Innocence Blog

February 12, 2007

Convicted based on forensic fraud in 1986, still waiting for justice

A capital case tainted by forensic science fraud will be considered by an Oklahoma judge on Friday (02/16/07), as a team of attorneys including the Innocence Project’s Colin Starger argue that murder charges against Curtis McCarty should be dropped because of the destruction of biological evidence that could have proved his innocence. McCarty, who has proclaimed his innocence since his arrest more than 20 years ago, has already had his death sentence overturned twice. He is currently awaiting a third trial.

In McCarty’s first two trials, notorious lab analyst Joyce Gilchrist falsely testified that hairs and other biological evidence proved that McCarty could have been the killer. In both trials, the juries convicted him and he was sentenced to death. In Gilchrist’s original notes, hairs from the crime scene did not match McCarty. She then changed her notes to say the hairs did match him. When the defense requested retesting, the hairs were lost. A judge has said Gilchrist either destroyed or willfully lost the hairs. DNA testing in recent years has also shown that another person raped the victim.

“I did not do it and they know damn good and well I didn’t do it,” McCarty said in an interview with Oklahoma Gazette from prison last year. “I want to be exonerated. Others just walk away with their head between their legs just happy to be alive. That’s not enough. They stole 20 years of my life because they wanted to.”

Read the full story. (Oklahoma Gazette, 08/23/06)

Click below to read more about this case and others involving forensic fraud in Oklahoma:

• The motion and brief filed Friday on McCarty's behalf. (PDF)
• Joyce Gilchrist’s false forensic testimony has led to at least two other wrongful convictions; read more about the cases of Jeffrey Pierce and Robert Miller.

DNA testing leads to actual perpetrator in Georgia case

Willie “Pete” Williams served 21 years in prison before DNA testing, obtained by his attorneys at the Georgia Innocence Project, proved his innocence. Those same DNA results have now led police to another man, Kenneth Wicker, who has been arrested and charged with the 1985 rape for which Williams was convicted.

Wicker pled guilty to similar crimes in 1985 and was presented as an alternate suspect by Williams’ lawyers in a 1986 appeal. The victim had picked Williams out of a photo lineup, however, and said she was 120 percent certain he was the perpetrator.

Williams' attorney at the time, Michael Schumacher, said Friday the April 1985 attacks were not linked to Wicker because authorities were already locked in on Williams as a suspect.

Schumacher even brought up the Wicker assaults in a 1986 hearing while trying to get his client a new trial. That hearing, where the attorney even had brought Wicker into the courtroom, most likely laid the groundwork that led to Wicker's arrest Friday.

"There's no way he'd be arrested now without that," Schumacher said. "I laid the trail of crumbs for someone else to come and pick up."

There are eerie similarities in looking at police reports from the time….
Williams was accused of raping a woman April 5, 1985, and attempting to rape another five days later. He was arrested April 28, 1985.

"But the attacks continued with the same M.O., down to the same words — he asked the victims about 'Carol,' " Schumacher said.

Read the full story. (Atlanta Journal-Constitution, 02/10/07)

Williams has not been officially exonerated yet – he is awaiting a court hearing that will officially clear his record. Check back here for updates.

More on this case:

Relying on the notepad in the electronic age

The New York Times today asks:

Why is the Federal Bureau of Investigation still using Sherlock Holmes methods in the YouTube era?…

More than 500 police departments in all 50 states now make electronic recordings of at least some interrogations, often videotaping them. At the F.B.I., by contrast, an agent cannot turn on a tape recorder without first getting a supervisor’s permission.

Thomas P. Sullivan, a former United States attorney in Chicago and a bit of a crusader on this point, says local law enforcement agencies that have adopted electronic recording cannot imagine life without it.

“I can say without exaggeration — it’s unanimous — that they all love it,” Mr. Sullivan said. “They hate it until they do it, and then they love it.”

Read the full story. (NY Times, 02/12/07)

PREVIOUS DATE  |  NEXT DATE