The national registry of exonerations

An interesting resource.

The national registry of exonerations

Interesting.

Could also be called something like "The National registry of Major Fuckups."

There are more black people in prisons now than ever were enslaved before emancipation.

Republicans love prison. It cuts down the unemployment figures, it takes Democratic voters out of their districts, and it makes them look "tough on crime."

NoCoPilot wrote:

... it takes Democratic voters out of their districts...

And most of the time they go for the permanent disenfranchisement, felons losing the right to vote. For no real reason.

Oh, there's a reason.

Another one out.

After 22 years on death row, woman sees murder case tossed

And another. This one is particularly disgusting.

Exonerated in Baltimore After Long Prison Stretch

Quote :

Police allegedly set their sights on Burgess from the get-go, swabbing his hands at the scene and taking him immediately to the station for interrogation.
    Burgess says "no evidence implicating him" in the crime, however, and that he was released from police custody the next morning.
    Rather than search for the real killers, Burgess says the police conspired with crime lab employee Daniel Van Gelder over the next month to fabricate gun-shot residue, or GSR, evidence against Burgess.
    In a two-day trial that ended with a conviction and life sentence for Burgess, "the primary - and virtually only - evidence used against him was defendant Van Gelder's fabricated GSR findings."
    Burgess said police had evidence of his innocence all along. Indeed one of Dyson's sons told them that he had seen the man who barged into the house on the night of the murder.
    "The officer defendants asked Ms. Dyson's son if that person was Ms. Dyson's boyfriend," the complaint states. "Ms. Dyson's son told the Defendants that it was not plaintiff.
    "Despite the obvious exculpatory value of this statement, it was never disclosed to the prosecutor or to plaintiff or his criminal defense lawyer."

And the real killer confessed a couple of years after the crime, too. And still the boyfriend had to do 19 years.

Sometimes, when you give small people big power, it inflates their sense of self-worth and they become abusive of the power.

Don't the prosecutors get embarrassed by stuff this shoddy?

Alabama death row inmate freed after 30 years

Quote :

Tests on bullets found at the crime scene could not be connected to a gun found at Mr Hinton's home, prompting prosecutors to drop the case.

Quote :

"All they had to do was test the gun," Mr Hinton said, explaining why he shouldn't have had to sit on death row for nearly three decades.
Bullets from the crime scene were the only evidence that linked Mr Hinton to the murders.

richard09 wrote:

Don't the prosecutors get embarrassed by stuff this shoddy?

Here's a hint. The defendant is black. Dollars to donuts the prosecutor is white.

Ex-Prosecutor of Exonerated Death Row Inmate Pens Apology

Quote :

Stroud's letter was more than just an apology. It was a condemnation of the state's decision to oppose compensating the now cancer-stricken Ford for three decades lost. It was also a firm statement against capital punishment.

"Glenn Ford deserves every penny owed to him under the compensation statute," Stroud wrote. "This case is another example of the arbitrariness of the death penalty. I now realize, all too painfully, that as a young 33-year-old prosecutor, I was not capable of making a decision that could have led to the killing of another human being."

Lead prosecutor apologizes for role in sending man to death row

Quote :

Pursuant to the review and investigation of cold homicide cases, investigators uncovered evidence that exonerated Mr. Ford. Indeed, this evidence was so strong that had it been disclosed during of the investigation there would not have been sufficient evidence to even arrest Mr. Ford!

And yet, despite this grave injustice, the state does not accept any responsibility for the damage suffered by one of its citizens. The bureaucratic response appears to be that nobody did anything intentionally wrong, thus the state has no responsibility. This is nonsensical. Explain that position to Mr. Ford and his family. Facts are stubborn things, they do not go away.

At the time this case was tried there was evidence that would have cleared Glenn Ford. The easy and convenient argument is that the prosecutors did not know of such evidence, thus they were absolved of any responsibility for the wrongful conviction.

I can take no comfort in such an argument. As a prosecutor and officer of the court, I had the duty to prosecute fairly. While I could properly strike hard blows, ethically I could not strike foul ones.

An email from Susan Sarandon.

Dear MoveOn member,

My dear friend Sister Helen Prejean, who I played in "Dead Man Walking," is fighting her every waking hour to save an innocent man Oklahoma plans to execute in just 33 days. We need your help—and we need it right now.

Sign our petition asking Oklahoma Governor Mary Fallin to stop the execution of Richard Glossip.

Richard is scheduled to be executed on September 16. He was convicted of murder solely on the testimony of Justin Sneed, who confessed to the murder but claimed Richard had hired him to do it—even though there is not a shred of physical evidence to support his claim. By implicating Richard, Sneed avoided the death penalty himself and is serving a life sentence in a medium-security prison.1

Ten men on death row in Oklahoma have been exonerated in the past 35 years, four of them convicted based on the false testimony of criminals who had their sentences reduced in exchange for their testimony.2

Despite this, Gov. Fallin has said the state will go ahead with the execution.3 Our only hope is that a groundswell of public outrage forces the governor to issue a 60-day reprieve—giving Richard's pro bono lawyers time to prove his innocence.

Add your voice to help save an innocent man's life. Click here to add your name, and then pass it along to your friends right away.

Sneed's own daughter wrote to the Oklahoma Pardon and Parole Board last October that she "strongly believe[s]" Richard is innocent. "For a couple of years now, my father has been talking to me about recanting his original testimony," she wrote. "I feel his conscience is getting to him."4

Decades of research and investigations show that the death penalty is discriminatory and is used disproportionately against people who are low-income (like Richard), and Black, and in cases where the victim is white.5

As Reverend Adam Leathers of Oklahoma City stated on Monday night, "Sixty days is a small price to pay to avoid killing an innocent man."6

Thanks for all you do.

–Susan Sarandon


Sources:

1. "Save Richard Glossip!" Ministry Against the Death Penalty, accessed August 7, 2015
http://www.moveon.org/r/?r=305872&id=128796-26655794-eh62IQx&t=5

2. "What Happened in Room 102: Oklahoma Prepares to Execute Richard Glossip," The Intercept, July 9, 2015
http://www.moveon.org/r/?r=305994&id=128796-26655794-eh62IQx&t=6

3. "Fallin says state is prepared 'to hold [Richard Glossip] accountable,' activists plead for his life," The City Sentinel, August 10, 2015
http://www.moveon.org/r/?r=305986&id=128796-26655794-eh62IQx&t=7

4. "Clemency letter from O'Ryan Justine Sneed," Scribd, October 23, 2014
http://www.moveon.org/r/?r=306051&id=128796-26655794-eh62IQx&t=8

5. "Death Penalty 101," American Civil Liberties Union, accessed August 14, 2015
https://www.aclu.org/death-penalty-101

6. "Fallin says state is prepared 'to hold [Richard Glossip] accountable,' activists plead for his life," The City Sentinel, August 10, 2015
http://www.moveon.org/r/?r=305986&id=128796-26655794-eh62IQx&t=9

I got that email too. Too bad prison reform is one of those "third rail" issues that political candidates dare not touch.

Forty Years for a Hair.

Funny part is the man had no hair at the time of the crime, and the hair was the only evidence.

A good start in the movement against killer cops. And it's in California.

Quote :

My personal opinion is that they made me the scapegoat because they had no one to blame. And being that I had been an escapee from the prison unit when these two ladies were killed, they kind of fixed it in a manner to make me look like the perpetrator.

Sounds like no angel.

NoCoPilot wrote:

Sounds like no angel.

I think the legal response to your comment is "So fucking what?"
The man was screwed by the prosecutor. Big time.

Eventually, hair evidence will be tossed out of court as pseudo-science, just as dental evidence was. I am starting to lean to the position that biological evidence should only be allowed for excluding someone, and never for including.

And I think DNA should also be used only for excluding someone. When the prosecutor says, "This DNA can only belong to one person in nine billion," he is not saying that it is not possible for more than one person alive today to have that same DNA. I don't know how many markers they use, and I don't know what their sample sizes were in the calculation of the numbers, but in any case, it never means that the individual is absolutely the only owner of such DNA markers. I believe that in the great majority of cases, maybe all of them, the DNA evidence is correct, but I also recognize that it is possible for it to be incorrect in the use of prosecution.

I dunno. Having worked with convicts for a project back in college, I came to realize that some people really do belong in prison.

If not for their own good, then for the good of society.

In those cases I actually have some sympathy for prosecutors -- you have a crime, you have a criminal. Who cares if they're related? It's a hell of a lot easier to put the two together and close two cases at once, taking credit for great law enforcement work. So what if it's the wrong crime? In the end you achieved the goal, which is to get the criminal off the streets.

I'm being only a little bit facetious.

Good god! I hope you're being a lot facetious.

Unfortunately, you describe the thoughts of many in law enforcement and the prosecutor's office, not to mention a large segment of society.

I have seen police dramas on the tube in which the circumstantial evidence presented was so broadly described that I could have been convicted of the crime. The tables have been turned in our judicial system (I refuse to call it a justice system), so that it has become necessary for a defendant to prove his innocence - which is antithetical to the declared process of the system.

Somewhere out there, maybe still in the same small county in which I live, is a 38 caliber S&W Model 19 registered in my name. I sold it forty years ago, through a third party, so I don't know who bought it. If it is ever used in a crime and found at the scene, my name is going to pop up. As I spend most of my time at home, there are very few daylight hours in which anyone can attest to where I am. So we have a gun registered in my name, used in a crime, I say I sold it but cannot say to whom, and I have no alibi for the time. It's possible that I could be definitely screwed. Unlikely, but conceivable under the circumstances in which prosecutors work today.

This case looks kind of like that. A known drug dealer, so lock him up even though you know he didn't do what you're convicting him of.

Why is a Man Serving Life for a Murder that Feds Say Someone Else Committed?