4-2-2012 Oklahoma:
NORMAN — University of Oklahoma Associate Professor of Law Cheryl Wattley knows — perhaps better than most — the high stakes and extremes of legal work.
“We have set up this criminal justice system based upon an assumption that people do their jobs fairly and that we take pains to get it right. When we get it wrong, there is no amount of money that will give victims their lives back,” Wattley said. “It can be the highest of the highs and lowest of the lows. The day you walk somebody out, it’s really good.”
Wattley works in the OU College of Law, currently serving as its director of clinical education and as an associate professor teaching criminal procedure, criminal law, trial techniques and civil rights.
In addition, Wattley also does post-conviction work, with three of her four cases resulting in the exoneration of innocent people.
Donating her legal expertise to groups like New Jersey-based Centurion Ministries, Wattley — together with Centurion’s founder and executive director Jim McCloskey — most recently brought a just end to the story of a Richard Miles, of Dallas, who was declared innocent by the Dallas court system on Feb. 12.
On the morning of May 16, 1994, then 19-year-old Miles found himself in a worst-case scenario.
It was 3 a.m. and he was walking back to a friend’s house when he was arrested by the Dallas police — complete with a helicopter spotlight assisting. He was put in the back of a police cruiser and taken to a nearby Texaco station in the northwest area of Dallas near Bachman Lake.
“I had no warning while I was walking,” Miles said. “I was still confident and calm when they took me to the Texaco.”
Based on a single eyewitness’ identification and unlucky coincidence, Miles was wrongly identified as the man who, 25 minutes earlier, had walked through the crowded gas station parking lot and shot two victims point blank while they sat in their parked car, killing one and injuring the other.
“I had a lot of mixed emotions. I remained confident in my innocence. I had an alibi and plenty of people to call, but as the procedures continued, my confidence became overshadowed,” Miles said.
After that morning, Richard’s life would never be the same again. Shortly thereafter, he was sentenced to spend the next 60 years behind bars, convicted of murder and aggravated assault. And that was that, for the next 15 years.
“Being in prison as an innocent man is like getting novocaine from the dentist,” Miles said. “You feel everything, but it dulls the pain. That’s how it was in prison; over the years, the pain of being there never went away, it just got less intense.”
Shortly after his release, Richard and his mother, Mrs. Miles, were featured guests at an event sponsored by John Grisham and McCloskey.
Wattley was present at the event and vividly recalled Mrs. Miles sharing her perspective of her son’s conviction and eventual release.
“The event was a celebration of Miles’ and other successful exoneration cases, and as part of the event, Mrs. Miles tells this very compelling story,” Wattley said.
“She tells us how she and her late husband were very involved in their church, and when Richard was arrested, she knew he was innocent and believed it to be God’s way of steering him out of a rebellious phase. When he was convicted, she told us how devastated she was and prayed for help. She then said, ‘Little did I know that God was going to send me angels to save my son,’” Wattley said.
Voice shaking with emotion, Wattley said, “To have someone publicly call you an angel in a crowded church full of people ... it’s amazing.”
Miles was freed from prison on Oct. 12, 2009 — 15 years after his conviction.
The process of achieving this goal was quicker than most, according to Wattley and McCloskey, and was distinct in that it was among the first exonerations made without DNA, based on recantation of witness testimony, prosecutor misconduct and police suppression of evidence.
“I started working on the case in July and he was freed that October,” McCloskey said. “This breaks our record. Things just moved; it was like the hand of God. He was freed so quickly because the district attorney agreed he was innocent, and when the DA joins you, it opens doors.”
Miles was Centurion’s 46th freed innocent person and was Wattley’s third case with Centurion.
“I feel so fortunate that I have such a dedicated and devoted attorney working for us,” McCloskey said of Wattley. “We could not do our work without her. Richard owes his freedom to her, Centurion and the Dallas DA’s office. All three had an equal share in this and worked as a team.”
Though Miles’ freedom wasn’t as costly as most exoneration cases, he still approaches his new life with gratitude and positive determination to make the most of it.
“The day I was released, they asked me what I wanted to eat, and I couldn’t even think about it because I’d spent the last 15 years being told what to do in every way. Since I know what that’s like, I want to help former inmates because it’s so hard out here and prison is so debilitating,” Miles said.
He is currently employed as an event organizer for a Dallas hotel and is working toward his dream of starting a special re-entry program called Miles of Freedom, where former inmates will renovate the facility that will serve as their transitional housing.
“In prison, you never see the work you’re made to do actually benefit anyone. You get into a mindset that good work doesn’t matter, and it makes you feel there’s no purpose. I want to show these men that their work means something and help them get out of that prison mindset,” Miles said.
Wattley is similarly focused on the tasks at hand and, like her client, possesses a passion for righting the wrongs of a fallible system.
“I do post-conviction work because we make mistakes. And when we make mistakes, it is really incumbent upon us to make it right. I firmly believe lawyering is about impacting lives. It’s a helping profession. It’s not often you are given the honor and privilege of having this type of impact,” Wattley said. ..Source.. by Caitlin Schudalla The Norman Transcript
April 2, 2012
Professor assists the wrongly convicted
January 5, 2011
Texan declared innocent after 30 years in prison
1-5-2011 Texas:
DALLAS — A Texas man declared innocent Tuesday after 30 years in prison had at least two chances to make parole and be set free — if only he would admit he was a sex offender. But Cornelius Dupree Jr. refused to do so, doggedly maintaining his innocence in a 1979 rape and robbery, in the process serving more time for a crime he didn't commit than any other Texas inmate exonerated by DNA evidence.
"Whatever your truth is, you have to stick with it," Dupree, 51, said Tuesday, minutes after a Dallas judge overturned his conviction.
Nationally, only two others exonerated by DNA evidence spent more time in prison, according to the Innocence Project, a New York legal center that specializes in wrongful conviction cases and represented Dupree. James Bain was wrongly imprisoned for 35 years in Florida, and Lawrence McKinney spent more than 31 years in a Tennessee prison.
Dupree was sentenced to 75 years in prison in 1980 for the rape and robbery of a 26-year-old Dallas woman a year earlier. He was released in July on mandatory supervision, and lived under house arrest until October. About a week after his release, DNA test results came back proving his innocence in the sexual assault.
A day after his release, Dupree married his fiancee, Selma. The couple met two decades ago while he was in prison.
His exoneration hearing was delayed until Tuesday while authorities retested the DNA and made sure it was a match to the victim. Dallas County District Attorney Craig Watkins supported Dupree's innocence claim.
Looking fit and trim in a dark suit, Dupree stood through most of the short hearing, until state district Judge Don Adams told him, "You're free to go." One of Dupree's lawyers, Innocence Project Co-Director Barry Scheck, called it "a glorious day."
"It's a joy to be free again," Dupree said.
This latest wait was nothing for Dupree, who was up for parole as recently as 2004. He was set to be released and thought he was going home, until he learned he first would have to attend a sex offender treatment program.
Those in the program had to go through what is known as the "four R's." They are recognition, remorse, restitution and resolution, said Jim Shoemaker, who served two years with Dupree in the Boyd Unit south of Dallas.
"He couldn't get past the first part," said Shoemaker, who drove up from Houston to attend Dupree's hearing.
Shoemaker said he spent years talking to Dupree in the prison recreation yard, and always believed his innocence.
"I got a lot of flak from the guys on the block," Shoemaker said. "But I always believed him. He has a quiet, peaceful demeanor."
Under Texas compensation laws for the wrongly imprisoned, Dupree is eligible for $80,000 for each year he was behind bars, plus a lifetime annuity. He could receive $2.4 million in a lump sum that is not subject to federal income tax.
The compensation law, the nation's most generous, was passed in 2009 by the Texas Legislature after dozens of wrongly convicted men were released from prison. Texas has freed 41 wrongly convicted inmates through DNA since 2001 — more than any other state.
Dallas County's record of DNA exonerations — Dupree is No. 21 — is unmatched nationally because the county crime lab maintains biological evidence even decades after a conviction, leaving samples available to test. In addition, Watkins, the DA, has cooperated with innocence groups in reviewing hundreds of requests by inmates for DNA testing.
Watkins, the first black district attorney in Texas history, has also pointed to what he calls "a convict-at-all-costs mentality" that he says permeated his office before he arrived in 2007.
At least a dozen other exonerated former inmates from the Dallas area who collectively served more than 100 years in prison upheld a local tradition by attending the hearing and welcoming the newest member of their unfortunate fraternity. One of them, James Giles, presented Dupree with a $100 bill as a way to get his life restarted.
At one point, Scheck pointed out that eyewitness misidentification — the most common cause of wrongful convictions — was the key factor that sent Dupree to prison. The attorney then asked how many of the others were wrongly imprisoned because an eyewitness mistakenly identified them. A dozen hands went in the air.
Not in attendance Tuesday was Dupree's accused accomplice, Anthony Massingill, who was convicted in the same case and sentenced to life in prison on another sexual assault. The same DNA testing that cleared Dupree also cleared Massingill. He says he is innocent, but remains behind bars while authorities test DNA in the second case.
Dupree was 20 when he was arrested in December 1979 while walking to a party with Massingill. Authorities said they matched the description of a different rape and robbery that had occurred the previous day.
Police presented their pictures in a photo array to the victim. She picked out Massingill and Dupree. Her male companion, who also was robbed, did not pick out either man when showed the same photo lineup.
Dupree was convicted of aggravated robbery with a deadly weapon. According to court documents, the woman and her male companion stopped at a Dallas liquor store in November 1979 to buy cigarettes and use a payphone. As they returned to their car, two men, at least one of whom was armed, forced their way into the vehicle and ordered them to drive. They also demanded money from the two victims.
The men eventually ordered the car to the side of the road and forced the male driver out of the car. The woman attempted to flee but was pulled back inside.
The perpetrators drove the woman to a nearby park, where they raped her at gunpoint. They debated killing her but eventually let her live, keeping her rabbit-fur coat and her driver's license and warning her they would kill her if she reported the assault to police. The victim ran to the nearest highway and collapsed unconscious by the side of the road, where she was discovered.
Dupree was convicted and spent the next three decades appealing. The Court of Criminal Appeals turned him down three times. ..Source.. JEFF CARLTON, AP
December 14, 2009
Fighting Wrongful Convictions
12-14-2009 National:
BU law students focus on freeing the innocent
Stanley Fisher slides open a cabinet door in his office and reveals a couple of file boxes, generic cardboard containers. Inside lies the fate of several souls, New England prisoners who claim they’ve been falsely incarcerated.
This semester Fisher, a School of Law professor of law, and his students have been sifting through the boxes full of court transcripts, police records, and lab reports. They are helping to determine whether the prisoners’ cases ought to be accepted by the New England Innocence Project (NEIP), which has freed more than a dozen innocent inmates since 2000.
“I have one case with one box, another with two boxes, and another with five boxes,” says Fisher, a founder of NEIP and now a trustee.
He slides the door closed and returns to his desk. Looking on from a corner of his ninth-floor office is Dennis Maher. Fisher has invited Maher to speak that afternoon to the law students in his Wrongful Convictions seminar. Maher’s fate, too, once lay in such a box. The bushy-bearded mechanic spent 19 years behind bars for crimes he did not commit: two rapes and one attempted rape in 1983. Branded a serial rapist, Maher served most of his time at the Massachusetts Treatment Center for sexual offenders in the commonwealth’s Bridgewater Correctional Complex.
Maher (right) stands and admires the view from Fisher’s window, the inky ribbon of the Charles River, the lights on BU’s DeWolfe Boathouse, the shadows falling across the jumble of buildings that comprise East Cambridge. “I was released from that building there,” he says, pointing a thick finger. “The one with the orange stripe. Cambridge Courthouse. April 3, 2003” — thanks, in large part, to NEIP lawyers who discovered lost biological evidence in a courthouse basement.
Headquartered at the Boston law firm of Goodwin Procter, NEIP provides free legal representation to those suspected of having been wrongly convicted in Connecticut, Maine, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, Rhode Island, and Vermont. Law students play an important part.
“As the result of the investigation the student does,” Fisher says, “the Innocence Project decides whether there is grounds to appoint a lawyer and try and get the conviction reversed.”
The nation’s first exoneration of a convicted prisoner based on DNA evidence was in 1989 and led to a spate of voided convictions. NEIP this year expanded its scope to include cases where any new evidence has been discovered: false confessions, incompetent counsel or police work, witness recantations. “In many cases, you don’t have biological evidence, like with a drive-by shooting,” Fisher says. “With non-DNA cases, it’s much harder to convince the court they got the wrong person.”
The original Innocence Project, based in New York City, was started in 1992 by Barry Scheck and Peter Neufeld (later part of O. J. Simpson’s defense team) at Yeshiva University’s Cardozo School of Law. In the first year, it received 5,000 letters from prisoners (including Maher). Scheck and Neufeld later reached out to law schools nationwide to enlist professors and students. Fisher heeded the call. Innocence Projects have since sprung up around the country.
Fisher’s interest in wrongful convictions began with the 1995 film In the Name of the Father. “I spent the next summer studying miscarriages of justice in the U.K. that gave rise to the film, which portrayed wrongful convictions, and ultimately exonerations, of alleged IRA agents who bombed pubs in England. That research led me to wonder whether wrongful convictions were a problem in this country.”
In 1997, Fisher (right) began offering a seminar at LAW that explored the convictions of innocent defendants, from the 19th-century’s Captain Alfred Dreyfus in France to the 200-plus prisoners in the United States so far exonerated by DNA evidence, 15 on death row. Topics include false confessions, suppression of evidence, the unreliability of eyewitness identifications, informant testimony, and “junk scientific” evidence, as well as postconviction remedies.
After helping form NEIP in 2000, Fisher affixed a sidecar to his seminar, a clinic that offers students a chance to roll up their sleeves and work on local and regional cases. After an NEIP paralegal examines applicants’ initial questionnaires, cases are assigned to law students for deeper investigation.
“This year I had 13 students who wanted to work on innocence cases,” Fisher says. “I was able to take six.”
Students scrutinize trial transcripts, forensic evidence, motions, and appeals and analyze the prosecution and defense theories. Finally, they conclude with a memorandum for NEIP’s Case Review Committee and participate in related discussions.
“It’s definitely stressful,” says David Levine (LAW’10). “Ultimately, students don’t make the final decision, but our opinions are given a lot of credence and we have to be very careful.”
Levine is part of a three-student team working on a first-degree murder case. The crime took place almost 15 years ago and the inmate is serving a life sentence without possibility of parole.
“It’s heartbreaking,” Levine says. “I believe he is innocent of the crime he was prosecuted for.”
Fisher insists on strict confidentiality, so Levine and fellow researchers Sophie Clavet (LAW’10) and Alexander Knapp (LAW’10) cannot discuss many specifics of the case, not even where it took place.
Their work began with four 20-pound legal boxes.
“It’s become pretty evident that something was clearly afoot,” Levine says. “We have ineffective counsel, new DNA testing procedures that may reveal more evidence, a recanted witness, and possibly people who were never tested and should have been.”
According to the Federal Bureau of Prisons, more than two million people are serving time in the United States. Fisher estimates that between 2 percent and 5 percent are innocent, which works out to between 20,000 and 50,000 wrongly convicted citizens.
“No one becomes a great prosecutor by losing cases,” Knapp says. “You’re being evaluated by your bosses, so you want to deliver what’s considered the best thing, and that’s a conviction. That mentality has almost warped the responsibility of the prosecutor.”
The law students believe the conviction-driven culture of criminal prosecution needs to change. Levine says DNA testing, often challenged by prosecutors, should be unrestricted. Clavet thinks a better tracking system for DNA evidence should be put in place. She points out that defense lawyers, too, can fail their clients.
“You have to be humble and respect the rules and be completely involved, especially with a capital case,” she says. “There have been cases where you have lawyers sleeping at trial. It’s not always about police and prosecutors.”
Maher, taking a seat at the front of the seminar room, knows this well. He has come from work, still in his mechanic’s uniform. He has told his story countless times, testified before state legislatures, and been featured in the documentary After Innocence. But he still chokes up at key points in his narrative, including when he talks about his children, one of whom is named after his NEIP lawyer.
Maher was a 23-year-old U.S. Army sergeant at the time of his arrest in November 1983. Police were on the lookout for a serial rapist who had attacked two women in Lowell and one in Ayer. Maher happened to be wearing a similar hoodie and was stopped near one of the scenes. Cops found pot in his pocket and brought him to the station. He was soon standing in a lineup and fingered by one of the victims. A collection of mistakes -- witness misidentification, shoddy police work, incompetent counsel, misplacement of evidence -- brewed into a nightmare.
He was convicted at two jury trials in the spring of 1984 and sentenced to life. His trial attorney was disbarred soon after. Two years later, Maher was deemed a sexually violent predator and given a civil commitment of life at Bridgewater, which overrode his prison sentences. All of his motions, briefs, and appeals failed. “I came to the conclusion that I was going to die in prison an innocent man,” he says.
In 1993 came a faint ray of hope: the New York Innocence Project accepted his case. When NEIP was formed, it took over representation. But almost 10 years went by before a law student found long-misplaced biological evidence from the Lowell trial in the Middlesex Superior Court basement. In December 2002, DNA test results excluded Maher as the source of the semen on the evidence. The following February, a slide prepared from the rape kit of the Ayer victim was found at the police station. Maher was again ruled out.
“So NEIP lawyer Aliza Kaplan calls me on April 1, April Fools’ Day, and says, ‘When do you want go home?’” Maher recalls, tears rising in his eyes. “So I said, ‘How about April 3, because it’s going to take my parents a while to adjust that it’s over.’”
State Attorney General and U.S. Senate candidate Martha Coakley (LAW’79), who was then Middlesex County district attorney, called the convictions a “miscarriage of justice.” After 19 years in prison, Maher stepped out of the Cambridge Courthouse a free man. Before leaving, a court officer stopped him and said that the original prosecutor wanted a word.
“So I went over and he says, ‘I’m sorry for what happened,’ and I accepted his apology. It went a long ways to helping me get through what I went through. A lot of exonerees are angry and bitter and think society owes them something in return. I’m one of the few to have gotten an apology, and that helped me to live life.”
Maher works at Waste Management, in Woburn, Mass., as a mechanic, even though he has since received several million dollars in compensation and settlements. He is married and has two children; he spends his free time testifying about updating DNA laws and speaking out against the arrest-equals-conviction culture in many prosecutors’ offices.
One student asks whether he is still treated with suspicion once people hear his story.
“They are more shocked than anything else and say, ‘I can’t believe this happens,’” Maher answers. “Well, it does happen. There are 240 DNA exonerees and countless others who got out using a different road, through appeals or motions for new trials. It’s happened all over this country.
“Laws have to change, police departments have to change. You are the ones who can start the change.” ..Source.. Caleb Daniloff
August 5, 2009
CT- DNA Clears Man of Rape, Murder 20 Years Later
8-5-2009 Connecticut:
A Wallingford man who spent the last 20 years in prison was freed Wednesday after DNA evidence proves he didn’t commit the crime he was convicted for.
Kenneth Ireland was convicted of rape and murder back in 1989. At the time, police believed he was the man who raped and killed Barbara Pelkey, a mother of four from Wallingford. In 1986, she was found dead at the former R.S. Moulding and Manufacturing Company where she worked nights.
Robert Staneslow was the jury foreman at Ireland's trial. He said convicting Ireland was a tough decision. The jury deliberated for days over circumstantial evidence.
"There's no one piece of evidence that says, you can say yes, definitely. But if you put all of them together I said there's too many coincidences," said Staneslow, when asked how the jury reached its verdict.
He said the verdict would have been different if the DNA evidence was available.
"If there had been DNA evidence in that time period, there never would have been a trial for him, he would have been immediately let go," said Staneslow.
But police could only use the technology they had two decades ago.
“The technology wasn’t available at the time of this case. We had facts and circumstances back in 1986 to go on, the technology of 1986 vintage to go on. That’s what we used at the time,” said Lt. Marc Mikulski of the Wallingford Police Department.
When Wallingford Police heard it may have been the wrong man behind bars, they worked with the Connecticut Innocence Project and the State’s Attorney’s Office to take another look at the evidence. When the DNA evidence came back, it showed Ireland could not have been the person who committed the crime.
“We never want to put an innocent person in jail or an innocent person convicted for a crime they didn’t commit,” said Lt. Mikulski.
Ireland will be given a new trial on August 19, 2009. The prosecution is expected to drop the charges.
Now, Wallingford Police are left with a 23-year-old case to solve.
“We are going to reopen this cold case and use the 20 years plus advancement in technology and forensic technology to put fresh eyes on this case and bring it to a successful conclusion,” said Lt. Mikulski.
Police did contact Pelkey’s family. The new developments did open new wounds, but they are confident police will find the person who murdered their mother.
Ireland is back home with his family. A spokeswoman for the Connecticut Innocence Project says he already has a job lined up.
The Connecticut Innocence project also helped to free James Calvin Tillman in 2006, and Miguel Roman in April after they were imprisoned for crimes they did not commit. ..Source.. by AMANDA RAUS and LEANNE GENDREAU
April 27, 2009
FL- For innocent convicts in Florida, legal project is a lifeline
4-27-2009 Florida:
TALLAHASSEE — The letters come, sometimes eight to 10 a day, filled with everything from indignation to outrage to humble pleas for help.
Amy Kochanasz, a 25-year-old graduate student, retrieves them from her mail slot in the laid-back law office where she works. She admires the flashy, graffitilike handwriting of some; thinks others would make good movie scripts; wonders about the ones who try to sound like lawyers.
"I believe that I am totally innocense, and it's further believed that I was set up," one convict wrote.
It's up to Kochanasz and others at the Innocence Project of Florida to figure out whether that's true.
The Innocence Project was founded in 1992 by New York defense lawyers Barry Scheck and Peter Neufeld; it has since expanded into a network of more than 50 groups across the country. For years these lawyers specialized in using DNA evidence to exonerate people wrongly convicted of crimes from rape to murder. They have exonerated 237 people across the country, including 10 in Florida.
Lately the organization has branched out into cases involving bullet analysis, glass comparisons, palm prints and evidence-sniffing dogs. The National Academy of Sciences has cast doubt on these forensic tests, providing an opportunity for the Innocence Project and the inmates they represent.
The Florida office — a few rooms in an old wood-frame house — has four full-time lawyers, an investigator and a dozen students and interns who help with the cases. It is funded by grants and foundations.
Recently, the staff let a reporter inside to see how they choose their cases.
The process is a lot like sifting for gold. Of the 3,000 inmates who have asked for help since the office opened six years ago, 90 percent have received rejection letters. Rarely do the lawyers find someone like Wilton Dedge or Alan Crotzer, both wrongly convicted of rape.
Still, every letter gets a look. Each represents a person's last shot at freedom.
• • •
The four lawyers and three students gather in a bare room with mismatched chairs. Just about every one of them — even the lawyers — is wearing jeans.
On the table for review: the case summaries of eight men who say they are innocent.
These cases have already made it past Kochanasz and the other intake specialist, a lawyer who has gathered trial transcripts, court documents and lab reports, and made a recommendation. Now the cases are ready for a decision.
All of these men have been convicted and sentenced to decades and, in some cases, life in prison. But to the folks at the Innocence Project they are — once again — innocent until proven guilty.
They begin with an exterminator convicted of strangling an elderly woman with a dress in her bathtub. The only physical evidence against him: a partial palm print on the bathtub. It could have gotten there when he did his job. Forensic analysts created a full print from the partial one that supposedly matched his hand, but was it really his?
This will be their first palm print case if they take it. A step toward the unknown. But can they get the case thrown out with just that?
They're willing to give it a try.
"I like this case," executive director Seth Miller says. "I'd like to know if they have the print available to look at and a good explanation of what they did to it."
They move on to a pair of rapists. The cases seemed promising when they came in. But the staff turned up lab reports showing that the male DNA found on the raped women belongs to the convicts. These men will get rejection letters: "We're sorry we can't assist you further. We wish you the best of luck in your efforts."
Next: a guy convicted of shooting a restaurant manager making a bank deposit. A witness produced a box of bullets that supposedly belonged to the shooter. And the FBI said the lead from the bullets in the box matched the lead in the bullet that was fired in the crime.
They'll take this one for sure.
The FBI first used comparative bullet lead analysis in the Kennedy assassination, and over the years it became common practice. But in 2004, the National Academy of Sciences said linking a bullet to a specific box of bullets is a dubious business. A year later, the FBI stopped using the process and is informing prosecutors around the country of their about-face.
The Innocence Project knows of about 20 people in Florida who were convicted at least partly on comparative bullet lead analysis; several have become clients. One, Jimmy Ates, a Baker County high school teacher convicted of killing his wife in 1998, won a new trial recently, the first in the nation to do so.
"The next one," said lawyer Kitty Farias, flipping a page, "is a sad and strange tale."
This man has been in prison since 1995 for trying to rape a woman in a ditch behind a convenience store. The only physical evidence against him is a cap that resembled one he was wearing. It turned up a few feet away in the wet ditch. And someone saw him with wet pants soon after the crime.
Farias says she has tried to find the hat so she can have its brim tested for his DNA.
"But everything in this was destroyed," she says glumly. The evidence is gone.
Miller pipes up. "One point of caution," he says. He tells Farias not to reject this case until she makes sure the evidence was really destroyed.
"Ask for proof," he says.
Sometimes, as Miller knows through experience, evidence that appears to have been lost still exists.
• • •
On a recent Tuesday afternoon, Alan Crotzer stops by the offices of the Innocence Project of Florida carrying a McDonald's lunch. He makes the rounds with the lawyers, the intake clerks, the college students who are working up more Alan Crotzers on their computers.
He's a regular here, and a living example of what innocence lawyers can do.
Crotzer, 48, was accused, with two other men, of raping a woman and her 12-year-old daughter in Tampa in 1981. For years he insisted he was innocent, but by the time the Innocence Project looked into his case, all of the evidence seemed to have been destroyed.
Then one of his lawyers from New York located an old filing cabinet in the basement of a Florida Department of Law Enforcement lab in Tampa.
Inside: DNA slides from his case.
Crotzer was exonerated with a DNA test three years ago and now works for the Department of Juvenile Justice in Tallahassee.
He stops by the Innocence Project from time to time, to say hello and offer encouragement.
"I want to give hope and pride," he says, "to those involved in this." ..News Source.. by Leonora LaPeter Anton, Times Staff Writer
March 10, 2009
VA- Stafford prosecutor muzzled on rape case
3-10-2009 Virginia:
Stafford Circuit Judge J. Martin Bass stayed a juvenile court judge's ruling yesterday, blocking Deputy Commonwealth's Attorney Eric Olsen from commenting on the records of a teen he prosecuted on a rape charge in 2007.
The teen's alleged victim recanted her accusation more than two months after the former Aquia Harbour resident was convicted of rape and breaking and entering and ordered held by the Department of Juvenile Justice. The girl's mother has since been attempting to correct what she views as a miscarriage of justice.
Attempts by two previous attorneys to get the boy's charges overturned failed.
Now, attorneys with the Innocence Project of the University of Virginia Law School and JustChildren, a child advocacy group in Charlottesville, have taken up the effort, including seeking to get his name removed from the state's sex offender registry.
On Feb. 25, the boy, now 17, was released from the Department of Juvenile Justice weeks ahead of his earliest possible release date. The agency's director ordered it after receiving a Jan. 22 letter from the teen's current legal team--Deirdre Enright of the Innocence Project and Andrew K. Block Jr. of JustChildren--laying out their investigation into what they believed was a wrongful conviction.
Olsen is seeking permission to comment publicly on the case to address what he called "inaccurate and incomplete" information provided to The Free Lance-Star for a Feb. 5 article.
Yesterday, in Stafford Circuit Court, Olsen argued against the stay of Juvenile Court Judge Julian W. Johnson's Feb. 27 ruling saying the teen's attorneys were intentionally spreading false information.
Specifically, Olsen said the attorneys know the purported victim is incapable of legally consenting to sexual contact because of her age and mental abilities, making her recantation irrelevant.
Olsen claimed she has the mental capacity of a 7- or 8-year-old and was under 13 at the time of the June 2007 incident inside her home.
The girl's mother has said she's been classified as "borderline" mentally retarded and was 14 at the time of the incident.
The boy's IQ is only 7 points higher than the girl's, according to his attorneys.
Block yesterday argued that granting Olsen permission to comment on his client's confidential information would have a "chilling impact" on free speech rights.
He said anyone who dared to criticize the prosecution's handling of a case--including this girl's mother--would fear his or her child's confidential information would be released as a result.
At the conclusion of a 42-minute hearing, Bass granted the defense's request to block Olsen from reviewing the boy's pre- and post-conviction information and making public comment. He scheduled a full appeal of the matter for April. 17. ..News Source.. by PAMELA GOULD
May 27, 2008
IL- DNA exonerates man convicted of sex assault
Faulty witness account put South Sider in prison 14 years
5-27-2008 Illinois:
DNA tests have exonerated a South Side man who has served nearly 14 years in prison for the sexual assault of a 15-year-old girl who was attacked in the fall of 1994 as she walked to school near 69th and State Streets, the prisoner's lawyer said Tuesday.
Dean Cage, 41, was convicted by a jury and sentenced to 40 years in prison despite his assertions that he was innocent and was home at the time of the attack.
Attorney Peter Neufeld, co-founder of the New York-based Innocence Project, which investigates wrongful convictions, said that he was informed by the Cook County state's attorney's office that it had the case dismissed after DNA tests eliminated Cage as the victim's attacker.
Cage, who has been confined to the Illinois River Correctional Center in Downstate Canton, is expected to be released within 24 hours, Neufeld said.
The exoneration of Cage is the 29th such case of innocence in Illinois and the 217th DNA exoneration in the nation, according to the Innocence Project.
The case is another example of an erroneous eyewitness identification leading to a wrongful conviction, Neufeld said. More than 75 percent of the wrongful convictions that have resulted through DNA testing involved faulty eyewitness testimony, he said.
The victim had testified in a trial before Circuit Judge Michael Bolan that she was walking to catch a bus about 6:25 a.m. on Nov. 14, 1994, when a man wearing blue jeans, a black leather jacket and a hat with a snap on it grabbed her and dragged her between two porches of an apartment building. She was then slammed against a wall and sexually assaulted, she said.
After her attacker fled, she ran into the street where a newspaper truck driver saw her and notified police, according to trial testimony.
A computer-generated composite sketch was circulated in the neighborhood and about a week later a tipster told police that a possible suspect worked at a meat-packing plant nearby.
Police took the victim to the business, where Cage was employed. The woman identified him as her attacker, according to trial testimony.
Cage testified at the trial that he was home on the morning of the crime and did not leave until about 7:30 a.m. ..News Source.. by Maurice Possley Tribune reporter
May 21, 2008
MI- After nearly 26 years in prison, man to go free after doubts raised in rape case
5-21-2008 Michigan:
It took a few years before Janice Nobliski could sleep through the night, but still the former cop’s conscience kept gnawing — Walter Swift, an innocent man, was in prison. And she was partly to blame.
“People kill and get 10 years and here Walter Swift was doing 20 to 40 for a rape he didn’t do,” said Nobliski. “I’ve suffered about this, but nothing like Walter Swift. He was just 21, and his whole life is gone.”
After almost 26 years in prison, Swift is expected to leave Wayne County Circuit Court Wednesday a free man, officially cleared of raping a pregnant mother who was surprised in her Indian Village home as she played with her infant child.
A joint motion by the Innocence Project and the Wayne County Prosecutor’s Office is to be presented to Wayne County Circuit Court Judge Vera Massey Jones Wednesday to set aside Swift’s conviction -- one based on what authorities now concede was a shaky identification.
“Oh, this is great,” Nobliski said today. “This is great.”
A new kind of victory
While the Project — headed by lawyer Barry Scheck, who gained national celebrity as a member of O.J. Simpson’s legal dream team — has used DNA evidence to clear more than 200 imprisoned persons, this is the first rape case they have overturned primarily because of faulty eyewitness testimony.
The Free Press could not reach the rape victim today, though in earlier conversations with the paper she said she remained convinced that Swift raped her. He had written to her, she said, and his attempts to free himself brought back the horror of the attack.
In a statement, Wayne County Prosecutor Kym Worthy said her office is not calling Swift innocent, but said there is now “some doubt about the fairness of the original trial.”
Project attorney Olga Akselrod said Swift, 47, will likely feel like other freed inmates, “like Rip Van Winkle. He’s never held a cell phone or used a computer. The Internet is something he’s seen on TV and in the movies. The Detroit and world he knew is gone.”
The Innocence Project presented Worthy with an array of troubling issues in Swift’s prosecution, from the lineup in which Swift was first identified; to lab tests that – while not definitive – seemed to point to Swift’s innocence; to lab reports the prosecutor handling the case said he never received.
In September 1982, a lawyer’s young wife was playing with their child on the sunny second floor of their imposing home in Indian Village.
The woman was a few months pregnant and still in her robe that morning when a young man entered. She was raped twice and robbed.
After the attack, investigators collected semen samples from her robe and a bedspread, and the woman was interviewed by detective Nobliski, a 13-year veteran of the Detroit Police sex crimes unit. The victim described her attacker as a thin young man 15 to 18 years old, clean shaven with hair fixed in braids and small poofs.
Looking through mug shots, she pointed to seven men with some features similar to her attacker. Nobliski decided to hold a line-up using the next man the victim pointed out.
“It was Walter,” she said. “There was nothing special about that identification compared with the other men she pointed out.”
Nobliski added: “And that’s how Walter was picked. It was my fault.”
Swift was 21 with short hair a full moustache and sideburns.
At the line-up, the victim pointed to Swift saying she believed it was Swift as she believed in God.
Nobliski said she thought the identification was weak and scheduled a polygraph
for Swift. She then took a vacation. On her return, she found the polygraph cancelled, Swift charged, and learned that she would be taken off the case.
At trial, assistant prosecutor Walter Piszczatowski argued that the victim picked out Swift only after examining 500-plus pictures.
It was only after being contacted by the Innocence Project, he said, that he learned of the other seven men cited by the rape victim.
Nobliski told the Innocence Project that Swift’s defense lawyer, Lawrence Greene, did not press her about her about the method used to identify Swift on cross examination.
Swift was convicted by a Detroit Recorder’s Court jury and given 20-40 years. Nobliski was transferred to street patrol; a move she said came after she raised doubts about the case.
In 1998, Swift contacted the Innocence Project, which uses scientific advances in DNA to review old cases.
Looking through Swift’s case, the project investigators found the semen samples had long been destroyed. But they found old lab reports suggesting that the less sophisticated biological tests used in 1982 pointed away from Swift, although not with DNA certainty.
“When the Project called me, I thought ‘Oh! Justice is going to be done now,’” Nobliski said. “But it still took years.”
Piszczatowski – who became a federal prosecutor before entering private practice – said Tuesday he didn’t know about Nobliski concerns or the lab tests pointing away from Swift.
Last year, Scheck and his team met with Wayne County Prosecutor Kym Worthy, who agreed to take a fresh look.
Greene, Swift’s defense lawyer, later lost his law license after mishandling other cases. He said today he found it “unreal” it took so long for him to win Swift's release.
“I liked Walter,” Greene said, “and I hope he has a long and happy life.”
