DNA Frees Misidentified Man

By TChris, Section Innocence Cases
Posted on Tue Oct 31, 2006 at 08:40:58 PM EST
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Another jury got it wrong. Another innocent man languished in prison. And another DNA test set him free.

You've heard the story before. (If you haven't, check out TalkLeft's innocence cases link.) This man's name is Larry Fuller. He served honorably in Vietnam before he served two decades for a rape he didn't commit.

The woman looked at two photo lineups, both of which included Fuller. She picked him in the second one, even though Fuller was bearded in the picture and she said her attacker had no facial hair.

The police contributed to Fuller's misidentification by including his photo in two photo arrays. The unduly suggestive tactic (I know I've seen that face before) all but assured that the victim would pick Fuller. (TalkLeft explores identification procedures in more detail here.)

Fuller has consistently asked for the DNA evidence to be retested, but the Dallas County prosecutors didn't agree to retesting until this year. Remarkably, Fuller is the tenth Dallas County prisoner to be exonerated by DNA testing in the last five years.

The Dallas County prosecutors deserve credit for finally allowing retesting in some cases, and for apologizing to Fuller. But questions need to be asked about the frequency with which the police have arrested, and Dallas County has prosecuted, the wrong person.

Officials from the Innocence Project, a New York-based legal clinic that seeks to uncover wrongful convictions, said the number of overturned cases is "unprecedented and troubling." They plan to ask the district attorney's office to investigate whether there is a pattern to the cases.

"Quite frankly, 10 exonerations in Dallas County is more than some other states have had," said Vanessa Potkin, an Innocence Project lawyer. "Nowhere else in the country have we had so many wrongful convictions exposed in such a short period of time."

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Documentary on Overturned Convictions (none / 0) (#1)
by PJS on Wed Nov 01, 2006 at 12:08:55 AM EST

We are producing a film documenting an epidemic of wrongful convictions in Kern County, CA in the early 80s. Several dozen working class folks were falsely accused of running 'child sex rings' in which they allegedly molested their own and other peoples' children. The allegations were actually a load of crap, but that didn't stop the DA's office from coercing kids to testify against their own parents.
Ultimately, dozens of people spent years in prison, only to have their convictions overturned as the kids recanted and admitted that they were forced to lie. The Northern California Innocence Project was able to free one of the last people to still be imprisoned in these cases, John Stoll.
The DA that presided at the time is still in office, and runs unopposed at election time. He has taken to spouting off at the local paper, using the county DA's website as a platform to publish his own editorials criticizing their reporting.
We hope to bring this into the public eye and expose it for the travesty it is.

If you want to know more about our effort, we are at http://www.luckyexitfilms.com/