Innocence Blog

New York Man Wrongfully Convicted of 1990 Crime Will Be Released

Posted: March 20, 2013 4:40 pm

David Ranta, convicted of killing a beloved Brooklyn Rabbi in a foiled 1990 robbery, has been cleared of the crime with help from the Brooklyn District Attorney’s Conviction Integrity Unit, and he will be freed on Thursday. According to The New York Times, police misconduct and fabricated informant testimony contributed to the wrongful conviction. One witness after another recanted, and, recently, the case completely unraveled. The New York Times reports:

Detective Scarcella and his partner, Stephen Chmil, according to investigators and legal documents, broke rule after rule. They kept few written records, coached a witness and took Mr. Ranta’s confession under what a judge described as highly dubious circumstances. They allowed two dangerous criminals, an investigator said, to leave jail, smoke crack cocaine and visit with prostitutes in exchange for incriminating Mr. Ranta.

Of the witnesses who testified against Ranta, one admitted that she lied in an attempt to help her incarcerated boyfriend, one admitted to implicating Ranta in order to reduce his own sentence, and one revealed that police told him which person to choose from the lineup.
 
Ranta told The New York Times:

“I’d lie there in the cell at night and I think: I’m the only one in the world who knows I’m innocent,” he said. “I came in here as a 30-something with kids, a mother who was alive. This case killed my whole life.”

Ranta was represented by Michael Baum of Brooklyn Defender Services and Pierre Sussman.
 
Read the full article.

Tags: New York

 

Documentary Spotlights Bad Lawyering

Posted: March 20, 2013 3:55 pm

Eddie Joe Lloyd with Senior Staff Attorney Nina Morrison
 
The New Media Advocacy Project and The Constitution Project have produced a short documentary “Defending Gideon,” which focuses on a lack of adequate indigent defense 50 years after the landmark Supreme Court ruling in Gideon v. Wainwright. Screenings of the film were shown for the Department of Justice on Monday night and for Congress the following day.
 
An unknown number of people have been wrongfully convicted due, in part, to bad lawyering. In most of these cases, the problem is better defined by what the attorney failed to do rather than overt negligence or misconduct. However, in some cases, such as the case of Innocence Project client Eddie Joe Lloyd whose story is featured in the film, the quality of the representation is so poor that it merely compounds the injustice. Lloyd was represented by an attorney who was appointed to the case just eight days before trial, The attorney didn’t cross-examine the police officer most directly involved in coercing a false confession from Lloyd, he called no defense witnesses and gave a five minute closing argument in which Lloyd was sentenced to death. His appellate lawyer didn’t raise an ineffective assistance of counsel claim on appeal. In response to Lloyd’s complaints about his representation, the appellate attorney wrote a note to the court saying that Lloyd should not be taken seriously because he was “guilty and should die.”
 
Watch the entire film here.
 
Read more about the case of Eddie Joe Lloyd.

Tags: Eddie Joe Lloyd, Bad Lawyering

 

Florida Officer Linked to Two Wrongful Convictions

Posted: March 19, 2013 5:00 pm

According to the Sun Sentinel, former Broward County Sheriff’s Major, Tony Fantigrassi, who has been linked to the wrongful conviction of Jerry Frank Townsend, is now being sued for allegedly coercing a confession in the Anthony Caravella case.
 
Both Townsend and Caravella were exonerated through DNA testing—Townsend in 2001 and Caravella in 2010. Each of them served over two decades in prison for murders that they didn’t commit after false confessions led to their wrongful convictions. Caravella was only 15 years old when he was interrogated and had an IQ of 67. Townsend, who also has a low IQ, ultimately confessed to six murders that he didn’t commit. Studies have shown that juveniles and the mentally disabled are especially vulnerable to making false confessions. The Sun Sentinel reports:

Jurors will only hear what Fantigrassi did in the Caravella case, but over the years he was a key player in some of Broward’s most notorious wrongful conviction cases. He was also linked to a controversy over a wrongly worded Miranda rights warning form used for years in Broward. And he retired under a cloud in 2005 during the Sheriff’s Office faked crime statistics scandal.
 
“When the same people are involved in the same horrendous results, one cannot think it’s a coincidence,” said Broward Public Defender Howard Finkelstein when asked about Fantigrassi’s record.

Caravella’s attorney in the civil case, Barbara Heyer, also represented Townsend and prevailed in settling for $2 million with the Sherriff’s Office in that case. In addition to Fantigrassi, Caravella is also seeking compensation from the city of Miramar, the Sheriff’s Office and three retired Miramar detectives.
 
Read the full article.
 
Read more about Anthony Caravella and Jerry Frank Townsend.

Tags: Florida

 

New York State Leaders and Lawmakers Call for Better Indigent Defense

Posted: March 19, 2013 4:45 pm

Criminal justice reform leaders joined New York State lawmakers at a press conference yesterday urging Governor Andrew Cuomo to overhaul the state’s troubled public defender system. The effort was organized around the 50th anniversary of the historic Gideon v. Wainwright case, in which the Supreme Court ruled unanimously that the Constitution guarantees the right to counsel.
 
Innocence Project Co-Director Barry Scheck spoke about the unfulfilled promise of that ruling. The Albany Times Union reports:

“When we fail to provide competent, effective counsel, the foreseeable, predictable consequence is that the innocent are convicted, the guilty are not apprehended, and the public safety is undermined,” Scheck said.

Inadequate defense counsel has been shown to contribute to wrongful convictions nationwide.
 
Read the full article.
 
Read more about bad lawyering.

Tags: New York, Bad Lawyering

 

Life After Exoneration, with Compensation, or Without

Posted: March 18, 2013 5:00 pm

“They take your respect and dignity as a man,” Moto said. “A lady spilled a hot cup of coffee on her lap and she got millions. Come on. I’m not looking for billions of dollars. If they could give my daughter a college scholarship, I’d take that. If they gave me the $160,000 my mom spent on lawyer fees, I’d take that.”

State Sen. Stewart Greenleaf (R., Montgomery), head of the Judiciary Committee, plans to reintroduce a bill that would give exonerated prisoners $50,000 per year of wrongful incarceration.
The bill failed to move out of committee in the Republican-controlled Senate last year. Greenleaf fears a tight budget may sink it again.

 

Maryland Gov. Cites Risk of Executing Innocent Person in Decision to Repeal

Posted: March 18, 2013 3:00 pm

“Between 2000 and 2011, an average of 5 death row inmates were exonerated every year. In Maryland, between 1995 and 2007, our state’s reversal rate for the death penalty was 80 percent.

Improving public safety is the most fundamental responsibility of our government. The death penalty does not make us stronger or more secure as a people. It is expensive, ineffective, and wasteful as a matter of public policy; it is unjust as historically applied; and its imperfections can and do result in the occasional killing of innocent people.”

On Friday, March 15, Maryland became the sixth state in six years to repeal the death penalty in favor of life imprisonment without parole. Eighteen people have been exonerated through DNA testing after serving time on death row. Kirk Bloodsworth, one of these 18 men, was instrumental in helping to build consensus for the legislation.


Read the full opinion editorial. 

 

Science News - March 15, 2013

Posted: March 15, 2013 4:35 pm

At a Massachusetts crime lab, retesting samples impacts current drug cases, a new crime lab on an Ohio university campus could spur collaboration, and Sweden has finally joined an international DNA database. Here’s this week’s round up of forensic news:
 
The seven chemists in Massachusetts responsible for retesting the samples once handled by Annie Dookhan, who was recently indicted for misconduct, have seen their backlog increase from 400 to 14,000 cases in 7 months. With an increased backlog, local prosecutors might have a limited ability to charge individuals for drug crimes.
 
Construction of a new crime laboratory at Bowling Green State University in Ohio should begin this summer. The university hopes to collaborate with the lab and enhance the criminal justice and science programs.
 
The Kansas House Appropriations Committee recently turned down a request for $3.5 million that would start the construction of a new crime lab on a local university campus. While there is consensus that a new lab is needed, some argue that building the lab through the private sector would be more cost effective.
 
Rob Maher, a professor in the Electrical and Computer Engineering Department at Montana State University, discusses his research on gunshot acoustics and how he assists lawyers and investigators with examining audio evidence. Maher stresses the need for peer-reviewed science to help separate what can be valid evidence in a trial from pseudoscience.
 
Sweden has finally joined a DNA data sharing system with the rest of the European Union. However, critics warned that international DNA exchanges could lead to privacy infringements.

Tags: Kansas, Massachusetts, Montana, Ohio, Science Thursday

 

Tune In: Innocence Project Board of Directors’ Director Emeritus Janet Reno on “The Simpsons”

Posted: March 15, 2013 4:05 pm

Innocence Project Board of Directors’ Director Emeritus and Former Attorney General of the United States, Janet Reno will make a guest-voice appearance on Sunday’s episode of “The Simpsons” on FOX at 8 p.m.
 
Bart is falsely accused of pulling a prank on Easter involving the school marching band and stuffing rotten eggs in the brass section’s horns, and Lisa must step in as his attorney to defend her brother. On the episode, Reno and her sister Maggy, talk about justice to Springfield Elementary School.
 
The Reno sisters have asked that the program be dedicated to their brother, Robert Reno, who died last summer. He was a great liberal columnist who believed in liberty and justice for all. They have donated their fee for the show to the Innocence Project.
 
Will Bart be lynched? Will justice prevail? Tune in to find out.

Tags: Dispatches

 

North Carolina Exoneree to Reunite With Sister After 40 Years

Posted: March 15, 2013 3:25 pm

Pictured: Daryl Hunt
 
Darryl Hunt, exonerated of murder after serving nearly 20 years behind bars, will see his younger sister, Doris, for the first time in 40 years. The siblings were nine and three-years-old when they were separated following the death of their mother. Hunt was exonerated through DNA evidence in 2004.
 
Doris, who now lives in Atlanta, didn’t remember having siblings until she reached adulthood and found documentation indicating that her mother also gave birth to two boys, reported The Herald Sun.
 
Hunt talked about the anticipation leading up to their reunion and compared his excitement to being freed from prison. The Herald Sun reports:

“Yesterday, to me, was even more special because for the first time in my life, I was able to talk to my sister, my biological sister,” Hunt said. “She had no idea about what I went through in those 19 years, and at the same time I had no idea what she went through.”
 
Hunt said that along with his freedom, the one thing he prayed for while in prison – “19 years, four months and 19 days” — was to be able to see his sister one day.

Hunt, who was only 19 years old at the time, was convicted of first-degree murder based on the testimony of eyewitnesses who claimed to have seen him with the victim. He was sentenced to life in prison, but his conviction was overturned by the North Carolina Supreme Court. In 1989, Hunt was retried before an all-white jury and again convicted of first-degree murder. Although DNA testing on crime scene evidence pointed to Hunt’s innocence in 1994, it took another decade and numerous unsuccessful appeals before the DNA profile from the crime scene was run in the state database at the request of Hunt’s attorneys. The results conclusively exonerated Hunt and pointed to another man who has since pled guilty to the murder.
 
In the years following his release, Hunt established The Darryl Hunt Project for Freedom and Justice, a non-profit organization dedicated to helping people after their release from prison.
 
Read the full article.
 
More on Hunt’s case.

Tags: North Carolina, Darryl Hunt

 

You Have the Right to an Attorney

Posted: March 14, 2013 6:00 pm

A new article in The Atlantic reflects on how the criminal justice system has been impacted by the United States Supreme Court decision in Gideon v. Wainwright fifty years later. In 1963, the Supreme Court ruled unanimously that the Sixth Amendment guarantees the right to a trial lawyer to every criminal defendant in a felony trial. Though everyone is entitled to counsel, far too often the attorneys they receive are ineffective, leading to wrongful convictions. 

In an effort to fix the problem, the Criminal Justice Section of the American Bar Association urged Congress to establish a federally funded Center for Indigent Defense Services. And lawyers and judges in the American Bar Association are working on a proposal called National Indigent Defense Reform in an attempt to return meaning to the promise of Gideon, according to The Atlantic.

In the end, 50 years after one of the most glorious chapters in the history of the Supreme Court, we tell ourselves that we are a nation of laws, and we praise ourselves for rulings like Gideon, and we extol the virtues of the Constitution in theory, but the truth is we are just lying to ourselves and each other when we pretend that there is equal justice in America. Either there is a right to counsel or there isn’t. And if there is such a right, we all have an obligation to ensure it is recognized — not just in the history books, and not just in a television movie, and not just in a dusty law book, but in the everyday lives of our fellow citizens.

Read the full article. 

Read more about how ineffective assistance has contributed to wrongful convictions.