Tag: wrongful convictions

South LA Man Is 13th To Be Exonerated For Murder In LA County Since 2020

It took only a single eyewitness testimony to convince a jury to wrongfully convict Stephen Patterson to a 50-year life sentence for shooting and killing 16-year-old Yair Oliva in 2005. That witness was 200 yards away, inside her home in South Los Angeles and peering through closed blinds.

Other witnesses contradicted that testimony or could not identify Patterson, who was only 19 at the time. Investigators also ignored that the gun used in Oliva’s killing showed up at another crime scene six weeks later.

But on Wednesday, Patterson was declared innocent after spending nearly half his life behind bars. His exoneration marks the 13th under Los Angeles County District Attorney George Gascón’s tenure. According to his office, those 13 people collectively add up to nearly 300 years of wrongful incarceration.

Gascón is running for reelection and touting his work on criminal justice reform that his competitors have criticized as being soft on crime.

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Three Pennsylvania men who have spent decades in prison for rape and murder of elderly woman in her home have their convictions overturned

Three Pennsylvania men who were imprisoned for decades in the 1997 slaying of a 70-year-old woman – despite their DNA never matching that found at the scene – have had their convictions overturned by a judge.

The Delaware County judge threw out the convictions for Derrick Chappell – who was 15 when he was arrested – and first cousins Morton Johnson and Sam Grasty. The District Attorney is now reviewing the case to see if a new trial is necessary.  

Chappel, Johnson, and Grasty were each convicted in separate trials for the murder of Henrietta Nickens, a 70 year old woman who was brutally killed at her home in Chester, Pennsylvania, on October 10, 1997.

Nickens was savagely beaten and had had her underwear removed. Investigators found her home ransacked and blood on the walls and bedding. 

A mysterious green jacket, in the pocket of which was cocaine, was found on top of Nickens’ television set.

Investigators discovered semen in the woman’s rectum. They tested the semen and found that it didn’t belong to any of the three arrested individuals.

The prosecutors, who have been characterized as pugnacious, sought to separate the recovered semen from the crime. They affirmed that the semen might have originated from consensual intercourse and was unrelated to the murder. 

Nickens had been chronically ill and had no known sexual partners. 

The prosecution’s case against Chappel, Johnson, and Grastly hinged on the testimony of key witness Richard McElwee, who was 15 years old at the time of the crime.

McElwee testified that he functioned as a lookout while the three older boys pilfered Nickens of $30.

In exchange for his testimony, McElwee pled guilty to third-degree murder, as well as other charges. He was sentenced to serve six to 12 years in prison in 1999.

In 2000 and 2001, Chappel, Johnson, and Grasty were each convicted of second-degree murder, and they were sentenced to life in prison.

Over the course of their more than two decades-long prison stint, the three men have continued to protest their innocence.

Each of them filed pro se petitions in federal court over the years saying they were wrongly convicted, but their petitions were denied.

The fate of Chappel, Johnson, and Grasty drew the attention of many organizations dedicated to freeing wrongly convicted men and women.

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California woman’s 2001 conviction for murdering her husband is OVERTURNED after two decades in prison as evidence used against her is discredited

More than two decades ago, a California woman was convicted and sent to prison for 25 years to life for murdering her husband.

Jane Dorotik has always maintained that she did not kill her husband of 30 years, Bob Dorotik, and over the years she has filed many motions requesting new testing be done on the evidence used in her case.

Dorotik, now in her mid-70s, was finally able to get her message through to the courts that the evidence evaluated against her in 2001 needed further assessment.

During the summer of 2020, when jails were overcrowded and COVID-19 was a concern, Dorotik was temporarily and conditionally released from prison.

Her legal team hoped that release would become permanent pending a court overturning her jury’s verdict.

During a remote hearing, that is exactly what happened when, much to Dorotik’s surprise. The state requested that her murder conviction be overturned. The judge agreed to the ask.

But the good news was followed shortly by the San Diego County DA’s attempt to retry her. A judge allowed the retrial to proceed, but said some of the central pieces of evidence used against her 20 years ago would not be admissible.

Then, in May 2022, as jury selection was about to begin again, the deputy district attorney walked in and said the state no longer felt the evidence they had was ‘sufficient to show proof beyond a reasonable doubt and convince 12 members of the jury. So we are requesting that the court … dismiss the charges at this time.’

Dorotik was once again, unconditionally, a free woman. 

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PROSECUTORS BURIED EVIDENCE AND MISLED THE COURT. TEN YEARS LATER, THEY GOT A SLAP ON THE WRIST.

AFTER RULING THAT federal prosecutors withheld key evidence resulting in a defendant’s wrongful imprisonment, D.C.’s top court took nearly a decade to decide on an appropriate sanction. In December, after extensive hearings, the D.C. Court of Appeals gaveOpens in a new tab two prosecutors a year of probation plus a stern warning not to commit any further misconduct, or they would be suspended from practicing law for six months.

Both prosecutors, Mary Chris Dobbie and Reagan Taylor, still work for the Justice Department, according to media reportsOpens in a new tab and other records. One of their former supervisors, Jeffrey Ragsdale, currently leads the department’s Office of Professional Responsibility, which oversees investigations into alleged prosecutorial misconduct.

Under the landmark U.S. Supreme Court decision in Brady v. Maryland, prosecutors have a constitutional obligation to disclose exculpatory evidence to defense attorneys. At the trial for two defendants accused of assaulting an officer during a jailhouse brawl, Dobbie and Taylor withheld unequivocal evidence that their lead witness, a corrections officer, had a history of filing false reports. Based on the officer’s testimony, one defendant was imprisoned for more than four years before his conviction was reversed.

In 2021, the D.C. Board on Professional Responsibility, a disciplinary panel appointed by the appeals court, unanimously recommendedOpens in a new tab a six-month suspension for Dobbie and Taylor. But in a divided opinion, the court ratcheted down the sanction to probation based on “one overriding mitigating circumstance”: the “deficient conduct” of Ragsdale and another supervisor, John Roth, who later served as inspector general for the Department of Homeland Security. There were no ethics charges or misconduct findings for either supervisor.

Reached by phone, Roth declined to comment, saying that he was not aware of the decision. Attorneys for Dobbie and Taylor did not respond to multiple requests for comment, nor did Ragsdale. The Justice Department also failed to respond.

The dissenting judge, Joshua Deahl, argued that Dobbie and Taylor “should face real consequences for their actions.”

“The board comes to us — despite innumerable favorable inferences drawn in respondents’ favor — with the rare recommendation of an actual suspension that at least comes close to reflecting the gravity of this serious prosecutorial misconduct,” Deahl wrote. “Yet this court balks.”

Deahl noted a dissonance between how courts treat prosecutors’ ethical violations versus misconduct by private attorneys, who are routinely disbarred or suspended for actions like dipping into client funds.

“That is too harsh a result, the majority concludes, when prosecutors intentionally suppress evidence in violation of the Constitution and thereby secure felony convictions resulting in years of unjust imprisonment,” wrote Deahl, who was appointed by President Donald Trump in 2019 and served as a public defender before joining the bench.

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LA Innocence Project took wife-killer Scott Peterson’s case because of key evidence including blood spatter that might have exonerated him but was withheld from trial and other suspects ‘who were were overlooked’

The Los Angeles Innocence Project decided to take Scott Peterson’s case with a view to revisiting previously ‘withheld’ evidence that may exonerate him, court records reveal. 

The organization – which is separate from the more acclaimed Innocence Project – was contacted by Peterson’s team in March last year. 

Its attorneys have not publicly discussed the case nor vouched for Peterson’s absolute innocence.

A spokesman today told DailyMail.com: ‘The Los Angeles Innocence Project (LAIP) represents Scott Peterson and is investigating his claim of actual innocence. 

‘We have no further comment at this time.’ 

Paperwork submitted to the Superior Court of California in San Mateo however highlights why they think he may have a shot at clearing his name. 

Lawyers point to ‘blood spatter’ in the home where Peterson is accused of murdering his pregnant wife Laci, but insist it does not belong to him. 

They also say no other suspects were considered. 

Laci was 27-years-old and eight months pregnant when she disappeared on Christmas Eve, 2002. 

Peterson led the search for his wife but was arrested months later when her body later washed up in the San Francisco shoreline in 2003.

He has always claimed that she was killed by a panicked burglar after catching them ransacking the couple’s home. 

A jury however convicted him of the killing, deciding he was motivated by an affair he was having at the time with Amber Frey, a 20-year-old massage therapist. 

Peterson was sentenced to death, but the decision was overturned in 2020 by the California Supreme Court, citing potential juror bias that prosecutors failed to account for. 

In December 2022, Peterson’s request for a new trial was rejected. 

Now, the L.A. Innocence Project is spearheading his case.  

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CRIME SCENE DNA DIDN’T MATCH MARCELLUS WILLIAMS. MISSOURI MAY FAST-TRACK HIS EXECUTION ANYWAY.

FELICIA ANNE GAYLE PICUS was found dead in her home, the victim of a vicious murder that devastated her family and rattled her neighbors in the gated community of University City, Missouri, just outside St. Louis. Police suspected a burglary gone wrong. The scene was replete with forensic evidence: There were bloody footprints and fingerprints, and the murder weapon — a kitchen knife used to stab Picus — was left lodged in her neck.

That detail caught the medical examiner’s attention. Weeks earlier, another woman had been stabbed to death just a couple of miles away, and the weapon was left in the victim’s body. Days after Picus’s murder, the University City police chief told the St. Louis Post-Dispatch that investigators had identified a “prime suspect,” someone they said had been spotted in the area “in recent weeks,” whom they believed had killed before.

But whatever became of that lead is unclear. After Picus’s family posted a $10,000 reward for information leading to the arrest and conviction of her killer, a jailhouse informant named Henry Cole came forward with a story about how his former cellmate, Marcellus Williams, had confessed to murdering Picus. Soon, police secured a second informant: Laura Asaro, Williams’s former girlfriend, also told the cops that Williams was responsible for the killing. There were reasons to be wary of their stories. Both informants were facing prison time for unrelated crimes and stood to benefit. Many of the details they offered shifted over the course of questioning, while others did not match the crime. Nonetheless, Williams was charged with Picus’s murder, convicted, and sentenced to death.

Questions about the investigation and Williams’s guilt have only mounted in the years since the August 1998 crime. DNA testing on the murder weapon done years after his conviction revealed a partial male profile that could not have come from Williams. On the eve of Williams’s scheduled execution in 2017, then-Missouri Gov. Eric Greitens intervened. He issued an executive order that triggered a rarely used provision of Missouri law, empaneling a board to review the evidence, including DNA, that jurors never heard about at trial.

While that review was ongoing for most of the last six years, the board never submitted a final report or recommendation to the governor, as the law requires. Instead, last June, Gov. Mike Parson announced that he was rescinding his predecessor’s order, effectively dissolving the panel that had been reinvestigating the case.

The question now is whether Missouri law allows the governor to simply disappear an ongoing investigation. Because the law has so rarely been used, its contours have never been fully litigated, prompting the Midwest Innocence Project, which represents Williams, to file a civil lawsuit seeking to invalidate Parson’s order. The state’s attorney general balked, arguing that Williams was trying to usurp the governor’s independent clemency powers. The AG has asked the Missouri Supreme Court to toss the lawsuit — and clear the way for Williams’s execution.

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Chicago man has murder conviction overturned after nine years behind bars when key witness who put him away admitted that he is BLIND

A Chicago man spent close to a decade behind bars for murder – thanks to the eyewitness testimony of a witness who’s since admitted to being blind.  

Darien Harris was locked up in 2011 aged 18, just a week before he graduated high school, and accused of shooting dead a man at a Chicago petrol station.

He now has a chance at freedom after star witness Dexter Saffold was revealed to be legally blind, and will get a new trial with his conviction vacated. 

Harris, now 30, was jailed for 76 years for the murder of Rondell Moore after a trial in 2014 despite there being no physical evidence tying him to the crime.

All prosecutors had was Saffold’s claim that Harris was the man seen in CCTV from the BP station in South Side Chicago, who then fired the fatal shots off-camera.

‘I was trying to tell the people all this time he’s lying… and here’s what came about. He was really lying,’ Harris told CBS.

Saffold was asked about his eyesight during the trial and told the court he had no vision problems and could see clearly.

But in a 2019 CBS interview he admitted he was legally blind, though still insisted he saw Harris pull the trigger.

‘I got glaucoma due to an eye disease,’ he said.

‘They didn’t do anything wrong, because they didn’t know. I didn’t have to tell nobody about my medical history.’ 

Saffold also filed a federal disability lawsuit in 2003 in which two doctors confirmed he was legally blind.

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Wrongfully convicted Philadelphia man released from prison after 27 years, prosecutors say

A Philadelphia man who has been incarcerated for nearly three decades was released from prison Thursday after prosecutors now say he was wrongfully convicted.

Eddie Ramirez, 47, has spent the last 27 years behind bars after he was convicted of killing Joyce Dennis, a laundromat employee who was found brutally beaten to death at work after a robbery in 1995.

The district attorney’s office says Ramirez was convicted of a crime despite no physical evidence tying him to the case. After reviewing the case, prosecutors argued for all charges against Ramirez to be vacated, which a judge granted Thursday morning in front of a packed courtroom that broke out in cheers following the announcement.

“Oh my God, I feel my heart’s going to come out and I feel I got my baby coming back home,” said Maria Ramirez, Eddie’s mom.

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Jabar Walker Exonerated After 25 Years of Wrongful Conviction in Manhattan Double Homicide

Jabar Walker was exonerated today in Manhattan after more than a quarter century of wrongful conviction and incarceration for a double homicide he did not commit. The exoneration came after a joint reinvestigation by the Innocence Project and Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg’s Post-Conviction Justice Unit revealed new evidence of Mr. Walker’s innocence.

Mr. Walker was convicted in the 1995 murders of Ismael De La Cruz and William Santana Guzman on 148th Street in Manhattan, following an investigation by officers from New York Police Department’s 30th Precinct. The precinct was known at the time as the “Dirty 30” due to widespread corruption amongst its officers.  

Misconduct in the precinct was so rampant that an investigation by the Mollen Commission, formed by New York City to investigate allegations of NYPD corruption, resulted in the arrest of 33 officers  — a staggering one-sixth of the precinct — in the 1990s. The Mollen Commission found that officers in the “Dirty 30” routinely engaged in perjury, record falsification, thefts during searches and seizures, and distribution of narcotics.

The Innocence Project and Post-Conviction Justice Unit’s joint re-investigation revealed police from the precinct pressured a witness, John Mobley, to incriminate Mr. Walker by falsely saying that Mr. Walker had admitted to the crime. Police questioned Mr. Mobley, showing him photos of other crime scenes and implied that they would charge him with those homicides if he did not cooperate. On the day of Mr. Walker’s sentencing in 1998, Mr. Mobley went to Mr. Walker’s attorney’s office seeking to recant that testimony — and has recanted his testimony under oath a number of times since. 

Further new evidence of Mr. Walker’s innocence includes the fact that the prosecution’s sole eyewitness to identify Mr. Walker as the assailant, Vanessa Vigo, misidentified another innocent man in a different neighborhood shooting and received monetary benefits in connection with her testimony against Mr. Walker. Ms. Vigo’s account of the shooting was riddled with inconsistencies and inaccuracies, and key facts in her account changed from the time of her first conversation with police to the trial. Another eyewitness to the shooting who was familiar with Mr. Walker is adamant that he is not the person he saw committing the crime. 

“We thank DA Bragg’s Post-Conviction Justice Unit for a truly collaborative and transparent joint-reinvestigation, which stands as a model for how post-conviction innocence claims can and should be investigated in a non-adversarial process. The joint re-investigation, guided by a commitment to transparency and the ascertainment of truth, revealed a myriad of ways where the system failed Mr. Walker, and uncovered pervasive misconduct that led to his wrongful conviction and new evidence of what he has stated all along — he is innocent. He has now spent more than half of his life in prison for a crime he did not do,” said Vanessa Potkin, Innocence Project’s director of special litigation.

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Wisconsin Governor Grants Dozens Of Marijuana Pardons As Advocates Pressure GOP Leaders To Advance Legalization

The governor of Wisconsin has granted another round of pardons, including dozens issued for people with prior marijuana convictions.

As Democratic lawmakers in the state continue to push for legalization amid opposition by GOP legislative leaders, Gov. Tony Evers (D) announced on Tuesday that he’s exercised his constitutional authority to provide relief to 82 more people, raising the total number of pardons under his administration to 1,111.

About one-third of the latest pardons were granted to people who had marijuana possession, cultivation or sales convictions on their records, with the majority of the cannabis cases related to simple possession. Another third of the overall grants of clemency went to people with other drug convictions.

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