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One year free, and a new life begun
Posted: August 28, 2008 5:20 pm
One year ago today, Dwayne Dail walked out of a North Carolina prison and into his family’s arms. Dail served 18 years for a child rape he didn’t commit, before his attorneys at the North Carolina Center on Actual Innocence discovered biological evidence from his case stored in a police department closet. For years, Dail had written and appealed to everyone he could think of – and even asked to be executed at one point. “I wanted the state of North Carolina to be responsible for my murder and not just another inmate,” he said. Finally he found the NCCAI, whose work led to his release.
Today he lives in Florida with relatives, and he was recently compensated by the state of North Carolina – which improved its compensation statute this month to bring it in line with federal standards of $50,000 per year of wrongful incarceration.
Watch a video interview with Dail after his release.
Other exoneration anniversaries this week:
Monday: Lonnie Erby, Missouri (Served 17 Years, Exonerated 8/25/03)
Tuesday: Barry Laughman, Pennsylvania (Served 16 Years, Exonerated 08/26/04)
Eddie Joe Lloyd, Michigan (Served 17 Years, Exonerated 08/26/02)
Today: Bruce Nelson, Pennsylvania (Served 9 Years, Exonerated 08/28/91)
Tags: Dwayne Dail, Lonnie Erby, Barry Laughman, Eddie Joe Lloyd, Bruce Nelson
Michigan Editorial: Lack of Indigent Defense Funding Leads to Wrongful Convictions
Posted: March 10, 2009 4:06 pm
An editorial in Sunday’s Detroit Free Press points to role of the state’s small budget for indigent criminal defense in convicting the innocent and driving up state costs further down the line – in wrongful conviction lawsuits and in prison overcrowding.
A robust and efficient indigent defense system will save money by reducing wrongful-conviction lawsuits, making sure poor defendants don't get unjustifiably long sentences, and keeping innocent people out of prison. Each person wrongfully incarcerated costs Michigan taxpayers $35,000 a year. Moreover, when innocent people are convicted, the guilty remain at large. Getting it right at trial is especially important in Michigan's current judicial climate, in which appellate courts practically rubber-stamp criminal convictions.
…"In theory, truth emerges when two equal adversaries -- with equal resources -- battle it out in the courtroom," said F. Martin Tieber, an East Lansing appellate attorney and former deputy director of the State Appellate Defender Office. "That's the basis of our justice system. With Michigan's abysmal public defense system, however, it often doesn't work that way. Innocent people are convicted, and other people are convicted of more serious offenses than they should be, leading to longer sentences. It creates a lot of unnecessary spending on prisons."Bad lawyering is a leading cause of wrongful conviction nationwide. Three people have been exonerated by DNA testing in Michigan to date, and there are countless others seeking to overturn convictions for crimes they say they didn’t commit.
Read the full editorial here. (Detroit Free Press, 03/08/2009)
The case of Eddie Joe Lloyd is a prime example of the failure of the state’s indigent defense system to protect the innocent. Lloyd’s court-appointed attorney withdrew from his case eight days before his scheduled 1985 trial, but the trial wasn’t postponed. The new appointed attorney never met with the previous attorney, called no defense witnesses and gave a five minute closing argument. Lloyd was convicted and spent 17 years in prison for a murder he didn’t commit before DNA testing proved his innocence.
Read more about wrongful convictions caused in part by bad lawyering here.
Tags: Eddie Joe Lloyd, Bad Lawyering
Seven Years Later, a Cause of Injustice Persists
Posted: August 27, 2009 2:15 pm
Seven years ago this week, Eddie Joe Lloyd was exonerated in Detroit. He served 17 years in prison for a murder and rape he didn’t commit before DNA testing obtained by the Innocence Project led to his release. His conviction in 1985 had rested in large part on a false confession he gave to police while in a mental hospital for treatment. Although he signed a written confession and gave a tape-recorded statement, these came after 21 hours of interrogation, which had not been recorded. It was later revealed that police fed him details during the interrogation that he could not have known otherwise. Sadly, Lloyd passed away two years after his release.
As part of a settlement in Lloyd’s case, Detroit police said they would begin electronically recording all interrogations in crimes that could carry a sentence of life. The state of Michigan, however, does not have any law requiring the recording of interrogations. (Sixteen states have a law in place requiring the recording of interrogations in at least some investigations). In 2005, Claude McCollum was convicted of a murder in Lasing based in part on a hypothetical statement he made to police that he could have committed the crime while sleepwalking. Parts of his interrogation were recorded, but McCollum says he asserted his innocence several times during the interrogations, and these statements were not on tape.
That same year, a task force formed by the Michigan State Bar Association called for the state legislature to pass a law requiring the recording of custodial interrogations. Research has shown near-unanimous consent among more than 500 jurisdictions across the country – including cities in Michigan – that recording of interrogations assists law enforcement.
Other Exoneree Anniversaries This Week:
Lonnie Erby, Missouri (Served 17 Years, Exonerated 8/25/03)
Michael Blair, Texas (Served 13.5 Years, Exonerated 8/25/08)
Barry Laughman, Pennsylvania (Served 16 Years, Exonerated 8/26/04)
Robert McClendon, Ohio (Served 17 Years, Exonerated 8/26/08)
Bruce Nelson, Pennsylvania (Served 9 Years, Exonerated 8/28/91)
Dwayne Dail, North Carola (Served 18 Years, Exonerated 8/28/07)
Tags: Eddie Joe Lloyd, False Confessions
Improving Counsel for Indigent Defendants
Posted: May 24, 2011 1:24 pm
The editorial argues that Michigan could improve the way poor defendants are represented by following Macomb County’s system, which restricts complex murder cases to veteran lawyers. Macomb County also appoints attorneys with mid-level experience to cases in which a defendant can receive between five and 20 years in prison.
Macomb Circuit Judge David Viviano said that attorneys are assigned on a rotating basis and are informally reviewed by the judges. If the judges are not satisfied with a lawyer’s performance, the list can be changed.
But ultimately, it's up to the state to set high standards to assure that all indigent defendants are adequately defended and that their attorneys have the necessary resources. Lawmakers and Gov. Rick Snyder should set that as a goal to attain as state revenues improve.
Read the full article.
Read the Innocence Project Report: Court Findings of Ineffective Assistance of Counsel
Read more about bad lawyering.
Read about Eddie Joe Lloyd’s case.
Tags: Michigan, Eddie Joe Lloyd, Bad Lawyering
Victim's Mother Relives Crime Through Wrongful Conviction
Posted: September 10, 2012 5:20 pm
Nearly three decades after her daughter was raped and murdered in Detroit, Carlotta Jackson struggles to come to grips with the false confession that sent the wrong man to prison for her daughter’s murder, reported the Detroit Free Press.
For years, Carlotta Jackson thought she'd been in the embrace of saviors -- William Rice and the other Detroit homicide officers who caught her daughter's killer with a confession, got him sent to prison and gave her some small measure of justice's comfort.
"I never questioned any of the evidence," she said. "My faith was in them. I just knew they had the right person.
"I was just so naïve," Jackson said through wracking sobs last week. "I was just so trusting. Unbelievable."
Eddie Joe Lloyd was convicted of the 1984 crime and spent 17 years behind bars before DNA evidence proved his innocence and led to his release in 2002. Lloyd, who was receiving treatment for mental illness at the time the crimes were reported in the news, wrote to police with suggestions on how to solve various murders, including the murder of Michelle Jackson.
Police officers visited and interrogated him several times in the hospital. During the course of these interrogations, police officers allowed Lloyd to believe that, by confessing and getting arrested, he would help them "smoke out" the real perpetrator. They fed him details that he could not have known, including the location of the body, the type of jeans the victim was wearing, a description of earrings the victim wore, and other details from the crime scene. Lloyd signed a written confession and gave a tape recorded statement as well.
The relief Jackson and her family felt when Lloyd was convicted was quashed when DNA evidence cleared him of the crimes almost two decades later. Her daughter’s murder is still considered an open case. Carlotta Jackson is plagued by the uncertainties that surround her death and wonders if she will ever know the truth.
Lloyd filed a suit against the city and Wayne County in federal court, naming homicide detective William Rice and others who coerced his false confession. Lloyd died while the case was pending, and his estate was awarded $3.25-million in a settlement that dismissed the claims against the officers. Rice currently faces criminal enterprise, fraud, conspiracy and drug charges.
Read the full article.
Read more about Eddie Joe Lloyd’s case.
Understand The Causes: How False Confessions Happen
Tags: Michigan, Eddie Joe Lloyd
Documentary Spotlights Bad Lawyering
Posted: March 20, 2013 3:55 pm
Tags: Eddie Joe Lloyd, Bad Lawyering