attorney with the CRU found rape kit samples that had not been used during DuBoise’s trial. It was submitted for DNA testing by the Innocence Project and showed that DuBoise’s DNA was not present. Instead, genetic evidence in the sample came from two other men. Over 11 months, the Innocence Project worked with the CRU to investigate the conviction, and determined that DuBoise did not commit the crime. The SAO filed a motion to release DuBoise after nearly 37 years in prison, three of which were on death row. On Aug. 27, 2020, DuBoise walked free.
According to the Innocence Project, “Knowing that their physical evidence was poor at best, the defendant officers allegedly then conspired to get two informants, including one suspect facing a long-term sentence for unrelated crimes, to turn state’s evidence. One suspect falsely claimed that DuBoise confessed the murder to him, but his story changed significantly in various recountings. This witnesses allegedly failed a polygraph test, but that and other exculpatory evidence was suppressed by the defendant officers.”
Pardoned 30 years after a wrongful conviction, Howard Dudley reflects on what he lost
Howard Dudley spent nearly 24 years in prison after being wrongfully convicted of sexually assaulting his 9-year-old daughter, Amy Moore. A few days before Christmas, 30 years after the initial verdict, North Carolina Governor Roy Cooper pardoned Dudley. ...
"So many lies were told. You know what I was guilty of? Breaking [Amy's mother’s] heart. That's the only thing I was guilty of. That was years before this. When I got married, all of a sudden I became a child molester. When you’re out there living that type of life, everybody’s heart gets broken…You’re young, you know, so it just happened. But I was taking care of my daughter, me and her had a relationship, she’d come spend the weekend with me. And then the thing that got me so bad was when I read that she said I got up on the bed and do this and do that. And I said, 'Oh, my goodness.' I said, 'No.'"...
"I didn't know this until Duke Law School told me, but [the court-appointed lawyer] spent an hour investigating. And I was told that Amy was taken to the clinic by her mother, because she had blood in her clothes and I was supposed to have done that. And so years later, when Duke Law School got investigating my case, they go here to the clinic to talk to the doctor that supposedly discovered the blood in the clothes. He said he didn’t treat her for that. He treated her for rash and headaches. Her mama got on the stand and lied. This is the type of stuff that sent me to prison... He had access to it, my first lawyer. I try not to even think about it because it can be hurtful."
"I cannot understand how twelve jurors came out and said 'Guilty,' with no evidence, no — absolutely nothing. I don't understand that." ...
"You know, my heart goes out to people that I spoke to in there, that confessed to things that they didn't do. One guy had been 37 years in there for a crime he didn't do. And I tried to get him not to do it. But you know, we had to make our own choices. And that's what he did. He took the [plea] deal.
I'm going to make choices that I can live with. Once I learned how to function [in prison] I could live with myself. I could get up every morning, I could look at myself in the mirror. I didn't walk around with a guilty conscience. Because I knew I didn't do anything. They knew I didn't do anything. ...
SLAVE PATROL DEFENDS DRUG FIELD TESTS BECUZ THEY ESTABLISH PROBABLE CAUSE WHICH ALLOWS THEM TO DENY RIGHTS. WITHOUT RIGHTS INNOCENT SLAVES ARE TYRANNIZED AND TORTURED TO PLEAD GUILTY 95% TO 99% OF ALL CASES WHICH WRONGFULLY CONVICTS THE INNOCENT. THIS LUCKY SLAVE WAS EXONERATED BUT, FOR THE MAJORITY REMAIN WRONGFULLY CONVICTED...
Trucker falsely accused of hauling 700 gallons of meth in Texas. How can that happen?
https://www.miamiherald.com/news/nation-world/national/article260176030.html
A trucker accused of hauling 700 gallons of liquid meth is free from custody after laboratory testing proved his cargo actually didn’t contain narcotics. Juan Carlos Toscano Guzman, a Mexican national, was arrested on Feb. 15, and spent nearly six weeks behind bars on false accusations of transporting an estimated $10 million worth of methamphetamine.... “This stemmed from a patrol officer’s attention to detail when he observed something out of the ordinary and he used our resources to further investigate. This is great policing!” But Guzman didn’t have any meth. The retired oil field worker was transporting a mixture of diesel and oil... The officer called dispatch and more first responders arrived. They noticed “crystallization” around the barrels and in a hose hung across a nearby chain link fence. Pharr police and firefighters tested Guzman’s cargo on the spot, saying it tested positive for methamphetamine. Lab agents from the DEA arrived and also found the liquid tested “presumptive positive” for meth, estimating it was about 700 gallons in total. “It’s an enormous amount of drugs,” Vega said — or so authorities thought. Because of the scale of the drug bust, federal investigators took over the case. “These guys were convinced they were on to something huge. But those tests are not reliable,”... Drug testing field kits are used by police across the country every day to determine whether a given substance is a drug or narcotic, and what kind. Many in law enforcement defend the kits, with some claiming the results have never been wrong. But they are far from infallible and sometimes mistake harmless substances for drugs. Because of the margin for error, the tests are generally used to establish probable cause, but courts often will not accept them as evidence... “It was not meth. It was not meth and I tried to explain it to them during the detention hearing, but their tests showed a positive result and so they had enough to detain my client,”... In Guzman’s case, further testing in a laboratory setting ultimately exonerated him...
Murder Conviction Vacated;
Judge Cites Ineffective Attorney
WINSTON=SALEM, N.C. (AP) — A North Carolina man's conviction for first-degree murder was vacated Monday after a judge said his trial attorney was so ineffective that his constitutional rights were violated. Henry Jerome White, 54, has spent the past 25 years in prison after his conviction in the 1996 death of Carl Marshburn, the Winston-Salem Journal reported. Assistant District Attorney Jane Garrity and White’s attorney, Elizabeth Hambourger, filed a joint motion for appropriate relief based on claims that White’s trial attorney, Robert Leonard, performed so poorly at his legal representation that White’s constitutional rights were violated....
ABSOLUTE POWER CORRUPTS ABSOLUTELY...
He Was Sentenced to Death After Law Enforcement Fabricated Evidence. A Federal Court Says He Can Sue.
In 2001, a prosecutor and a police officer zeroed in on a child who they claimed could shed some much-needed light on a yearslong Louisiana murder investigation. But in reality, the law enforcement agents had pinpointed a suspect of choice, constructed a story around him, and then coerced a juvenile witness into adopting that story.
The next year, the man at the center of the investigation—Michael Wearry—was convicted of and sentenced to death for the 1998 murder of Eric Walber, after Livingston Parish District Attorney Scott Perrilloux and Sheriff's Detective Marlon Foster strong-armed Jeffrey Ashton, a young teenager facing his own separate charges, to implicate him. They allegedly fed Ashton a tale putting Wearry at the crime scene. They lied about the results of a photo line-up, indicating Ashton had selected Wearry as the culprit when he expressly picked other people. And they hid instances where Ashton departed from the agents' chosen story. All of this despite the fact that Ashton was at a strawberry festival the night of the crime, and that he maintained he'd never seen Wearry prior to Perrilloux and Foster introducing him to his picture.
Wearry's conviction was overturned in 2016. He will be permitted to sue the government agents who fabricated evidence to put him behind bars, a federal court ruled last week. "Nothing in the story the defendants invented was based on information the child had provided to the Detective or the District Attorney," writes Judge James L. Dennis of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 5th Circuit. "Foster and Perrilloux detained and coerced Ashton into falsely testifying to a narrative that had no basis in any evidence gathered in the case, physical or testimonial."
At question was whether the two men would be entitled to absolute prosecutorial immunity, which, true to its name, essentially makes it impossible to hold prosecutors accountable when they violate your rights while advocating for the state.... But not because the law was applied accurately. The problem is the law is utterly rotten, constructed of a slew of immunity doctrines that give special protections to the government by the government, all while prohibiting victims—whether of a prosecutor, a police officer, a prison guard, a judge, a legislator, a public educator—from achieving any sort of recourse.
"Worthy civil rights claims are often never brought to trial. That's because an unholy trinity of legal doctrines—qualified immunity, absolute prosecutorial immunity, and Monell v. Department of Social Services of City of New York, 436 U.S. 658 (1978)—frequently conspires to turn winnable claims into losing ones," he writes. "This case illustrates that conspiracy in action."...
Video: Hear David Milgaard’s own words on his wrongful conviction
Right up to his death in May, David Milgaard wasn’t satisfied with the results of Saskatchewan’s public inquiry into his wrongful conviction and maintained there was a cover-up, which he said the inquiry failed to expose. Milgaard spent almost 23 years in prison for the rape and murder of Saskatoon nursing assistant Gail Miller before DNA evidence exonerated him. Milgaard insisted that the Crown and police knew he was innocent but buried the truth to save themselves, their careers and their reputations.
“I believe the prosecutor himself somehow really knew what was going on in this situation and more for his own self-preservation than anything else, he decided to continue to suppress this information,” Milgaard told SASKTODAY.ca in a phone interview in October 2021. “Rather than bring out the truth about [Fisher] and free me from prison they suppressed the truth,” said Milgaard. “It was terrible what they did to me." Milgaard was exonerated after DNA evidence proved he didn’t commit the crime and identified serial rapist Larry Fisher from North Battleford as the real killer....
SLAVE PATROL FABRICATING EVIDENCE AGAINST THE INNOCENT...
Natale Cosenza spent 16 years in prison before his conviction was tossed; Now he’s suing the police involved
The civil trial of a former Worcester man who is suing two Worcester police officers alleging that they manipulated evidence that led to him serving 16 years in prison before his sentence was vacated, is underway in Worcester federal court. Natale Cosenza filed a federal civil rights lawsuit against the city of Worcester and eight former and current police officers in 2018 saying police withheld and destroyed evidence in a case that led to his wrongful conviction of assault and battery and armed burglary in August 2002. Cosenza was convicted and served 16 years in prison after a woman who lived in his building was attacked in her bedroom on Aug. 14, 2000. His conviction was later vacated. ...
“Instead of putting together a photo array with pictures of men who fit the description ... Defendants showed her a grossly suggestive photo array that contained 9 photos of people who looked like the Plaintiff, including the Plaintiff’s photograph,” lawyers wrote in the suit. Police told the victim she “needed to identify someone” and that the suspect’s photo was in the array they would show her, according to the suit. The detectives also mentioned Cosenza’s name to the woman and told her that he lived in her building. The woman picked Cosenza’s picture and detectives told her “she had correctly identified her attacker,” the suit said. ...
LAW ABIDING GOOD GUYS COMMIT CRIMES AND THE INNOCENT SLAVES DO THE TIME. PROSECUTORS ABUSE THEIR POWERS...
Prosecutor faces disciplinary hearing for role in Missouri man’s wrongful conviction
https://www.kansascity.com/news/state/missouri/article266422786.html
The Missouri Supreme Court will decide whether a former attorney with the Jackson County Prosecutor’s Office will have her license suspended after a man she prosecuted was wrongfully convicted. Ricky Kidd was found guilty and spent 23 years in prison before being exonerated. He was freed in August 2019. Amy McGowan prosecuted the case. “The case speaks to the problem this country faces with prosecutor’s power and their misconduct in abusing that power,” Kidd said. The Office of Chief Disciplinary Counsel alleges McGowan withheld evidence about a suspect and a person of interest...
LAW ABIDING GOOD GUYS COMMIT CRIMES AND THE INNOCENT SLAVES DO THE TIME. PUBLIC DEFENDERS RIPPING OFF THE SYSTEM...
Spence Law Firm, LLC: Exonerated Iowa Man Awarded $12 Million After Wrongful Imprisonment
IOWA CITY, Iowa, Sept. 29, 2022 /PRNewswire/ -- An exonerated Iowa man who spent more than six years in prison for a sex crime he did not commit was awarded $12 million by a state district court jury today, The Spence Law Firm, LLC and co-counsel said.
Jurors in the Iowa District Court in Johnson County returned the verdict for Donald L. Clark, of Iowa City, Iowa, after six days of testimony and just over two hours of deliberation, finding that the state public defender's failure to investigate the state's case against Mr. Clark and a substandard trial performance in 2009 led to his conviction and wrongful imprisonment. The public defender, John Robertson, died in 2013.
In May 2016, an Iowa District Court entered an order vacating Mr. Clark's conviction after finding Mr. Robertson was ineffective as defense counsel. The court ruled that Mr. Clark was not only not guilty, but also "actually innocent," a legally important finding. Mr. Clark had served six years of a 25-year prison sentence.
After the verdict today, Mr. Clark said, "No matter what happens from here on out, I'm not only free from prison, but I'm also free from the state's prison of lies. With this verdict, the rebuilding of my life can continue."...
FALSE TESTIMONY COERCED BY SLAVE PATROL CRIMINALS SENDS INNOCENT SLAVE TO USA CONCENTRATION CAMP FOR 30 YEARS...
Federal Appeals Court Finds Frank Gable Innocent of Michael Francke’s Murder
The 9th Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals on Sept. 29 upheld a U.S. District Court decision that Frank Gable, the man found guilty of one of the most notorious murders in Oregon history, did not commit the crime for which he was convicted.... Nell Brown, a federal public defender in Portland, to take his case. Working with investigators, Brown worked her way through the long list of witnesses who’d testified against Gable. Nearly all of them recanted...
“They attribute their false testimony to significant investigative misconduct, which the State—remarkably—does not dispute,” the decision says of the witnesses. “The state’s error was compounded by the trial court’s refusal to allow evidence that another man, John Crouse, had confessed multiple times to the murder. Crouse’s confession was particularly compelling because he gave details of the crime that were not publicly known.”... U.S. Magistrate John V. Acosta ordered Gable released from prison in June 2019 after he’d served nearly 30 years....
LAW ABIDING GOOD GUYS COMMIT CRIMES COSTS THE SLAVES KAZILLA GAZILLA GATRILLIONS OF DULLAS...
$9 Million Wrongful Conviction Payout for a 1991 Murder Case
Last year, Cook County State’s Attorney Kim Foxx recused her office from handling eight potentially explosive cases where defendants alleged they were framed by a Chicago police detective married to a criminal court judge. Now one of those cases is about to cost Chicago taxpayers more than $9 million. On Monday, the City Council’s Finance Committee will be asked to authorize the settlement to Patrick Prince. He is among a long line of defendants who have accused now-retired detective Kriston Kato of fabricating evidence and intimidating witnesses. Kato is married to Cook County Criminal Judge Mary Brosnahan....
THE GOOD OL BOYS NETWORK IN THE SLAVE AUCTIONS RUSH THE SLAVES THRU THE SYSTEM WITHOUT DETERMINIG INNOCENT OR GUILT. THEY JUST USE UNCONSTITUTIONAL ACTS TO TORTURE THE SLAVES TO PLEA GUILTY 95% TO 99% OF ALL CASES....
He Was Innocent. He Served Eight Years Anyway
https://www.thedailybeast.com/he-was-innocent-he-served-eight-years-anyway
Stephen Schulz is just one of many convicted by a legal system more committed to conviction rates and clearing dockets than to a search for truth. It didn’t matter that he was innocent. That the waitress whose restaurant he allegedly robbed identified him from a photo lineup, then recanted her testimony on the witness stand. That the prosecution offered to drop the weapons possession charge against the restaurant’s cook if he fingered him as the robber. That the judge would not allow his defense attorney to show the jury a picture of a lookalike who had recently pled guilty to a half a dozen similar robberies around the time of the one he was on trial for....
Medwed believes the most egregious part of this biased system involves “prosecutorial power,” that “because of the plea-bargaining system, and the prosecutor’s decision to charge you with a crime, this means they hold all the cards in the system....
that clearing the case load is more important than determining guilt or innocence. The book also alleges that shared experience between judges, lawyers, and prosecutors, all of whom belong to the same bar, means that appeals courts defer to trial judges, appellate judges cut defense attorneys a break by tolerating all sorts of mistakes...
“Once you become a suspect, everything snowballs against you.”...
LAW ABIDING GOOD GUYS COMMIT THE CRIMES, AND THE SLAVES PAY....
NYC taxpayers shell out whopping $794M in legal payments in past year — a 38% jump
https://nypost.com/2022/10/01/nyc-legal-payments-jump-38-in-past-year-to-whopping-794m/
Taxpayers shelled out a whopping $794.4 million in legal judgments and claims during the fiscal year ending June 30 – up 38% from the $575.9 million paid out during the previous 12 months, according to Mayor Adams’ management report released two weeks ago...
“It’s Crushing”: The Lasting Trauma of the Exonerated
https://www.themarshallproject.org/2022/07/30/it-s-crushing-the-lasting-trauma-of-the-exonerated
Few people remembered that there was a sixth defendant on that indictment: Steven Lopez, who had accepted a plea deal for a lesser charge before trial and served about three years in prison. Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg finally exonerated Lopez this week. It’s a powerful reminder that even in cases that would seem to be under a microscope, wrongful convictions are shot through the criminal system, and for the innocent, there’s rarely a simple path to exoneration, or back to life on the outside.
“It’s PTSD that all of us in this sort of fraternity suffer,”...
In 2000, DNA evidence cleared Atkins of a rape conviction. Even two decades later, he told NBC News, he’s constantly seeking to establish alibis, hoarding receipts and staring into security cameras, just to avoid being wrongfully accused of a crime again. “Being in prison when you know you shouldn’t be there is hard to describe. It’s crushing,” Atkins said. “You are fearful of death almost every second, conditioned in ways that bring on paranoia and anger.” A study released last month of 59 exonerees — researchers said it was the largest study of its kind — found that 80% experienced at least one serious traumatic event while incarcerated. More than half of exonerees showed significant signs of PTSD, higher than the reported rate among combat veterans...
“I don’t think they can ever make it right,” Jackson said after a court earlier this month declared he had been wrongfully imprisoned. Jackson’s lawyers argued that police lied and made up evidence used to convict him for a 1991 murder, and also withheld exculpatory evidence from prosecutors and from Jackson’s defense. “They mess your whole life up, your family’s lives, and then it takes a long time to get yourself together,”...