Addressing the Impact of Wrongful Convictions on Crime Victims. We need to better understand how wrongful convictions affect the original crime victims and improve systemic support available to them.
When a wrongfully convicted individual is exonerated, the original crime victim may experience feelings of guilt, fear, helplessness, devastation and depression. For some victims, the impact of the wrongful conviction may be comparable to — or even worse than — that of their original victimization. These are the findings of an NIJ-funded study examining how wrongful convictions affect the original crime victims, an area in which no prior empirical research had been conducted. Researchers from ICF International conducted in-depth studies to identify the shared experiences and service needs of the original crime victims in 11 cases of wrongful conviction.
The study found that wrongful convictions have a significant impact on the original crime victims and exposed a lack of services available to them. A Closer Look at the Cases* For the First Time Ever, a Prosecutor Will Go to Jail for Wrongfully Convicti... Today in Texas, former prosecutor and judge Ken Anderson pled guilty to intentionally failing to disclose evidence in a case that sent an innocent man, Michael Morton, to prison for the murder of his wife.
When trying the case as a prosecutor, Anderson possessed evidence that may have cleared Morton, including statements from the crime's only eyewitness that Morton wasn't the culprit. Anderson sat on this evidence, and then watched Morton get convicted. While Morton remained in prison for the next 25 years, Anderson's career flourished, and he eventually became a judge. At the Innocence Network — Innocence Network. Amanda Knox, Barry Scheck at Portland Innocence Network conference. Hundreds of people who champion the causes of wrongly convicted prisoners opened a weekend conference in Portland on Friday, a who's who of legal minds including Innocence Project co-founder Barry Scheck (one of O.J.
Simpson's lawyers). Attendees included Amanda Knox (convicted and acquitted of murder after four years in an Italian prison); Steven T. Wax (Oregon's retiring federal public defender, soon to be director of the fledgling Oregon Innocence Project), and Portland Police Chief Mike Reese.
Is DNA analysis stuck in the past? A few weeks ago, the Innocence Project of New York (IP) announced that it had helped to release another innocent person from prison.
This time it was Gerard Richardson. As The Verge outlined in September, Richardson was convicted of murdering a New Jersey woman in 1994 after a forensic odontologist concluded that the shape of Richardson’s jaw and the orientation of his teeth matched a bite mark on the murdered woman’s back. After years of legal wrangling, IP was finally allowed to conduct a DNA test to double-check the odontologist’s conclusions. Their goal: to determine whether saliva swabbed from the bite mark in 1994 matched Richardson’s genetic makeup. It didn’t. Know the Cases: Browse Profiles:Kenny Waters. Kenny Waters served 18 years in prison for murder he didn’t commit before DNA testing proved his innocence.
His sister, Betty Anne Waters, put herself through college and law school in order to help with her brother’s case. She worked with the Innocence Project to bring about his exoneration in 2001. Sadly, Waters passed away six months after his release. Former Williamson County Prosecutor Ken Anderson Enters Plea to Contempt for Misconduct in Michael Morton’s Wrongful Murder Conviction. Appeal court referral is a welcome boost for university Innocence Projects. The Criminal Cases Review Commission (CCRC) referred the case of Dwaine George to the court of appeal on Friday.
Daniel Dale died almost instantly as he ran away from a shooting in the Miles Platting area of Manchester in July 2001. George, then 18 years old, was sentenced to life in prison for the murder after a jury at Preston Crown Court found him guilty. He pleaded not guilty. A few weeks ago George, now 29, was released from prison on life licence, having studied hard and been awarded a first class social sciences degree. Diary of UK Innocence Project 6: Not expecting the unexpected - The Justice Gap. We have just received news that has come as a shock, but for the right reasons.
Science Needed To Help Free Innocent Prisoners. Lee Rannals for redOrbit.com – Your Universe Online Thousands of convicted inmates are sitting in a prison, including dozens on death row, that are innocent, but one project is collaborating with the American Chemical Society (ACS) to try and keep forensic experts accountable to science.
Forensic scientists, attorneys and others that are a part of The Innocence Project put out a call to scientists at the 244th National Meeting & Exposition of the American Chemical Society to get involved in trying to exonerate convicted people in the prison system. In recent years, forensic scientists have come under scrutiny, particularly after being called out by the National Academy of Sciences.
Dr. Frederic Whitehurst, an FBI supervisory agent who works in the agency’s crime laboratory, said “we are looking at a social problem, not a science problem,” during a press conference attended by redOrbit at the ACS event. Texas Death Penalty System Falls Short. Texas has improved its criminal justice system following dozens of exonerations in recent years, but a new study the American Bar Association will release Wednesday finds that the death penalty system here still falls far short when it comes to fairness and eliminating the risk of executing the innocent.
“In many areas, Texas appears out of step with better practices implemented in other capital jurisdictions, fails to rely upon scientifically reliable methods and processes in the administration of the death penalty and provides the public with inadequate information to understand and evaluate capital punishment in the state,” the report says. The report, which outlines a host of recommendations to improve the criminal justice system, is part of the bar association’s national project examining the implementation of the death penalty in states.
While it praises Texas for recent improvements intended to increase fairness, the report says much work remains. Court employee fired for assisting wrongfully convicted man. A Kansas City man freed from prison three decades after being wrongfully convicted of rape considers Sharon Snyder his “angel” for giving him a public document that showed him how to properly seek DNA tests.
A Jackson County Circuit judge considers the 34-year court employee an insubordinate for offering legal advice and being too chatty about courthouse matters. Sharon Snyder, a 70-year-old great-grandmother who was fired nine months before she was scheduled to retire, sees herself somewhere in the middle and insists she would provide the same help if she had a chance to do it again. Robert Nelson, 49, was convicted in 1984 of a Kansas City rape that he insisted he didn’t commit and sentenced to 50 years for forcible rape, five years for forcible sodomy and 15 years for first-degree robbery.
The judge ordered the sentence to start after he finished serving time for robbery convictions in two unrelated cases prior to the rape conviction. Hallam's case will send shockwaves through criminal justice system. "I will not have my courtroom turned into a circus," Lady Justice Hallett warned family and supporters in a standing room-only courtroom at the Royal Courts of Justice on Wednesday. Family and friends had turned out in force to support Sam Hallam, who was 18 when he was sentenced to life imprisonment in 2005 for killing trainee chef Essayas Kassahun, 21, in a gang attack.
Hallam has always protested his innocence. After lunch, the prosecution barrister announced that "the application was not going to be opposed". There was stunned silence followed by uproar as supporters digested that Hallam - jailed a teenager and now a 25 year old man - would soon be free. Hallett kindly asked Hallam whether he understood what was happening, why the hearing needed to continue, and asking if he was OK to carry on. Innocent man, jailed for 20 years, suing forensic experts. Bennie Starks was released from prison in 2006, after being locked up for 20 years for a crime he never committed.
He is now suing the forensic experts who falsely testified against him in a case of sexual assault. Although Starks’ charges were dismissed, the 53-year-old man will never regain his lost years. In 1986, he was found guilty of assaulting and raping a 69-year-old woman from Waukegan, Ill., and sentenced to 60 years in prison. Government witnesses, two dentists and a forensic technician testified against him. The rape victim also identified him in a photo line-up, but Starks believes two police officers encouraged the woman to accuse him. Dr. Addressing wrongful conviction and actual innocence issues around the globe. Innocence Network – UK. The High Costs of Wrongful Convictions. Wrongful convictions of men and women for violent crimes in Illinois have cost taxpayers $214 million and have imprisoned innocent people for 926 years, according to a seven-month investigation by the Better Government Association and the Center on Wrongful Convictions.
The joint investigation, which tracked exonerations from 1989 through 2010, also determined that while 85 people were wrongfully incarcerated, the actual perpetrators were on a collective crime spree that included 14 murders, 11 sexual assaults, 10 kidnappings and at least 62 other felonies. "I am astounded," said former U.S. Attorney Thomas Sullivan, who chaired the Capital Punishment Reform Committee established by the Illinois General Assembly. Report of the Advisory Committee on Wrongful Convictions 2011. Innocence Project starts in South Africa.
Calculating Bad Math’s Contribution to Wrongful Conviction. BLADEN COUNTY: Evidence stored away may prove Joseph Sledges innocence. BLADEN COUNTY — As Joseph Sledge pleaded for his freedom this year, sheriff’s deputies and prosecutors said whatever evidence they had from the 1976 double murder Sledge swore he didn’t do had been lost or destroyed. In August, stored in lockers in the Bladen County Sheriff’s office, investigators with the N.C.
Wrongful Conviction Infographic - Forensic Nexus. This is a popular question that is surfacing in discussions after the verdict of the Casey Anthony trial. The problem is that too often people have been found to be wrongfully convicted, and served lengthy sentences only to be exonerated by DNA evidence many years later. Eyewitness misidentification, invalidated and improper forensic science, false confessions/admissions, government misconduct, informants/snitches and bad lawyering are all of the leading causes of wrongful convictions in the United States. Reprieve. Indian faces death for rape charge in Abu Dhabi. On November 11, Ezhur Kalarikkal Gangadharan will appeal against his death sentence in a court in Abu Dhabi. Protests in UK in support of Indian death row convict in UAE.