New York Man Wrongfully Convicted of 1990 Crime Will Be Released (3/20/2013)
Documentary Spotlights Bad Lawyering (3/20/2013)
Florida Officer Linked to Two Wrongful Convictions (3/19/2013)
New York State Leaders and Lawmakers Call for Better Indigent Defense (3/19/2013)
Life After Exoneration, with Compensation, or Without (3/18/2013)
Maryland Gov. Cites Risk of Executing Innocent Person in Decision to Repeal (3/18/2013)
Science News - March 15, 2013 (3/15/2013)
North Carolina Exoneree to Reunite With Sister After 40 Years (3/15/2013)
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Friday Roundup: The Long Road to Freedom, and Life After Exoneration
Posted: June 25, 2010 2:40 pm
A Buffalo, New York, man was cleared this week by DNA test results that prosecutors say point to the identity of a man who committed two rapes in the 1980s. Douglas Pacyon served six years in prison before being released on parole in 1990. On Monday, a state judge vacated his conviction – fully clearing him. The Innocence Project is reviewing his case for inclusion in our database of DNA exonerations.
On Tuesday, a U.S. District Court Judge in California ordered the reversal of Daniel Larsen’s conviction. According to the California Innocence Project, Larsen was wrongfully convicted of being an ex-felon in possession of a knife under California’s Three Strikes Law, in 1998 and sentenced to 25 years to life behind bars. The state has 90 days to either release or retry or him.
A three-year project studying memory in children and adults will help researchers learn about confidence levels associated with memory and simulating situations associated with eyewitness identification in criminal events. The results could have significant implications on the criminal justice system and eyewitness identification procedures.
Hearings concluded last Friday in the case of Wisconsin man Terry Vollbrecht, who was convicted of rape and murder in 1989. Attorneys from the Wisconsin Innocence Project presented new evidence of Vollbrecht’s innocence, and a judge will decide whether to grant him a new trial.
The Tulsa, Oklahoma, Police Department’s forensic laboratory director was fired last week based on allegations of “incompetence, inefficiency and gross neglect of duty,” police records show.
Innocence Project client Barry Gibbs, who served 19 years in New York prisons for a crime he did not commit, appeared on WNYC’s “The Leonard Lopate Show,” on Thursday. He discussed the fight to prove his innocence and his release from prison in 2005.
Problems are continuing to mount at the San Francisco Crime Lab, and a California state forensic commission voted to disband.
Documents obtained by the Houston Chronicle show that problems are continuing at the Houston Police Department’s fingerprint unit, and that officials have known about some issues for a decade.
A hearing concluded this week in the case of Georgia Death row prisoner Troy Davis, who is seeking to prove his innocence of the 1989 murder of a Savannah police officer. We covered the case yesterday here.