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Oklahoma man exonerated from death row
Posted: May 11, 2007
Innocence Project client Curtis McCarty was freed this morning after more than 21 years of wrongful incarceration – including 16 on death row – when a judge dismissed the charges that would have led to his third trial for a 1982 murder. McCarty had been convicted twice but both convictions had been thrown out by appeals courts. DNA testing has now shown that semen and hairs recovered from the crime scene do not match McCarty.
McCarty was released this morning after judge Twyla Mason Gray dismissed his indictment, saying the misconduct committed in McCarty’s case was inexcusable. District Attorney Robert H. Macy and lab analyst Joyce Gilchrist both committed serious and repeated misconduct to secure McCarty’s conviction. Gilchrist was fired in 2001 due to fraud she committed in McCarty’s case and others; she was involved in at least two other convictions later overturned by DNA testing.
"I want to know, where is Joyce Gilchrist and why isn’t she in prison?" Gray said at this morning’s hearing, according to the Oklahoma Gazette.
Macy, who was the Oklahoma County District Attorney for 21 years, prosecuted McCarty in both of his trials. Macy sent 73 people to death row – more than any other prosecutor in the nation – and 20 of them have been executed. Macy has said publicly that he believes executing an innocent person is a sacrifice worth making in order to keep the death penalty in the United States.
"This is by far one of the worst cases of law enforcement misconduct in the history of the American criminal justice system," said Barry Scheck, Co-Director of the Innocence Project, which is affiliated with Cardozo School of Law. "Bob Macy has said that executing an innocent person is a risk worth taking – and he came very close to doing just that with Curtis McCarty."
McCarty is the 201st person exonerated by DNA evidence in the United States and the ninth in Oklahoma. Fifteen of the 201 exonerees spent time on death row.
Read the full Innocence Project press release here.
Tags: Oklahoma, Curtis McCarty, Government Misconduct
News coverage of today’s exoneration
Posted: May 11, 2007
Inmate Freed After 22-Year-Old Murder Charge Dropped – KOCO, Channel 5
Inmate to be freed after murder charge dropped, News 9, Oklahoma City
Associated Press National: Former Okla. death row inmate to go free
Tags: Oklahoma, Curtis McCarty
Oklahoma man exonerated – more media coverage
Posted: May 14, 2007
After 21 years behind bars – including 16 on death row – Curtis McCarty was freed on Friday when an Oklahoma City judge dismissed charges that would have led to his third trial for a 1982 murder he didn’t commit. DNA testing in recent years has proven that someone else committed the crime.
Read more about McCarty’s case in the Innocence Project press release, and view media coverage of the exoneration below.
Los Angeles Times: Judge frees oklahoma man facing execution
Oklahoma Gazette: Judge releases McCarty; rips former chemist
The Oklahoman / News 9: Ex-death row inmate freed (with video)
Tags: Oklahoma, Curtis McCarty, Government Misconduct
Exoneree tells his story on radio show
Posted: July 16, 2007 12:25 pm
"I thought I was going to get a fair shake…but I didn’t," Oklahoma exoneree Curtis McCarty said on a national radio show last week about the 1986 trial at which he was sentenced to death for a murder he didn’t commit.
McCarty was exonerated in May after serving 21 years in prison – most of it on death row – for a crime he didn’t commit. He discussed his case on “Philosophy Talk,” a weekly philosophy radio show. The July 8 show focused on the death penalty and featured a report on McCarty.
Listen to the show here.
Read more about McCarty’s case.
Exonerations nationwide have raised questions about the death penalty; read more:
An editorial in today’s New Jersey Courier Post says Byron Halsey’s exoneration is another argument for abolishing the death penalty. Read the full editorial.
A letter to the editor in yesterday’s Columbia (Missouri) Tribune says:
Our legal system is far from foolproof. Those who are unjustly executed have their ultimate right, their lives, irrevocably stripped from them. Evidence suggests that with the limitations inherent in our current legal system, the state should no longer execute those convicted of capital crimes.
Read the full letter here.
Tags: Curtis McCarty
Video: Death row exoneree Curtis McCarty speaks in Nebraska
Posted: February 26, 2008 2:08 pm
Curtis McCarty, who spent 18 years on Oklahoma’s death row for a murder he didn’t commit, spoke over the weekend in Nebraska about his experiences.
“I am free physically, but mentally I am not. I am always there and I am always with the men I left behind and the men who died there, men whom I am certain are innocent," McCarty said.
Watch the video here.
Tags: Nebraska, Oklahoma, Curtis McCarty, Death Penalty
Friday links
Posted: May 2, 2008 5:28 pm
There is so much news every week about wrongful convictions, crime labs, criminal justice reform and other related topics that all of it doesn’t make it onto the Innocence Blog. In this new weekly post, we’ll share some links each Friday to stories we find interesting and relevant. If you have links you’d like to see next week, email them to info@innocenceproject.org
Exoneree Curtis McCarty talks about spending 18 years on death row for a crime he didn’t commit (KOKH, Oklahoma City)
Kansas City man seeks DNA testing after spending 20 years in prison for a crime he says he didn’t commit (Kansas City Star, 04/29/08)
Ballistic results cast doubt on Detroit crime lab (Detroit Free Press, 04/26/08)
New Oklahoma crime lab opens doors (Edmond Sun, 05/01/08)
Missouri lawmakers approve crime lab funding, but less than requested (Springfield News-Leader, 05/02/08)
Tags: Curtis McCarty
Friday Roundup: Opinions on Innocence
Posted: December 5, 2008 6:20 pm
To start this week’s roundup, here are some views from around the country from editorials and op-eds published this week.
Law professor Dan Simon questions a recent report by that Larimer County, Colorado, District Attorney that found that no past convictions in his jurisdictions warranted post-conviction DNA testing.
A former Baltimore Police officer and a former Texas District Attorney both wrote op-eds this week calling for the state to repeal the death penalty due to the risk of executing an innocent person.
And in Montana, The Daily Inter Lake ran an editorial on the Montana Innocence Project and its quest to free innocent inmates in the state and preventing wrongful convictions.
There was also plenty of news this week on exonerees and prisoners seeking to overturn wrongful convictions.
New York inmate Lebrew Jones is waiting for DNA test results that could prove his innocence after 21 years behind bars for a murder he has always said he didn’t commit. The Innocence Project has consulted with Jones’ attorneys on the case.
A new book will be released later this month on the wrongful conviction of Marty Tankleff, who was released from prison in 2007 after serving 17 years in prison for a crime he didn’t commit.
A California woman’s burglary conviction was overturned last week more than a decade after her wrongful conviction, thanks to the work of the Northern California Innocence Project.
And the Innocence Project client Curtis McCarty, who was exonerated last year after serving 21 years on death row in Oklahoma prison for a crime he didn’t commit, was in Rome this week for a conference on the death penalty.
Tags: Curtis McCarty, Marty Tankleff
Oklahoma Exoneree Speaks Out Against Capital Punishment
Posted: March 23, 2009 4:29 pm
Oklahoma exoneree Curtis McCarty will speak tomorrow at an annual two-day conference on Catholic Social Teaching and Criminal Justice at Villanova University.
McCarty served two decades on Oklahoma’s death row for a murder he didn’t commit. Since DNA proved him innocent and led to his exoneration in May 2007, he has spoken around the world against the death penalty and to raise awareness about the problem of wrongful convictions. The Villanova conference focuses on contemporary issues through the lens of Catholic social thought and is sponsored by Villanova's Office for Mission and Ministry and the Journal for Catholic Social Thought. Sister Helen Prejean, author of Dead Man Walking and founder of the non-profit organization Witness to Innocence, will be the keynote speaker.
Read more about the conference, and get the full schedule and registration information.
Read more about McCarty's case here.
Tags: Curtis McCarty, Death Penalty
Ted Stevens and Prosecutorial Misconduct
Posted: April 3, 2009 2:48 pm
An op-ed in today’s New York Times examines the alleged prosecutorial misconduct in the case against former Alaska Sen. Ted Stevens and asserts that the problem of prosecutorial misconduct is widespread – and unnoticed – in the U.S.
In the piece, “Prosecutors Gone Wild,” former New Jersey Attorney General John Farmer writes that prosecutors have overstepped their role in countless cases across the country, seeking convictions rather than justice. The U.S. government was right in seeking to dismiss charges against former Alaska Sen. Ted Stevens, he writes, but the Stevens case “did not occur in a vacuum.”
Prosecutorial misconduct takes many forms, from failing to disclose critical evidence to disclosing information illegally to the press to overreaching in the exercise of the prosecutor’s discretion. Underlying all of them is a frightening misconception of the role of the prosecutor.Prosecutorial misconduct has played a role in many of the 235 wrongful convictions later overturned through DNA testing, through a range of misconduct including hiding exculpatory evidence or exaggerating the value of evidence.
That role is not to seek the maximum penalty at every turn, nor to put together an impressive statistical tally of convictions. It is not to use the emotional pain and personal ruin involved on all sides of a criminal case to advance one’s own career or personal agenda. Prosecutors do not even share the duty defense lawyers have of providing zealous representation. The prosecutor’s only duty is to seek justice. Period.
This duty is especially important in an age like ours, when the integrity of the criminal justice process is so frequently called into question. Read the full article here. (The New York Times 04/03/09)
In the case of Curtis McCarty in Oklahoma, prosecutors intentionally misled jurors and relied on falsified forensic evidence to convict an innocent man of murder, leading to a death sentence. McCarty was exonerated in 2007 after serving 21 years in prison – including 19 on death row.
Prosecutors also committed misconduct in the case of Bruce Godschalk, who spent more than 14 years in Pennsylvania prison for a rape he didn’t commit. When the Innocence Project requested DNA testing after Godschalk had served 13 years in prison, prosecutors said they had secretly sent the evidence for testing and received an inconclusive result. Additionally, they said the tests had destroyed the evidence. A missing piece of evidence would then later mysteriously surface, and DNA testing freed Godschalk.
These cases – and others like them – are proof that when prosecutorial misconduct occurs, justice cannot.
Tags: Bruce Godschalk, Curtis McCarty, Government Misconduct