Innocence Project Bournemouth

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: law, injustice, 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 Sep 10

Watch online tomorrow at 10 a.m. EST as Innocence Project Co-Director Peter Neufeld testifies before the U.S

Watch Live: Senate Judiciary Hearing on Forensic Reform
Watch online tomorrow at 10 a.m. EST as Innocence Project Co-Director Peter Neufeld testifies before the U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee on the need for a National Institute of Forensic Science. He will be joined by Law Professor Paul Giannelli, Houston Police Chief Harold Hurtt, a lab director and two prosecutors.

Visit this link at 10 a.m. EST to watch live.

The Innocence Project has called for the creation of an independent federal agency to support and oversee forensic science practices across the country. Learn more and voice your support for forensic reform at the Just Science Coalition website.

Tags: Barrister, Layla D’monte, injustice

posted by Justice on Jul 15

Innocence Project Co-Director Peter Neufeld writes today in the Tennessean that federal oversight and support for forensic science would vastly improve the justice system in the United States and help prevent wrongful convictions. A National Institute of Forensic Science is a vital step toward strengthening our criminal justice system

New National Institute Would Help Improve Forensic Science

Innocence Project Co-Director Peter Neufeld writes today in the Tennessean that federal oversight and support for forensic science would vastly improve the justice system in the United States and help prevent wrongful convictions.

A National Institute of Forensic Science is a vital step toward strengthening our criminal justice system. When an innocent person is wrongfully convicted, the actual perpetrator remains free to commit additional crimes. That's exactly what happened in Memphis after Clark McMillan was wrongfully convicted – during the 22 years he was in prison before DNA proved his innocence, the actual perpetrator went on to commit several additional rapes.

In the months ahead, Congress will seriously consider how to structure a national institute. U.S. Rep. Bart Gordon, D-Tenn., will play a key role in this as the chairman of the House Committee on Science and Technology.

Read Neufeld’s op-ed here. (The Tennessean, 07/13/09)

Do you want to join the call for federal forensic reform in the U.S.? Visit the Just Science Coalition website to sign the petition for reform and to learn more about the recommendations.

Tags: , law, Innocence Project

posted by Justice on Mar 19

The U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee heard testimony today from the co-chairman of the National Academy of Sciences committee that recently released a report calling for the creation of an independent agency to oversee and support forensic science in our criminal courts.

An Overhaul of the Forensic System
The U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee heard testimony today from the co-chairman of the National Academy of Sciences committee that recently released a report calling for the creation of an independent agency to oversee and support forensic science in our criminal courts.

Former Judge Harry Edwards told members of the Judiciary Committee that the committee was “thoroughly convinced” that it was time to move from the current forensic science system, “which is dysfunctional.”

“The principal point of our report is simple,” Edwards said in his testimony today. “There’s an obvious need to overhaul the existing system of forensic science in the United States. …Unfortunately, adversarial approach to the submission of evidence in court is not well-suited to the task of finding scientific truth. Judicial review alone will not cure the ills of the forensic science community.”

Watch a video of Edwards’ testimony and questioning from Senators.

Download the National Academy of Sciences report and learn more about unvalidated or improper science as a contributing cause of wrongful convictions.

Tags: , legal aid, Miscarriage of Justice

posted by Justice on Mar 19

A new law review article by Innocence Project Co-Director Peter Neufeld and University of Virginia Law Professor Brandon Garrett finds that forensic analysts often overstated evidence in wrongful conviction cases. The pair spent over a year reviewing 137 DNA exoneration cases in which a forensic analyst testified at trial, and found that in 60 percent of these cases, the forensic expert gave invalid testimony. Watch a video with Garrett discussing the paper, and download the full Virginia Law Review paper

New Study on Forensics and Wrongful Conviction
A new law review article by Innocence Project Co-Director Peter Neufeld and University of Virginia Law Professor Brandon Garrett finds that forensic analysts often overstated evidence in wrongful conviction cases. The pair spent over a year reviewing 137 DNA exoneration cases in which a forensic analyst testified at trial, and found that in 60 percent of these cases, the forensic expert gave invalid testimony.

Watch a video with Garrett discussing the paper, and download the full Virginia Law Review paper.

While conducting the research for this paper, both Garrett and Neufeld testified before the National Academy of Sciences committee that recently released a report on the need for forensic reform in the United States. The NAS report called for a new federal agency to oversee and support forensic sciences in order for the disciplines to play a more reliable role in the American court system.

The Innocence Project also recently completed a review of the role of forensic science in wrongful convictions. The review went beyond transcripts of testimony to analyze all forensic science evidence used in the cases, and found that in more than 50% of the first 225 DNA exonerations, unvalidated or improper forensics played a role in the wrongful conviction. Learn more about the Innocence Project study here. (PDF)

Garrett said studies like these are rare, despite the fact that the systematic review of wrongful conviction cases can reveal a great deal about the causes of wrongful conviction.

“These trial transcripts were fascinating to read, because in retrospect we know that all of the defendants were innocent,” he said. “Yet few have looked at these records. Even after these wrongful convictions came to light, crime laboratories rarely conducted audits or investigations to review the forensic evidence presented at the trial.”

Tags: Miscarriage of Justice, Barrister, Layla D’monte