by TChris

In 2003, after serving 21 years in a North Carolina prison for a rape he didn't commit, Leo Waters was released. New DNA testing proved his innocence. Yesterday, Gov. Mike Easley granted Waters a pardon on the ground of actual innocence.

The pardon came as authorities charged another man with the rape. The new suspect has been identified as a serial rapist, leading one to wonder whether his other victims would have been spared if the police had conducted a thorough investigation rather than focusing on building a case against the first suspect to cross their path.

by TChris

Two days ago, this post remarked: "It seems that a week rarely goes by without a new report of an innocent accused being cleared (after conviction) by DNA testing." This week, only two days have passed.

Luis Diaz was arrested in 1977 when a teenage girl identified him as the man who had raped her a few nights earlier. The police were unconvinced that the girl identified the right man, and they eventually let him go. After a series of rapes in the Miami area, police began putting Diaz' picture into photo arrays. A victim picked out Diaz' picture, so they threw Diaz into lineups, where six more victims identified him.

All those people can't be wrong, right? The fact that Diaz, at 5'3", was smaller than the assailant that many witnesses described to the police didn't trouble the jury for long. And so Diaz, who has always protested his innocence, was sent to prison for life, convicted of seven sexual assaults. But now, DNA testing of evidence from two victims provides persuasive evidence that the crimes weren't committed by Diaz.

Barry Scheck and others explain how so many witnesses got it so wrong:

by TChris

It seems that a week rarely goes by without a new report of an innocent accused being cleared (after conviction) by DNA testing. How many innocent men and women are behind bars with little hope of release because the true criminal left behind no DNA evidence, or because it wasn't collected by the police?

Today's happy ending is about Thomas Doswell, who spent nearly 18 years in prison for a rape he didn't commit:

Doswell, of Homewood, was convicted in the 1986 rape of a 48-year-old woman at a hospital in Pittsburgh. He was 25 and the father of two young children when he was convicted.

Because Doswell truthfully insisted that he was innocent, he was denied parole four times.

by TChris

With good reason, prosecutors aren't opposing Larry Peterson's motion for a new trial. Peterson was convicted of rape and murder, but new DNA testing proves that semen in the victim's body and skin beneath her fingernails didn't come from Peterson. And hair found on the victim's body that the prosecutors claimed to be Peterson's actually belonged to the victim.

Great news for Peterson? Not necessarily. The prosecutor has indicated that he will ask the judge to set bail for Peterson within standard guidelines, which could mean bail of $250,000 or more. If the judge sets bail that high, Peterson's family won't be able to afford it, and Peterson will remain in jail - exonerated and still incarcerated.

What good is the mountain of DNA evidence supporting Peterson if the practical effect of setting high bail is to deny him his freedom?

Why is this happening? The explanation is both simple and common:

Asking for standard bail in this case would be one more signal that prosecutors still cannot admit they made a mistake.

by TChris

Columnist Ronnie Polaneczky writes about three men in the Philadelphia area who were arrested on the basis of mistaken identifications.

[Morris] Wells was arrested in March for a subway-stop murder that police now believe had been committed by Philly serial-killer suspect Juan Covington, who has admitted to the crime. Yesterday, murder charges against Wells were dropped.

The district attorney may soon also drop aggravated-assault and attempted-murder charges against Clyde Johnson, who has been imprisoned since April 2004, for a Logan shooting that ballistics tests have since tied to a gun belonging to Covington.

Wells and Johnson were arrested in large part based on eyewitnesses who tagged them as suspects. So was Omar Lezama de La Rosa, the Ambler man arrested last week for a rape that his half-brother is now suspected of committing.

Mistaken identification is a frequent cause of mistaken convictions. Temple law professor Edward Ohlbaum explains why:

by TChris

Rex Penland's two nephews testified that they were with Penland when he picked up a prostitute in Winson-Salem in 1992.

The Sapp brothers testified that Penland drove Alford to a logging road in Stokes County, a mostly rural county north of Winston-Salem along the Virginia border, where he raped her, instructed his nephews to tie her to a tree, then stabbed her to death.

Penland testified that he was drunk and passed out. The jury believed the Sapp brothers, and Penland was sentended to death. New DNA evidence casts doubt on Penland's involvement.

by TChris

A dishonest cop. A dishonest prosecutor. A judge who doesn't seem to care. And a potentially innocent man who faces three life sentences.

The cop, Det. Joseph Godoy, investigated a robbery and triple homicide in Tucson, but found no leads until anonymous sources identified some men who may have been involved. After Godoy had that information, he interviewed Keith Woods, a repeat drug offender facing 25 years, who supposedly identified three men he claimed were involved in the crime.

Godoy interviewed Woods, but didn't record the first 45 minutes. "No plausible explanation" was offered why some of the interview was untaped, the Arizona Supreme Court found.

During the trial of two of the men, Godoy testified (falsely) that he first learned of the defendants during the interview with Woods. He didn't mention the anonymous calls. The inference is that Godoy fed the names he received from the anonymous callers to Woods during the unrecorded portion of the interview, then let Woods parrot back the information during the recorded portion. In exchange for his help, Woods got a break in his own case.

The prosecutor, Kenneth Peasley, twice named Arizona Prosecutor of the Year, knew that Godoy intended to commit perjury, but he elicited the false testimony at trial. Having concealed evidence that could have discredited Woods, he argued to the jury that Woods' testimony should cause the jury to convict the two men. The jury did as he asked and the men were convicted.

Did Missouri execute an innocent man? Larry Griffin was executed in 1995 for a drive-by shooting. Yesterday, a report was issued by the NAACP Legal Defense Fund demonstrating the likelihood that he was factually innocent of the crime. The Circuit Attorney's office has agreed to reopen the investigation.

Death penalty advocates like to point out that despite the growing number of wrongfully convicted prisoners later found innocent through DNA testing, it has never been shown that an innocent person has been put to death. That may change.

The timing could not be more critical as the Senate Judiciary Committee today considers a bill to limit habeas corpus appeals in state death penalty cases.

by TChris

Reversing decisions of a trial court and the state court of appeals, the Wisconsin Supreme Court today ordered a new trial for Ralph Armstrong, convicted of the 1980 rape and murder of Charise Kamps. While the prosecution clung to its theory that Armstrong was the rapist, it had difficulty explaining new DNA tests that excluded Armstrong as the source of the semen recovered from Kamps. It turned out that the semen belonged to Kamps' boyfriend.

The prosecution nonetheless argued that "head hairs found on a bathrobe belt draped over Kamps' mutilated body ... were similar to Armstrong's" hair, and hey, superficial similarity should be good enough to sustain a murder conviction, right? Wrong. New DNA tests revealed that the hairs didn't come from Armstrong.

The prosecution's shakey case was always controversial, given the decision police made to "reconstruct" events by hypnotizing a witness, and the witness' subsequent flip-flopping testimony.

David Lemus and Olmado Hidalgo have been in jail for 14 years for the notorius 1990 New York Palladium murder. They may be innocent. A hearing will be held tomorrow, and a decision to free them, give them a new trial, or leave their convctions and sentences intact could come down within weeks.

The case has taken over the lives of three unlikely allies: A former prosecutor, a former detective and the jury forewoman. All are working to free the men.

Dan Slepian, the "Dateline" producer who has been following the case since 2002, says he finds the devotion of Mr. Cohen, Mr. Addolorato and Ms. Kramer remarkable. "The ultimate truth of what happened that night, while important, is in many ways less interesting then these three people," he said. "Here you have three former strangers who have come together to fight for what they believe is the truth."

by TChris

As TalkLeft reported here, a federal judge ordered a new trial for Randy Steidl after concluding that his lawyer's poor representation, combined with new evidence, compelled the conclusion that Steidl was probably innocent of the double murder with which he was charged. Steidl was freed after Illinois decided not to bring him to trial again.

Steidl's co-defendant hasn't been so fortunate.

Herbert Whitlock’s hopes for a second chance were crushed Thursday afternoon when the much anticipated decision by Edgar County Circuit Judge H. Dean Andrews denied the 59-year-old a new trial.

The validity of Whitlock's conviction is called into question by the same unreliable testimony and prosecutorial misconduct that eventually led to Steidl's freedom. Whitlock's lawyers say that "as in Mr. Steidl’s case, it is going to take the federal courts to make the right decision to let an innocent man out of jail."

Former Illinois State Police Lt. Michale Callahan, who believes both Steidl and Whitlock are innocent, is disappointed with the state court's decision.

How many times do you hear Nancy Grace, Jeanine Pirro, Wendy Murphy, Mark Fuhrman and other prosecution oriented tv analysts proclaim a parent guilty of murdering his or her child because, they claim, statistics show that this is almost always the case? DNA may prove a better indicator than their precious statistics. The Chicago Tribune reports on the case of Kevin Fox, released Friday after 8 months in jail:

Charges were dropped today against Kevin Fox, accused of the sexual assault and murder of his 3-year-old daughter Riley, after prosecutors said DNA tests excluded him as a suspect in her death. This is an absolute exclusion of Kevin Fox," Will County State's Atty. James Glasgow said during an emergency court hearing this afternoon requested by prosecutors in the Joliet courthouse.

Prosecutors already are falling over themselves to justify their erroneous rush to judgment: