New Evidence, Testimony Points to Wisconsin Man’s Innocence
On Tuesday, the Wisconsin Court of Appeals granted a new trial for a Wisconsin man who was convicted in 1996 of an armed robbery and attempted murder that another man has confessed to committing. Cody Vandenberg will get a new trial in order to present new evidence about the other man’s confession and the unreliability of the eyewitness who identified him.

Vandenberg was convicted of repeatedly stabbing an acquaintance, Blake Renard, in his home and stealing his credit cards. He was sentenced to 80 years in prison.

Defense lawyers say another man, Larry Pearson, who testified for the state at Vandenberg’s trial after receiving immunity, has confessed to committing the crime. Pearson’s bloody shoeprint was also found at the crime scene.

Additional evidence casts doubt on the reliability of the victim’s eyewitness identification of Vandenberg. It was known at trial that Renard was drinking the night of the crime, but the level of intoxication was never disclosed. Tuesday’s ruling revealed that based on hospital records from that evening, Renard had a blood-alcohol level of 0.22 percent, nearly three times the legal driving limit.

John Pray, Vandenberg’s lawyer and co-founder of the Wisconsin Innocence Project, who accepted Vanderberg’s case in 1999, told the Greenbay Press-Gazette that his client was misidentified by the victim, who said he knew his attacker.

“When you’re drunk and you’re being stabbed by someone at 4 a.m. within an inch of your life, it’s pretty understandable he can’t remember the details,” he said. “No one is blaming the victim in this case. He was trying to make an identification under difficult circumstances.”

In light of the new evidence and confession, Pray hopes the state’s attorney will agree to drop the charges against Vandenberg, allowing him to be freed after 14 years in prison.

Eyewitness misidentification is the single greatest cause of wrongful convictions nationwide, playing a role in more than 75% of convictions overturned through DNA testing.

Read the full story here.

Read about eyewitness misidentification here.

Tags: law, legal aid, Barrister

Friday Roundup: Prosecutorial Misconduct and Junk Science
A group of former federal prosecutors is asking the Supreme Court for time to argue on behalf of a Louisiana man in a case to support his right to hold cities liable for causing wrongful convictions through a failure to properly train prosecutors. The case, Connick v. Thompson, will be heard Oct. 6.

A California assistant medical examiner testified before a grand jury on Monday that she was 51 percent sure that a car crash victim died of blunt force injuries but that there was a 49 percent likelihood he died of a heart problem resulting from hardened arteries and an enlarged heart; prosecutors are now seeking a second opinion from the Chief Medical Examiner.

A Texas man convicted of murder based on unreliable forensics is seeking a new hearing.

Harris County, Texas, which has been plagued by wrongful convictions, will receive more than $4 million to create a much-needed public defender office that aims to improve representation of indigent defendants.
The beleaguered North Carolina state crime lab continued to face new accusations of misconduct and faulty testing as officials searched for a new crime lab director.

The Task Force on Indigent Defense in Texas voted on Wednesday to send a report by the Timothy Cole Panel on Wrongful Convictions Issues detailing recommendations to prevent wrongful convictions to the Governor, legislative leaders, and the Texas Judicial Council.

Following news that Los Angeles and other cities had backlogs of thousands of untested rape kits, California lawmakers passed a bill requiring law enforcement agencies to keep detailed records of biological evidence collected in sexual assault cases.

DNA evidence cleared men suspected of sexual assaults in Alaska and California.

Hat tip to Stand Down Texas for pointing us to several stories this week.

Tags: Barrister, Innocence Project, injustice

Governor Is Last Hope for Ohio Death Row Prisoner
The Ohio Parole Board announced yesterday that it has voted 8-0 against recommending clemency for death row prisoner Kevin Keith, who is scheduled to be executed September 15 for a triple murder he says he didn’t commit.

The parole board’s recommendation is non-binding – Gov. Ted Strickland has the final decision on whether Keith will be executed. Strickland has said he finds the facts of Keith’s case “troubling.”

The Innocence Network has joined with several key experts and officials along with other legal groups and thousands of Americans in calling on Gov. Strickland to commute Keith’s execution based on strong evidence of Keith’s innocence. Keith was convicted based in large part on questionable eyewitness identifications — the leading factor of wrongful convictions overturned through DNA testing.

In a letter to Strickland and the parole board earlier this month, Innocence Network President Keith Findley wrote: “We believe the newly discovered evidence, which was withheld by the state at the time of (Keith’s) trial, provides compelling evidence of his innocence.”

Join Keith’s supporters in urging Strickland to grant clemency based on the substantial doubts about his guilt.

For a roundup of press coverage of the parole board decision, visit Stand Down Texas.

Tags: , Barrister, Layla D’monte

Louisiana Man Proves His Innocence But Remains Behind Bars
Recent blood tests have confirmed that a Louisiana man serving life behind bars for a 1988 rape and armed robbery is actually innocent. Innocence Project client Booker Diggins, who was convicted of the crimes, has been behind bars for 22 years for a crime he didn’t commit.

Diggins was convicted based on the eyewitness testimony of the victim, who picked him out of a photo line-up as the man who raped her. Prosecutors knew that semen was recovered from the rape kit, but never shared this information with defense attorneys, so Diggins’ blood typed was never tested, and therefore compared to the semen from the perpetrator.

More than two decades after the conviction, Diggins managed to purchase a copy of his case file for $209, where he discovered that the biological evidence had been withheld. DNA testing can’t be conducted because the evidence has been missing since Hurricane Katrina, but the Innocence Project filed an appeal earlier this month seeking a hearing on the blood-type evidence.

“This is bulletproof scientific evidence that he is not the guy,” said attorney Barry Scheck. “He wasn’t the rapist and they could have known that in 1988.”

Read more in today’s Times-Picayune article.

Download the Innocence Project’s motion on Diggins’ behalf.

Tags: legal aid, law, Innocence Project

Report Finds Serious Flaws in NC Crime Labs
A new investigative series in the Raleigh News & Observer reveals a troubling pattern of forensic error and misconduct in North Carolina’s state crime lab. The four-part series highlights biased and unscientific work at the State Bureau of Investigation, and officials have responded by calling for sweeping changes.

According to the News & Observer, SBI agents distorted the rules to yield the desired test results of the prosecution more than a dozen times when the truth threatened to undermine their cases.

“The documented policies and practices of our state lab support the long-held concern that North Carolina’s lab is the prosecution’s lab, not the justice system’s lab,” said Christine Mumma, executive director of the N.C. Center on Actual Innocence, which works to free wrongly convicted prisoners. “Public confidence, judicial confidence and the lives of innocent citizens have been destroyed. It is past time for change.”

North Carolina is among 38 states whose crime labs are controlled by a law enforcement agency where tests aren’t administered in an independent scientific setting. A 2009 report on forensics from the National Academy of Sciences finds that law enforcement labs are often not the most scientific environments.

“The best science is conducted in a scientific setting as opposed to a law enforcement setting,” said the NAS report to Congress. “Forensic science serves more than just law enforcement; and when it does serve law enforcement, it must be equally available to law enforcement officers, prosecutors and defendants in the criminal justice system.”

The News & Observer series also found that SBI agents have concealed test results and ignored key evidence of innocence. As a result, defense attorneys in North Carolina often hire their own experts to examine evidence.

Since the series was published, Attorney General Roy Cooper removed the SBI director, hired an outside auditor and suspended all bloodstain pattern analysis work. A state legislator is calling for the creation of an independent crime lab.

“Everybody ought to understand that this is something that needs to be fixed,” said State Rep. Mickey Michaux, a Durham Democrat who heads the powerful budget committee.

To date, seven people have been exonerated in North Carolina through post-conviction DNA testing.

Read the four-part series here.

Read the Innocence Project’s recommendations for forensic oversight and independent forensic labs.

Tags: pro bono, Layla D’monte, injustice

It’s OK to Be Wrong
An interview with Innocence Project Co-Director Peter Neufeld today at Slate.com explores the causes of wrongful convictions and the reluctance of some police and prosecutors to admit errors. Neufeld tells interviewer Kathryn Schulz:

If a prosecutor or a detective is totally unable to admit they’re wrong in one case, what that tells you is that they will be making dozens and dozens more erroneous decisions, because they’re not allowing new information to affect their views…. I think generally speaking it’s difficult for people to admit they’re wrong, and the higher the stakes, the more difficult it becomes. So what you really want to do is educate people that it’s OK to be wrong. It doesn’t mean you’re a fool. It’s not going to be the end of your life.

Read the full Q&A here.

Tags: , legal aid, law

Death Row Prisoner Appeals Arson Conviction
A Pennsylvania man sent to death row based on questionable arson evidence is seeking a new hearing based on expert findings that the fire may have been accidental.

Daniel Dougherty was sentenced to death in 2000 for allegedly setting the blaze in that killed his children. Dougherty has always maintained his innocence and says he is a victim of flawed arson science.

Reviews of evidence in Dougherty’s case have turned up similarities to the case of Cameron Todd Willingham, a Texas man who was convicted of murder in 1992 after his three young daughters died in a fire at his home. Willingham was executed in 2004 despite evidence available at the time that the science used to convict him was invalid.

According to CNN, two arson investigators who re-examined the evidence from Dougherty’s case reported that they didn’t find any conclusive indicators of arson. Dougherty’s original lawyer never introduced expert testimony in his 2000 trial and has since admitted to never seeking assistance from independent fire investigators.

“We have an innocent man on death row who has been languishing there, and there is absolutely no evidence that a crime occurred,” said his [new] attorney, David Fryman. “We’ve been trying our best to right that wrong.”

Across the country, people are convicted of arson based on outdated science that has been discredited for years. As a result of advancements in the field, lawyers and investigators are now questioning previous arson convictions.

Dougherty filed a petition for post-conviction relief in 2006 and hopes the arson experts’ reports will help the Pennsylvania Supreme Court decide to hear his case. There is no execution date set.

Read the full story here.

Learn more about Cameron Todd Willingham here.

Tags: pro bono, injustice, legal

30 Years Later, DNA Tests Prove Virginia Man Innocent
For nearly three decades, Calvin Wayne Cunningham sought forensic tests to prove his innocence of the 1979 rape for which he was convicted. Even before DNA profiling was ever used to identify individuals, Cunningham saw forensics as his potential salvation.

“If I were able to afford to have my semen analyze with the semen that the doctors suppose to have gotten from the victim, I know it would prove my innocents,” Cunningham wrote to a judge in 1982. “The way technology is today it should be able to be done. Don’t you think?”

This year, he finally got his wish — DNA tests on evidence from the rape prove his innocence and implicate another unknown man as the perpetrator, according to the Mid-Atlantic Innocence Project, which represents Cunningham.
DNA tests were conducted in Cunningham’s case as part of Virginia’s ongoing Old Case Testing Project — an initiative launched in 2006 by former Gov. Mark Warner to examine evidence from convictions between 1973 and 1988 for possible signs of innocence.
The Mid-Atlantic Innocence Project and pro bono lawyers at Wilmer Cutler Pickering Hale and Dorr LLP have filed a writ of actual innocence on Cunningham’s behalf. Prosecutors haven’t responded to the writ yet. Cunningham is currently incarcerated on unrelated nonviolent crimes and is scheduled to remain behind bars until 2012 even if he is exonerated of the rape.

Read more at the Mid-Atlantic Innocence Project’s blog.

Tags: law, Miscarriage of Justice, legal

Ohio Governor Pursues DNA Tests in Seven Cases
Ohio Governor Ted Strickland (left) and Attorney General Richard Cordray wrote to prosecutors across the state yesterday urging them to allow DNA testing in seven criminal cases where it has previously been denied. The cases in question include one man on death row, two prisoners serving long sentences, three who are out of prison and want to clear their names and one who died in 2006.

The testing – which could confirm guilt or prove innocence – has been opposed by prosecutors and denied by judges in the past.

Strickland told the Columbus Dispatch that he doesn’t have the power to force prosecutors or judges to grant DNA testing but said prosecutors should provide evidence “as a matter of public policy.”

“I really think it’s irrational not to take advantage of methods that could establish either guilt or innocence when those technologies are available to us,” Strickland told The Dispatch. “I can think of no good argument why anyone would be denied DNA testing if, in fact, there is a reasonable or relevant opportunity to bring clarity to whether or not someone is guilty of a crime.”

Five of the seven cases highlighted by Strickland and Cordray were part of an investigation the Columbus Dispatch conducted in 2008. In collaboration with the Ohio Innocence Project, the paper reviewed more than 300 cases for DNA testing. Attorneys agreed that testing was necessary in 30 cases and was ultimately approved for 18.

If prosecution grants DNA testing, Cincinnati-based lab DDC Diagnostics would conduct the tests for free.

Read the full story here.

Read the Columbus Dispatch investigation here.

Tags: law, Layla D’monte, pro bono

After Five Years in Jail, Illinois Man Is Freed
Jerry Hobbs was freed yesterday in Illinois after spending five years in jail awaiting trial for the murder of his daughter and another young girl, a crime for which DNA tests implicate another man. His case is an example of the vast damage that can be caused even when injustice is uncovered before trial.

Shortly after alerting police that he had discovered his daughter and a friend murdered in 2005, Hobbs was charged with the crime. He signed a written confession after a daylong police interrogation, but he soon recanted the statement, saying it had been coerced.

One year after the crime, investigators learned that DNA testing on semen from one victim’s body pointed to another unknown man. They pressed forward with charges against Hobbs, however, saying they intended to seek the death penalty. In June, the DNA profile from the crime scene implicated a man in custody in Virginia, police say, and charges were dropped yesterday against Hobbs.

Prosecutors didn’t offer an apology to Hobbs, saying they were dropping the charges because they couldn’t prove his guilt beyond a reasonable doubt.
While 258 people have been exonerated through post-conviction DNA testing, countless others have spent months or years in prison while facing charges before they are freed. In a 1995 study of 10,000 criminal cases by the by the U.S. National Institute of Justice, suspects were excluded 25 percent of the time after DNA tests came back. While wrongful convictions are avoided in these cases, the contact with the criminal justice system and time spent behind bars is incredibly damaging to the life of an innocent individual.

The Chicago Tribune recently examined the cases of Hobbs and another Illinois man, Kevin Fox, who spent eight months in jail awaiting trial for the murder of his daughter before DNA tests pointed to his innocence. Unlike Fox’s case, however, Hobbs remained in prison for four years after the results came back.

False confessions play a role in more than 25 percent of wrongful convictions overturned through DNA testing. Read more about the Innocence Project recommendations to record all custodial interrogations.

Tags: pro bono, legal, injustice