Innocence Project Bournemouth

posted by Justice on Jul 14

A Florida judge ruled today that an expert in the science of human memory and eyewitness identifications can offer limited testimony at the trial of a man charged with killing three people in 2007.

Experts and Identification
A Florida judge ruled today that an expert in the science of human memory and eyewitness identifications can offer limited testimony at the trial of a man charged with killing three people in 2007. Prosecutors are seeking the death penalty in the case and say they plan to rely heavily on eyewitness identification.

For now, (the judge) is allowing the testimony, but is placing limitations on what the expert, John Brigham, can discuss. Brigham can express opinion on general issues, including the length of time an eyewitness observes an event or the impact of stress on eyewitness identification, but can’t discuss how that relates to specific witnesses in this case.

He’s also precluded from addressing the number of defendants who were convicted largely through eyewitness testimony, and were later exonerated through DNA evidence.

Rules vary nationwide on whether courts will allow expert testimony on the science of eyewitness identification, but sometimes experts are admitted and only allowed to offer limited testimony. The Innocence Project strongly supports the admission of eyewitness experts, for both prosecution and defense, to provide background for judges and juries on variables that affect the reliability of identifications.

A major ruling last month from a New Jersey judge could lead to critical changes in the way that state – and others – handle eyewitness identification evidence in court, including the admission of experts.

And an editorial in the Philadelphia Inquirer last week calls on Pennsylvania lawmakers to follow New Jersey’s footsteps in proactively addressing unreliable eyewitness evidence. Pennsylvania is one of a few states that prohibit all expert testimony on the science of human memory and eyewitness identification.

Tags: law, Innocence Project, Miscarriage of Justice

posted by Justice on May 17

A Detroit police officer testified in court last week that a hit man told him authorities had convicted the “wrong guy” of four murders in 2007. Davontae Sanford was 16 years old when he pled guilty to the murders, but his attorneys say he did not commit the crime and signed a confession he could not read

A Michigan Teen Fights for Freedom
A Detroit police officer testified in court last week that a hit man told him authorities had convicted the “wrong guy” of four murders in 2007. Davontae Sanford was 16 years old when he pled guilty to the murders, but his attorneys say he did not commit the crime and signed a confession he could not read.

Police say an accused hit man, Vincent Smothers, has confessed to the murders. Smothers is awaiting trial on eight other murders and has not been charged with the 2007 killings. A Michigan judge is holding hearings on whether Sanford can withdraw his plea.

Read the full story here.

Our previous coverage of Sanford’s case is here.

Learn more about false confessions as a cause of wrongful convictions.

Tags: pro bono, legal,

posted by Justice on May 17

Reggie Cole was released from a California prison on Saturday after serving 16 years in prison for a Los Angeles murder that evidence shows he did not commit.

California Man Freed After 16 Years
Reggie Cole was released from a California prison on Saturday after serving 16 years in prison for a Los Angeles murder that evidence shows he did not commit. Upon his release, he went straight to the California Western School of Law in San Diego to visit the California Innocence Project and thank the dozens of students and lawyers who worked on his case for over three years, eventually developing evidence of his innocence.
http://www.cwsl.edu/main/default.asp?nav=cip.asp&body=cip/home.asp

During its investigation of the case, the California Innocence Project uncovered evidence that Cole’s lawyers hadn’t provided adequate representation at trial and that prosecutors had withheld key evidence. Cole’s conviction was tossed last year, but he remained in prison until Saturday on an unrelated conviction.

“Just a little over 24 hours ago I was sitting in a cell, and now I’m here hugging my family,” a jubilant Cole said Sunday night from his sister’s home in Los Angeles. “The traffic and the phones – it’s a completely different world here. In solitary, you’re just looking at a wall.”

Read the full story here.

The California Innocence Project is a member of the Innocence Network.

Tags: Layla D’monte, injustice, legal

posted by Justice on Apr 23

Tomorrow from 9:30 a.m. to 3 p.m., the Texas Forensic Science Commission will convene to discuss forensic developments and the investigations into the cases of Cameron Todd Willingham and Ernest Willis, among other items. The Innocence Project will broadcast the entire meeting live online here .

Texas Commission Set To Discuss Arson Cases Friday
Tomorrow from 9:30 a.m. to 3 p.m., the Texas Forensic Science Commission will convene to discuss forensic developments and the investigations into the cases of Cameron Todd Willingham and Ernest Willis, among other items. The Innocence Project will broadcast the entire meeting live online here.

Willingham was executed in 2004 for allegedly setting a fire that killed his children. Before and after his execution, leading experts found that there was no scientific basis for deeming the fire an act of arson. In another Texas case, Willis was convicted of arson based on the same kind of forensic analysis, but he was fully exonerated. The cases raise important questions about the integrity of forensic analysis in arson investigations statewide.
The Willingham case was not discussed when the commission met in January, but it is on the agenda for Friday’s meeting.

The Texas Forensic Science Commission was created by the Texas Legislature in 2005 for the purpose of investigating allegations of negligence or misconduct that would significantly affect the results of forensic analysis. The Innocence Project formally asked the commission to investigate the Willingham and Willis cases in 2006. That request specifically asked the commission to determine whether there was negligence or misconduct in the forensic analysis that initially deemed the fire arson and – importantly – to determine whether other arson convictions in Texas may have been based on the same kind of unreliable forensic analysis.

In 2008, the Texas Forensic Science Commission agreed to investigate the case. The commission hired renowned arson expert Craig Beyler to review all of the evidence in the case. In August 2009, Beyler submitted his report to the commission, finding that the forensic analysis used to convict Willingham was wrong – and that experts who testified at Willingham’s trial should have known it was wrong at the time.

For full background on the Willingham case, see the Innocence Project’s Resource Center here.

For the full meeting agenda, click here.

You can view live video from the meeting on the Innocence Project’s website here.

Tags: pro bono, law, Innocence Project

posted by Justice on Mar 16

Mississippi Attorney General Jim Hood opposes a House bill that would require people performing autopsies in the state to be nationally board certified . Tucker Carrington, director of the Innocence Project at the University of Mississippi School of Law, said: “If I mess up some guy’s case, there has to be some organization that can take my license.

Friday Roundup: Opposition in Mississippi and Updates on Exonerees
Mississippi Attorney General Jim Hood opposes a House bill that would require people performing autopsies in the state to be nationally board certified. Tucker Carrington, director of the Innocence Project at the University of Mississippi School of Law, said: “If I mess up some guy’s case, there has to be some organization that can take my license. How can a bill be any less controversial? It is just asking that people be licensed.”

Two former Duke lacrosse players who were cleared of sexual assault accusations almost three years ago have moved on with their lives. Collin Finnerty resumed college at Loyola in the fall of 2008 and played lacrosse for the past two seasons. He is being considered for the Tewaaraton Trophy, awarded to the nation’s top lacrosse player each year. Reade Seligmann also resumed college in the fall 2008, enrolling at Brown and continuing to play lacrosse. He also became involved in the Innocence Project, most recently working to organize a symposium of experts on eyewitness identification.

Joshua Kezer, who spent 16 years in prison for a murder he did not commit before being exonerated in 2009, will be featured on CBS’s “48 Hours Mystery” this Saturday, March 13, at 9 p.m. Kezer was accused of murdering a 19-year-old woman he had never met in 1994.

On Thursday, Innocence Project client Jeffrey Deskovic testified at a Connecticut Judiciary Committee hearing against a bill that would limit appeals for people sentenced to death. Since his exoneration in 2006, Deskovic has advocated against the death penalty, noting that if he hadn’t been a minor when he was wrongfully convicted he might have been sentenced to death.

Tags: Layla D’monte, legal aid, Barrister

posted by Justice on Mar 16

In an op-ed in the Dallas Morning News, Innocence Project Co-Director Barry Scheck joined others in calling on Texas Gov. Rick Perry to order a stay in Skinner’s case so that DNA testing can proceed

Texas Man Set to Be Executed Despite Untested DNA
In an op-ed in the Dallas Morning News, Innocence Project Co-Director Barry Scheck joined others in calling on Texas Gov. Rick Perry to order a stay in Skinner’s case so that DNA testing can proceed. Skinner’s attorneys made a similar request in a letter to Perry last week.

Scheck was joined in the op-ed by Cory Session, whose brother Timothy Cole was exonerated posthumously in Texas last year, and Rodney Ellis, a Texas state senator and the chairman of the Innocence Project Board of Directors. They wrote:

In Tim Cole’s case, solid science came too late. Perry was right to pardon him, but he would do well to learn from this case and make sure it doesn’t happen to anyone else.

One such person might be Hank Skinner, who is set to be executed March 24. Skinner has requested DNA testing for 10 years, and there is no good reason for state officials to continue blocking these efforts.

We don’t know whether Hank Skinner is guilty or innocent. But we know the governor has the power to step in and delay the execution so DNA testing can be done to resolve this case once and for all – before Skinner is executed.

Read the full op-ed here.

Last week, former Texas prosecutor Sam Millsap wrote in the Houston Chronicle that Texas should conduct testing in Skinner’s case in order to avoid the possible “horror of executing an innocent man.”

Calls for testing in Skinner’s case come after months of worldwide attention to the case of Cameron Todd Willingham, who was executed in Texas in 2004 despite evidence of his innocence. Since Willingham’s execution, several independent scientific studies have determined that the forensic analysis used to convict him was wrong. A 16,000-word story in the New Yorker magazine last year went on to discredit all of the evidence used against Willingham, including the forensic analysis, the informant’s testimony, other witness testimony and additional circumstantial evidence.

Learn more about Hank Skinner’s case.

Learn more about Willingham’s case.

Seventeen people have been proven innocent and exonerated by DNA testing in the United States after serving time on death row. Learn about their cases here.

Tags: injustice, Barrister, pro bono

posted by Justice on Feb 26

Eight years ago this week, Arvin McGee was exonerated through DNA testing after spending more than 12 years in Oklahoma prisons for a crime he didn’t commit.

Eight Years of Freedom
Eight years ago this week, Arvin McGee was exonerated through DNA testing after spending more than 12 years in Oklahoma prisons for a crime he didn’t commit. After his release, he would fight the city of Tulsa in court for years before settling a civil suit. One city councilman would later write that his case was “flubbed from beginning to end” at an enormous cost to McGee and to taxpayers.

McGee was charged with the 1987 rape despite inconsistencies in the evidence against him. The victim’s description of the perpetrator differed significantly from McGee’s appearance, and she picked a different man in the first photographic lineup. At a second lineup almost four months after the crime, she took almost 15 minutes to identify McGee.

Significantly, McGee was suffering from an injury that rendered him physically unable to commit the crime. The victim had been carried over the perpetrator’s shoulder, but McGee was awaiting surgery for a hernia operation, and it was extremely unlikely that he would have been able to carry the victim. Eyewitness misidentification is the single most common cause of wrongful convictions.

Despite these issues, McGee was charged with the crime, based mainly on the second identification. He would be tried three times before he was ultimately convicted of rape, kidnapping and forcible sodomy and sentenced to over 200 years in prison. The first trial ended in a mistrial, and the second in a hung jury.

McGee spent almost 13 years in prison before the Oklahoma Indigent Defense System took his case and arranged for DNA testing on the remaining biological evidence. These tests excluded McGee. A second round of testing ordered by Tulsa County prosecutors on the rape kit recovered from the victim produced the same results, which implicated another Oklahoma prisoner. The other man was charged with the crime, but his case was dismissed because the statute of limitations had expired.

Due to the conclusive evidence of McGee’s innocence, Tulsa prosecutors joined with his attorneys in seeking his release. McGee, who was 27 years old when he was wrongfully convicted, was 39 on the day he was freed in February 2002.

Read more about McGee’s case and the role of eyewitness misidentification in causing wrongful convictions.

Other Exoneree Anniversaries This Week:

Charles Chatman, Texas (Served 26.5 years, Exonerated: 2/26/08)

Tags: injustice, law, pro bono

posted by Justice on Feb 26

In 1985, Rolando Cruz and Alejandro Hernandez were sentenced to death in Illinois for the murder of a ten-year-old girl. They were convicted based mainly on admissions they allegedly gave to police. Biological evidence didn’t play a role in their trials

The Many Faces of Forensic Science
In 1985, Rolando Cruz and Alejandro Hernandez were sentenced to death in Illinois for the murder of a ten-year-old girl. They were convicted based mainly on admissions they allegedly gave to police. Biological evidence didn’t play a role in their trials. The case was far from over, however, and science would play a central role in the years ahead.

Ten years later, DNA testing helped set the two free. Cruz and Hernandez were exonerated when DNA evidence uncovered by the Medill Innocence Project and the Center on Wrongful Convictions implicated another man, since identified as Brian Dugan, in the crime.

In November of last year, Dugan was convicted of the murder and sentenced to die. A column in today’s Daily Herald examines the case’s 27-year history and considers the number of victims it has left in its wake. The case has also left a fascinating trail of forensic science, from DNA to the emerging practice of functional magnetic resonance imaging brain scans (fMRI, which examines brain activity.

In considering Dugan’s punishment, jurors heard testimony on his mental condition from psychologists and from a neuroscientist who works with fMRI. As Michael Haederle writes in Miller-McCune magazine this week, neuroscientist Kent Kiehl testified that magnetic scans of Dugan’s brain showed the impact of his mental illness and suggested that he didn’t feel emotion like others, possibly disqualifying him for the death penalty. It may have been the first time fMRI was used in a capital sentencing hearing.

Other supporters of fMRI suggest that someday the technique could be used in court as a sort of lie detector. This case and others have spawned questions about whether fMRI should be admitted in a courtroom before the practice has been vetted by an independent agency.

The history of wrongful convictions in the United States is replete with new forms of science, and further research is needed to validate existing and new forensic techniques. A groundbreaking report from the National Academy of Sciences last year found that no forensic discipline other than DNA analysis has been subjected to the kind of rigorous scientific evaluation needed to develop reliable information. Unvalidated and improper forensic testimony can have a devastating impact on a criminal case, misleading jurors and contributing to injustice.

Innocence Project Co-Director Peter Neufeld is speaking about the impact of the NAS report and the need for a federal forensic entity this week at the annual meeting of the American Association of Forensic Scientists’ in Seattle.

Learn more about forensic oversight and call on Congress to create a federal oversight agency.

Tags: Miscarriage of Justice, , legal aid

posted by Justice on Dec 28

Just weeks after a new Innocence Project report revealed devastating gaps in the support states provide to people exonerated after serving years in prison for crimes they didn’t commit, New Jersey’s Star Ledger ran an editorial this weekend about the serious need for the state to improve compensation laws immediately. The Star Ledger writes: Under New Jersey's current unjust conviction law, a prisoner who is exonerated can receive up to $20,000 for each year spent in prison, or twice what the person earned in the year before imprisonment, whichever is greater.

Compensating the Exonerated in New Jersey

Just weeks after a new Innocence Project report revealed devastating gaps in the support states provide to people exonerated after serving years in prison for crimes they didn’t commit, New Jersey’s Star Ledger ran an editorial this weekend about the serious need for the state to improve compensation laws immediately.

The Star Ledger writes:

Under New Jersey's current unjust conviction law, a prisoner who is exonerated can receive up to $20,000 for each year spent in prison, or twice what the person earned in the year before imprisonment, whichever is greater.

A bill proposed by Senate President Richard Codey would raise the limit to $50,000, which is the federal standard. After five years the amount would be adjusted for inflation. The bill also would allow a court to order other services, such as vocational training, counseling and assistance with tuition, housing or health insurance “as appropriate.”…

Clearly, the current law is inadequate. Offering fair compensation to an innocent person who was wrongly imprisoned is simply the right thing to do.

To date, in New Jersey, there have been five people wrongfully convicted, incarcerated and eventually released since 1995. All five men were released based on DNA evidence and all five men filed civil suits to recover additional damages. The proposed statute would apply to the pending cases.

Even though New Jersey is one of the 27 states to compensate the wrongfully convicted, it still falls short. There is still a lot of room for improvement with financial support and social services which is why it’s necessary for New Jersey to pass the proposed bill.

Read the full editorial here.

Read more about the need for compensation and existing shortcomings in legislation here.

Tags: Barrister, legal, pro bono

posted by Justice on Dec 28

Phillip Scott Cannon was released from an Oregon jail on Friday after prosecutors in his case said he had been convicted based on unreliable forensics and couldn’t be retried because evidence in his case had been destroyed. He had served 10 years behind bars. Cannon, 43, was convicted of a 1998 triple murder based in part on comparative bullet lead analysis, a forensic procedure used by the FBI for three decades before it quietly ended the practice in 2005.

Oregon Man Freed After 10 Years

Phillip Scott Cannon was released from an Oregon jail on Friday after prosecutors in his case said he had been convicted based on unreliable forensics and couldn’t be retried because evidence in his case had been destroyed. He had served 10 years behind bars.

Cannon, 43, was convicted of a 1998 triple murder based in part on comparative bullet lead analysis, a forensic procedure used by the FBI for three decades before it quietly ended the practice in 2005. A 2007 investigation by CBS News’ “60 Minutes” and the Washington Post revealed that thousands of convictions had been secured based on the unreliable tests.

Cannon has maintained his innocence throughout his ordeal, but prosecutors said they were dropping charges because evidence in the case wasn’t available for a retrial. A relative of one of the victims the Oregonian that the lost evidence meant justice wouldn’t be served for either the victims of Cannon.

“There’s no closure for our family,” said Thomas Osborne, the father of one of the victims. Suzan Renee Osborne was found shot in the head at a mobile home with Jason Roger Kinser and Celesta Joy Graves. “There’s no closure for his (family) either. It’s just a bad deal all around.”

The case demonstrates the importance of two critical reforms supported by the Innocence Project — oversight of forensic sciences to avoid reliance on unproved tests and the preservation of evidence.

Via A public defender

Tags: law, legal aid, pro bono