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James Giles is expected to be cleared of 1982 rape on Monday
Posted: April 6, 2007
In a hearing Monday in Dallas, Innocence Project attorney Vanessa Potkin and attorneys from the Dallas County District Attorney’s Office will present evidence that proves James Curtis Giles didn’t participate in the 1982 gang rape for which he served 10 years in prison. Giles, 53, has been on parole as a registered as a sex offender for 14 years.
The crime was committed by three men who were acquaintances, and police were told that one was named James Giles. The victim identified James Curtis Giles in a lineup, even though he did not match her initial description of the perpetrator. DNA evidence now links two other men to the crime – and shows that they were both closely associated with another man, James Earl Giles, who lived near the crime scene and fits the victim’s initial description. New evidence shows that information linking the three true perpetrators to the crime – James Earl Giles and the two other men – was available to police and prosecutors before James Curtis Giles was convicted, but was illegally withheld from his defense attorneys.
Giles has fought for nearly two decades to prove his innocence. The Innocence Project began investigating his case in 2000, and the Dallas County District Attorney’s Office began reinvestigating it earlier this year after the Innocence Project filed initial legal papers to vacate the conviction. New evidence from both investigations will be presented in court Monday. He will still not be officially exonerated, however, until he is granted a writ of habeas corpus from Texas’ highest criminal court or a pardon from the governor.
On Tuesday, Giles will join Texas exonerees James Waller, Chris Ochoa and Brandon Moon, Innocence Project Co-Director Barry Scheck and legislators in Austin for a press conference and legislative hearing on bills to improve the criminal justice system in Texas.
Read more on this case in today’s news:
Rape victim is for exoneration: She ID'd man, now backs DA's bid to clear him in '82 case (Dallas Morning News, 4/6/07)
Hearing set for man who claims innocence in 1982 rape (Houston Chronicle, 4/5/07)
For more information on attending the hearings and press conferences Monday and Tuesday, email us at info@innocenceproject.org
Tags: James Giles, Government Misconduct, Eyewitness Misidentification
Federal jury awards compensation to wrongfully convicted man
Posted: May 1, 2007
Herman Atkins was convicted in 1988 of a southern California rape he didn’t commit. Yesterday, a federal jury ordered the Riverside County to pay him $2 million because a detective had falsified evidence that led to his conviction. Evidence presented at the civil trial showed that a statement allegedly made by a witness connecting Atkins to the area of the crime was fabricated.
"When I was in prison, one thing that motivated me was something my grandmother often said to me. She said, 'A lie will die, but the truth lives on.' Today, Detective Miller's lies were not only exposed but put to rest, and the truth lives on as my grandmother said," he said.
Atkins, now 41 and living in Fresno, said he hoped to start a graduate program in psychology or go to law school. He and his wife have started a small foundation to help others who have been exonerated adjust to life outside prison.
Read the full story. (Los Angeles Times, 5/1/07, Payment required for full article)
Atkins served over 11 years for the 1986 rape before DNA evidence led to his exoneration in 2000. Read more about his case here.
Tags: Exoneree Compensation, Government Misconduct
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
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
Louisiana exoneree starts reentry program
Posted: June 6, 2007
John Thompson spent 18 years in Louisiana prison – including 14 on death row – for a murder he didn’t commit. When a prosecutor made public that he had concealed evidence at Thompson’s 1984 trial that could have proven his innocence, he got a new trial and was acquitted of the charges in 2003.
Thompson was released with a small bag of possessions and given $10 for bus fare. He says he founded Resurrection After Exoneration to make sure that no future exonerees are dropped into freedom like he was. And he was recently awarded a two-year, $60,000 grant from Echoing Green to build RAE’s capacity.
Thompson said the wrongfully convicted have a hard time finding a place to live where they can be at peace. Most are forced to move in with family members, which can cause turmoil. Former inmates often have difficulties communicating because no one understands what they’ve been through and the effect it’s had on their psyche.
“You can’t communicate with your family. You don’t know what you’re supposed to be doing,” Thompson said. “You’re supposed to get a job but because of your record or attitude you can’t. It’s not what we wanted to come home to but we have no choice. And that’s the worst — being a grown man having to depend on someone else for help. And it all goes back to that one thing — what I experienced in that prison but no one wants to recognize it.”NOTE: Because Thompson was not exonerated as a result of DNA testing, his case is not listed as one of the 202 DNA exonerations tracked by the Innocence Project.
Resurrection After Exoneration will offer the wrongfully convicted a place to live, jobs and courses in how to manage finances. Participants will be asked to set aside at least 25 percent of their paychecks in savings accounts. After a year, RAE will match the savings to help find independent housing.
Read the full story. (New Orleans City Business, 06/04/07)
Tags: Louisiana, Exoneree Compensation, Government Misconduct
Texas murder conviction overturned
Posted: June 7, 2007 9:46 am
Michael Scott was convicted in 2002 of killing four teenage girls in a notorious Austin murder 11 years earlier. He allegedly confessed to his involvement in the crime along with another man, Robert Springsteen. Yesterday, Texas’s highest court overturned Scott’s conviction because Springsteen’s confession was improperly used against Scott at trial. Springsteen’s conviction has also been thrown out and he is expected to be tried again.
Scott and Springsteen have claimed that their confessions were coerced during long hours of interrogation by the Austin Police. Part of Scott’s interrogation was videotaped, and the tape shows a detective holding a loaded gun against Scott’s head.
Ariel Payan, the lawyer handling Scott’s appeal, says he always knew this day would come. He encourages detectives to look elsewhere for the yogurt shop murderer or murderers.
“There were fingerprints found inside the cash drawer where the money was stolen,” Payan said. “You have ask yourself, if there are fingerprints there that weren't traced to anybody, doesn't that mean that there is someone else?Read the court’s opinion here.
Read the full story here. (CBS 42, 6/6/07)
Read background on the case here.
Tags: Texas, False Confessions, Government Misconduct
Unheralded exonerations
Posted: June 18, 2007 5:31 pm
The case of three Duke lacrosse players who were wrongly accused of rape last year has been making headlines nationwide for months. But a column in New York Newsday today questions why the Duke case has sparked more outrage nationwide against overzealous prosecutors than the 203 wrongful convictions that have been overturned by DNA testing.
I don't want to minimize these young men's suffering over the last year, or to downplay the injustice that was done to them. But the public outcry over this case has a lot to do with the fact that these were three white guys from upper-middle-class families who got railroaded. And because they could afford first-rate, aggressive lawyers, in the end the criminal justice system worked for them.Read more about prosecutorial misconduct in exoneration cases.
Whatever humiliation and pain they suffered over being wrongly accused pales in comparison to what happens on a regular basis to countless other defendants, many of them black or Latino men, who are charged, convicted and spend long years in prison for crimes they didn't commit.
Read the full column here. (Newsday, 06/18/07)
Tags: Government Misconduct
The legacy of the Duke case
Posted: June 19, 2007 1:55 pm
An editorial in today’s Anniston (Alabama) Star looks forward to the legacy of the case of three Duke lacrosse players falsely accused of raping a woman in North Carolina. Charges were dropped earlier this year and the original prosecutor was disbarred yesterday. The editorial says the Duke case should lead the public to hold overzealous prosecutors accountable for operating outside of the law.
As the Innocence Project’s record attests, men and women are falsely accused more regularly than one would imagine. Most of them do not have the luck of being fabulously wealthy and are not able to hire top-dollar lawyers.Read yesterday's blog post on this issue.
These unseen victims are often set on a path to jail by zealous prosecutors who aren’t willing to look at all the facts. Those falsely accused rarely become a cause for the right or the left. They mostly languish in prison hoping someone will pay attention.
Read the editorial here. (Anniston Star, 06/19/07)
Tags: Government Misconduct
California commission considers prosecutorial misconduct
Posted: July 12, 2007 11:18 am
The director of the Northern California Innocence Project < http://www.ncip.scu.edu/> told a panel studying the state’s criminal justice system yesterday that prosecutorial misconduct needs to be addressed. She said studies had shown that misconduct was widespread.
"Prosecutorial misconduct occurs with some frequency in this state and prosecutors are rarely disciplined for their misconduct," Santa Clara University law professor Cookie Ridolfi said at a hearing at Loyola Law School.Prosecutors at the meeting disagreed, saying that current rules of conduct were sufficient.
Michael Schwartz, a deputy district attorney in Ventura County, countered that a close look at the available data shows that prosecutorial misconduct occurs in less than 1% of all cases. "I am not sensing that we have a crisis of prosecutorial misconduct … it doesn't seem like we need new rules."
Read the full story here. (Los Angeles Times, 07/12/07)The California Commission on the Fair Administration of Justice held the hearing yesterday as part of its ongoing review of possible flaws in the criminal justice system. The commission, one of six “innocence commissions” nationwide, was created in 2004. Currently, three bills pending before the state legislature address other issues addressed by the panel: false confessions, jailhouse informants and eyewitness identification procedure.
Read more about the reform bills pending in the California legislature.
Read more about the six Innocence Commissions nationwide.
Tags: Government Misconduct
How common is prosecutorial misconduct?
Posted: August 3, 2007 5:35 pm
In an op-ed in yesterday’s New York Times, Professor Richard Moran considers malicious prosecutions and government misconduct that leads to wrongful convictions. In the case of four men awarded more than $100 million last week by a federal judge for the wrongful conviction they suffered in 1965, Moran says the withholding of evidence by FBI agents was malicious and should be punished. And this type of misconduct may not be as rare as we think, Moran says.
Mistakes are good-faith errors — like taking the wrong exit off the highway, or dialing the wrong telephone number. There is no malice behind them. However, when officers of the court conspire to convict a defendant of first-degree murder and send him to death row, they are doing much more than making an innocent mistake or error. They are breaking the law.Read more about how government misconduct has led to wrongful convictions later overturned by DNA testing.
Perhaps this explains why, even when a manifestly innocent man is about to be executed, a prosecutor can be dead set against reopening an old case. Since so many wrongful convictions result from official malicious behavior, prosecutors, policemen, witnesses or even jurors and judges could themselves face jail time for breaking the law in obtaining an unlawful conviction.
Read the full op-ed article here. (New York Times, 08/02/07, paid subscription required)
Tags: Government Misconduct
New book examines Duke lacrosse case and prosecutorial misconduct
Posted: September 4, 2007 1:16 pm
Until Proven Innocent, a new book by Stuart Taylor and KC Johnson released today, examines the Duke University lacrosse case, in which three men were identified and charged in a rape, only for all charges to be dropped later due to evidence of their innocence. The prosecutor in the case, Michael Nifong, was disbarred and sentenced to one day in jail for his misconduct in the case.
Until Proven Innocent covers the Duke case and the broader problem of prosecutorial misconduct. Learn more about the book, and buy it online, at Amazon.com or read an excerpt on ABCNews.com.
Co-author Stuart Taylor, a National Journal columnist, appeared on National Public Radio’s Diane Rehm Show on Thursday with Innocence Project Co-Director Barry Scheck and Oregon prosecutor Joshua Marquis. Listen to the show here.
Tags: Government Misconduct
Innocence Network calls on FBI to investigate agent
Posted: September 5, 2007 1:08 pm
In April, a federal jury found that former sheriff's deputy Danny Miller fabricated evidence that led to the wrongful conviction of Innocence Project client Herman Atkins. Miller now works for the FBI, and the Innocence Network yesterday called for him to be suspended and investigated. Atkins served 11 years in prison before he was exonerated by DNA testing, and he was awarded $2 million in a federal civil suit in April.
This is the first time that the Innocence Network, a consortium of 31 innocence organizations around the country, has asked that a law enforcement officer be suspended or investigated. The letter was signed by Kathleen Ridolfi, executive director of the Northern California Innocence Project at Santa Clara University Law School.
Ridolfi's letter to the Justice Department said that "in light of these extraordinary developments," the Innocence Network was asking that Miller be the subject of a formal investigation, "which could result in the termination of his employment with the Bureau. Indeed, given the security and sensitivity of Miller's assignment, we urge you to consider suspending him pending the outcome of the investigation."Read more about the Innocence Network and Herman Atkins’s case.
"We are confident that the FBI and the Department of Justice will conclude . . . that it is inconceivable that our nation's homeland security will rely on the intelligence analysis of a man found in a court of law to be a liar and an evidence fabricator," Ridolfi added.
Read the full news story. (Los Angeles Times, 09/05/07)
Watch a video of Atkins telling the story of his wrongful conviction.
Tags: Herman Atkins, Government Misconduct
DNA evidence clears two men in Mississippi and uncovers serious misconduct
Posted: February 8, 2008 4:25 pm
Innocence Project client Kennedy Brewer has waited more than 15 years – much of it on death row – for this day to come. DNA evidence proves that Brewer didn’t commit the heinous murder of a three-year-old girl for which he was sentenced to die in 1995, and he is expected to be exonerated at a hearing on Thursday (February 14).
The DNA evidence and other evidence uncovered by the Innocence Project and its partners also point to the identity of the real perpetrator of the murder, Justin Albert Johnson, who has confessed that he alone killed the little girl.
Johnson also confessed this week to killing another three-year-old girl in the same small Mississippi town eighteen months before the murder for which Brewer was convicted. The man convicted of this eerily similar crime, Levon Brooks, is also an Innocence Project client and is still in prison. The Innocence Project filed papers today seeking Brooks’ release. It’s possible that Brooks will also appear at Thursday’s hearing, where his conviction would be thrown out and he may be released.
These pending exonerations reveal startling misconduct in the Mississippi justice system, and the Innocence Project called for a review of the way evidence in the state is collected, analyzed and presented in court.
Read more in today’s Innocence Project press release.
Press coverage of Brewer’s and Brooks’ cases:
New York Times: New suspect is arrested in two Mississippi killings (02/08/08)
Associated Press: New suspect charged in 1982 Miss. Murder (02/08/08)
Picayune Item: Future unclear for death row inmate after another charged with crime (02/08/08)
Tags: Mississippi, Kennedy Brewer, Government Misconduct, Death Penalty
California case challenges prosecutorial immunity
Posted: April 14, 2008 1:15 pm
Prosecutors nationwide have traditionally been shielded from lawsuits brought by wrongfully convicted individuals. The U.S. Supreme Court has ruled that this immunity is necessary to ensure that prosecutors can do their jobs without fear of personal legal implication.
But last year, the federal 9th Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that supervising prosecutors could be liable if they failed to create a system that safeguarded against wrongful conviction. And now a lawsuit – brought by Thomas Goldstein, who served 24 years in prison before being released on evidence of his innocence – alleges that Los Angeles’ head prosecutor can be held liable for the use of a jailhouse informant in Goldstein’s case. The U.S. Supreme Court announced today that it will hear this case during its next term.
The Los Angeles County district attorney's office, the nation's largest prosecution office, once made regular use of jail informants, but at the time it had no system for sharing information among prosecutors countywide about which informants were reliable and what they had been promised.The lawsuit names John Van de Kamp, Los Angeles County’s chief prosecutor at the time of Goldstein’s conviction and now the chair of the California Commission on the Fair Administration of Justice, one of the country’s most active innocence commissions.
Goldstein was ordered released after 24 years in prison after the sole eyewitness recanted and doubts emerged about a supposed confession by Goldstein to an informant. Years after his conviction, Goldstein learned that his jailhouse accuser -- a three-time felon -- had lied in court when he denied having received promises of special treatment from another county prosecutor in exchange for his testimony.
"This suit is 29 years in the making, and it's about accountability," said Goldstein. "[It] will put every prosecutor's office on notice that they need a system for sharing information. And by doing so, it will result in fewer wrongful convictions."
...Van de Kamp sees a note of irony in the situation. He is the chair of the California Commission on the Fair Administration of Justice, a group set up to prevent wrongful convictions. It has pressed for a law that would require corroboration before testimony from a jailhouse informant could be used in a criminal trial.Read more about the California Commission on the Fair Administration of Justice.
The Legislature approved such a bill last year, but it in October Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger vetoed it. He called the measure "unnecessary" because this "perceived problem . . . arises in very few criminal cases."
Read the full article here. (LA Times, 04/13/08)
Tags: Informants/Snitches, Government Misconduct
Ex-prosecutors reprimanded in Colorado case
Posted: September 15, 2008 12:55 pm
The Colorado Supreme Court has censured two former prosecutors for their role in the wrongful conviction of Timothy Masters in Fort Collins in 1999. Terrance A. Gilmore and Jolene C. Blair, both now judges in Colorado, were reprimanded by the Supreme Court for failing to ensure that defense attorneys received evidence that could have pointed to Masters’ innocence. They have acknowledged that they didn’t disclose the information.
Masters served nearly a decade in prison for a 1987 murder before DNA tests and other evidence pointing to his innocence led to his release in January. His trial attorney, Erik Fischer, said the prosecutors could have prevented his wrongful conviction by handing over the complete evidence at trial.
"If we would have had the evidence that was withheld from us, there's no doubt in my mind that Tim Masters would have been exonerated at the trial," Fischer said.Read more about Masters’ case on the Denver Post website.
… "I don't know what to say about that," Masters said of the decision when reached by phone by The Associated Press. "I spent 10 years in prison for something I didn't do. It's something, I guess."
Read the full story here. (Associated Press, 09/10/08)
Tags: Government Misconduct, Timothy Masters
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.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.
Read the full Grits post here. (9/16/08)
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
Former Chicago cop arrested for involvement in torture
Posted: October 21, 2008 4:45 pm
Former Chicago Police detective Jon Burge was arrested this morning on charges that he lied under oath about his participation in the torturing of suspects in criminal investigations. Burge, who was fired in 1993 for his alleged role in the torture and beatings of suspects, was arrested at his Florida home and charged in federal court with perjury and obstruction of justice.
Last year, Chicago settled a civil suit with four defendants who were freed from death row after showing evidence that they falsely confessed under torture by Burge and other officers. Burge, when questioned in that case, said: "I have not observed nor do I have knowledge of any other examples of physical abuse and/or torture on the part of Chicago police officers at Area 2."
But a report by two special prosecutors in 2006 found that officers under Burge’s watch had tortured dozens of suspects, by beating, hitting, kicking and asphyxiating them.
"There is no place for torture and abuse in a police station," said U.S. Attorney Patrick J. Fitzgerald in a news release. "There is no place for perjury and false statements in federal lawsuits. No person is above the law, and nobody--even a suspected murderer--is beneath its protection."Background on the case: Jon Burge’s legacy (Chicago Tribune)
Read the full story here. (Chicago Tribune, 10/21/2008)
Download the indictment here.
Tags: Government Misconduct
U.S. Supreme Court Rejects Lawsuit by Freed California Man
Posted: January 29, 2009 5:46 pm
Thomas Goldstein served 24 years in California prison before a federal appeals court ruling in 2004 found that he had been wrongfully convicted and led to his release. His 1979 murder conviction was based largely on testimony of a jailhouse snitch, who said he had not received anything for his testimony – a claim which was later revealed to be untrue.
After being freed, Goldstein sued former Los Angeles District Attorney John Van de Kamp, seeking to hold the prosecutor liable for not having procedures in place to track testimony from unreliable snitches. In 2008, Goldstein’s case went before the U.S. Supreme Court, which considered whether office policies created by Van de Kamp were protected by prosecutorial immunity. Individual prosecutors have absolute immunity from lawsuits seeking to hold them accountable for their trial-related “adversarial” conduct but not for “investigative” or “administrative” actions.
In a unanimous decision this week, the court found that Van de Kamp could not sue in this instance.
Justice Stephen Breyer wrote in the opinion that immunity covered claims about a failure to train or supervise prosecutors or to set up an information system with material that calls into question the truthfulness of informants.
Breyer said allowing the lawsuit to go forward would permit criminal defendants to bring claims for other trial-related training or supervisory failings, affecting the way in which prosecutors carried out their basic courtroom tasks.
Read the full story here. (Reuters, 01/26/09)Before the case was argued, the Innocence Network filed a friend-of-the-court brief in the Supreme Court, arguing that Van de Kamp’s role in this case was administrative, not trial-related. The Supreme Court disagreed.
Download the Innocence Network amicus brief here.
View other amicus briefs and read commentary on the decision at the SCOTUS blog.
Tags: Informants/Snitches, Government Misconduct
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
Deadline Extended: Help Us Pay for DNA Testing
Posted: September 24, 2009 2:05 pm
We have been honored and moved by the strong interest in our campaign this month to raise funds for client DNA testing. We deeply appreciate the generosity of hundreds of people from all over the world who have given so far this month. It is thanks to your support that we are able to free the innocent.
We have just $5,470 to go in order to reach our goal of $25,000 and we think we can make it. That’s why we extended the deadline to September 30. For one more week, you can donate here and 100% of your gift will go to support DNA testing.
Spreading the word about this work is critical as well - click here to post this campaign to Facebook and here to post on Twitter.
Thank you from all of us at the Innocence Project.
Tags: False Confessions, Unvalidated/Improper Forensics, Informants/Snitches, Bad Lawyering, Government Misconduct, Eyewitness Misidentification
Dallas Man Released After 14 Years
Posted: October 13, 2009 6:00 pm
Richard Miles was arrested and convicted of murder and attempted murder in 1995 and, after 14 years behind bars, has been released after the court ruled that police failed to alert both the prosecution and defense to a phone call implicating a different suspect before trial.
With help from Centurion Ministries, Miles had his conviction overturned on October 13; the prosecution has not announced whether or not they will pursue a new trial against Miles:
The DA's office said that it will continue to investigate the case but that the new information makes it question Miles' guilt. Prosecutors are also trying to determine whether charges can be brought against anyone else.
[State District Judge Andy] Chatham told Miles as he stood before the judge's bench that he could not guarantee anything, but it appeared that his convictions would be overturned by the Court of Criminal Appeals. Chatham released Miles on his own recognizance, meaning Miles did not have to pay bail.
Read the report here. (Dallas Morning News, 10/13/09)
Judge Chatham was swayed by the fact that officers failed to properly investigate the phone call from a woman telling officers that her ex-boyfriend confessed to the crime. Critics of Miles’ original conviction argue that there were other examples of misconduct: several witnesses told investigating officers that Miles was not the gunman, and although Miles tested positive for low levels of gunpowder residue, he had been tested after he had already been handcuffed. In addition, there was no serological evidence introduced.
Tags: Texas, Government Misconduct
Wrongful Convictions and Prosecutorial Immunity
Posted: November 4, 2009 5:42 pm
The U.S. Supreme Court heard oral arguments this morning in a case centered on wrongful convictions and the issue of whether prosecutors are protected by absolute immunity, even when their misconduct extends beyond the courtroom.
Two men filed a civil rights lawsuit against Iowa prosecutors who allegedly coerced false testimony and fabricated evidence to convict them of crimes they say they didn't commit. Prosecutors in the case have claimed that they are protected by absolute immunity, and have stated outright that there is no constitutional "right not to be framed.”
During arguments, Chief Justice John Roberts expressed concern about creating a “chilling effect on prosecutors” by allowing them to be sued. Justice John Paul Stevens, however, said it was “perverse” that a prosecutor can be sued if he or she fabricates evidence and then hands it to another prosecutor to conduct a trial, but can’t be sued if he or she completes that trial. He wasn’t the only justice to raise concerns:
"So the law is the more deeply you're involved in the wrong, the more likely you are to be immune? That's a strange proposition," Justice Anthony Kennedy said.The case comes to the Supreme Court following a decision from the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eighth Circuit, which found that the men could sue because they had presented evidence that the prosecutors in the case had violated their right to due process. In reviewing the Eighth Circuit decision, the Supreme Court is essentially considering the extent of prosecutorial immunity under historical precedent and the Constitution.
The two men at the center of the case, Terry Harrington and Curtis McGhee, served 25 years in prison for a murder they’ve always said they didn’t commit. On appeal, the men discovered records showing that prosecutors had coerced a witness to testify against them and that police and prosecutors had withheld evidence pointing to another suspect. They were freed this year.
One argument raised by the prosecutors is that allowing these men to sue will open floodgates for prisoners to allege misconduct by prosecutors. Attorneys for Harrington and McGhee argue that this case is so egregious that it would meet even a strict standard under which defendants could sue prosecutors.
In an editorial this morning, the Washington Post agrees:
The vast majority of prosecutors perform honorably and understand that they are duty-bound not just to secure convictions but to seek justice. Those who don't often suffer no consequences at the hands of state or bar organizations, as a brief in support of Mr. McGhee and Mr. Harrington convincingly argues. For these few renegades, perhaps the prospect of being held liable will help to keep them in line or, at least, hold them accountable.News coverage of the case, Pottawattamie County v. McGhee:
Associated Press: Court Worries About Stifling Prosecutors
NPR Morning Edition: Can Prosecutors Be Sued by the People They Framed?
Washington Post Editorial: The Right Not to Be Framed
Analaysis of the Case by SCOTUSblog
Transcript of today’s oral arguments.
Briefs and filings in the case at SCOTUSwiki.
Tags: Government Misconduct