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Blogs: California needs eyewitness reform

Posted: August 16, 2007 11:19 am

On the Huffington Post yesterday, Justice Project President John Terzano writes about the case of Herman Atkins, an Innocence Project client who is featured in a new YouTube video. Atkins was misidentified and wrongfully convicted in California in 1998 and served 12 years before he was exonerated by DNA testing.

What happened to Mr. Atkins is not as uncommon as it should be. Eyewitness identification is notably unreliable. According to a detailed 2004 analysis of California wrongful convictions by San Francisco Magazine, faulty eyewitness identification was a factor in 60% of the 200 cases of people proven to have been wrongly convicted in the state since 1989.The good news is that Senate Bill 756, sponsored by Senator Ridley-Thomas (D-Los Angeles, Culver City), addresses the development of new guidelines for statewide eyewitness identification procedures.

The bill has already passed the State Senate and Assembly Public Safety Committee, and it will soon be heading to the Assembly Floor for a final vote. An earlier version of an eyewitness reform bill was taken up in the legislature last year, but it was vetoed by Governor Schwarzenegger. If this new eyewitness reform bill passes the Assembly, the Governor will soon have an opportunity to sign into law this important reform.

Read the full post here. (Huffington Post, 08/15/07)

Read more about Herman Atkins’ case and eyewitness identification reforms nationwide.

Another call for reform in California published today: When the Innocent Go to Prison in California, the Guilty Go Free by Natasha Minsker.

Tags: California

Former prosecutor calls for governor to sign California bills

Posted: September 26, 2007 3:03 pm

Three bills awaiting the signature of California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger would reform the state’s criminal justice system to provent wrongful convictions. In an op-ed in today’s Sacramento Bee, former federal prosecutor Thomas Sullivan calls for the state to improve its justice system for all parties involved.

I have sat on both sides of the table -- prosecuting crimes as a U.S. attorney and representing the accused as a defense lawyer. This broad experience has shown me that if we can bolster the reliability of evidence in the courtroom, we can strengthen our system of justice for everyone's benefit. California now has a vehicle for that brand of change with three significant bills. If enacted, the trio would enhance the overall accuracy of evidence -- and ensure that California heeds the lessons of (wrongful convictions).

Read the full column here. (Sacramento Bee, 09/26/07)

Read more about the pending bills in our previous blog post.

Watch a video of California exoneree Herman Atkins, explaining how these reforms would prevent others from suffering the injustice he did.

Tags: California, Herman Atkins, False Confessions, Eyewitness Identification, Informants/Snitches

California governor vetoes justice reforms

Posted: October 16, 2007 3:15 pm

For the second year in a row, California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger yesterday vetoed three bills passed by the state legislature to reduce the number of wrongful convictions in the state. The bills would have required law enforcement agencies to record interrogations in certain crimes, required jailhouse informant testimony to be corroborated and created a task force to develop guidelines on increasing the accuracy of eyewitness identifications.

The chairman of the California Commission on the Fair Administration of Justice said in a statement yesterday that “Schwarzenegger has taken California out of the front lines of criminal justice reform.”

The vacuum of leadership in the Governor’s mansion will not make the causes of wrongful convictions disappear. We cannot insert our heads in the sand as the parade of innocents who have been wrongfully convicted continues to grow.

Read the full statement here. (PDF)

Schwarzenegger, in his veto messages, said new state policies would “would place unnecessary restrictions on police.”

Read the governor’s veto statements here.

More coverage: Gov. vetoes bills on criminal procedures (Los Angeles Times, 10/16/07)

The California Commission on the Fair Administration of Justice, one of six innocence commissions nationwide, will hold its next public meeting tomorrow, October 17, at Santa Clara University in Santa Clara, California. Click here for the meeting’s agenda.

Tags: California, Innocence Commissions, False Confessions, Eyewitness Identification, Informants/Snitches

California panel calls for criminal justice reforms

Posted: February 26, 2008 2:13 pm

The California Commission on the Fair Administration of Justice issued a report on Friday calling for improvements in the state’s handling of post-conviction appeals based on innocence and urging the state to improve compensation for exonerees after their release. The report calls for:

• An increase in the amount of compensation paid to exonerees – from $36,500 per year served to $50,000

• An extension in the time permitted for exonerees to file claims for compensation – from six months to two years

• State services for re-integration into society – currently offered to parolees but not exonerees

• State funding for the Northern California Innocence Project and California Innocence Project

An op-ed in the Los Angeles Times yesterday called on state lawmakers to make these recommendations a reality; read it here.

The Commission on the Fair Administration of Justice, which is considered by many a national model for innocence commissions, will continue operating through June of this year. Visit the commission website here.

Learn about innocence commissions and compensation laws across the country in our interactive map.

Tags: California, Innocence Commissions, Exoneree Compensation

California exoneree continues to fight for compensation

Posted: March 6, 2008 10:16 am

James Ochoa served 10 months in a California prison for a carjacking he didn’t commit. He pled guilty to avoid a possible life sentence. In 2006, DNA evidence proved his innocence and exonerated him. He has applied for compensation under state law, but documents obtained by the Innocence Project show that state officials are seeking to deny Ochoa his compensation because he pled guilty.

A final decision is expected at the April 17 meeting of the California Victim Compensation and Government Claims Board, but a proposed decision says that “Ochoa has not met the statutory requirements to receive compensation under Penal Code section 4900 because he contributed to his conviction by pleading guilty.”

Ochoa has argued that he pled guilty to avoid a possible life sentence. Scott Baugh, a former California lawmaker who authored an amendment to the compensation law, told the Los Angeles Times last June that Ochoa should definitely be compensated under the law.

"I find it outrageous," Baugh told the Times "that you can force someone into a Hobson's choice of 25 years to life or pleading to a crime he didn't commit and spending two years in prison, and call it a voluntary decision. Even if the judge said nothing, he's facing 25 years to life or a two-year plea bargain.”

Read more about Ochoa’s case here.

In a report issued last month, the California Commission on the Fair Administration of Justice specifically addressed the guilty plea loophole: “The exception should not include those who were victims of false confessions or improperly induced guilty pleas. It should be limited to those who intentionally subverted the judicial process.”

Read the full CCFAJ report here.

Tags: California, James Ochoa, Exoneree Compensation

California columnist: State aims to save pennies by refusing exoneree compensation

Posted: March 18, 2008 11:25 am

California exoneree James Ochoa is seeking $31,700 in compensation for the 10 months he spent in prison for a carjacking that DNA proves he didn’t commit, but state officials have announced that they plan to deny his request because he pled guilty. The law states that an exoneree can be compensated if he didn’t “contribute to his conviction.” Although state representatives involved in drafting the law have said excluding guilty pleas wasn’t the intent of the law, a hearing officer in charge of compensation claims is citing this clause in his recommendation to deny Ochoa’s claim. A final hearing in the case is set for April.

Los Angeles Times columnist Dana Parsons writes today that the state is making a mistake to deny Ochoa’s claim:

With California in financial trouble (who isn’t?), I thought you’d like to know how the state is saving you money. It could have agreed to pay James Ochoa $31,700 for doing 10 months in the state pen for a carjacking he didn’t commit.

It said no…

Ochoa, then 20, was arrested at his Buena Park home in May 2005 not long after a robbery-carjacking outside a nearby nightclub. The victims described the carjacker and an officer thought it matched Ochoa, whom he’d recognized from an earlier stop. The two victims were taken to Ochoa’s home and identified him as he sat in his driveway. Before the trial that December, however, DNA testing by the Orange County crime lab excluded Ochoa as the person inside the victim’s car, which had been recovered. Unbowed, the district attorney’s office proceeded with the case….

To avoid the possibility of a life sentence for a crime he knew he didn’t do, Ochoa took a two-year deal. He was 20, had a bogus eyewitness identification staring him in the face and wasn’t too keen on a potential lifetime sentence.

What would you do?

Read the full column here. (LA Times, 03/18/08)

Read the March 6 Innocence Blog post on this case.

Read more about James Ochoa’s case.

Tags: California, James Ochoa

Compensation bill for California man is on governor's desk

Posted: August 29, 2008 2:38 pm

James Ochoa served 10 months in California prison, and 5 months in jail awaiting trial, for a carjacking DNA proves he didn’t commit. He was exonerated in 2006, but to date he hasn’t been compensated under California’s law – which pays exonerees $100 per day of wrongful imprisonment. As we’ve reported here before, Ochoa was initially denied access to compensation because he pled guilty – after a judge told him he could get 25 years to life in prison if he went to trial and lost. He was given a two-year sentence after pleading guilty.

The California compensation statute reads that, in order to receive compensation, the exoneree must not have “contribute(d) to the bringing about of his arrest or conviction for the crime with which he was charged." California officials first said the law excluded Ochoa because he pled guilty. But members of the state assembly took action to rectify this situation, and a bill to pay Ochoa $31,700 was passed earlier this month. The bill now awaits a signature by Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger.

An improvement to California’s compensation law – which would eliminate the loophole that almost denied Ochoa’s compensation and increase the amount of compensation by a cost-of-living adjustment each year – is also awaiting the Governor’s signature. Republican Assemblyman Todd Spitzer discussed Ochoa's case in a recent speech in support of improvements to the general compensation law.

“As a society we have a responsibility to make that [injustice] right,” Republican Assemblyman Todd Spitzer said...“To be wrongfully charged, to sit in prison for 10 months and also Orange County Jail for an additional five months] for $31,700? That's unconscionable.”

Read the full blog post here. (OC Weekly)

Innocence Project supporters in California are sending letters to Gov. Schwarzenegger this week urging him to sign the bill into law. If you’re in California – send your own letter to the Governor today. Otherwise, please forward the action to your friends and family in California.

Tags: California, James Ochoa

Friday roundup

Posted: September 5, 2008 3:07 pm

New projects and investigations launched this week by innocence organizations, law schools, prosecutors and attorneys general across the country show the momentum nationwide to overturn wrongful convictions and address the root causes of wrongful conviction to prevent future injustice. Here’s this week’s roundup:

Questions were raised about standards of DNA collection and preservation in Massachusetts after improper procedures were revealed in a high-profile case. Mass. is one of 25 states without a DNA preservation law.

The Mississippi Attorney General said this week that the state is underfunding DNA tests and DNA collection and a new task force is examining the state problem.

San Jose opened California’s largest crime lab, training began in Maryland before a new law expanding the state’s database took effect and cutbacks in Georgia led to furloughs for prosecutors and could cause lab closings.

The Midwest Innocence Project this week launched an investigation into a 1988 fire that killed six Kansas City firemen and led to the conviction of five people who say they’re innocent. The North Carolina Innocence Inquiry Commission, a first-of-its-kind panel dedicated to investigating cases of possible wrongful conviction, finished reviewing its first case, deciding that there wasn’t enough evidence to overturn the conviction of Henry A. Reeves. And Dallas District Attorney Craig Watkins asked county officials to allow filming in his offices in coming months for a Discovery Channel documentary.

Some of the best policy analysis and research to help improve our criminal justice system comes, of course, from our nation’s law schools – and now many of those schools have blogs. Marquette University Law School launched a new faculty law blog, and a post by Keith Sharfman finds that “blogging’s potential as a medium for serious legal discourse can no longer be doubted.”

A column on Law.com asks: “Is the future of legal scholarship in the blogosphere?”

Here at the Innocence Project, we read law school blogs everyday. Among our favorites are Crim Prof Blog and Evidence Prof Blog

New York University Law School has formed a new Center on the Administration of Criminal Law, which will seek to promote “good government practices in criminal matters.”

Tags: California, North Carolina, Georgia, Kansas, Maryland, Massachusetts, Mississippi, Texas, Innocence Commissions, Evidence Preservation, Access to DNA Testing, DNA Databases

Gov. Schwarzenegger can’t wait another year

Posted: September 11, 2008 4:00 pm

Cross-posted from The California Progress Report
By Herman Atkins

Over 20 years ago, a woman was brutally raped and robbed in a shoe store in Riverside. To this day, no one knows who committed the crime. But because of other people’s mistakes, I spent almost 12 years in prison for his crime—until the Innocence Project used DNA to prove I was innocent. Even though I lost 12 years of my life and suffered the indignities and horrors of more than a decade in California’s prisons, I am one of the lucky ones. For most people, there is no DNA to prove their innocence and no free lawyers to help them.

Four bills that would help reduce wrongful convictions in California were introduced in the legislature this year, and two have finally made it to the Governor’s desk. The state’s budget crisis killed the other two bills even though they had very moderate price tags. Nonetheless, the two bills on Gov. Schwarzenegger’s desk are important first steps and he must sign them now.

Failing to enact these reforms puts public safety at risk. As in my case, when an innocent person is convicted, the investigation stops and the real perpetrator is often never found. We cannot wait one more year to take action to reduce wrongful convictions.

The first bill, SB 1589, would require corroboration for jailhouse informant testimony. Informants have good reasons to lie: they are getting something in exchange for what they say. Yet, they are persuasive. In fact, informants are the leading cause of wrongful convictions in death penalty cases. We already require corroboration for co-defendant informants; SB 1589 simply extends that same precaution to jailhouse informants.

The second bill, AB 2937, would provide more services to wrongfully convicted people and remove some of the hurdles to compensation for the innocent. Currently, wrongfully convicted people receive even less assistance than parolees who actually committed the crime. Indeed, my wife and I have established a foundation to provide assistance to wrongfully convicted people because the state does nothing. As the chair of the Council for the Wrongfully Convicted, I had the opportunity to testify before the California Commission on the Fair Administration of Justice about the difficulties we face after exoneration. My testimony led the Commission to recommend the reforms in this bill.

Also known as the Arthur Carmona Justice for the Wrongfully Convicted Act, AB 2937 is named after a brave young man who was wrongfully convicted at just 16 years old, and whom I had the opportunity to work with before he was tragically killed earlier this year. Arthur and I shared a couple of things in common: we were both wrongfully convicted based on mistaken eyewitness identification and police misconduct, and we also both had loving and dedicated families who fought for and supported us. Even with our strong support systems, we both struggled to cope with life outside of prison with virtually no help from the state that took our best years from us.
The Arthur Carmona Act would change that by ensuring that wrongfully convicted people have the same access to resources that ex-offenders receive when released from prison. It would also require that criminal records relating to a wrongful conviction are sealed, and would remove procedural hurdles to compensation for the factually innocent.

All of these reforms are based on recommendations by the California Commission on the Fair Administration of Justice, which spent the last three years studying our justice system and developing recommendations to make it better and more accurate. The Commission was created by the Senate in 2004, and the legislature has even passed similar bills based on the Commission’s recommendations in the last two sessions. But Gov. Schwarzenegger vetoed these bills in the past, causing even a commentator on Foxnews.com to lead with the headline: “Schwarzenegger Vetoes Justice.” Now the Governor can redeem himself, at least partially.
The bills that did not make it to the Governor this year, SB 1591 and SB 1590, would have addressed two other common causes of wrongful convictions – eyewitness misidentification and false confessions. Mine was a case of eyewitness misidentification, so I understand the need for reform, and am disappointed that our budget crisis has once again gotten in the way of justice.

Every year that goes by without these reforms, we risk sentencing more innocent people to prison or even the death penalty, we let guilty people go free, and we continue the cycle of injustice by failing to help the wrongfully convicted who are released. Justice cannot wait one more year; Gov. Schwarzenegger must sign the bills in front of him today.

Please contact Gov. Schwarzenegger and urge him to sign SB 1589 and AB 2937.

Herman Atkins lives with his family in Fresno California. He is the founder of the LIFE Foundation, which provides immediate support to wrongfully convicted people on release from prison. He is also the chair of the Council for the Wrongfully Convicted, a coalition of innocent men and women who were wrongfully imprisoned. His story is one of eight featured in the acclaimed documentary, Life After Exoneration. He is a frequent lecturer and public speaker on wrongful convictions and the struggles of the wrongfully convicted on release.Read Herman's last post on the Innocence Blog.

Tags: California, Exoneree Compensation, Informants/Snitches

Innocence Network urges U.S. Supreme Court to maintain safeguards against prosecutorial misconduct

Posted: September 16, 2008 3:18 pm

In a new Supreme Court brief, the Innocence Network is arguing that top-level prosecutors must be held accountable when they set policies that ignore or violate people’s rights and lead to wrongful convictions. False testimony from a jailhouse informant was central in the 1980 murder conviction of Thomas Goldstein, who is suing the former Los Angeles County District Attorney because the office had no safeguards in place at the time of Goldstein’s conviction to prevent snitches from testifying falsely.

Read today’s Innocence Project press release on the Innocence Network’s friend-of-the-court brief in the Goldstein case and download the full brief.

Also today, the Texas criminal justice blog Grits for Breakfast focuses today on the difficulty to prove innocence in non-DNA cases, especially those involving snitches and informants.

A situation involving a mendacious jailhouse snitch out of Orange, Texas shows how such cases play out when DNA evidence doesn't exist to prove innocence to a certainty. KPRC-Channel 2 in Houston recently told the story of Daniel Meehan (Sept. 4) whose 1998 conviction and 99-year sentence was based in part on testimony by an informant who now says he lied to get his own cases dismissed and that prosecutors told him what to say.

Read the full Grits post here. (9/16/08)

A bill passed this year by the California legislature and currently awaiting Gov. Schwarzenegger’s signature would require corroboration of jailhouse snitch testimony. Send Schwarzenegger an email today urging him to sign the bill and prevent wrongful convictions in his state.

More resources:

“The Snitch System” – a report by the Center on Wrongful Convictions in Chicago.

Learn more about the role of snitch testimony in wrongful convictions later overturned by DNA testing.

Tags: California, Informants/Snitches, Government Misconduct

Report reveals forensic flaws in LA labs

Posted: October 22, 2008 4:10 pm

Reports over the last week have revealed problems with DNA testing and fingerprinting in the Los Angeles Police Department crime lab. An investigation into the department’s fingerprint unit has revealed that faulty analysis led to the arrests of at least two innocent people, and the extent of the problems is still unclear. Another audit found a backlog of 7,000 untested rape kits in the lab. LA Times columnist Tim Rutten wrote that the city has compromised its justice system by failing to fund badly needed forensic improvements:

Public safety begins with justice, and the LAPD's continuing inability to guarantee the integrity of its scientific evidence fundamentally undermines the criminal justice system. That's clear, but the problem won't be resolved until the department makes correcting this failure a high priority and the council realizes that, in the 21st century, it's just as important to put white coats in the crime labs as it is to put blue shirts on the street.

Read the full column here. (LA Times, 10/18/08)

And read Rutten’s column today about the rape kit backlog here. (10/22/08)

Tags: California, Crime Lab Backlogs

Exoneree: Crime Labs Should Be Independent

Posted: October 28, 2008 11:55 am

James Ochoa spent nearly two years in California prison for a carjacking he didn’t commit before DNA testing proved his innocence and led police to the real perpetrator. After Ochoa’s exoneration, news reports revealed that prosecutors attempted to exert pressure on a crime lab analyst to falsify the test results to say that he hadn’t been cleared.

Now the same prosecutor’s office is seeking partial control of the county crime lab, and Ochoa argues that his case should be enough reason to maintain independence at the lab. He sent a letter yesterday to the Orange County Board of Supervisors, which today is considering a proposal to create a three-member panel, including the district attorney, to control the county’s forensic lab. The letter reads, in part:

The fact that the prosecution proceeded with my case in order to protect their image when they knew they had insufficient evidence demonstrated to me that the District Attorney’s office is willing to go too far. After what happened to me, it is pretty clear that the District Attorney doesn’t care about guilt or innocence; he cares about his career.

Read Ochoa’s full letter here.

California DA Wins Partial Control of Crime Lab

Posted: October 29, 2008 11:04 am

The Orange County Board of Supervisors voted 5-0 yesterday to award oversight of the country’s forensic labs to a three-member panel comprised of the District Attorney, County Sheriff and County CEO. The Innocence Project has argued that if prosecutors oversee forensic testing, politics could take precedence over science. And a report in the OC Weekly made it clear that the prosecutor’s office inappropriately pressed an analyst to alter the forensic report – despite DNA testing that clearly exonerated Ochoa.

Veteran forensic specialist Danielle G. Wieland made the charge last month during a civil deposition related to the December 2005 wrongful conviction and imprisonment of James Ochoa, according to documents obtained by the Weekly.

In a civil deposition taken last month for Ochoa’s wrongful-prosecution lawsuit, Ochoa attorney Patricio A. Marquez of Morrison & Foerster asked Wieland, “Did anyone ever exert pressure on you to change your [DNA] conclusions?”
“Yes,” Wieland replied. “Camille Hill from the DA’s office … She called me and asked me to change the conclusion that Mr. Ochoa was eliminated from [DNA found on] the left cuff of the shirt.”

Before its vote yesterday, the board received a letter from Ochoa, who served nearly two years in California prison for a carjacking he didn’t commit. He wrote:

The fact that the prosecution proceeded with my case in order to protect their image when they knew they had insufficient evidence demonstrated to me that the District Attorney’s office is willing to go too far. After what happened to me, it is pretty clear that the District Attorney doesn’t care about guilt or innocence; he cares about his career.

Read Ochoa’s full letter here.

Orange County District Attorney Tony Rackauckas disputed the allegation of impropriety at Tuesday’s hearing:

Rackauckas explained to the board that his prosecutor merely questioned the analyst about her conclusion and did not try to influence her.

"(But) once an allegation is made, it can be pretty hard for the other party to disprove it," Rackauckas said.

Read the full article here. (OC Register, 10/28/08)

And an editorial in the OC Register before the board meeting said “Orange County's efforts to safeguard the public and protect the innocent have been caught up in an ugly turf war between the District Attorney's Office and the Sheriff's Department”

Officials at the Innocence Project, which uses DNA evidence to free the wrongly convicted, rightly told the newspaper that it's a conflict of interest for district attorneys to control DNA and other forms of evidence. "Just like we wouldn't want a defense attorney to call the shots in a lab, we wouldn't want a prosecutor," said one Innocence Project spokesman.

That's exactly right. Prosecutors are interested parties in legal proceedings. They are seeking convictions, so it would be unwise to let any D.A. control such important evidence. In fact, as the Register also reported, "A senior [Orange County]prosecutor is alleged to have pressured a sheriff's analyst to change her conclusion in a carjacking case that kept an innocent man imprisoned for 16 months." That's chilling.Read the full editorial here. (OC Register, 10/23/08)

Tags: California, James Ochoa

Virginia Man Celebrates Almost 20 Years Since Exoneration

Posted: January 9, 2009 4:00 pm

After supposedly confessing to a crime he did not commit and serving four years in prison, David Vasquez was exonerated 19 years ago when DNA testing proved he could not have been responsible for other similar murders.

Officially exonerated in 1989, Vasquez previously pled guilty to the murder of a woman in Arlington County, Virginia, and was sentenced to 35 years in prison. Vasquez made “dream statements” about the crime, which officers turned into a confession even though he was considered to be borderline mentally impaired. Prosecutors depended heavily on forensic evidence found on the victim that supposedly matched Vasquez, and told Vasquez they had two eyewitnesses that placed him at the scene of the crime.

It was only after multiple DNA tests that police linked the murder for which Vasquez was convicted to another string of crimes. The tests eventually concluded that there was no match between Vasquez and the evidence found at the scene of the crime, at which time the prosecution secured a pardon for Vasquez and pursued a case against the actual perpetrator.

Other exoneree anniversaries this week:

Sunday: Larry Holdren West Virginia (Served 15 Years, Exonerated, 2000)
Tuesday: Mark Diaz Bravo California (Served 3 Years, Exonerated, 1994)

Tags: California, Virginia, West Virginia, Mark Diaz Bravo, Larry Holdren, David Vasquez

Innocence Project of Northern California to Review DNA Evidence from 1982 Murder

Posted: April 27, 2010 5:15 pm

According to The Reporter, the request has been granted, but there is no date for a hearing.

Ortiz was arrested by Vacaville police in 2003 after detectives reportedly obtained DNA evidence linking him to Castaneda at the time of her death. That evidence included material taken from beneath the slain woman's fingernails which investigators claimed was a match for Ortiz's DNA profile.

The DNA evidence used in the case was twice attacked by defense attorneys. Ortiz's first attorney, Robert Fracchia -- now a Superior Court judge -- charged that DNA evidence from Ortiz used by Vacaville police was improperly obtained from another law enforcement agency in connection with a case for which Ortiz was never convicted.

His trial attorney, Daniel Healys, later argued that the amount of DNA obtained from the victim's body was too small to be accurately analyzed or interpreted. He charged that the state Department of Justice analysis was "junk science."

The Innocence Project of Northern California is a nonprofit legal service based at Santa Clara University that works to exonerate prisoners who may have been wrongfully convicted.

Read the full story here.

Tags: California

California Crime Lab Waited Two Years for DNA Testing

Posted: April 28, 2010 4:00 pm

Donzell Francis pleaded guilty yesterday to the 2007 murder charge. He is already serving a 17-year sentence for another sexual assault. Prosecutors filed special circumstances of murder during a sexual assault which makes Francis eligible for life in prison without parole or the death penalty if convicted. They said he preyed on transgender prostitutes by picking them up and driving to remote areas and attacking them.

District Attorney Kamala Harris has never filed a death penalty case, saying she opposes capital punishment. Her office said it will await a committee review, typically conducted after the preliminary hearing, to decide whether to seek the death penalty against Francis.

The DNA examination division of the police department's crime lab is currently being reviewed by state investigators. Its drug investigation unit was shut down last month when a technician was alleged to be skimming cocaine and OxyContin that was retained as evidence.

Read the full story here.

Tags: California

California Man Freed After 16 Years

Posted: May 17, 2010 2:57 pm

During its investigation of the case, the California Innocence Project uncovered evidence that Cole’s lawyers hadn’t provided adequate representation at trial and that prosecutors had withheld key evidence. Cole’s conviction was tossed last year, but he remained in prison until Saturday on an unrelated conviction.

"Just a little over 24 hours ago I was sitting in a cell, and now I'm here hugging my family," a jubilant Cole said Sunday night from his sister's home in Los Angeles. "The traffic and the phones — it's a completely different world here. In solitary, you're just looking at a wall."

Read the full story here.

The California Innocence Project is a member of the Innocence Network.

Tags: California

Innocence Project Policy Advocate on Justice and the Death Penalty

Posted: January 27, 2012 11:20 am

Tags: California

Science Thursday

Posted: February 2, 2012 3:00 pm

Tags: Arkansas, California, Ohio, Texas

Friday Roundup: False Confessions, Investigating Wrongful Convictions

Posted: February 3, 2012 4:30 pm

Tags: California, Florida, Maryland, Michigan, Ohio, Alan Crotzer

Science Thursday

Posted: February 9, 2012 5:00 pm

Tags: California, Indiana

Science Thursday

Posted: February 16, 2012 10:45 am

Tags: California, Pennsylvania, Texas, Washington

Science Thursday

Posted: April 5, 2012 5:20 pm

Tags: California, Florida, Illinois, New York

One Woman's Triumph over Wrongful Conviction

Posted: April 6, 2012 11:45 am

Tags: California

Science Thursday

Posted: April 12, 2012 3:30 pm

Tags: California, New York

Science Thursday - May 3, 2012

Posted: May 10, 2012 12:30 pm

Tags: California, District of Columbia, Indiana, New York

Conviction Dismissed Against Former High School Football Player

Posted: May 25, 2012 4:00 pm

Kidnapping and rape charges against a former Southern California high school player were dismissed Thursday in a Los Angeles County Superior Court. In 2002, Brian Banks was accused by a classmate of the crimes and took a plea to avoid trial and the risk of a 41-year prison sentence.

The alleged victim claimed that she had been forced to the school’s basement and raped without a condom, but DNA testing did not find sperm on her underwear. Banks pleaded to one count of forcible rape and spent five years in prison. Upon his release, he was forced to register as a sex offender and wear an electronic monitoring bracelet.

After Banks was released, the alleged victim contacted him on Facebook. She eventually admitted to him what he already knew—that there had been no kidnap and no rape. She offered to help him clear his record if it didn’t affect the $1.5 million settlement she received from the school district after her family filed a lawsuit about the incident.

Banks recorded their conversations and took the evidence to the California Innocence Project. Director Justin Brooks presented prosecutors with the project’s findings, and they agreed the case should be dismissed.

Read more about the case in the Los Angeles Times.

Tags: California

Copping a Plea for a Crime You Didn't Commit

Posted: June 1, 2012 12:20 pm

Retired Federal Judge H. Lee Sarokin asks “Why Do Innocent People Plead Guilty?” in a recent opinion editorial in the Huffington Post.

In light of last week’s exoneration of Brian Banks, who pled guilty, Sarokin noted the prevalence of false confessions and the need for more vigilance on the part of the prosecution, judge and defense attorney to ensure that innocent defendants aren’t pressured into plea bargaining. Most cases never make it to trial, with some 95% of cases resulting in plea bargains. Sarokin argues that guilty pleas prove very difficult to set aside, and exonerations such as Banks are the exception.

The defendant, frightened, most often poor, uneducated, a minority member is advised that a trial is likely to end with a conviction and a long sentence, whereas a plea will guarantee a much shorter sentence. Despite his protestations of innocence, the defendant seeks guidance frequently from an over-worked, underpaid defense lawyer who would much prefer a quick deal rather than a long drawn out trial. Of course, not all defense counsel fit that description. Many do not, but even the best and most devoted are required to put this draconian choice to their clients -- a guaranteed short sentence versus a potentially long one -- possibly life in prison.

Read the full article.

Read more about Banks' case.

Read more about DNA exoneration cases in which people plead guilty.

Tags: California

Streamlining Capital Punishment Endangers the Innocent

Posted: June 1, 2012 4:40 pm

This fall, residents of California will vote on an initiative to abolish capital punishment in the state. Proponents of the abolition argue that capital punishment is far too costly; opponents argue that the costs could be drastically decreased by streamlining the system. Writing in the Los Angeles Times, James Liebman argues that streamlining the process of capital punishment increases the risks of executing an innocent person.

Liebman is the co-author of a recent Columbia Human Rights Law Review report challenging the conviction of Carlos DeLuna, a young Latino man, who was executed by the state of Texas in 1989 for the murder of Wanda Lopez. The report highlights systemic flaws in the criminal justice system that assisted in securing DeLuna’s conviction. Perhaps the most striking aspect of the case was the speed with which it advanced through the court system. The process—from arrest to execution—took only six years.

From the time of his arrest, DeLuna consistently maintained his innocence, and even gave the name of the man who he saw commit the crime: Carlos Hernandez. This claim was dismissed entirely, with a federal judge concluding that Hernandez had likely never existed. With further investigation—and therefore more time and money—police would have discovered that Hernandez was not only real, but a violent felon who was well-known to the police. Writes Liebman:

“DeLuna's case disproves the myth that we can save the death penalty by generating more ‘quick and dirty’ executions. The death penalty is broken. At great effort and expense, states such as California have tried every measure to fix it, but they have failed. The only solution is to end it.”

Read the full article.

Read more about the DeLuna case.

Read about cases of people exonerated through DNA testing who served time on death row.

Tags: California, Texas

LAPD Resist Eyewitness Identification Reform

Posted: August 28, 2012 10:20 am

Though a Los Angeles Police Department investigation has exposed police misconduct during lineup procedures, LAPD Chief Charlie Beck remains opposed to adopting identification reforms. According to the Los Angeles Times, one recorded identification procedure reveals police Detective John Zambos continually encouraging a witness to select the suspect in the fourth slot.

“I kept seeing you go to four…And you kept returning to four,” Zambos said, according to a transcript reviewed by The Times. “Was [there] a reason why you kept comparing everybody to No. 4?”

The detectives then showed the witness a separate photo of the man in the fourth position. Eventually, she selected him as the killer.

Decades of social science research has shown that when the detective conducting the lineup knows the identity of the suspect, they are more prone to provide clues to the witness—either intentionally, as in this instance, or unintentionally. However, many law enforcement agencies nationwide have failed to update their procedures to incorporate scientific research. Some have no written guidelines for procedures at all.

Eyewitness misidentification is the leading cause of wrongful convictions later overturned through DNA testing. An increasing number of cities and states—from Denver to Boston, and from Texas to Virginia—have adopted comprehensive eyewitness identification reforms to address the problem.

Read the full article.

Read more about eyewitness identification reform.

Tags: California, Eyewitness Identification

The Case for 'Blind' Lineups

Posted: September 17, 2012 3:50 pm

By Barry C. Scheck and Karen A. Newirth
(Originally appeared in the Los Angeles Times.)

Photo: Herman Atkins, of California, was wrongfully convicted based, in part, on eyewitness misidentification and later exonerated through DNA testing.

Nearly 300 American men and women wrongly convicted of crimes have been exonerated by DNA testing. And in the bulk of those cases — almost 75% — the convictions were based in part on faulty eyewitness identifications.

Witnesses are often asked to identify suspects from photo lineups, which are typically conducted by the officers investigating a crime. But numerous scientific studies on memory and identification have demonstrated that witnesses can be influenced, intentionally or not, by the person conducting a lineup. An officer who believes one of the people in a photo lineup is the likely perpetrator can influence — sometimes without even meaning to — the proceeding.

This has led scientists to recommend "blind" lineups, meaning that the officer who conducts the lineup shouldn't be aware of the identity of the suspect, so that he or she can't contaminate the identification procedure.

Many cities, as well as many states, have embraced this approach. Los Angeles is not one of them. Los Angeles Police Chief Charlie Beck refuses to embrace blind photo lineups. He told reporters that his reluctance was based on the belief that an officer close to the case would be more likely to have rapport with witnesses, and that this could produce better outcomes.

Beck's reluctance should be allayed not just by scientific studies or the adoption of blind administration as a best practice by groups like the International Assn. of Chiefs of Police, but by more than a decade of success in the field, including statewide programs in New Jersey, North Carolina and Texas.

This newspaper recently reported on cases in which detectives seemed to consciously guide eyewitnesses to a police suspect during a photo lineup. One of the officers was later disciplined by the department for his actions. A requirement that the procedure be "blind" would prevent not just deliberate misconduct but also the more common problem of administrators inadvertently providing cues — sometimes nonverbal — that can influence witness choices.

In 2006, a California commission recommended that police in the state institute blind lineups, and initially the LAPD was on board. But then the L.A. County district attorney's office said it opposed even doing a pilot program to field test the effectiveness of the new approach. "We prosecute thousands of cases," a D.A. spokesman told The Times. "How many can you point to where it was shown that the police consciously or unconsciously influenced an eyewitness identification?"

The answer to this question is that we will never know, particularly when the influence can be subtle. What we do know with certainty is that California has seen nine people convicted of crimes later exonerated by DNA testing, and eight of those cases were attributable — at least in part — to eyewitness misidentification. The Northern California Innocence Project and the California Innocence Project report an additional 10 non-DNA exonerations that were attributable to misidentification.

DNA testing is rarely useful in overturning wrongful convictions because biological material that is instructive on guilt or innocence is available in less than 10% of criminal cases. While we cannot begin to guess the scope of the entire problem in California, we do have proof that 18 people spent years behind bars for crimes they didn't commit after being misidentified. We also know that while they sat behind bars, the real perpetrators remained free to commit more crimes. The Innocence Project has identified the real perpetrator in more than 100 of its nearly 300 DNA exonerations nationwide. Those individuals went on to commit more than 70 rapes, 32 murders and countless other violent crimes while other men served their time.

The eyewitness identification reforms, which were recommended by the broadly constituted California Commission on the Fair Administration of Justice, are cost-neutral. If an agency doesn't have the manpower to get a second officer to administer the lineup, the officer can use a "folder shuffle system" in which photos are placed in individual folders and then shuffled by the chief investigator.

Some law enforcement leaders in California have already voluntarily implemented these modifications to identification procedures in their own agencies. Let's hope Los Angeles follows soon. Making sure that innocent people don't get put behind bars isn't simply a matter of fairness and justice; it's a matter of public safety.

Barry C. Scheck is the co-director and Karen A. Newirth is the eyewitness identification litigation fellow at the Innocence Project.

Read Los Angeles Times coverage of LAPD lineup procedures.