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Wrongful Convictions Hurt Victims' Families, Too
Posted: September 5, 2007 3:01 pm
A post yesterday on the new blog of the organization Murder Victims’ Families for Human Rights explains how the victim’s family suffers from a wrongful conviction.
When the wrong person is convicted of and sentenced for a murder, it is not only the innocent defendant who suffers; the family of the murder victim suffers as well.Visit the Murder Victims’ Families for Human Rights website.
Jeanette Popp’s story makes this clear. For years after her 20-year-old daughter Nancy DePriest was raped and murdered during a robbery of the Pizza Hut where she worked, Jeanette Popp believed she knew who was responsible: two men named Chris Ochoa and Richard Danziger, who were arrested a couple of months after the crime and eventually sentenced to life in prison. Jeanette had no idea that while Ochoa and Danziger were in one Texas prison, an inmate at another prison, Achim Marino, was writing letters to the county district attorney and to then-Governor George W. Bush, saying that he was the one who had robbed the Pizza Hut and killed Nancy DePriest. Marino said that he acted alone and had no idea why two other men had confessed.
… It has now come out that Ochoa’s confession followed two grueling days of police questioning, during which police openly threatened Ochoa by telling him that he would receive the death penalty if he didn’t cooperate (and even going so far as to jab his arm with a pen in a gesture mimicking lethal injection.)
Jeanette Popp believes the death penalty should be abolished so that it can no longer be used as a threat to coerce confessions from innocent people. But when she first learned that the two men she had believed were guilty might not be guilty after all, her most pressing question was, has the original story been a lie? Everything she thought she knew about her daughter’s murder was now called into question.
Read the full blog post here.
Read more about the cases of Chris Ochoa and Richard Danziger.
Watch a video interview with Chris Ochoa.
Tags: Richard Danziger, Christopher Ochoa
Darryl Hunt marks four years of freedom
Posted: February 6, 2008 4:14 pm
Four years ago today, Darryl Hunt was exonerated in North Carolina after serving more than 18 years in prison for a brutal Winston-Salem murder he didn’t commit. Hunt was first convicted of the murder in 1985, but a judge threw out the conviction because prosecutors used a girlfriend’s statements against Hunt at trial even after she had recanted them. While he was waiting for a second trial, he refused an offer to plead guilty that would have set him free.
After 11 months outside of prison awaiting trial, Hunt was again convicted and sentenced to life in prison in 1989. Five years later, DNA evidence in the case was tested and showed that semen from the crime scene excluded Hunt. He wouldn’t be freed, however, until 2004, when the DNA profile from the crime scene was run in the state database at the request of Hunt’s attorneys. The profile matched a man serving time in prison for another murder. Finally, this evidence led to Hunt’s exoneration in 2004.
For more on Darryl Hunt’s long struggle for justice, rent or buy "The Trials of Daryl Hunt, "an award-winning documentary detailing his story, now available on DVD. View a trailer of the film and buy a copy here.
Read more about Daryl Hunt's case here.
Other exoneration anniversaries this week:
Today: Chris Ochoa and Richard Danziger, Texas (Served 11 Years, Exonerated 02/06/02)
Friday: Anthony Gray, Maryland (Served 7 Years, Exonerated 02/08/99)
Saturday: Donte L. Booker, Ohio (Served 15 Years, Exonerated 02/09/05)
Lesly Jean, North Carolina (Served 9 Years, Exonerated 02/09/01)
Tags: Donte Booker, Richard Danziger, Anthony Gray, Darryl Hunt, Lesly Jean, Christopher Ochoa