Innocence Project Bournemouth

posted by Justice on Dec 20

A new report released yesterday by the New York Inspector General finds that a major State Police crime lab failed to detect and act upon systematic problems in the handling of evidence and the falsification of test results in hundreds of cases over 15 years. And as signs of misconduct began to appear, the report finds, lab officials hid evidence that the problem was widespread and pinned it on an analyst who had committed suicide in 2008

Report: NY Lab Hid Pattern of Misconduct

A new report released yesterday by the New York Inspector General finds that a major State Police crime lab failed to detect and act upon systematic problems in the handling of evidence and the falsification of test results in hundreds of cases over 15 years. And as signs of misconduct began to appear, the report finds, lab officials hid evidence that the problem was widespread and pinned it on an analyst who had committed suicide in 2008.

“Cutting corners in a crime lab is serious and intolerable,” the state’s inspector general, Joseph Fisch told the New York Times. “Forensic laboratories must adhere to the highest standards of competence, independence and integrity. Anything less undermines public confidence in our criminal justice system.”

The state police superintendent said the agency planned to hire an outside consultant to review forensic tests conducted in the lab. Several analysts whose conduct is questioned in Thursdays report remain in their jobs pending an internal review.

Innocence Project Co-Director Barry Scheck said the New York scandal is another clear sign that forensic reform is needed.

“It is a wake-up call to the forensic community,” said Scheck, director of the Innocence Project and a member of the New York State Commission on Forensic Science, which monitors all the state’s crime labs. “What’s alarming about this report and others that we’ve seen like it is it’s not so much the bad actors, it’s the fact that the system didn’t detect them earlier.”

Read the full story here. (New York Times, 12/18/09)

Download the full report here. (PDF)

Tags: law, , Innocence Project

posted by Justice on Dec 10

DNA testing has been suspended for over a month in New Mexico’s State Police crime lab after the state’s forensic accreditation lapsed at the end of October, and a backlog is building up. Officials reported recently that the lab is 124 cases behind and that at least two cases will have passed court deadlines before accreditation can be renewed, which could happen as soon as this week. “This could be a blow to every district attorney's office across New Mexico, as well as law enforcement,” Lemuel Martinez, a district attorney in New Mexico, told the Albuquerque Journal .

DNA Backlogs Build Across the U.S.

DNA testing has been suspended for over a month in New Mexico’s State Police crime lab after the state’s forensic accreditation lapsed at the end of October, and a backlog is building up. Officials reported recently that the lab is 124 cases behind and that at least two cases will have passed court deadlines before accreditation can be renewed, which could happen as soon as this week.

“This could be a blow to every district attorney's office across New Mexico, as well as law enforcement,” Lemuel Martinez, a district attorney in New Mexico, told the Albuquerque Journal. “To not have that service readily available will really be terrible for the entire criminal justice system. I just hope no cases fall through the cracks.”

We’ve reported in recent weeks that backups in labs across the country have left critical evidence, including rape kits, untested nationwide in thousands of cases.

And budget shortfalls mean that some departments rule out testing in entire categories of crimes. Although DNA testing has been used increasingly in burglary cases in recent years, Houston Police Chief Harold Hurtt told the Houston Chronicle on Friday that he can’t get funding to expand the use of DNA tests in burglary investigations. Burglaries are up 4.4 percent in Houston this year, with 21,212 break-ins through September.

It would cost $8 million to upgrade the current HPD crime lab to process DNA evidence from non-violent offenses in addition to violent crimes, Hurtt estimated….

“I'm so frustrated with this whole process,” Hurtt said Friday. “We find a problem, we find a solution, and … everybody says, ‘This is important. We have to do it.' However, it doesn't seem to be a priority. And we're not going to be able to do this for free.”

Even when testing is eventually conducted, lab backlogs can delay arrests for violent crimes and delay the slow investigations that eventually clear innocent suspects.

A Massachusetts man recently spent five months in jail before DNA tests proved he didn’t commit the crime he had been charged with — and he was freed. Another man was recently charged with a 2003 sexual assault based on evidence collected in 2005, but not tested until this year.

Despite this, Massachusetts officials announced last week that are not focused on eliminating the state’s backlog of 16,000 cases.

Tags: law, legal aid, Miscarriage of Justice

posted by Justice on Jul 22

Last week, Lafonso Rollins marked the anniversary of the day he walked out of an Illinois prison after serving 11 years for a rape he did not commit. Rollins was a 17-year-old special education student in the ninth grade when he was arrested, and he was convicted based largely on a false confession he had signed, but did not write

Five Years After Exoneration, Lafonso Rollins is Giving Back

Last week, Lafonso Rollins marked the anniversary of the day he walked out of an Illinois prison after serving 11 years for a rape he did not commit. Rollins was a 17-year-old special education student in the ninth grade when he was arrested, and he was convicted based largely on a false confession he had signed, but did not write. In 2004, DNA testing was finally obtained and conclusively proved Rollins’s innocence and he was released.

Rollins spoke to ABC7 Chicago about how his false confession was coerced by police. He said: “They came on hitting on me. They kept told me they were going to wring me out to dry if I didn't tell the truth… I was scared to death.” In addition to this alleged improper treatment by police, Rollins’ case was also plagued by improper forensic analysis and reporting.

In early 2006, Rollins filed a lawsuit against the City of Chicago for violating his civil rights. He eventually settled for $9 million, and the city pledged to investigate whether the police officers and crime lab who handled his case had engaged in wrongdoing. Rollins said his mission now is to use his freedom to help others.

“This is not my lottery ticket or anything,” he said. “Keep in mind, the most important thing right now is for everybody to focus on that, OK, I made it, I'm free, you know what I'm saying? It's over with. Make sure the next guy doesn't go through this heat.”

Since then, Rollins has used portions of his settlement money to help free the innocent and prevent wrongful convictions. He started a foundation called Right the Wrong Complications. In one of his first donations, Rollins gave $10,000 to benefit Northern Illinois University Law School’s Innocence Project, which had provided him pro bono legal services during his incarceration.

More recently, Rollins donated another $10,000 to the rebuilding fund of a Chicago church after he saw it burn down on television. He cited his late father, a pastor who had died during his incarnation. “My father passed, and here is a church that I can help out and here this one is,” said Rollins. “I thought this would be my chance to help out.”

Other Exoneration Anniversaries:

Steven Linscott, Illinois (Served 3 Years, Exonerated 7/16/92)
Steven Toney, Missouri (Served 13 Years, Exonerated 7/16/96
Joe Jones, Kansas (Served 6.5 Years, Exonerated 7/17/92)
Perry Mitchell, South Carolina (Served 14.5 Years, Exonerated 7/20/98)

Tags: Miscarriage of Justice, Barrister, injustice

posted by Justice on Jul 22

As of today, 240 people have been exonerated by DNA testing in 34 states. They come from all walks of life and their experiences after exoneration are as diverse as they are

Uneven Compensation Leaves the Exonerated in Limbo
As of today, 240 people have been exonerated by DNA testing in 34 states. They come from all walks of life and their experiences after exoneration are as diverse as they are. But they all share a common experience – they served years in prison for crimes they didn’t commit. Rebuilding a life after exoneration is not easy, and the level of support offered to the exonerated varies greatly from state to state – and even sometimes within states.

Twenty-seven states offer some compensation to the exonerated after their release, but the compensation laws in these vary widely. Click here to find your state on our interactive map.

Even within some states, exonerees’ experiences after exoneration – and the services offered by the state – can take different paths. Georgia is one of the 23 states without a statewide compensation law, but several exonerees have been awarded compensation by the legislature in individual bills. As the Associated Press reported recently, however, Georgia exonerees Samuel Scott and Douglas Echols never received any compensation from the state for the injustice they suffered.

Seven years after DNA evidence exonerated Echols and Scott, neither has received a cent from the state of Georgia. Their appeal was doomed by the influential district attorney of “Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil” fame who locked them both away in 1987 and is still not convinced they're innocent.

…”We're like ghosts,” Scott said recently. “They want to pretend we don't exist.”

…Like Echols and like most ex-cons, he's struggled to find steady work since he got out. He started a small landscaping business but has few customers these days. He had a line on a job waxing and cleaning floors that he says would have paid about $15 an hour, but when the company discovered he had a criminal record, it was a no go. He is two months behind on his mortgage.

Read the full story here. (Associated Press, 7/18/09)

Read more about the Innocence Project’s efforts to seek exoneree compensation in states across the country.

Tags: pro bono, law, legal

posted by Justice on Jun 3

Attorney and former police officer Stephen Wyse writes in the Springfield, Missouri, News-Leader today that his state is in dire need of reforms to prevent wrongful convictions and better identify the perpetrators of crime. There have been seven DNA exonerations in Missouri, but efforts to reform eyewitness identification procedures, forensic practices and interrogations have fallen flat in recent years.

Missouri Column: Too Many Errors

Attorney and former police officer Stephen Wyse writes in the Springfield, Missouri, News-Leader today that his state is in dire need of reforms to prevent wrongful convictions and better identify the perpetrators of crime. There have been seven DNA exonerations in Missouri, but efforts to reform eyewitness identification procedures, forensic practices and interrogations have fallen flat in recent years.

There are no endeavors where perfection is universally possible, but where substantial errors can be eliminated by adopting the “best practices,” don't we owe that to ourselves as citizens? Memorial Day honors those who protect our freedom. We should all commit ourselves to defending the spirit of the Constitution and the liberty it enshrines.

Read the full column here. (News-Leader, 06/01/09)

For an overview of exonerations by state and the reforms in place, visit our interactive maps here.

Tags: law, Barrister, injustice

posted by Justice on May 16

Three years ago tomorrow, Doug Warney was freed from a New York prison after serving nine years for a murder he didn’t commit. Warney, who has a history of mental health issues, was convicted based in part on a false confession he allegedly made after 12 hours of questioning. About 25% of wrongful convictions overturned by DNA testing nationwide have involved false confessions or admissions.

Three Years of Freedom
Three years ago tomorrow, Doug Warney was freed from a New York prison after serving nine years for a murder he didn’t commit. Warney, who has a history of mental health issues, was convicted based in part on a false confession he allegedly made after 12 hours of questioning. About 25% of wrongful convictions overturned by DNA testing nationwide have involved false confessions or admissions.

At the time of Warney’s exoneration in 2006, Innocence Project Co-Director Peter Neufeld said it should lead law enforcement agencies across the state to begin recording interrogations. Three years later, although many individual agencies in the state have begun to record interrogations, New York is still one of 36 states with no law requiring recordings.

“These DNA results don’t just show that Doug Warney is innocent – they reveal criminal conduct on the part of at least two Rochester police officers, and they demonstrate tunnel vision on the part of police and prosecutors who ignored compelling evidence that the confession was bogus,” said Peter Neufeld, Co-Director of the Innocence Project. “This case should be a clarion call for every law enforcement agency in the state to begin recording police interrogations for serious crimes.”

Earlier this month, the chief judge of New York’s highest court said he would create a new permanent task force to examine causes of wrongful convictions – like false confessions – and recommend reforms to prevent wrongful convictions like Warney’s.

Neufeld said this task force could be a driving force to finally bring about changes like recorded interrogations in New York, but that it is also critical that the state legislature take action.

“While this is a major step forward, it is one piece of the whole. There are major systemic weaknesses demanding immediate action, and we will continue working with the Governor, Attorney General and Legislature to advance critical reforms in this legislative session that can prevent wrongful convictions. The task force Judge Lippman is creating does not supplant other efforts – it complements them and makes them even more critical.”

Other Exoneration Anniversaries This Week:

Sunday: Neil Miller, Massachusetts (Served 9.5 Years, Exonerated 5/1/0/2000)

Monday: Curtis McCarty, Oklahoma (Served 21 Years, Exonerated 5/11/2007)

Thursday: Josiah Sutton, Texas (Served 4.5 Years, Exonerated 5/14/04)

Tags: legal aid, Barrister, Miscarriage of Justice