Tag: wrongful convictions

Man Wrongfully Convicted of NYC Subway Stabbing in 1990 to be Compensated $18 Million

A man who was wrongfully convicted of fatally stabbing a tourist at a New York City subway in 1990 will be compensated $18 million.

Johnny Hincapie spent more than 25 years in prison for a crime he did not commit.

Hincapie was released from prison in 2015 and his conviction was dismissed in 2017.

According to reports, Hincapie said he was “coerced” into falsely confessing to the fatal stabbing.

Hincapie was sentenced to 25 years-to-life despite the fact that he recanted his confession and exculpatory evidence proved his innocence.

“I have never forgotten the loss his family suffered,” Hincapie said. “I am fortunate that my innocence has finally been acknowledged by my city and my state and I look forward to the next chapter of my life with my family.”

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Former Iowa City schools counselor awarded $12 million after being wrongfully imprisoned for 6 years

Donald Clark won $12 million in a lawsuit he filed against the state of Iowa on Thursday, years after being exonerated and released from prison on false charges that he sexually abused a student while working as an Iowa City elementary school counselor.

A jury awarded Clark $8 million in past emotional distress damages and $4 million for future damages after he spent six years in prison starting in 2010. He was released in 2016 when his conviction was vacated. That year, the court found that his public defender, John Robertson, was ineffective and declared Clark not guilty, but also “actually innocent,” a legally important finding, according to a news release from Clark’s lawyers at The Spence Law Firm LLC.

The jury found that Robertson, who died in 2013, failed to investigate the prosecution’s case against Clark, and a “substandard trial performance led to his conviction and wrongful imprisonment.”

Mel Orchard III of Jackson, Wyoming, one of Clark’s lawyers, told the Press-Citizen on Friday that Clark was joyous when the decision was rendered. Clark and his lawyers spent five years suing the state since his original 25-year prison sentence was vacated.

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Chicago Mayor Lori Lightfoot Says People Charged With Violent Crimes Are Guilty Because Prosecutors Say So

Chicago Mayor Lori Lightfoot has repeatedly blamed bail reforms and local judges for exacerbating gun violence by releasing defendants back onto the streets, but on Monday she took her rhetoric a step further, saying that people charged with violent crime should be kept in jail because only guilty people get charged with violent crimes.

The comments, first reported by the Chicago Tribune, were part of a longer harangue against the Cook County courts and bail reform efforts.

“We shouldn’t be locking up nonviolent individuals just because they can’t afford to pay bail. But, given the exacting standards that the state’s attorney has for charging a case, which is proof beyond a reasonable doubt, when those charges are brought, these people are guilty,” Lightfoot said. “Of course they’re entitled to a presumption of innocence. Of course they’re entitled to their day in court. But residents in our community are also entitled to safety from dangerous people, so we need to keep pressing the criminal courts to lock up violent dangerous people and not put them out on bail or electronic monitoring back into the very same communities where brave souls are mustering the courage to come forward and say, ‘this is the person who is responsible.'”

The comments outraged civil liberties advocates and public defenders in Chicago, and rightly so. They should offend anyone familiar with the American criminal justice system and why it places such an emphasis on the presumption of innocence: to force the government to prove its case and shield defendants from prejudice and demagoguery. Lightfoot’s statements are particularly absurd, given the enormous amount of taxpayer money Chicago has spent settling wrongful conviction lawsuits.

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Black Secret Service Agent, Jailed for JFK Plot Warning, Cleared: The Full Story

On April 26, President Joe Biden pardoned Abraham Bolden, an 87-year-old who was the first Black man to join the presidential Secret Service security detail.

Bolden’s presidential pardon — for a ginned-up 1964 bribery conviction based on the testimony of witnesses who later admitted to lying — was the first introduction for many Americans to Bolden. The pardon statement characterized him as a brave and noble advocate for racial justice, who spoke out against the racist behavior of other Secret Service agents, and who maintained his innocence during his bribery trials and subsequent prison term. 

But neither Biden nor the international news media that briefly picked up on Bolden’s pardon mentioned the explosive core issue: the ex-agent’s role in trying to prevent the assassination of John F. Kennedy. 

To this day, Bolden believes that it was his warnings about problems with the Secret Service prior to Kennedy’s death, his knowledge of a conspiracy to kill Kennedy in an early November trip to Chicago, and his efforts to share what he knew with the Warren Commission that led to his being targeted with false charges. 

This crucial context was not included in the White House press release, nor in most of the press coverage.

“I think readers don’t understand at all,” Bolden told WhoWhatWhy. “They just understand that I was pardoned. 

“They don’t have the details of what occurred and what it had to do with the assassination of President Kennedy, how I was treated, the reason for my incarceration, the effort to declare me insane. Or the fact that I wrote a book that explained everything. That’s not before the public.” 

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Over 230 People Freed After a Single NYPD Cop Caught Framing Innocent People for Drug Crimes

Charges against the now-disgraced NYPD detective Joseph Franco are being welcomed by the families of more than 130 more New Yorkers as it is leading to the dismissal of their family members’ charges. Franco was reportedly caught framing innocent individuals last year and this is the second wave of case dismissals tied to his corruption..

Last April, Brooklyn District Attorney Eric Gonzalez’s Conviction Review Unit asked for the dismissal of 27 felony convictions and 63 misdemeanor convictions based on Franco’s corrupt policing. Now, that number has grown as Bronx Supreme Court Justice David Lewis granted the motion to drop the felony cases against 133 defendants who were indicted between 2011 and 2015.

“We did not want to dismiss or vacate out of hand all cases he was involved in; we investigated those that hinged on his testimony and sworn statements,” Bronx County District Attorney Darcel Clark said in a statement.

“[Franco’s] compromised credibility suggests a lack of due process in the prosecution of these defendants, and we cannot stand behind these convictions.”

An addition 250 cases are under review and a total of 500 cases could be dropped.

According to ABC 7, Franco was indicted in Manhattan for perjury, official misconduct and other charges in connection with four incidents whereby he allegedly framed numerous individuals for making narcotics transactions.

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Assange Prosecution Relied On False Testimony From A Diagnosed Sociopath And Convicted Pedophile

The Icelandic newspaper Stundin reports that a key witness in the US prosecution of Julian Assange has admitted in an interview with the outlet that he fabricated critical accusations in the indictment against the WikiLeaks founder.

“A major witness in the United States’ Department of Justice case against Julian Assange has admitted to fabricating key accusations in the indictment against the Wikileaks founder,” Stundin reports. “The witness, who has a documented history with sociopathy and has received several convictions for sexual abuse of minors and wide-ranging financial fraud, made the admission in a newly published interview in Stundin where he also confessed to having continued his crime spree whilst working with the Department of Justice and FBI and receiving a promise of immunity from prosecution.”

BREAKING: Lead witness in US case against Julian Assange admits to fabricating evidence against him in exchange for a deal with the FBI #Assange https://t.co/kZxsTi62q0

— WikiLeaks (@wikileaks) June 26, 2021

This major witness would be Iceland’s Sigurdur “Sigi” Thordarson, a paid FBI informant who after his short-lived association with WikiLeaks has been found guilty of sexually abusing nine boys as well as embezzlement, fraud, and theft in his home country. A court-appointed psychologist has found him to be a sociopath.

“The court found that Sigurður is by all definitions a sociopath, suffering from a severe anti-social personality disorder. However, the court found that he did know the difference between right and wrong and could not be considered insane and could therefore stand trial,” Iceland Magazine reported in 2015 during Thordarson’s child abuse case.

This was all public knowledge when the US government was building its case to extradite Julian Assange to America and try him under the Patriot Act for journalistic activity which exposed US war crimes, a prosecution for which Assange is still locked up in Belmarsh Prison pending Washington’s appeal of a UK court’s denial of the extradition request. And now we know for a fact that the odious person whose testimony formed the basis for much of that prosecution was lying.

“US officials presented an updated version of an indictment against him to a Magistrate court in London last summer,” Stundin says. “The veracity of the information contained therein is now directly contradicted by the main witness, whose testimony it is based on.”

What this means is that the US decided to add more accusations to its previous indictment because charging a journalist for standard journalistic practices was too weak on its own, and now this decision has bitten them in the ass.

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