innocence
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Texas Gov. Ducks Arson Investigation
Innocent and Deported
Published November 05, 2009 @ 04:35PM PT
I've got bad news to share. I wrote a couple of weeks ago about the case of cousins Julio Maldonado and Denis Calderon. Unfortunately, I came to the story too late. The day after I wrote, Maldonado was deported to Peru -- a country he left when he was three. He doesn't speak Spanish and found housing with distant relatives. He's stuck in a foreign land because of an injustice that started when he was jumped 13 years ago.
The Philadelphia City Paper has the sad story of Maldonado and Calderon, who is still detained in the U.S. and scheduled to be deported next year. The injustices suffered by these men never seem to end.
The cousins say they were wrongfully convicted of murder aggravated assault for a 1996 fight. They say they were the victims of a hate crime. They were involved in a scuffle after a group of white men began yelling racial epithets on a Philadelphia street and attacked them. Even prosecutors agree that the white men started the scuffle. Maldonado and Calderon then grabbed a steering-wheel lock and a baseball bat -- they say to defend themselves -- and critically injured a man who prosecutors say was an innocent bystander a man who prosecutors say was an innocent bystander ended up in a coma (he may have gone into a coma because of a pre-existing blood clotting condition, more below). The man died two years later. The white men were never charged.
And now the prosecutor who convicted them -- Seth Williams -- has been elected as Philadelphia's next attorney general.
Two Posthumous Pardons in South Carolina
Published October 27, 2009 @ 07:07AM PT
Last week, the South Carolina pardon board voted unanimously to clear the names of two men executed in 1915 for a murder they may not have committed. The men -- Meeks and Thomas Griffin -- were great uncles of syndicated radio talk show host Tom Joyner (left), who sought the pardons after learning last year about the men’s story.
It was the first posthumous pardon ever granted in a capital case by the state of South Carolina.
I wrote about this case a couple of weeks ago, and I’m excited to be able to report on this positive outcome. Joyner was delighted with the news:
“It’s good for the community, it’s good for the nation. Anytime you can repair racism in this country is a step forward,” he said.
When There's No DNA
Published October 23, 2009 @ 06:54AM PT
Two men are expected to be freed later today in Dallas after serving 12 years in prison for a murder they didn't commit. So why does District Attorney Craig Watkins say it's his "biggest" exoneration yet?
Watkins, a hero in the innocence movement for his success in shifting a major Texas city from 'tough on crime' to 'smart on crime,' says the cases of Claude Alvin Simmons Jr. (left) and Christopher Shun Scott (right) could have national impact because they cleared through reinvestigation -- but not DNA testing, and because his office worked closely with the Dallas Police.
"I expect this case will get a lot of attention, and I expect you'll see other police departments get involved in cases like this. We're going to lead the way in how to dispense justice," Watkins told the Dallas Observer.
Wrongfully Convicted and Now Deported, Too?
Published October 22, 2009 @ 04:16PM PT
The cases of Julio Maldonado and Denis Calderon are getting some attention in Philadelphia -- but Maldonado could still be deported in the coming weeks to Peru, a country he left 36 years ago when he was 3, if something doesn't give.
This case involves is a long, winding trail of injustice. Maldonado and Calderon were convicted of a 1996 aggravated assault in Philadelphia that they claim was not only self defense, but self defense in a racially motivated assault by a drunken gang. The evidence is strong that they were wrongfully convicted of this assault. They spent nearly three years in prison - but then their immigration nightmare began.
The men were both longtime lawful residents, but their conviction was grounds for deportation. They refused to sign a deportation order, and were sent to federal prison for hindering their own removal from the U.S.
More than 900 people have signed a change.org petition urging Pennsylvania Gov. Rendell to pardon the men. Join them here.
Reexamining Shaken Baby Convictions
Published October 09, 2009 @ 07:20AM PT
In Georgia on Tuesday, a woman named Melonie Ware was acquitted in her second trial for charges that she killed a nine-month-old infant at her in-home day care by shaking the child. It turns out the baby died of sickle cell anemia. And you’ll hear this story again soon, with a different defendant in a different state. And then again after that.
More than 200 people are convicted of shaken baby murder each year in the U.S., and new scientific research shows that many of them are innocent. The time has come for a sweeping review of these cases that could free hundreds of innocent people from prison.
I pointed in June to the new research in shaken baby cases, but it bears repeating. There is a growing body of work showing that’s it is actually impossible to shake a baby to death. There is general consensus among scientists that the triad of symptoms long believed to be exclusive to shaken baby syndrome can actually be caused by other forms of trauma. Deborah Tuerkheimer, a University of Maine School of Law professor, wrote in a new paper on Shaken Baby Syndrome (SBS) that "we may surmise that a sizeable portion of the universe of defendants convicted of SBS-based crimes is, in all likelihood, factually innocent."
To be sure, many people convicted of causing a child’s death through abuse actually are guilty -- they could have hit or dropped the child -- but many are not, and it's up to us to correct these injustices.
False Confessions at Guantanamo
Published October 02, 2009 @ 07:17AM PT
Wrongful conviction cases often follow similar patterns, and all of the warning signs have been present at Guantanamo for years. A federal judge’s decision unsealed last week demonstrates exactly how innocent people have become American captives and the lengths our government is willing to go to obtain false convictions.
Judge Colleen Kollar-Kotelly ordered that a Kuwaiti man named Fouad al-Rabiah (left) be freed from Guantanamo, finding that we’ve detained an innocent man for seven years based on false confessions extracted under torture. Her 65-page opinion completely eviscerates the government’s case against al-Rabiah, explaining that American authorities ignored warning signs of his innocence in order to stick to the original story. Blogger and author Andy Worthington gives us an excellent play-by-play review of the frightening case here.
The case is an eye-opening example of the kind of injustice that can occur when we let fear and revenge get the best of our justice system. It’s a deadly recipe: a suspect with some scant circumstantial evidence of involvement meets pressure to get a conviction. We see it again and again in domestic cases. About 25% of the wrongful convictions overturned by DNA testing to date have involved false confessions.
Al-Rabiah’s wrongful incarceration follows the same pattern of many of the domestic wrongful convictions, except the interrogation techniques used by the officers (and approved by the Bush administration) were infinitely more aggressive and unjust than any used regularly in American police stations since Jon Burge’s reign of terror on Chicago’s South Side in the 1970s and 1980s.
Below are the facts in al-Rabiah’s case as I understand them:
The Troy Davis Fallout Continues
Published August 20, 2009 @ 03:41PM PT
The U.S. Supreme Court dropped a bombshell on Monday, and it was great news for Troy Davis. The court ruled 6-2 that a lower court must review new evidence in Davis' case before he can be executed. Davis' case had attracted attention from around the world, and millions celebrated the ruling. But it was the dissent that really turned some heads this week - and the conversation isn't over.
Antonin Scalia wrote in his dissent (joined by Clarence Thomas) that the court had never found that executing an innocent person was unconstitutional. That's true - but why assert this position when you have the chance to articulate the obvious - that executing someone for a crime they didn't do is about as cruel and unusual as it gets?
Attorney and Professor Alan Dershowitz wrote at the Daily Beast that he was shocked that two Catholic justices could sign this dissent. He points to Scalia's famous 2002 article on the death penalty where he said that if his role as a justice ever forced him to do something immoral he would resign. That article asserted his belief that the death penalty isn't always immoral. But surely, Dershowitz says, executing an innocent man is. Tony, maybe it's time to go. I'm sure the President will come up with a replacement you'd appreciate.
