Today it's in Missouri-- Lonnie Erby was freed from jail after serving 17 years of a 115 year sentence for crimes he didn't commit. He is now 49 years old. DNA evidence was not available at the time of his conviction. Thanks to the perserverence of The Innocence Project, DNA testing finally was done. Someone else --not Lonnie--raped three young girls....and got away with it.

Nationally, more than 300 men and women have been exonerated of crimes and released from prison as the result of DNA testing, the Innocence Project said. Testing has confirmed the guilt of some other inmates.

How do the exonerated fit back in society after so many years? With great difficulty. There's a new organization to help--the Life After Exoneration Program. They welcome contributions.

Exoneration ends the struggle of many men and women who have fought for years to prove their innocence. But it begins their struggle to survive on the outside. That struggle includes virtually every aspect of life - a job, a place to live, financial resources, a support system, and access to medical, psychological, and dental care. Because no services are provided to exonerees, they must face these overwhelming challenges alone. Many do not succeed. The Life After Exoneration Program was created to address the on-going injustices exonerees suffer in the aftermath of their release. Begun in 2003, LAEP is a nationwide project that appreciates the unique challenges facing the exonerated and provides services and resources to help this growing community of survivors of wrongful conviction re-enter society and rebuild their lives.

The program was started by Barry Scheck and Peter Neufeld, co-directors of the Innocence Project and Dr. Laurie Lola Vollen of the University of California, Berkeley. It is a non-profit project of the Tides Center.

Yesterday the feds decided not to bring charges against the cops and prosecutors in Chicago's infamous Ford Heights case. An exhaustive state report by Cooks County was released that clears them of deliberate wrongdoing. While this may wrap up the Ford Heights case, it is apparent that reviews must be made in every case of wrongful conviction. Only by knowing what went wrong inside the system, can we figure out how to prevent it from happening again.

Dennis Williams, Verneal Jimerson, Kenneth Adams and Willie Raines were all in their 20s when they were wrongfully convicted of the gang rape and double murder of Carol Schmal and Lawrence Lionberg.

Their freedom came with the aid of a Northwestern University journalism professor and his class who uncovered new evidence. The evidence included written confessions from two of the three other men who were charged with the murders in July 1996.

The four wrongfully convicted men won a $36 million settlement in 1999--the largest of its kind in U.S. history. The 348 page Cook County report says there was insufficient evidence to prove the cops or prosecutors intentionally lied to convict the men.

Asked today what were the biggest flaws in the prosecutors' case agains the original defendants, Appellate Court Justice Gino DiVito, who conducted the 4-year study, cited the "tunnel vision" of investigators.

The Innocence Project today announced the opening of an office in their New Orleans center to serve Mississippi.

We have already received more than 100 applications from inmates seeking assistance," said Emily Maw, a staffer for the Mississippi project. A case in which two sisters, Jamie and Gladys Scott, were sentenced to life in prison after being convicted of taking about $10 at gunpoint is among those being reviewed.

The Innocence Project was instrumental in winning a new trial last year for former Mississippi death-row inmate Kennedy Brewer. Local lawyers handled the case for the national Innocence Project.

....Mississippi ranks second only to Louisiana in the number of individuals incarcerated per 100,000 people, according to the Innocence Project. "If the system's failure rate is a mere one percent, 215 people in prison in Mississippi are innocent," the project says.

Another group, the Mississippi Justice Project will work with the Innocence Project to get information and applications to inmates.

....The project will be looking at questionable convictions in which inmates received more than 20 years in prison.

The goal is one project in every state. We'll keep reporting on the progress.

In Florida, lawyers with the aid of law students are furiously battling a coming DNA testing deadline, after which they will not be allowed testing to prove their innocence.

Meanwhile, Barry Scheck, cofounder of the The Innocence Project at Cardozo Law School in New York, is trying to line up support from lawyers around the state to find a way to lift the ''arbitrary deadline,'' established by the Legislature two years ago.

He characterizes the situation as a looming miscarriage of justice for possibly hundreds of inmates who could be cheated out of the chance the law was designed to provide.

Under the law, passed in 2001 and sponsored by Sen. Alex Villalobos, R-Miami, anyone convicted of a crime has two years after a sentence becomes final to ask a judge to review DNA testing of physical evidence. Those convicted before the Villalobos law went into effect have until Oct. 1 to file their petitions.

Villalobos is willing to consider extending the deadline, but Florida Governor Jeb Bush is not.

Another one of the costs of ignoring systemic abuse and abusers:

Aldermen OK $1.5 million Roscetti settlement

The Chicago City Council agreed Tuesday to pay $1.5 million to settle a civil rights lawsuit brought by the one of four men cleared by DNA evidence in the 1986 murder-rape of a medical student.

This a a very famous wrongful conviction case called the "Roscetti case" after the victim who was raped, kicked and beaten to death.

The convictions were overturned based on coerced confessions, and ultimately, DNA evidence that cleared the four. In October, 2002, they were pardoned by then Governor Ryan. Subsequently, based on a telepone tip, police were led to two other men. DNA showed they were responsible for the crime. Faced with the DNA tests, the two pleaded guilty.

The lawsuits aren't over:

"In addition to suing the city, the four exonerated men have lawsuits pending against police, prosecutors, a crime lab worker and others involved in convicting them. "

For more on the four men, go here.

Nicholas James Yarris, 42, of Philadelphia has been on death row since for 21 years....half of his life. Today at a press conference, his lawyers, Peter Goldberger and Christina Swarns, announced that DNA testing has cleared him.

Recent tests show that Yarris' DNA did not match physical evidence left on the victim's clothing and under her fingernails, said Swarns, of the Federal Defender Association of Philadelphia. The association said that Yarris is the first person on death row in Pennsylvania to be cleared by DNA testing.

In the late 1980s, Yarris -- who has maintained his innocence -- was one of the first prisoners in Pennsylvania to demand DNA testing. Test results done in at a state police lab in 1992 were inconclusive. After Yarris exhausted his state court appeals, federal defenders took over the case and in 1997 demanded new tests, which were completed last week by a private lab in Richmond, Calif., Swarns said.

Each piece of evidence kept by the Delaware County District Attorneys Office-- gloves left in the victim's car, the victim's underwear and skin samples from under her fingernails -- was retested and each piece excluded Yarris, Swarns said.

The prosecutor has said he will evaluate the new evidence. So does this mean the system works? No.

"The fact that after 21 years Yarris was lucky enough to have this evidence discovered is by no means proof of the system working," said Jeff Garis of Pennsylvania Abolitionists United Against the Death Penalty.

"The true killer has escaped justice, a young man's life was destroyed and the limitations of our justice system have been exposed."

Since DNA evidence is available in only a small number of homicide cases - approximately 15% -- this exoneration should cause us to consider the fact that 85% of death penalty cases can never be 'scientifically verified.' An erroneous conviction of this magnitude is ample evidence of a problem. The vast majority of reasonable people - both for and against the death penalty - can agree that no executions should take place until we can be certain that there aren't other innocent people on death row."

This case is another glaring example of why a moratorium on the death penalty is needed.

Update: Here's some more news on the case.

Barry Scheck flew into Indianopolis today to ask a federal judge to order a DNA test on Darnell Williams, who is set for execution.

The former prosecutor on the case, now in private practice joined in the motion. Scheck is seeking clemency from the Governor, and wants to establish that Williams was not the shooter. Some of the jurors who returned the death verdict have joined in the request.

The Innocence Project, of which Scheck is co-founder, has agreed to pay the considerable cost of the testing.

If Williams was not the shooter, but instead along for the robbery that preceded the murder, the Governor might commute his death sentence to life in prison.

Update: The New York Times Thursday has this report.

How many Richard Danzigers or Gary Lamars will it take before Congress gets the message? DNA testing protects the innocent and identifies the guilty.

Hearings were held yesterday on the Innocence Protection Act. Peter Neufeld of the Innocence Project at Cardozo Law School (co-founded by Neufeld and Barry Scheck) testified, pointing out:

• Passage of the Innocence Protection Act will double the number of prisoners cleared each year by DNA evidence.

• DNA testing varies widely state-to-state, and some prosecutors actively resist efforts to reopen old cases to new science.

• At least 132 Americans, twelve of them on death row, have been exonerated since DNA testing began. Last year, 20 people were exonerated based on DNA.

The Justice Department is resisting the Innocence Protection Act, apparently fearful of a deluge of testing requests. Nonsense. As Neufeld points out,

"...most of the people in prison are guilty ... they know they're guilty and they don't want to go near the DNA test."

For more on the Innocence Protection Act, what it provides, its history and why it's needed, go here. Read this letter from cops and prosecutors supporting the Act. We hope you will contact your elected officials in Congress and tell them to pass the IPA--no innocent person should be kept in jail when available evidence could prove their innocence.

The Florida Commission on Capital Cases issued a study last year that listed 23 inmates on death row in Florida who were wrongfully convicted. One more died while on death row who likely was innocent. And one was released shortly after the study was finished. That makes for 25 wrongfully convicted persons on Florida's Death Row, according to authorities.

Four of the cases reflect men who authorities later believed were innocent. Smith died in 2000 before DNA evidence could exonerate him of the 1985 sexual assault and death of an 8-year-old Miami girl. Freddie Lee and Wilbur Pitts were pardoned by Gov. Reuben Askew in 1975. Gov. Bob Martinez pardoned James Richardson in 1989 after Janet Reno, then a special prosecutor, determined evidence was suppressed, witnesses lied and another suspect wasn't investigated.

The remaining 20 cases were sent back to trial courts, seven because of evidence issues, seven because of witness issues and six for issues involving court officials, according to the study.

In those cases, eight were dropped or dismissed for a variety of reasons: witness recanted; prosecutors did not want to subject witnesses to further trials; witness had died; evidence was lost or missing. Ten inmates were either acquitted at retrial or by the courts. Two pleaded guilty to lesser charges.

This companion article lists the 25 inmate with a short paragraph on why each was released.

How many more are unjustly on Death Row? It's time for a moratorium --we hope one of the leading Democratic candidates will call for it. Here's a chart showing where each stands on the issue. Of them, John Kerry has the most progressive position.

Kerry: Opposes capital punishment, except for terrorists. Believes that the system is flawed so long as innocents are in danger of being executed.

Considering the candidates widely considered to be least likely to win:

Kucinich: Opposes death penalty because it's morally wrong and racially biased.
Sharpton: Opposes the death penalty.

And then there's Bush:

"I was the governor of a state that had a death penalty and, as far as I was concerned, I reviewed every case and I was confident that every person that had been put to death received full rights and was guilty of the crime charged." (Bush press conference, May 11, 2001)

Joe Conason went to see The Exonerated, an off-broadway play about the wrongfully convicted, and writes a powerful article about it.

Composed wholly from court records and interviews by playwrights Jessica Blank and Erik Jensen, this documentary drama recounts true tales of horror from the American criminal-justice system. The actors sit downstage and read their parts as the stories of six innocent citizens condemned to death row unfold. If this sounds like a worthy endeavor, it is; if it sounds dull or didactic, it isn’t.

The Exonerated is so compelling as theater, in fact, that it has drawn a rotating marquee of talent to the 45 Bleecker Street Theatre—including Richard Dreyfuss, Jill Clayburgh, Sara Gilbert, Gabriel Byrne, Aidan Quinn, and director Bob Balaban. At the performance I saw, Mariska Hargitay, star of Law and Order: Special Victims Unit, gave brilliant voice to Sunny Jacobs, a woman who spent almost 17 years in a Florida penitentiary—including five years on death row—for a double murder she didn’t commit.

In the article, Conason retells the story of another death row inmate, one who was brutally executed when he caught on fire in the electric chair. He also touts, as do we, Taryn Simon's new book, The Innocents, with commentary by Innocence Project co-founders Barry Scheck and Peter Neufeld.

Funded in part by a Guggenheim Fellowship, Ms Simon spent three years crisscrossing the country, interviewing and photographing the book’s subjects, whose wrongful convictions occurred in 18 different states, from California to Kentucky, Texas to Indiana.


The Innocents

"Former Death Row inmate Aaron Patterson, who was pardoned by Gov. George Ryan in January, filed a federal lawsuit seeking $30 million Thursday alleging he was tortured by Chicago police and Cook County prosecutors covered it up. Patterson alleged he was tortured or threatened by former Cmdr. Jon Burge and officers he commanded as they investigated the 1986 murders of Vincent and Rafaela Sanchez in their South Chicago home."

Patterson is the second of the pardoned inmates to sue.

"This lawsuit is a road map for people who want to understand the police scandal and torture" that has occurred for the last 30 years."

John Kogut, 39, John Restivo, 44, and Dennis Halstead, 48 walked out of prison today for the first time in 17 years. Recent advanced DNA testing failed to link them to the crime--the murder of a teenage roller rink worker.

The men were released on bail as the prosecution has not yet decided whether to retry the men. Restivo was represented by Barry Scheck, who" hailed the decision to vacate the convictions."

''Once again, DNA testing has exposed the tragic fact that innocent people are accused, tried and convicted on a regular basis in the American criminal justice system,'' Scheck said.

According to Scheck, there have been more than 130 post-conviction exonerations nationwide based on DNA evidence. Scheck is founder of the Innocence Project at Cardozo Law School in New York City.

Why were the three convicted in the first place?

Kogut confessed to the crime after a lengthy interrogation and implicated Restivo and Halstead, but he later recanted. Two hairs found in Restivo's van were similar to those of the victim.

It is generally conceded today that microscopic comparison of hair samples is a ''junk science'' when used to identify the person from whom a hair came. It can show similiarities but it cannot identify the source of the hair. It's snake oil.

The advanced DNA testing showed that the semen on the victim did not match any of the three convicted young men.
Junk Science and false confessions--two prominent causes of wrongful convictions.