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Supreme Court Delivers Rare Victory to Death Penalty Defendants

The U.S. Supreme Court on June 14, 2010 sympathized with a Florida death row inmate whose lawyer missed a deadline for his habeas appeal and failed to communicate with him for years despite numerous written pleas for help. By a 7-2 vote in Holland v. Florida, the Court said that the lawyer's misconduct may entitle convicted murderer Albert Holland to "equitable tolling," or a delay in what otherwise would have been a one-year statute of limitation for filing the appeal under the Antiterrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act of 1996. The lawyer's failures, wrote Justice Stephen Breyer for the majority, "seriously prejudiced a client who thereby lost what was likely his single opportunity for habeas review."

U.S. Supreme Court to hear Texas Death Row inmate's case

Hank Skinner, who was eating his last meal when the justices stayed his execution in March, says a Texas prosecutor is violating his civil rights by not turning over DNA evidence that Skinner says will prove his innocence. The high court agreed Monday to hear the case. Skinner was convicted and sentenced to death in 1995 for killing his live-in girlfriend, Twila Busby, and her two mentally impaired adult sons. Skinner said he was passed out on the couch the night of the slayings after consuming alcohol and Xanax and could not have committed the murders. In hearing Skinner's case, the nine justices could decide whether prisoners are empowered to file federal civil-right lawsuits to force DNA testing after their convictions. The decision could give hundreds of prisoners a powerful legal avenue involving DNA evidence, legal experts say.

Judge Declares Death Penalty Unconstitutional

A Houston judge on Thursday granted a pretrial motion declaring the death penalty unconstitutional, saying he believes innocent people have been executed. “Based on the moratorium (on the death penalty) in Illinois, the Innocence Project and more than 200 people being exonerated nationwide, it can only be concluded that innocent people have been executed,” state District Judge Kevin Fine said. “It's safe to assume we execute innocent people.”

American Law Institute Abandons the Death Penalty

American Law Institute, which created the intellectual framework for the modern capital justice system almost 50 years ago, has pronounced its project a failure and walked away from it. The ALI provided the only intellectually respectable support for the death penalty system in the United States. The death penalty, the ALI has decided, is irretrievably broken.

Debra Milke

Debra Jean Milke has been sitting on Arizona’s death row for nearly 20 years, largely because a police detective said she confessed to plotting her 4-year-old son’s murder. Now Ms. Milke could get a new trial, and even her freedom, because the detective, who was alone with Ms. Milke when he said she confessed, skipped one of the most basic steps when officers interview suspects — getting them to sign a Miranda waiver, giving up their right to remain silent. “I don’t know any place in the civilized world in the last 30 years,” said Judge Alex Kozinski of the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit, in San Francisco, “where a state has found a waiver of constitutional rights without a signed waiver.”

Ronald Kitchen

On Tuesday, July 07, 2009, 43-year-old Ronald Kitchen, who confessed under extreme physical duress to a taking part in five murders 21 years ago, was exonerated and freed from prison. The confession was extracted by Detective Michael Kill, who worked under Commander Jon Burge. Kitchen spent nine of his 21 years behind bars on death row.

Kevin Keith

The Ohio Innocence Project says Kevin Keith did not kill three people, including a 7-year-old girl, and wound three others in a 1994 shooting in Bucyrus. The group, which has asked the Ohio Supreme Court to consider Keith's claim of innocence, generally steers clear of death-penalty cases because inmates already have attorneys making their case. In this one, Keith's public defenders say there is another suspect and that a police detective lied about a witness' statement.

UPDATE: 4/6/10 - Innocence groups from around the country have asked the U.S. Supreme Court to hear the case of an Ohio man sentenced to die in September for fatally shooting three people. Evidence that could clear Keith has never been heard. Ohio is determined to kill him.

Newsroom Cuts are Blow to Death Penalty Opponents

Opponents of the death penalty looking to exonerate wrongly accused prisoners say their efforts have been hobbled by the dwindling size of America’s newsrooms, and particularly the disappearance of investigative reporting at many regional papers. In the past, lawyers opposed to the death penalty often provided the broad outlines of cases to reporters, who then pursued witnesses and unearthed evidence. Now, the lawyers complain, they have to do more of the work themselves and that means it often doesn’t get done. They say many fewer cases are being pursued by journalists, after a spate of exonerations several years ago based on the work of reporters.

Justin Wolfe

Owen Barber pulled the trigger ten times and told a Northern Virginia jury that his friend Justin Wolfe had hired him to do it. Barber cut a deal with prosecutors and got 28 years. Wolfe got the death penalty. Did Barber tell the truth—or is an innocent man awaiting execution?

UPDATE - 5/11/09: The US Court of Appeals for the 4th Circuit on May 11th, 2009 ordered a federal district-court judge to re-examine Barber’s recantation. The judge, Raymond A. Jackson of the federal district court for eastern Virginia, previously had dismissed the new evidence in the case, but a three-judge panel found errors in that decision. While the panel did not order Jackson to hold an evidentiary hearing, it noted that Barber’s testimony was key to Wolfe’s prosecution—a fact that it said “strongly suggests” the need for a fresh investigation.

Death Penalty Abolished in New Mexico

Gov. Bill Richardson, who has supported capital punishment, signed legislation to repeal New Mexico's death penalty, calling it the "most difficult decision in my political life." The new law replaces lethal injection with a sentence of life in prison without the possibility of parole. The repeal takes effect on July 1, and applies only to crimes committed after that date. "Regardless of my personal opinion about the death penalty, I do not have confidence in the criminal justice system as it currently operates to be the final arbiter when it comes to who lives and who dies for their crime," Richardson said.

Larry Swearingen

In an 11th-hour move, the 5th Circuit Court of Appeals halted the January 27, 2009 execution of Texan Larry Swearingen. Four forensic pathologists , including the medical examiner who testified against Swearingen at his capital murder trial, now say that Swearingen was in jail when Melissa Trotter, 19, was strangled and left in a national forest near Conroe in East Texas. The 5th Circuit did not address his innocence claim, and the Montgomery County DA remains intent on seeing Larry executed, regardless of evidence of his innocence.

Charles Raby

DNA tests have excluded Charles as the donor of skin found under the fingernails of Edna Franklin, the 72-year-old North Houston, TX grandmother he was convicted of beating and stabbing to death. Charles is scheduled to die, and Texas has the most efficient death machine in the country. Is innocence enough to spare him from the executioner?

Michael Toney

Since he arrived on Texas’ Death Row in 1999, Michael Roy Toney, of Lake Worth, has proclaimed his innocence to anyone he thought might listen. Nine and a half years later, he has everyone’s attention. The Texas Court of Criminal Appeals has overturned Toney’s capital murder conviction because Tarrant County prosecutors withheld evidence favorable to his defense. Among the 14 documents were records that cast doubt on the testimony of two key witnesses against him.

Colin Campbell Ross

Eighty-six years after Colin Ross of Melbourne, Australia was hanged for the rape and murder of 12-year-old Alma Tirtschke, he has been officially pardoned. The pseudo-science of microscopic hair comparison put Colin on the gallows, despite his protestations of innocence. Recent tests show that the hairs found at Colin's home, said to be from young Alma, weren't even from the same head.

Levon Jones

After nearly 15 years in prison, most of which were spent on death row, Levon Junior "Bo" Jones of Kenansville, NC is now a free man -- and saying he is innocent of the crime that put him there. His release comes as states ramp up executions in the wake the U.S. Supreme Court decision approving lethal injection.

Glen Chapman

The bologna and cheese sandwich that Glen Chapman savored Wednesday could have been his last meal. Instead, it was his first as a free man after almost 14 years on death row. Chapman, 40, was released from Central Prison on Wednesday after Catawba County, North Carolina District Attorney James Gaither Jr. dismissed murder charges against him.

Related: A day after Glen Edward Chapman was freed from prison, the State Bureau of Investigation agreed to review allegations of perjury and obstruction of justice against Dennis Rhoney. The former Hickory police detective led the 1992 double-murder investigation that resulted in Chapman's convictions. Ex-Cop Who Led Discredited Case Probed

Mumia Abu-Jamal

The long-awaited decision handed down in Mumia Abu-Jamal's federal appeal weighed in at 118 pages but changed nothing as the 3rd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals affirmed a lower court's ruling that upheld Abu-Jamal's conviction but overturned his death sentence because of potentially confusing jury instructions.

Dennis Lawley

The California Supreme Court upheld the death penalty for a man whose professed innocence was bolstered late in 2007 by the discovery of a gun buried in mud in a Modesto field. Though unanimously rejecting Dennis Lawley's constitutional challenge of his conviction and death sentence, the state high court said he could once again try to prove his innocence by presenting a new petition based on the discovery of the gun.

New Jersey Abolishes Death Penalty

In a 44 - 36 vote largely along party lines, the New Jersey State Assembly on December 13, 2007 took the final legislative step toward abolishing the death penalty in New Jersey and replacing it with life in prison without parole. Gov. Jon Corzine has said he will sign the bill, S-171, which the Senate passed on December 10, 2007 without amendment by a vote of 21-16, also along strict party lines.

Link:

THOMAS ARTHUR FIGHT FOR LIFE

Thomas Arthur, Alabama death row inmate Z-427 has sat on death row for 20 years for a crime he did not commit. The State of Alabama will execute another innocent person 09-27-2007 unless you reach out and act NOW to help fight for his life. Time is running out!!

UPDATE: On 9/27/07, Alabama Gov. Bob Riley issued a 45-day stay for Arthur's execution, solely to tinker with the death process. Gov. Riley continues to refuse to allow DNA testing that could confirm Arthur's guilt or innocence.

UPDATE: On 12/5/07, the United States Supreme Court granted a stay of execution pending his application for a write of certiorari.

Link:

Texas Math

What do you get when you take one ambitious prosecutor, four cold cases, a couple of cooperative snitches and four defendants with compelling innocence claims? You get three death sentences and one life without parole.

Max Soffar

“Max Soffar has been on Texas’s death row for almost three decades for a crime he did not commit,” David Dow, Head of the Texas Innocence Network and one of Soffar’s attorneys, told the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals. “We urge the court to do the right thing and strike down Mr. Soffar’s wrongful conviction. Too many innocent people have been executed as a result of mistakes in the system. The risk of executing an innocent man is unacceptable in a just society.”

Claude Jones

A Texas judge has sided with an anti-death penalty group seeking to find out whether an inmate was wrongly executed, ruling that officials must keep a 1-inch (2.5-centimeter)-long piece of hair that was a key piece of evidence in the man's murder trial almost two decades ago. The Innocence Project wants to know whether Claude Jones was wrongly executed in December 2000. Jones was the last of a record 40 inmates executed in America's busiest capital punishment state that year and the last of 152 inmates put to death during now-President George W. Bush's time as Texas governor.

Kennedy Brewer

Kennedy Brewer of Macon, Mississippi, a mildly retarded, Black defendant, was convicted of raping and killing a 3-year-old girl and sentenced to death in 1992. In 2002, he was cleared by DNA, but he wasn't released. He has spent the past 5 years in the local jail, awaiting retrial. Because you can bet, the local authorities plan to get another conviction and another death sentence. The Sheriff says he can't look for a DNA match because Mississippi doesn't have a DNA database -- which is news to the state's crime lab director. The prosecutor will bring back his star witness, dentist Dr. Michael West, whose bite mark testimony has been disproven by DNA in other cases, and who resigned from professional forensic dentistry groups to avoid expulsion. Prosecutors are so sure they're right about Kennedy's guilt that they're willing to bet his life on it.

UPDATE: 2/9/08 - Kennedy Brewer and Levon Brooks, both convicted of killing 3-year-old girls in Noxubee County, Mississippi, and both cleared by DNA, are slated to be released. What did it take to reach this point? Mississippi Attorney General Jim Hood had to take the prosecutions of these murders away from the Noxubee County DA, something almost unheard of in the state's history. The Attorney General has charged Albert Johnson with the murders of both children.

Troy Davis

The pending execution of Troy Anthony Davis, scheduled to take place on July 17, 2007, is raising serious questions about his guilt — and about the Newt Gingrich-era federal law that has limited his appeals options and prevented him, say his supporters, from getting a fair shake.

UPDATE: On July 16, 2007, the Georgia Board of Pardons and Paroles granted Troy Davis a 90-day reprieve.

UPDATE: On April 16, 2009, in a 2-1 opinion, the 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that Davis could not establish by clear and convincing evidence a jury would not have found him guilty. Tom Dunn, one of Davis’ lawyers, said he was disappointed, but would fight on. “Troy is innocent and this struggle is far from over.”

UPDATE: May 20, 2009 -- Twenty-seven former judges, justices and prosecutors are asking the U.S. Supreme Court to allow death-row inmate Troy Davis’ innocence claims to be heard in federal court. Group asks Supreme Court to send death row case back to federal court.

UPDATE: August 17, 2009 -- U.S. Supreme Court orders new hearing for Troy Davis

Curtis E. McCarty

A judge in Oklahoma City has dismissed murder charges against Curtis McCarty, who was sentenced to death three times in the 1982 slaying of a teenager -- convictions that were based largely on testimony from a police department chemist who was fired for fraud and misconduct in 2001. Curtis was prosecuted by Oklahoma County DA Robert H. Macy, who sent 73 people to death row, more than any other prosecutor in the U.S. Macy has publicly said that he believes executing an innocent person is a sacrifice worth making in order to keep the death penalty in the United States.

Cesar Fierro

Consider the pitiful case of Cesar Fierro, who has been on death row since 1980 for the murder and robbery of El Paso taxi driver Nicholas Castanon. Fierro, who was not considered a suspect until months after the February 1979 murder, was convicted on the basis of two things: the shaky testimony of an alleged co-conspirator and his own confession, which many now conclude was coerced. Fierro, whose landlord testified the accused was home on the night of the killing, confessed to the crime because he was told his mother and stepfather would be tortured by the police in a jail in Ciudad Juárez, where they lived. After his parents were released from the Juárez jail, Fierro recanted. Without that confession, Fierro would not be sitting on death row today. The Texas Court of Criminal Appeals ruled no harm had been caused by the extorted confession.

Wilbert Coffin

Wilbert Coffin was hanged on February 10, 1956 in Quebec, Canada, for the murders of three American hunters. Now the Association in Defence of the Wrongly Convicted has taken up the battle for Wilbert Coffin's exoneration, a battle that gained momentum this year. In September, the federal justice department's Criminal Conviction Review Group began poring over trial records to determine if there are grounds for setting aside Coffin's conviction or referring the case to an appeal court for review. The review is expected to last about a year. It's believed to be the first time the government has considered reopening a murder case posthumously.

Report on wrongly imprisoned Jerseyans fuels death-penalty debate

On the day a state death penalty study panel considered the risks of executing innocent people, opponents of capital punishment released a report documenting the cases of 25 New Jerseyans who spent time in prison for serious crimes they did not commit. The report, "Innocence Lost in New Jersey," could fuel already-impassioned arguments against execution. New Jerseyans for Alternatives to the Death Penalty, which sponsored the report, is among the groups arguing that the risks of putting innocent people to death are too great to continue to impose the death sentence.

Ruben Cantu - Did Texas Execute An Innocent Man?

Ruben Cantu, 17 at the time of his crime, had no previous convictions, but a San Antonio prosecutor had branded him a violent thief, gang member and murderer who ruthlessly shot one victim nine times with a rifle before emptying at least nine more rounds into the only eyewitness — a man who barely survived to testify. Four days after a Bexar County jury delivered its verdict, Cantu wrote this letter to the residents of San Antonio: "My name is Ruben M. Cantu and I am only 18 years old. I got to the 9th grade and I have been framed in a capital murder case." A dozen years after his execution, a Houston Chronicle investigation suggests that Cantu, a former special-ed student who grew up in a tough neighborhood on the south side of San Antonio, was likely telling the truth.

UPDATE: DA Investigators Mock Cantu's Innocence Claim

The Bexar County district attorney's investigation into a possibly wrongful execution had barely started early in 2006, but already DA investigators were scoffing at the three witnesses who contend Texas sent an innocent man named Ruben Cantu to his death. The DA denies bias.

Cory Maye

Cory Maye was convicted of murder in the 2001 death of Prentiss, Mississippi police officer Ron W. Jones during a drug raid on the other half of Maye's duplex. Maye has said he thought that the intruders were burglars and did not realize they were police. He pleaded not guilty at his trial, citing self-defense. Nevertheless, Maye was convicted of murder and was sentenced to death. On September 21, 2006, the death sentence was overturned by Judge Michael Eubanks, and Maye was sentenced to life in prison. His case attracted little attention until late 2005, when Reason magazine senior editor and police misconduct researcher Radley Balko brought it to light in the article we have reposted here. Maye's supporters say his conviction and sentence raise issues about the right to self-defense, police conduct in the War on Drugs, and racial and social inequities in Mississippi. They have also raised questions about whether he has received competent legal representation.

UPDATE: On November 17, 2009, the Mississippi Court of Appeals ruled that Maye's constitutional right of vicinage was violated when Judge Eubanks refused to return the case to Jefferson Davis County, where the alleged crime occurred. The court reversed Maye's conviction and remanded the case for a new trial.

Derrick Jamison

Derrick Jamison has been released from Ohio's Death Row. His 1985 murder conviction was overturned by two federal courts, which ruled he was denied a fair trial by prosecutors who withheld evidence that might have cleared him. Jamison is the 119th innocent person to be freed from death row since 1973 and the first to be exonerated in 2005.

Billy Kelley

In 2002, Broward (Florida) U.S. District Judge Norman C. Roettger, who died in 2003, granted Kelley a new trial. State prosecutors said they could not retry Kelley, clearing the way for his release from prison. But a three-judge panel of the 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Atlanta overturned Roettger's decision and reinstated Kelley's conviction. Chief Justice Gerald Tjoflat wrote the opinion. Now the only thing standing between Kelley, 62, and a lethal shot of potassium chloride is the petition to the U.S. Supreme Court by Tribe -- a legal giant who represented Al Gore in the recount battle after the 2000 election.

SCOTUS Strikes Death Penalty for Juveniles

There's a reason adolescents are overrepresented in every form of reckless behavior. Sometimes they lack the judgment, the impulse control, the maturity and the character to resist harmful peer pressure. Every parent knows this. So do most legislators. That's why young people are prohibited from serving on juries, voting, marrying, serving in the armed forces and drinking. The U.S. Supreme Court now knows this, too. In a landmark ruling Tuesday, the court found that it is unconstitutional to put to death those who were under age 18 at the time of their crime. A 5-4 majority of justices acknowledged what common sense already tells us: Adolescents inherently are different from adults.

John Spirko

John Spirko is hard to like. He's lived a life of crime that makes him virtually incredible. But he says he's innocent of the murder of Betty Jane Mottinger, a crime that put him on Ohio's death row. An investigation by the Cleveland Plain Dealer strongly supports Spirko's claim that he did not commit this crime.

Click HERE to read Bob Payne's full series about John Spirko at the Cleveland Plain Dealer.

UPDATE: Ohio governor commutes Spirko death sentence to life without parole.

Conviction Reversed
Ken Richey's Death Penalty and Conviction Tossed

The American Dream that Died in a Death Row Cell

December 20, 2007
Kenny Richey to walk free after plea deal

More About Kenny Richey's Case
Ken Richey
Colombus Grove, Ohio
Complete transcript of Frontline Scotland'sKilling Time profile of Kenny Richey's case!

Martin Soto-Fong and the DA with Killer Instincts [pdf format]

Last year, former Pima County, AZ DA Kenneth Peasley was disbarred for intentionally presenting false evidence in death-penalty cases—something that had never before happened to an American prosecutor. In a 1992 triple-murder case, Peasley introduced testimony that he knew to be false; three men were convicted and sentenced to die. Peasley was convinced that the three were guilty, but he also believed that the evidence needed a push. According to the Death Penalty Information Center, since the mid-nineteen-seventies a hundred and seventeen death-row inmates have been released. Defense lawyers, often relying on DNA testing, have shown repeatedly how shoddy crime-lab work, lying informants, and mistaken eyewitness identifications, among other factors, led to unjust convictions. But DNA tests don’t reveal how innocent people come to be prosecuted in the first place. The career of Kenneth Peasley -- and the case of Martin Soto-Fong -- do.

Tommy Ziegler

In the 1989 nationally syndicated television program on the case, A Matter of Life and Death, television journalist Ike Pappas noted: ``In 1975, Tommy Zeigler was attempting to clean up corruption right in his hometown of Winter Garden, Florida. He was helpful in shutting down the old Edgewater Hotel, a center of prostitution and drug dealing. But he was also trying to gather information on other illegal activities such as gun running and, most importantly, loan sharking. The loan sharks made a fortune letting [black] migrant workers buy groceries on credit at an interest rate of 520 percent per year. And Tommy Zeigler alleges that certain members of the Winter Garden police force were in on the action.''

On Christmas Eve that year, there was a multiple murder at the Zeigler family furniture store. Zeigler was charged with the murders. Maurice Paul, who openly opposed Ziegler's efforts, was the trial judge who presided over Zeigler's fate. Paul overrode the jury's recommendation and sentenced Zeigler to death. Zeigler has maintained his innocence. Now DNA evidence offers Zeigler the hope of a very different future Christmas.

OF NOTE: Phillip Finch's landmark book on this case, Fatal Flaw: A True Story of Malice and Murder in a Small Southern Town, is once again available. Fatal Flaw can be purchased in printed copy or may be downloaded free of charge from the website of the publisher, Libertary.com. Click HERE for more information.

The Death Penalty on Trial: Crisis in American Justice
by Bill Kurtis

Bill Kurtis, the A&E host and Kansas booster, has had an uncomfortably up-close view of the worst in human nature for much of his career. But the man who covered the Manson family trials has lately been sickened by the idea that our justice system has sent innocent men to the death chamber.

“Look, I was for the death penalty,” Kurtis said in a telephone interview, “but looking at these cases and the rapidly increasing number of exonerations, there are just too many possibilities for error.” In the state of Illinois, where Kurtis Productions is based, 13 men were set free in the late 1990s after research — some of it done as a class project by journalism students — uncovered grave errors in their cases.

Click HERE to read the rest of this review by Aaron Barnhart of the Kansas City Star.

Todd Willingham - Executed for an Accidental Fire

Strapped to a gurney in Texas' death chamber in February, 2004, just moments from his execution for setting a fire that killed his three daughters, Cameron Todd Willingham declared his innocence one last time. "I am an innocent man, convicted of a crime I did not commit," Willingham said angrily. "I have been persecuted for 12 years for something I did not do." Four fire cause and origin experts -- Gerald Hurst, John Lentini, John DeHaan and Kendall Ryland -- agree. "There's nothing to suggest to any reasonable arson investigator that this was an arson fire," said Hurst, a Cambridge University-educated chemist who has investigated scores of fires in his career. "It was just a fire."

UPDATE

Innocence Project Asks Texas to Review Willingham and Willis Arson Convictions

(In pdf format - Includes Report and Supporting Documentation)

UPDATE - August 15, 2008
Texas Panel to Probe Findings That Led to Willingham's Execution

Charles Walker

A Superior Court judge has stayed the December 3, 2004 execution of a Greensboro man who was convicted of murder based largely on the testimony of his co-defendants, with no physical evidence to link him to the crime. In fact, there isn't even a body.

UPDATE: On January 30, 2006, Charles Walker won the right to a new trial.

Bobby Lee Tankersley

Thelma Younkin used an oxygen tube to help her breathe. Her killer used it as a murder weapon. n November 1991, the frail, 65-year-old Younkin was strangled with the tube, bitten and raped in her room at the Post Park Motel along a grim stretch of Yuma, Arizona. A fellow resident of the low-budget motel, Bobby Lee Tankersley, was convicted and sent to Arizona's Death Row for the attack, based largely on the testimony of a forensic dentist who said he had matched Tankersley's teeth to bite marks on Younkin's body. But on December 6, 2004, the same judge who sentenced Tankersley to death will hold a hearing that promises to showcase the problems of forensic science in America's courts, from the legacy of discredited experts to new DNA tests exposing the questionable science behind many other disciplines, including bite-mark comparison.

UPDATE: Bobby Lee Tankersley has been granted a new sentencing hearing. Bogus Bite Mark Evidence Cited.

Paul Gregory House

Recently discovered DNA evidence proves that House did not rape Carolyn Muncey immediately before she was killed in 1985 in Union County, north of Knoxville, Tennessee. Other evidence has surfaced that might show that House did not rape or kill Muncey. While Tennessee's judiciary argues over how many jurors can dance on the head of a pin, Paul Gregory House remains on death row.

UPDATE - 5/12/09: Charges dropped against former TN death row inmate

Criminal Science: The Paul House Case

[pdf format - use Acrobat Reader]

Can we rely on forensic science as the arbiter of truth in the courtroom? In his latest investigation for Seed Magazine, writer Simon Cooper exposes a case of corrupted science at the heart of our justice system -- and the forensic failures that put a man on Tennessee's death row.

Infamous Justice

Wilton Dedge of Port St. John, Florida has been freed after 22 years in prison for a rape he did not commit. His conviction rested on the word of notorious snitch Clarence Zacke, who got a sweetheart deal from prosecutors in exchange for lying under oath. When DNA excluded Dedge, a Florida Assistant Attorney General told the 5th Circuit Court of Appeals that even if she knew Dedge to be innocent, it would not matter. Zacke provided the only evidence in Gerald Stano's murder case, and subsequently recanted it. Stano was executed in 1998 anyway, still insisting he was innocent. But in the words of the Florida Assistant Attorney General, "That is not the issue".

Ryan Matthews

Once condemned to die by lethal injection for the 1997 murder of a Bridge City, LA grocer, Ryan walked out of court a free man. Prosecutors dropped all charges after DNA cleared Ryan and implicated another man.

The Massachusetts Plan for an Infallible Death Penalty
Commission Suggests Death Penalty Safeguards	DAs Rap Death Penalty Plan
The Island of Misfit Cops	22 Examples of MA Justice
"The premise is interesting that scientific evidence is more reliable than other evidence. . . . It would be nice if it were true," said Simon A. Cole, an assistant professor of criminology, law and society at the University of California at Irvine. "In the cases of wrongful conviction that we know about, scientific evidence is a very significant factor." Massachusetts Gov. Romney believes in the myth of infallible science, and he's willing to bet other people's lives on it. Foolproof Forensics

Tyrone Noling: The Unlikely Triggerman

Nothing about the double homicide seemed to finger Tyrone Noling. Even the former sheriff doesn't believe he should be on death row.

UPDATE: Evidence withheld by the state comes to light. Get all the updates at TyroneNoling.com

Michael Mordenti

The word of one witness put Michael Mordenti on Florida's Death Row. What the jury didn't know could kill him.

UPDATE: The Florida Supreme Court granted Michael Mordenti a new trial, which was conducted in August, 2005. Mordenti was again found guilty. He was sentenced to life in prison with parole eligibility after 25 years and credit for the 14 years he had already served. He was released from prison in July, 2008.

In 2001 at condemned prisoner Philip Workman's clemency hearing, Shelby Co., TN Medical Examiner O. C. Smith testified that his microscopic analysis showed that Workman's bullet was the one that felled a police officer in 1981. Clemency was denied. Soon after, Smith was found outside his office, chained to a stairwell, wrapped in barbed wire with a bomb hanging around his neck. He told officers that an attacker had thrown a caustic substance in his face. Now the forensic pathologist has been indicted, charged with staging the elaborate and extremely dangerous "abduction". Can we talk credibility here?

Shelby Co., TN ME Indicted

Clarification Sought in Workman Case

Tennessean Editorial: A Review in Workman Case

A day after a federal appeals court spared the life of convicted killer Kevin Cooper and ordered further testing of evidence, the death row inmate's defense team called for an independent investigation of the case. The appeals court ordered testing to determine whether a blood drop left outside Doug and Peg Ryen's bedroom had been treated with a preservative known as EDTA, commonly used to take calcium out of solutions, which could indicate the evidence was deliberately planted. Reliability of Evidence

When 80-year-old Anna Knaze was robbed and beaten to death in 1992 in Johnstown, PA, Det. Richard Rok decided Ernest Simmons had done it. Problem was, he had no evidence. Rok recruited Simmons' girlfriend to secretly tape record conversations with him, but instead of confessing, Simmons denied committing the crime 19 times. Finally, Rok was able to convince another elderly robbery victim to identify Simmons as her attacker and claim he threatened to give her "the same thing Anna Knaze got". She lied -- she never saw her assailant's face. But Rok got the conviction he wanted. Ernest Simmons Got the Death Penalty

And what about Det. Rok? Over the years he was accused of assaulting suspects, conducting searches without warrants and pushing a witness to make false identifications. He's in Federal Prison Now

In May, 1988 Jason Derrick was convicted of murdering grocer Rama Sharma in Pasco County, Florida and sentenced to death. There were no eyewitnesses, no weapon, no physical evidence whatsoever connecting Derrick to the crime -- just the testimony of the original suspect and a jailhouse snitch. Now another man has made statements implicating himself, and Derrick will get a hearing in March, 2004. A Life Hangs in the Balance

Death sentences are continuing their descent in the United States, according to a Washington, D.C.-based group that shows numbers falling by more than 50 percent over the last five years. The national trend is reflected in California, where James Anderson, chair of the California District Attorneys' Association's committee on the death penalty, says he has witnessed "creeping doubt" among jurors. One reason for juror unease: DNA exonerations. Death Takes a Holiday

In a rare and unusual move, the US Supreme Court stayed Texas' execution of Delma Banks just 10 minutes before he was to be killed. Only 3 years ago his murder conviction was reversed after the state's witnesses admitted being paid by the prosecution to commit perjury identifying Banks as a killer, but the 5th Circuit Court of Appeals reinstated his death sentence. In Texas, somebody has to die, even if he's innocent. Banks Lives to Fight Again

When the Supreme Court heard oral arguments in the case of Delma Banks -- a case distinguished by unchecked prosecutorial misconduct, manufactured evidence and suborned perjury -- even conservative justices made clear how appalled they were. Will SCOTUS Again Just Tweak the Death Machine?

UPDATE: On Feb. 24, 2004, the US Supreme Court overturned Delma Banks' death sentence. The decision means Banks can continue to press his appeals in lower courts. The Court's decision was based on prosecutorial misconduct, withhold evidence that tended to prove his innocence. Click HERE to read the full decision.

A May, 2003 Gallup poll showed that 73% of Americans believe at least one innocent person has been executed within the past five years -- yet 60% of those polled think the death penalty is applied fairly. Small wonder, then, there is such resistance to DNA testing that would answer that question as to two already-executed men who proclaimed their innocence to the end. When DNA Meets Death Row

A coalition of anti-death-penalty groups yesterday called for a moratorium on capital punishment in Virginia until changes can make it fairer for the accused. The organizations contend that problems with Virginia's system, from misconduct by prosecutors to limits on appeals, have led to wrongful death sentences and possibly the execution of innocent people. Stop the Executions

January, 2003: Had the North Carolina Supreme Court not been compelled to stay his execution, Henry Lee Hunt's life would have ended before the N.C. Actual Innocence Commission began. Neither the Governor nor the court, or for that matter, the rest of the state, can rely on the validity of Hunt's conviction. And Justice for All?

September, 2003: The State of North Carolina remains utterly determined to kill Henry Lee Hunt. Since 1989, the state has had a sworn confession from one of the four men responsible for the murders for which Hunt was condemned, clearing Hunt of any involvement. But it took until 2002 for the state to turn it over to Hunt's lawyers. North Carolina is Going to Execute an Innocent Man

September 13, 2003: Henry Lee Hunt was executed by the State of North Carolina.

For half of his 42 years, Nicholas J. Yarris has been on death row in Pennsylvania prisons, emphatically telling anyone who would listen that he didn't commit the 1981 abduction, rape and murder of a Delaware County woman for which he was convicted. He now may have scientific evidence that he has been telling the truth from behind bars for more than two decades. Nick Yarris Cleared by DNA

Click HERE to visit Nick's weblog.

Jane Eisner of the Philadelphia Inquirer observes, "We acknowledge innocent people are on death row, we acknowledge that sometimes they are killed for crimes they did not commit - yet we believe that this is an acceptable by-product of a punishment that, far as anyone knows, has little deterrent value. Perhaps we believe it's justified as the collateral damage in a war without end." No Problem Supporting Death Penalty?

Eighteen years after he was sent to death row for a 1984 murder, John Thompson of New Orleans, LA has been found not guilty by a second jury. Now he is a Free Man

Joseph Amrine

The Missouri Supreme Court has overturned the conviction of death row inmate Joseph Amrine, who had claimed he was innocent of killing another prisoner 17 years ago. The Supreme Court, in a 4-3 decision, said Amrine had shown "clear and convincing evidence of actual innocence that undermines confidence" in his conviction.

Update: Joseph Amrine released from prison.

For the second time in 4 1/2 months, a judge has ordered a new trial for a death row inmate -- this time, Jerry Lee Hamilton -- because prosecutors withheld exculpatory evidence. The State's Star Witness is the Killer

Read the Raleigh, NC News-Observer's riveting series on the framing of Alan Gell: Who Killed Allen Ray Jenkins

UPDATE: Sentenced to die for the murder of a man he had never met, Alan Gell got a new trial when it was learned prosecutors withheld an audio tape of their star witness saying she had to "make up a story" about Jenkin's death. At Gell's retrial, it took the jury only 2 1/2 hours to return its verdict: Not Guilty

Damn the DNA -- the State of Ohio says Jerome Campbell has to die

Bloody Shoes and Snitches