tagged w/ Innocence Project
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This is Carlos De Luna. It is pretty universally accepted that he was a innocent man. He was executed in Texas in 1989. How do we say we are sorry to a dead man? He is just one of many people who have been executed to later be found to be innocent. It's time that we as a society stop this insanity. At least now, Illinois has.
Gov. Quinn of Illinois says --
“Since our experience has shown that there is no way to design a perfect death penalty system, free from the numerous flaws that can lead to wrongful convictions or discriminatory treatment, I have concluded that the proper course of action is to abolish it.”
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/03/10/us/10illinois.html?_r=1&smid=tw-nytimes&seid=auto
To learn more about the De Luna case see IFC's "At the Death House Door"--
"At the Death House Door is a personal intimate look at the death penalty in the state of Texas through the eyes of Pastor Carroll Pickett, who served 15 years as the death house chaplain to the infamous "Walls" prison unit in Huntsville. During Pickett's remarkable career journey, he presided over 95 executions, including the world's first lethal injection. After each execution, Pickett recorded an audiotape account of his trip to the death chamber."
http://www.ifc.com/atthedeathhousedoor/about-the-show.php
http://www.horizontalimage.net/wp-content/uploads/2011/02/Carlos-De-Luna.jpgThis is Carlos De Luna. It is pretty universally accepted that he was a innocent man.... more
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Houston Man To Be Declared Innocent After Serving 30 Years For a Dallas Rape and Robbery He Didn’t Commit
[Print Version]
Innocence Project Urges State to Pass Legislation that Would Help Prevent Misidentification
UPDATE: January 4, 2011 – A Texas judge this morning declared Cornelius Dupree an innocent man, clearing him more than 30 years after he was wrongfully convicted. Read more about today’s hearing on the Innocence Blog and get the details on Dupree’s case below.
(DALLAS, TX; Monday, January 3, 2011) With the consent of the District Attorney’s Office, a Dallas County judge is expected to vacate the rape and robbery conviction of Cornelius Dupree, Jr. on Tuesday, January 4, and declare him an innocent man after he served 30 years for crimes he didn’t commit. DNA tests requested by the Innocence Project and pursued by the Dallas District Attorney’s Conviction Integrity Unit proved that he could not have been involved in the crime. Dupree served more time in prison than any other person in Texas who was later cleared through DNA testing. The hearing will take place on Tuesday, January 4, 2011, at 9:00 a.m. CST in Criminal District Court 2 before Judge Don Adams.
“Cornelius Dupree spent the prime of his life behind bars because of mistaken identification that probably would have been avoided if the best practices now used in Dallas had been employed,” said Barry Scheck, Co-Director of the Innocence Project, which is affiliated with Cardozo School of Law. “Yet most counties in Texas do not have these best practices in place. This must be remedied in the next legislative session by the adoption of an eyewitness identification reform bill that had the votes needed for passage last session but not enough time to get enacted. Let us never forget that, as in the heartbreaking case of Cornelius Dupree, a staggering 75% of wrongful convictions of people later cleared by DNA evidence resulted from misidentifications.”
On November 23, 1979, two men approached a 26-year-old female and her male friend in the parking lot of a drive-in grocery and forced them into the male victim’s car at gunpoint. The male victim was forced to drive them in his car, during which time the perpetrators robbed both victims of their money and personal property. The perpetrators forced the male to pull over at a highway exit and ordered him out of the vehicle. They continued on to a nearby park where both perpetrators raped the victim.
On December 1, 1979, Dupree, 19, and a friend named Anthony Massingill were on their way to a party when they were stopped and frisked approximately two miles from the drive-in grocery where the crime began. Police recovered a handgun from Massingill and placed the two men under arrest. The following day, the female victim selected Dupree’s and Massingill’s photographs from a photo array. The male victim, however, was unable to identify either defendant in the same photo array. At the identification hearing and trial, which took place approximately four months after the attack, both victims identified Dupree and Massingill in court as their attackers. During the identification hearing, however, the female victim repeatedly misidentified a photo of Massingill as Dupree before finally identifying it as Dupree’s photograph. The victims are both white and both Dupree and Massingill are black.
Throughout the trial and since, Dupree has maintained his innocence. His defense at trial was misidentification. However, he and Massingill were both found guilty of aggravated robbery with a deadly weapon on April 3, 1980. Dupree was sentenced to 75 years in prison. The prosecutors ultimately chose not to pursue the rape charges because a conviction would not have resulted in additional jail time. Dupree appealed his conviction several times, but these efforts were unsuccessful.
He eventually sought the help of the Innocence Project, which requested that the Dallas Country District Attorney’s Office initiate a search for the physical evidence in Dupree’s case. On July 6, 2007, the Innocence Project learned that pubic hair combings and cuttings that were taken from the female victim during the female victim’s medical examination immediately following the rape were available. With the state’s consent, the Innocence Project conducted DNA testing of the evidence, which found the presence of sperm from two males that did not match the DNA of either Dupree or Massingill. The DA’s office agrees with the Innocence Project that the DNA test results establish that Dupree and Massingill are actually innocent of the robbery and is fully supporting the application for habeas corpus relief in court.
Massingill, who is represented by the Texas Wesleyan Innocence Project, will not be participating in tomorrow’s hearing but is expected to be declared innocent at a later date. At the same time Massingill was misidentified in the 1979 rape and robbery for which DNA has now proven his and Dupree’s innocence, he was also charged with and convicted of another rape for which he remains incarcerated. Massingill also maintains his innocence of the second crime, in which DNA testing is scheduled to begin shortly.
“Mistaken identification has always plagued the criminal justice system, but great strides have been made in the last three decades to understand the problem and come up with fixes like those being considered by the state Legislature that help minimize wrongful convictions,” said Nina Morrison, Senior Staff Attorney at the Innocence Project. “We hope state lawmakers take note of the terrible miscarriage of justice suffered by Cornelius. When the wrong person is convicted of a crime, the real perpetrator goes free, harming everyone.”
SB 121, authored by Sen. Ellis, and HB 215, authored by Rep. Gallego, would require all law enforcement agencies to adopt written policies for identification procedures, including lineups and photo arrays such as the one used in Dupree’s case. These procedures must be based on scientific research on eyewitness memory to increase accuracy and reliability and must include instructions to witnesses, documentation and preservation of witness statements and identification procedures as well as procedures for assigning lineup and photo array administrators to prevent opportunities to influence the witness.
After serving 30 years of his 75-year sentence, Dupree was released from prison on July 22, 2010, and placed on parole. After initial DNA testing completed on July 30, 2010 - less than two weeks after his release - indicated he was likely innocent of the rape and robbery, the District Attorney’s Office agreed not to oppose a request by the Innocence Project made to the Board of Pardons and Paroles that Dupree should no longer have to comply with several conditions placed on his parole, including registering and participating in therapy for sex offenders. That request was granted by the Board in October. Additional testing completed in December confirmed that Dupree and Massingill were wrongly convicted.
Dupree is represented by Innocence Project attorneys Scheck and Morrison as well as Robert C. Hinton of Dallas. He is pictured above with his wife Selma Perkins Dupree. The couple was married shortly after Dupree’s release in 2010.Houston Man To Be Declared Innocent After Serving 30 Years For a Dallas Rape and... more
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Man wrongfully imprisoned for decades happy to start relearning life
By Rich Phillips, CNN
May 24, 2010 8:43 p.m. EDT
Tampa, Florida (CNN) -- Meeting 54-year-old James Bain, the one thing that stands out is that the smile never seems to leave his face. He appears happy and positive, and the bitterness that might be buried inside a man who was wrongly sent to prison for 35 years is nowhere to be found.
"I kind of see myself as a man of God and being like Joseph," he said.
"In a sense, I feel like a bear, coming out of hibernation. Like, they come out to eat, mine would be coming out to enjoy what I have missed."
Bain has missed a lot. His life was returned to him and his family in December, when a Florida judge freed him after DNA testing proved he did not kidnap and rape a 9-year-old boy in 1974 in Lake Wales, Florida.
With the help of the Innocence Project, a national public policy organization dedicated to exonerating wrongfully convicted people through DNA tests, Bain left a Florida courtroom and entered a world he had left a lifetime ago. He is now on the outside, in a world that has changed technologically and socially, and one in which he must now learn how to live -- again.
"I've been planning on going back to school, and getting ready to take my driving test again, and hoping to get a motorcycle license," Bain said.
In the backyard of his mother's home in Tampa, Florida, Bain said that he'd like to tour the country on his motorcycle. CNN spoke with him amidst grapefruit and orange trees that weren't even planted when he went to prison so many years ago.
"You spend 35 years in prison, and just the little things, like a grapefruit tree or an orange tree ... those had vanished for me," he said. "I never thought I'd get a chance to see another one of these."
The past six months have been a whirlwind, and Bain has become a celebrity. He was brought to Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, by the Martin Luther King Jr. Association for Nonviolence to ring the Liberty Bell on Martin Luther King day.
When it was revealed that his favorite movie was "Titanic," the owners of the Orlando, Florida, exhibit "Titanic -- the Experience" invited him and his family to spend the day at the site, where characters from the movie tell the story of the sunken vessel.
Noting the movie symbolized hope and strength for him while in prison, Bain said the film sends chills through his body.
"To me, it means love and care for what you feel about other persons, like my sisters and mother. I think about that key word from 'Titanic,' 'Don't ever let go,' " Bain said.
Bain was invited to Orlando by Lowell Lytle, the man who portrays the Titanic's captain, Edward Smith. Lytle was touched by the torment James experienced while wrongly imprisoned.
"It just hit me how horrible that must have been. That man's youth was taken away from him," Lytle said. "I thought, I need to do something to help this man. If I can bring a smile to his face ... to be able to take him through this exhibit here, and take him through an experience he will remember forever, that was fun for me."
During the past six months, Bain also has spoken to church groups and organizations.
"I try to show whoever I'm speaking to about choices. That's my key word. Choice. Only you can make it because you have to live with it," he said.
"My choice was snatched. ... It was taken from me. They didn't leave me no alternative. It's like the old saying, the right place at the wrong time."
But Bain insists that he's not bitter. He said he believes he's returned to a better society -- a better country than the one he left in 1974. He points to the fact that an African-American was elected president.
"I saw a big difference when the president changed, which I never dreamed would happen," he said. "To see that change, that goes to show me, now, that there's a lot of good that we've done in this country."
Bain has been living with his mother in Tampa. He's been paid to speak in a couple of places, money that will help tide him over until his big payday. He and his attorneys have filed with the state of Florida for the restitution that Bain is entitled to -- $50,000 for every year he spent behind bars, for a total of $1.75 million. That's a lot of money to most of us, but not nearly enough to make up for 35 years, Bain said.
"Not even if they gave me $100 million," he said. "Even if they gave me that, it still wouldn't replace what I lost."
He said it's the money that's keeping him on his guard -- and is one reason why he doesn't yet have a girlfriend.
"I just don't want no woman to want me for my money, to be honest with you," he said. "... You don't know what they have planned."Man wrongfully imprisoned for decades happy to start relearning life
By Rich... more
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A recent article in the New York Times asks a question often heard by the Innocence Project: How many people convicted in the United States are innocent?
Observers from across the criminal justice system have weighed in.
Samuel Gross, a law professor at the University of Michigan, has found the rate of wrongful conviction in death row cases to be somewhere between 2.3 and 5 percent.
A recent review of biological evidence in 31 randomly chosen Virginia cases led to DNA testing that could yield results in 22 cases, two of which resulted in exonerations –- a small sample size but an indicator that the rate could be as high as 9 percent.
A couple of years ago, Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia cited questionable and discredited calculations from Oregon Prosecutor Joshua Marquis (who divided the number of DNA exonerations by the total number of felony convictions) to make his claim that the wrongful conviction rate is .027 percent. As Gross points in a recent law review article: "By this logic, we could estimate the proportion of baseball players who’ve used steroids by dividing the number of major league players who've been caught by the total of all baseball players at all levels: major league, minor league, semipro, college and Little League -- and maybe throwing in football and basketball players as well."
The Times article notes that while there is disagreement about which calculations might help suggest the magnitude of the problem, there is a consensus that nobody really knows how many innocent people are in prison –- and we may never know.
The Innocence Project has always said that DNA exonerations are just the tip of the iceberg, since only 5-10% of all criminal cases involve biological evidence that can be subjected to DNA testing (and even in those cases, the evidence is often lost, destroyed or too degraded to yield results in DNA testing). But the 215 wrongful convictions overturned to date by DNA testing illustrate the broader causes of wrongful conviction and show the need for reforms that can prevent injustice. As the Times article says:
"… A few general lessons can be drawn nonetheless. Black men are more likely to be falsely convicted of rape than are white men, particularly if the victim is white. Juveniles are more likely to confess falsely to murder. Exonerated defendants are less likely to have serious criminal records. People who maintain their innocence are more likely to be innocent. The longer it takes to solve a crime, the more likely the defendant is not guilty."
Read the Times article at the link:A recent article in the New York Times asks a question often heard by the Innocence... more
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"two Dallas men serving life sentences for a 1997 murder case will be freed after another man confessed"."two Dallas men serving life sentences for a 1997 murder case will be freed after... more
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execution of man who 'may have been innocent' causes another Governor, formerly a "strong supporter of capital punishment" to reconsider.execution of man who 'may have been innocent' causes another Governor,... more
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"denying ability to prove innocence violates fundamental rights; many sign as part
of plea-bargain for lighter sentence""denying ability to prove innocence violates fundamental rights; many sign as... more
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