Tag: wrongful convictions

Exonerated Missouri woman sues police for conspiracy and coverup that put her in prison for 43 years

Sandra Hemme’s federal lawsuit accuses St. Joseph Police of suppressing and destroying evidence that pointed to a fellow officer who was guilty of the 1980 murder. Before being freed last year, Hemme served the longest sentence of any wrongly convicted woman in American history.

Sandra Hemme, the Missouri woman who spent 43 years in prison for a murder she did not commit, has sued the city of St. Joseph and eight police officers in a 10-count federal lawsuit alleging malicious prosecution, a coerced confession and conspiracy.

“There was never any objective evidence tying Plaintiff (Hemme) to the crime,” the lawsuit alleges.

The lawsuit also points the finger at a former police officer, Michael Holman, as the killer of librarian Patricia Jeschke in 1980.

“To protect Holman, the Defendants concealed evidence of his guilt and chose not to follow the evidence leading to Holman,” according to the lawsuit. Holman died in 2015.

Hemme served the longest sentence of any wrongly convicted woman in American history, her lawyers have said. She was finally exonerated and freed last year after a lengthy legal battle that saw the Missouri Attorney General fighting to overturn her innocence ruling.

A year ago, in July 2024, Livingston County Circuit Court Judge Ryan Horsman overturned Hemme’s conviction — writing that she was “the victim of a manifest injustice.”

Missouri Attorney General Andrew Bailey battled all the way to the state Supreme Court to keep Hemme in prison. She won her final freedom after the Missouri Court of Appeals rejected all of Bailey’s arguments, and in March the Buchanan County prosecutor declined to refile charges.

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Court Overturns Douglass Mackey Meme Conviction

A federal appeals court has overturned the conviction of Douglass Mackey, the man prosecuted for posting satirical memes ahead of the 2016 presidential election.

The Second Circuit Court of Appeals ruled on July 9 that the government failed to prove Mackey knowingly participated in a conspiracy, a requirement under the statute used to charge him.

We obtained a copy of the ruling for you here.

Mackey had been found guilty in 2023 of violating 18 U.S.C. § 241, a law dating back to Reconstruction that punishes conspiracies to deprive individuals of their constitutional rights. Prosecutors claimed that Mackey’s memes, which joked that Hillary Clinton supporters could vote via text, were part of a coordinated scheme to suppress votes.

That case has now unraveled.

“The mere fact that Mackey posted the memes, even assuming that he did so with the intent to injure other citizens in the exercise of their right to vote, is not enough, standing alone, to prove a violation of Section 241,” wrote Chief Judge Debra Ann Livingston in the court’s opinion. Because Section 241 applies only to conspiracies involving “two or more persons,” the government had to prove that Mackey entered into an agreement with others, a threshold it did not meet.

Prosecutors attempted to tie Mackey to private Twitter message groups such as “War Room” and “Madman #2,” where users discussed political memes.

The court found no evidence that Mackey saw, let alone participated in, any of the conversations that allegedly formed the conspiracy. “This the government failed to do,” the panel wrote, noting that “Mackey did not send any messages in the War Room in the two weeks before he tweeted the text-to-vote memes.”

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Trump Vows To Probe Ashli Babbitt Homicide, Consider Comp Fund For Pardoned J6ers

President Trump on Tuesday vowed that he would bring new scrutiny to the Department of Justice’s handling of the killing of Ashli Babbitt by a Capitol police officer during the Jan 6, 2021 riot, and to explore the possibility of a compensation fund for the 1,500 Capitol riot defendants he pardoned.   

Trump’s promises came in a Roosevelt Room interview with Newsmax’s Greg Kelly. When Kelly asked Trump about the DOJ continuing to mount a defense against a $30 million wrongful death claim filed by Babbitt’s husband, Trump said he wasn’t aware of it but would look into the matter: 

“Well, I’ll look into that. I mean, you’re just telling me that for the first time, I haven’t heard that. I’m a big fan of Ashli Babbitt. And Ashli Babbitt was a really good person who was a big MAGA fan, Trump fan. And she was innocently standing there; they even say trying to sort of hold back the crowd. And a man did something to her that was unthinkable when he shot her. And I think it’s a disgrace. I’m going to look into that. I did not know that.”

Babbitt was shot and killed by US Capitol Police (USCP) Lieutenant Michael Byrd as she attempted to climb through a broken window that was part of an interior doorway close to the House chamber. Though the unarmed, 5’2″, 115-pound Babbitt posed no imminent threat of inflicting death or serious injury as she awkwardly navigated the narrow space — with a furniture barricade still ahead of her —  Boyd opted against using any type of nonlethal force, and instead shot her from an ambush position, killing her with a bullet that perforated her trachea and lung. 

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Virginia Prosecutors Fight to Uphold Life Sentence for Man Found Not Guilty

In 1998, someone shot and killed police officer Allen Gibson in the woods behind an apartment complex in the small town of Waverly, Virginia. Police arrested Terence Richardson and Ferrone Claiborne for Gibson’s murder days later—despite a lack of physical evidence linking them to the crime and the presence of another possible suspect. 

In 2001, a jury found them not guilty of murder. A judge sentenced them to life in prison anyway. 

Richardson and Claiborne have been fighting to prove their innocence ever since.

In February, the Virginia Supreme Court gave Richardson a chance to make his case by ordering a new hearing to examine potentially exculpatory evidence. Richardson’s legal team says this material was never shared with his original defense attorneys—a violation of a U.S. Supreme Court decision known as Brady v. Maryland. (Richardson’s case is following a separate procedure than Claiborne’s.)

The innocence claim centers around three pieces of evidence: an anonymous call to a police tip line identifying someone other than Richardson as a suspect, a photo lineup administered to a 9-year-old witness, in which she identified a suspect other than Richardson, and a statement made by her on the day of Gibson’s death in 1998 describing someone whose hairstyle did not match Richardson’s.

At the hearing in Sussex County Circuit Court this May, Richardson’s legal team set out to prove that this evidence could have changed the outcome of the case. But they were derailed by what Richardson’s attorneys have characterized as a deliberate effort by state prosecutors and federal law enforcement officials to undermine Richardson’s innocence claim.

“Terence and Ferrone are innocent,” Jarrett Adams, an attorney for both Richardson and Claiborne, told The Appeal. “They are not innocent by accident.”

For Richardson and Claiborne, the hearing was perhaps their best chance to bolster their innocence claims with recently unearthed evidence. But ultimately, the judge allowed only one item to be admitted as evidence before the Virginia Court of Appeals—the same court that had previously dismissed his case.  With Richardson’s case now once again set to go before the potentially unfriendly Appeals court, his legal team fears he faces an uphill battle to prove his innocence.

“We’re up against the impossible,” Adams said.

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Jamal Trulove Tells How He Was Framed with Murder and Kamala Harris Sat in Back of the Courtroom and Laughed

Jamal Trulove framed by police and convicted of murder in 2010. He was then sentenced to prison for 50 years and served six years before his conviction was overturned in 2014.

Recently, a video made the rounds of Jamal telling how Kamala Harris sat in the courtroom and laughed after he was sentenced to prison for 50 years. Jamal did not think it was funny.

Jamal Trulove: In 2008, I was framed for murder and wrongfully convicted by the office of Kamala Harris, sentenced 50 to life in prison. It took me five and a half years to ultimately get back into trial due to prosecutorial misconduct. And it took me another year to go to my second trial, to which I was vindicated by a jury of my peers. When I got convicted, Kamala Harris was in the courtroom when I got sentenced 50 to life in prison. Kamala Harris courtroom when I look back and I seen her, she was smiling, and she did that stupid ass laugh that she do right now. This sh*t ain’t funny.

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Hawaii Governor Signs Bill Creating Expungement Task Force That’s Expected To Consider Marijuana Conviction Relief

Hawaii’s governor has signed into law a bill to create a task force charged with crafting legislation that would expunge certain criminal records, likely including some past marijuana arrests and convictions.

Gov. Josh Green (D) signed the so-called Clean Slate Expungement Task Force bill on Tuesday, a day before a signature deadline for measures passed this session by lawmakers. The legislation does not explicitly mention cannabis, but marijuana-related offenses are widely expected to be included in the task force’s discussions, and organizations named as members of the new body have focused significantly on cannabis this session.

Reform advocates welcomed the news, saying that removing blemishes from peoples’ criminal records would help remove barriers to housing, education and employment.

“I believe in redemption. I believe in second chances,” Rep. David Tarnas (D), the bill sponsor, said at a press conference alongside the governor on Tuesday. “And in Hawaii, we have a system for record clearance and expungement, which is very challenging. There are tens of thousands of individuals who qualify to have their records expunged, and yet it is so difficult to do that. Very few people do it.”

The new law will “bring together people in a task force to figure out what is the best way for us to have a comprehensive framework for all clemency efforts in the state, including pardons, expungement and record sealing, so that we make it more accessible to people.”

Carrie Ann Shirota, policy director for ACLU of Hawai’i, told Marijuana Moment that the group strongly supports Clean Slate laws that expand expungement and record-sealing through the use of technology.

“SB 2706 creates an Expungement Task Force that brings us one step closer to ensuring that all people have access to opportunity,” she said. “Having a record should not be a barrier to helping individuals provide for themselves and their families, nor should it be a life sentence to poverty. At its heart, Clean Slate is about a shot at redemption and facilitating workforce development.”

Research shows that a year after record clearance, people are more likely to be employed and earn higher wages, Shirota added.

The new body will include state officials—including the attorney general, chief justice, public defender and some prosecutors—as well as representatives from various advocacy groups, including ACLU, the Last Prisoner Project (LPP), the Hawaii Innocence Project and others.

In a statement to Marijuana Moment, LPP said it’s “honored to be part of the expungement task force to ensure all Hawaiians with cannabis charges have their records expunged.”

“Our appointment to the Clean Slate task force will help ensure the state-initiated cannabis expungement bill signed by Governor Green is implemented with fidelity,” said LPP Policy Manager Adrian Rocha, “and can serve as the foundation for broader record relief moving forward.”

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MISSOURI’S ATTORNEY GENERAL IS WAGING WAR TO KEEP THE WRONGLY CONVICTED LOCKED UP

WEARING A CRISP gray suit, Christopher Dunn walked into the Division 18 courtroom just blocks west from the famed Gateway Arch in downtown St. Louis, Missouri, on May 21. He took his seat at a long table crowded with binders of legal exhibits and surrounded by a half-dozen lawyers working to free him from prison.

It was the same courthouse where Dunn, now 52, was convicted in July 1991 and sentenced to life in prison for the murder of 15-year-old Recco Rogers. According to the state, under the cover of darkness Dunn opened fire on Rogers and two other boys while they were sitting on the front steps of a friend’s home.

There was no physical evidence linking Dunn to the murder; he has always maintained his innocence and says that on the night of the shooting he was at home with family watching TV and talking to a friend on the phone until after midnight. The state’s case against Dunn was built solely on the testimony of the two boys sitting with Rogers: 12-year-old Michael Davis and 14-year-old DeMorris Stepp. During truncated police interviews, each boy named Dunn as the shooter. At Dunn’s trial, the prosecutor boldly leaned into the lack of physical evidence: The boys’ testimony was “all the evidence in the case,” he told the jury.

As such, when Davis and Stepp later recanted their stories about Dunn being the assailant, there was nothing left to prop up the prosecution’s case. Although the situation was about as straightforward as they come, thanks to quirks of Missouri law, Dunn found himself in a legal quagmire. He had no way to effectively challenge his conviction. And so it was — until 2021, when a new law offered prosecutors an avenue to overturn convictions they believe were wrongly obtained by their office. In February, Gabriel Gore, St. Louis’ appointed circuit attorney, asked a court to exonerate Dunn. “Both witnesses … now state that it was too dark to see any shooter on May 18, 1990,” Gore wrote in a motion to vacate the conviction. “The recantations alone are enough to show clear and convincing evidence of actual innocence.”

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Can This Woman Sue the Rogue Prosecutor Who Allegedly Helped Upend Her Life?

The job of the prosecutor is to hold the public accountable. But when the tables are turned—when the prosecutor is the one who allegedly flouted the law—it is, paradoxically, enormously difficult for victims to achieve recourse. Lawyers yesterday sparred at the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 5th Circuit over one such barrier preventing someone from suing a former assistant district attorney accused of misconduct so egregious that one judge on the 5th Circuit described it last year as “utterly bonkers.”

At the center of the case is Ralph Petty, whose yearslong career included work as both an assistant district attorney and a law clerk—at the same time, for the same judges. In practice, that means his arguments as a prosecutor were sometimes performance art, because, as a law clerk, he had the opportunity to draft the same rulings he sought in court. It doesn’t take a lawyer to deduce that the set-up presents troubling implications for due process.

One of Petty’s alleged victims, Erma Wilson, would like the opportunity to bring her civil suit against him before a jury. In 2001, she was convicted of cocaine possession after police found a bag of crack on the ground near where she and some friends were gathered. Law enforcement offered to let her off if she implicated the guilty party; she said she didn’t know.

Years later, that conviction continues to haunt her. Most notably, it doomed any chance of her fulfilling her lifelong dream of becoming a nurse, because Texas, where she lives, does not approve registered nursing licenses for people found guilty of drug-related crimes.

Wilson’s conviction coincided with the beginning of Petty’s dual-hat arrangement in Midland County, Texas. Though he was not the lead prosecutor on her case, she alleges he “communicated with and advised fellow prosecutors in the District Attorney’s Office” on her prosecution while simultaneously working for Judge John G. Hyde, who presided over her case, giving him “access to documents and information generally unavailable to prosecutors.” (Hyde died in 2012.)

“Further undermining confidence in Erma’s criminal proceedings, Petty and Judge Hyde engaged in ex parte communications concerning Erma’s case,” her lawsuit reads. “Consequential motions, such as Erma’s motion to suppress, were resolved in the prosecution’s favor throughout trial. And despite the weak evidence against her, Erma’s motion for a new trial was not granted. Any of these facts by itself undermines the integrity of Erma’s trial. Together, these facts eviscerate it.” 

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New York appeals court overturns Harvey Weinstein’s 2020 rape conviction from landmark #MeToo trial

New York’s highest court on Thursday overturned Harvey Weinstein’s 2020 rape conviction, finding the judge at the landmark #MeToo trial prejudiced the ex-movie mogul with “egregious” improper rulings, including a decision to let women testify about allegations that weren’t part of the case.

The state Court of Appeals ruling reopens a painful chapter in America’s reckoning with sexual misconduct by powerful figures — an era that began in 2017 with a flood of allegations against Weinstein. The court ordered a new trial. His accusers could again be forced to relive their traumas on the witness stand.

Weinstein, 72, has been serving a 23-year sentence in a New York prison following his conviction on charges of criminal sex act for forcibly performing oral sex on a TV and film production assistant in 2006 and rape in the third degree for an attack on an aspiring actress in 2013.

He will remain imprisoned because he was convicted in Los Angeles in 2022 of another rape and sentenced to 16 years in prison. Weinstein was acquitted in Los Angeles on charges involving one of the women who testified in New York.

Weinstein’s lawyers argued Judge James Burke’s rulings in favor of the prosecution turned the trial into “1-800-GET-HARVEY.”

The reversal of Weinstein’s conviction is the second major #MeToo setback in the last two years, after the U.S. Supreme Court refused to hear an appeal of a Pennsylvania court decision to throw out Bill Cosby’s sexual assault conviction.

Weinstein’s conviction stood for more than four years, heralded by activists and advocates as a milestone achievement, but dissected just as quickly by his lawyers and, later, the Court of Appeals when it heard arguments on the matter in February.

Allegations against Weinstein, the once powerful and feared studio boss behind such Oscar winners as “Pulp Fiction” and “Shakespeare in Love,” ushered in the #MeToo movement. Dozens of women came forward to accuse Weinstein, including famous actresses such as Ashley Judd and Uma Thurman. His New York trial drew intense publicity, with protesters chanting “rapist” outside the courthouse.

Weinstein is incarcerated in New York at the Mohawk Correctional Facility, about 100 miles (160 kilometers) northwest of Albany.

He maintains his innocence. He contends any sexual activity was consensual.

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Teacher sues after he’s convicted of putting ‘For Sale’ sign in truck window

A retired Pennsylvania teacher is suing his local government after he was convicted of a criminal charge for putting a “For Sale” sign in his truck window.

Will Cramer teamed up with the Institute for Justice last week to take legal action against the borough of Nazareth over its ordinance, claiming that it’s a violation of his First Amendment rights, according to the nonprofit law firm.

Cramer had put the sign in his 1987 Chevy Deluxe last October and received a ticket stating that parking a vehicle in public “for the purposes” of selling it was illegal.

“It made no sense to me that I could park my truck on the street legally, but as soon as I put a ‘For Sale’ sign in the window, it became illegal,” said Cramer, who was found guilty by a judge after trying to fight his ticket.

“This lawsuit is bigger than me, it’s about standing up for the free speech rights of everybody in Nazareth.” 

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