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Truth in
Justice
Newsletter
Wrongful Conviction News from June - September, 2009
RECENT CASES
September 2, 2009 was
a big day for three men -- 2 in North Carolina, 1 in Florida -- who
have spent, among them, 55 years in prison for crimes they did not
commit.
Laboratory
testing has shown that a Broward, Florida man locked up since
he was 15 for the rape and murder of a Miramar woman in 1983 is not the
source of the DNA found on the victim's body. Anthony
Caravella, now 41, has spent 25 years, or more than half his life, in
prison.
A
49-year-old man who has served more than 14 years of a life
sentence for raping two teenage sisters was released after DNA
tests determined that he wasn't the attacker. Joseph
Lamont Abbitt of Winston-Salem was convicted on June 22,
1995, of two counts of first-degree rape, one count of first-degree
burglary and two counts of first-degree kidnapping in connection with
the 1991 sexual assaults of a 15-year-old girl and her 13-year-old
sister.
A
pioneering state commission was Gregory Taylor's only hope at a chance
of dying a free man. The
eight members of the commission delivered that chance on
Friday, voting unanimously that they believed there was sufficient
evidence that Taylor was innocent of murdering a prostitute in 1991.
They referred his case to a three-judge panel for further review.
It was 1993 when
Dorka Lisker was murdered in her home in
Sherman Oaks, CA. Her 17-year-old son, Bruce,
was
charged with the murder. He had a drug problem and a history of
fighting with his mother. Phillip
Rabichow, then a deputy district attorney, convinced a jury that
Bruce was guilty. As the years rolled by and Lisker reached middle age
in prison, Rabichow rarely gave the case a second thought. But in 2005,
new information had shaken his faith in the
fairness of the verdict: A bloody footprint found at the scene did not
match Lisker's shoes. A mysterious phone call made around the time of
the murder raised further questions.
UPDATE: August 18, 2005 - FBI confirms shoe print
at scene not Lisker's.
UPDATE: August 8, 2009 -
Judge overturns Bruce Lisker's conviction in 1983 killing of his mother
UPDATE: August 22, 2009 - D.A.
to retry Lisker in mother's 1983 slaying
UPDATE:
September 21,
2009: The D.A. has decided not to retry Bruce. Of course,
the DA remains "confident in Mr. Lisker's original conviction," because
they may not always be right, but they are never wrong.
William
Joseph
Richards
When William
Richards came home from work in High Desert,
CA and found his wife, Pamela, bludgeoned to death with a cinder block
on their front lawn, he instantly became the only suspect. The
local authorities had to work hard to obtain a conviction,
though. It took three trials -- the first two ended with hung
juries -- and false evidence manufactured by a county crime lab analyst
to make William appear guilty. Now DNA from under Pamela's
fingernails excludes William, and DNA on the murder weapon shows
someone else was holding it. The DA, of course, just doesn't see
William being exonerated.
UPDATE: August 13, 2009 - California
Superior
Court Judge Brian McCarville has granted a Writ of Habeas Corpus
filed by the California Innocence Project on behalf of William Joseph
Richards. "The court finds due to the bitemark,
DNA and hair evidence that
the People's case was undermined and points unerringly to innocence,"
Judge McCarville wrote. Will the DA
prosecute Richards a fourth time?
Joseph Grossi
When Perry Bai was
found stabbed to death in his Perry
Township, Ohio home, police pursued a classic investigation. They
decided Bai's former roommate, Joseph Grossi, walked 17 miles to Bai's
home and killed him. Grossi, who suffers from bipolar disorder
and schizophrenia, was brought in for questioning, denied his
medications and after hours of intense interrogation, he
confessed. Stark County Common Pleas Judge
Charles E. Brown Jr. found their methods were just hunky-dory and the
confession could be used against Grossi at trial. But the crime
lab found evidence implicating others, and a polygraph test cleared
Grossi. Looks like the cops in Stark County, Ohio will have to
actually investigate this crime.
Kenneth
Ireland
“You can take the handcuffs off,” Judge
Richard Damiani
said.
And with that, Kenneth Ireland, a man who has been in jail for 21 years
— and was
supposed to spend decades more behind bars — walked away a free
man. DNA set him free.
Nine rounds of DNA
testing have excluded Ernest Sonnier as the man who kidnapped and raped
an Alief, Texas woman in 1986, and identified two convicted felons as
the actual perpetrators. His conviction was the result of faulty
eyewitness identification and junk science by the Houston Police Crime
Lab.
Police
were convinced that Michelle Moore-Bosko, a young Navy wife, was raped
and murdered by eight men in her small Norfolk apartment in 1997 while
her husband was away at sea. And five of them confessed. But
Bosko's apartment showed no signs of mass attack, and the DNA left
behind matched only one man: Omar A. Ballard, a convicted sex offender,
who gave details of the killing and said he acted alone. The
four
others who confessed -- Danial
J. Williams,
Joseph J. Dick Jr., Derek E. Tice and Eric C. Wilson --
all Navy sailors, later recanted but were
convicted anyway, and three of them are serving life sentences.
UPDATE:
Derek
Tice wins
state habeas. Because
of one mistake by his lawyers, one of the men convicted
in the 1997 rape and murder of a young Navy wife could be set free, a
judge has found. The state, of course, says it will appeal and
wants Tice kept in prison while it does so. Click HERE to read
the judge's decision.
UPDATE: Unbelievable!
On the same day four former Virginia attorneys general declared that
the Norfolk Four are innocent of the rape and murder of Michelle
Moore-Bosko, the Virginia Supreme Court flipped his habeas and
reinstated his conviction.
Alan
Berlow, an independent free lance writer who has written frequently
about wrongful convictions (an earlier article about the Chris Ochoa
case for Salon magazine is a classic), has done it again. His
piece "What
Happened in Norfolk?" picks apart the case against the Norfolk
Four, four Navy sailors stationed in Norfolk, Virginia who many believe
were wrongfully convicted of the rape and murder of Michelle
Moore-Bosko, the wife of another seaman. Three of the men are
still locked up despite the fact that DNA evidence found on the victim
was linked to another man, Omar Ballard, who subsequently confessed to
having committed the crime by himself.
Margaret
Edds, the author of one of the best
books on the Earl Washington wrongful conviction (“An Expendable Man”),
has turned her laser-like focus on the infamous Norfolk Four case in
this cover story from the Richmond Style Weekly. Anything You Say.
UPDATE:
While the
clemency petition submitted during the administration of Virginia
Governor Mark Warner continues to languish on the desk of his
successor, Governor Tim Kaine, 26 more voices have joined the throng of
police, prosecutors, judges and politicians urging pardon and release
of the Norfolk Four. Retired FBI agents
conclude Norfolk Four are innocent victims of Virginia's system.
 UPDATE: 8/6/09 - Gov. Tim
Kaine gives half a loaf -- conditional pardon and commutation of
sentence -- to three of the Norfolk four. This means they will be
released from prison but the Governor refuses to recognize that they
are factually innocent. Gov. Kaine has aspirations to higher
office, and apparently thinks that doing the right thing will cost him
votes.
Visit
Norfolk
Four:
A Miscarriage of
Justice
UPDATE:
9/15/09 - A federal judge has overturned the rape and
murder convictions of Derek Elliott Tice, one of the "Norfolk Four,"
ruling that his lawyers should have challenged the use of his
confession at his trial. Expect the Commonwealth of Virginia to
appeal to the very conservative 4th Circuit Court.
The Virginia Court of
Appeals has overturned the
first-degree murder conviction of a former Navy SEAL trainee in the
1995 slaying of college student Jennifer Lea Evans in Virginia
Beach. In granting an appeal of Dustin Allen Turner, a divided
three-judge
panel vacated his convictions of murder and abduction with intent to
defile and found him guilty only of being an accessory after the fact
-- a misdemeanor. The judges remanded the case to the Virginia Beach
Circuit Court with instructions to modify the conviction order
accordingly. This is the first petition contested by the state
that has been granted under Virginia's Actual Innocence statute.
UPDATE: August 7, 2009 - Virginia Attorney General Bill Mims has
asked for a full court review of the appeals panel decision.
In the same
week that a judge in Ohio decided that the DNA exclusion of
Clarence Elkins as the source of sperm found in the murder victim's
vagina
and her granddaughter's underwear was not enough to overturn Elkins'
rape
and murder conviction, the Wisconsin Supreme Court stepped up to the
plate
and gave Ralph Armstrong his freedom in a strikingly similar
case.
Armstrong gives all of us hope.
UPDATE - 4/13/07: Prosecutors
retrying a 1980 murder charge against Ralph Armstrong in Madison,
WI cannot use the
results of a DNA test on a key piece of evidence because the results
were obtained in violation of a court order, a judge has ruled. Dane
County Circuit Judge Daniel Moeser said the state acted in
"bad faith" when it went ahead with the testing without notifying the
defense and, in the process, used up the material - in violation of the
judge's order. Bad
Faith.
UPDATE - 4/25/08: Now we know why the
state violated a court order to test -- and use up -- key
evidence. The state, and specifically, Assistant DA John
Norsetter, has known for 13 years that Ralph Armstrong's brother
confessed to the crime of which Ralph was convicted. Norsetter,
who retired from the office last year, allegedly not
only failed to investigate or notify Armstrong’s defense attorneys of
this confession, he subsequently ordered a test that destroyed evidence
that could have established Steve Armstrong’s guilt. Worse Than Bad Faith
UPDATE - 8/1/09: Ralph
Armstrong’s long wait for freedom, four years after his
conviction for the 1980 rape and murder of a UW-Madison student was
overturned, came closer to an end Friday after a judge dismissed the
charges against him. Reserve Judge Robert Kinney, of Rhinelander,
said a Dane County
prosecutor in 1995 should have told Armstrong’s attorneys about a
reported confession to the murder of Charise Kamps by Armstrong’s
brother. He also said a prosecutor-ordered test in 2006 caused the
destruction of a semen stain on a piece of evidence that could have
eliminated Armstrong as a suspect in Kamps’ murder. Is it really almost
over?
After eight years and
uncounted dashed hopes, DeShawn Reed
and
Marvin Reed walked out of custody into the free sunshine Friday morning
after prosecutors decided not to retry them for a 2000 shooting that
left a man paralyzed. They were the victims of faulty eyewitness
identification.
A Battle Creek, MI judge
ordered a new trial for
Lorinda Swain, who has steadfastly maintained her innocence since being
accused of a sex crime with her son.
Judge Conrad Sindt ordered the new trial after hearing two days of
testimony that included new witnesses and her son, who recanted his
original statement.
Nancy
Smith and Joseph Allen were convicted of sexually abusing young
children in August of 1994. Smith, a 37-year-old single mother
with four children, was a bus driver for the Lorain, Ohio Head Start.
The prosecution charged that after delivering the children to
school, she would sometimes keep three or four of them and take them to
a mysterious location, where she and a man known to the children only
as "Joseph" would commit various sexual acts with them, make
them drink urine, and poke them with needles and sticks. But an
examination of the police investigation leaves many disturbing
questions; questions about the children's testimony, questions about
whether Smith and Allen even knew each other -- questions about
whether, in fact, any crimes were committed at all.
UPDATE:
2/22/07 - Nancy
Smith’s bid for freedom Tuesday was rejected for a number of reasons,
including a parole board official’s opinion that she hadn’t served
enough time after being convicted of molesting children while she was a
Head Start bus driver in the 1990s. They Want a
Confession to Crimes She did not Commit
UPDATE:
2/4/09 - Investigator Martin Yant, who has helped to free 12 innocent
people, has worked on Nancy
Smith's case for 13 years. He has obtained piles of
evidence that prove her innocence of charges she molested four young
children. That evidence can get Nancy a re-trial, or at least
re-sentencing. Shining Light on
Abuse-Hysteria Conviction.
UPDATE: 2/4/09 - Nancy Smith freed on
bond.
UPDATE: 6/24/09 - Nancy Smith and
Joseph Allen Acquitted.
DEATH
PENALTY ISSUES
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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.
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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.
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.
INNOCENT IMPRISONED
The
Harris County (Texas) Medical Examiner's office has quietly
rewritten the results of a 1998 autopsy, prompting renewed innocence
claims on behalf of a baby sitter sent to prison nearly a decade ago
for allegedly shaking a 4-month-old infant hard enough to cause fatal
injuries. The
original autopsy classified the baby's death as a homicide
and was used by prosecutors as a key piece of evidence against Cynthia
Cash, now 53, a former nurse convicted of fatal injury to a child after
4-month-old Abbey Clements died after being rushed to the hospital from
Cash's home.
But the modified autopsy report made public in a new appeal calls the
cause of death “undetermined” and found no evidence of “trauma” in the
postmortem exam.
Karl Vinson's family hopes that
science will redeem its
faith and convince the authorities to free him after 23 years in
prison. The Innocence
Project at the University
of Michigan Law School,
in a motion filed September 14, 2009 in Wayne County Circuit Court,
said it has new
scientific evidence that Vinson was not the man who crawled through a
window in 1986 to rape a 9-year-old Detroit girl in her bed.
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HOW THE SYSTEM WORKS
Darn!
The cops will
actually have to investigate. When Perry Bai
was found stabbed to death in his Perry Township,
Ohio home, police pursued a classic investigation. They decided
Bai's
former roommate, Joseph Grossi, walked 17 miles to Bai's home and
killed him. Grossi, who suffers from bipolar disorder and
schizophrenia, was brought in for questioning, denied his medications
and after hours of intense interrogation, he confessed. Stark
County Common Pleas Judge Charles E. Brown Jr. found their methods were
just hunky-dory and the confession could be used against Grossi at
trial. But the crime lab found evidence implicating others, and a
polygraph test cleared Grossi. Looks like the cops in Stark
County,
Ohio will have to actually investigate this crime.
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Innocence
claim
trumps late filing. Kevin Phelps, serving a
life sentence for a 1993 murder in
Richmond, California, has been trying for more than a decade to get a
federal judge to hear his claim of innocence, and may soon get his
chance. In overturning a series of decisions that barred Phelps'
appeal because his lawyer filed his appeal 15 days too late, the 9th
U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals said, "Far too often in
recent years, concern for efficiency and procedure has overshadowed
concern for basic fairness."
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POLICE/PROSECUTOR
MISCONDUCT
Florida. Actually, all over the US, but the
latest example of a wolverine prosecutor who gets convictions
regardless of guilt is in Broward County, Florida -- Robert
Carney. Of course, he's a judge now, and that's typical,
too. A belt full of scalps qualifies prosecutors to move up to
the bench and apply the same, twisted legal rationales to the cases
tried by and before them. Congratulations, Judge Carney. Strike Four.
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Wolverine prosecutors travel in packs.
Robert Carney's successor,
Carolyn McCann, launched a full-court (no pun intended) effort to
assault the credibility of Edward Blake and his lab, Forensic Science
Associates. Why? Blake not only found DNA in the Anthony
Caravella case, but his tests cleared Caravella of rape and murder
charges. In 2001, the Broward County Sheriff's crime lab
"couldn't find" any DNA evidence. They travel in the same
pack. Seek the truth? No. Protect the conviction.
Mississippi. Former
Hinds County Circuit Court Judge Bobby DeLaughter, 55, has resigned his
job and pled guilty to misleading authorities. His
plea means he'll be spending a little over a year--18 months--in a
federal prison, and he will lose his law license. He'll not have
to answer for what he did to Cedric Willis. DeLaughter
sent an innocent man to prison for the rest of his natural life, even
though evidence was available to the contrary. DeLaughter is no
victim.
California: As
Michael Gressett waited for a jury verdict in a molestation
trial, the Contra Costa County sex crimes prosecutor had what he called
a "nooner," bringing a fellow prosecutor to his Martinez home for
intercourse. What happened next, on May 8, 2008, is the subject
of an explosive rape
case brought by the state attorney general. It involves a gun and an
ice pick, but rests on a simple question that Gressett often asks
juries to decide: Was the sex consensual or forced? Do as I say, not as I do.
Illinois: A
Cook County judge ordered a new trial for convicted murderer Victor
Safforld on May 22, 2009 after
finding three Chicago police detectives once supervised by
disgraced former Cmdr. Jon Burge likely beat him into confessing.
"...
I have a more complete history of the behavior of these
detectives," Circuit
Judge Clayton J. Cranesaid.
"That evidence is staggering. That evidence is
damning."
False
Allegations of Child Abuse
Shaken
Baby Syndrome
Fatima
Miah of London, England, accused of shaking
her baby son to death, walked
free from court after a
judge ordered jurors to clear her of manslaughter. The
judge said expert evidence was too divided for the jury to
come to a conclusion as he threw out the charge. Legal experts said his
decision would have serious implications for similar prosecutions up
and down the country. The science is flawed and
contradictory.
The Ventura County District
Attorney’s Office has
dismissed felony
charges against Cecila Garcia Cortes, who was accused of assaulting her
4-month-old daughter who died early in April, 2009. Chief
Medical Examiner Ronald O’Halloran ruled that
the death of Guadalupe Cardoza, from blunt-force trauma, was
an accident. The death was attributed to an accidental fall.
The
Harris County (Texas) Medical Examiner's office has quietly
rewritten the results of a 1998 autopsy, prompting renewed innocence
claims on behalf of a baby sitter sent to prison nearly a decade ago
for allegedly shaking a 4-month-old infant hard enough to cause fatal
injuries. The
original autopsy classified the baby's death as a homicide
and was used by prosecutors as a key piece of evidence against Cynthia
Cash, now 53, a former nurse convicted of fatal injury to a child after
4-month-old Abbey Clements died after being rushed to the hospital from
Cash's home. But
the modified autopsy report made public in a new appeal calls the
cause of death “undetermined” and found no evidence of “trauma” in the
postmortem exam.
DA continues
to back Dr. Moore, a team player.
False
Allegations of Sexual Abuse
A
Battle Creek, MI judge has ordered a new trial for
Lorinda Swain, who has steadfastly maintained her innocence since being
accused of a sex crime with her son.
Judge Conrad Sindt ordered the new trial after hearing two days of
testimony that included new witnesses and her son, who recanted his
original statement. Saying
what they wanted to hear.
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JUNK SCIENCE
United States. A report from
Israeli scientists that DNA evidence can be fabricated is the real
thing, and the implications are terrifying. “You
can just engineer a crime scene,” said Dan Frumkin, lead
author of the paper, which has been published online by the journal
Forensic Science International: Genetics. “Any biology undergraduate
could perform this.” We have seen, over and over, in cases from
around the country, that police and prosecutors will plant evidence in
order to win convictions. Victims of planted evidence include George Lee III,
Nicholas
Sampson and Matt Livers, Madison Hobley,
Kevin
Cooper
and Kenneth Hudson,
to name just a few. Fabricating a Win for
the State.
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Texas. Fort
Bend County Sheriff’s Deputy and bloodhound trainer Keith
Pikett has been sued in federal court for the second time in less than
a year over a scent line-up involving his dogs. The dogs were
trumped by DNA in the most recent case, and by the guilty plea of a
rapist/murderer in the earlier case. So why continue such
blatantly bogus tactics? The dogs are
generating income.
UPDATE: 9/27/09 - Curvis Bickham
does not know for sure whether Pikett's dogs, used to connect
him to a triple murder in southeast Houston last year, made a mistake,
produced a false “hit” because their handler encouraged them or
responded correctly to scent that was deliberately placed on items from
the murder scene. All he knows is that he was accused of capital
murder, a crime that could have cost him his life. Former
Harris County prosecutor Vic Wisner, an assistant district attorney for
more than 24 years, has a one-word summation of scent
evidence: "Ludicrous."
Oklahoma. Former
Oklahoma City DA Bob Macy and police chemist Joyce Gilchrist have
settled with Curtis
Edward McCarty, who spent 20 years on death row for a crime he didn't
commit, thanks to the "convictions at all costs" efforts of Macy and
Gilchrist. The settlement terms with Macy are sealed, but not the
settlement with Gilchrist. The Oklahoma
Gazette has peeled away the layers of "spin" to reveal inner
workings in the DA's office and crime lab that are shocking. A scoop
for the Oklahoma Gazette.
United States. The U.S.
Supreme Court dragged crime labs toward transparency in its June 25,
2009 opinion that
crime lab reports used in drug and other cases can be
introduced as evidence at trial only if defendants can cross-examine
the forensic analysts who prepared them. One less rock
for incompetence to hide behind.
Arson or
Accident?
The inability of arson investigators to recognize the
difference could put YOU in prison - or worse. |
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Five men charged with
crimes that never happened. Five men's lives ruined. Two
men freed. One man executed. Two innocent men still locked
up. This doesn't just happen in Texas. It happens
everywhere. It can happen to anyone. It can happen to YOU.
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The Arson Screening Project
With the generous support of the JEHT Foundation, the Center has
launched an Arson Screening Project, designed to:
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*
Survey and analyze the range of
“Arson”
convictions that in fact involved accidental fires,
* Forward meritorious cases to a blue-ribbon
Fire Science panel, led by Center Advisory Board member John Lentini,
* Report to scientists and practitioners the
depth and extent of the problem and develop targeted remedies.
The Arson Screening Project will not provide legal
representation. It
will, however, offer an assessment of the science used to gain a
conviction which can be employed in trying to persuade prosecutors,
lawyers, and courts that a given case is worthy of review. The Project
is not designed to assess “whodunit” cases; it is designed to offer a
scientific analysis of whether the crime of arson was committed, not to
identify arsonist or rule out a defendant in case where a fire was set.
If you believe you or a client have a case that would
benefit from
authoritative review, click HERE for
further information and the application form.
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INNOCENCE
PROJECTS
Innocence
Projects provide representation and/or investigative assistance
to prison inmates who claim to be innocent of the crimes for which they
were
convicted. There is now at least one innocence project serving each
state (except Oregon and Tennessee, whose programs are undergoing
reorganization).
Most of these innocence projects are new and overwhelmed with
applications,
so waiting time between application and acceptance is long. Wrongfully
convicted persons should not be dissuaded from applying to Innocence
Projects because of this, but should have realistic expectations
regarding acceptance and time
lags. Check the list for the innocence project in your area; we
update
it regularly.
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RECOMMENDED
READING
The Monfils
Conspiracy
by Denis Gullickson and John Gaie
On November 21, 1992, Thomas Monfils, an employee at the James River
paper mill in Green Bay, Wisconsin, disappeared. After an intensive
search, his body was found the next evening, submerged in a pulp vat.
The police called it murder. In 1995, six of Monfils' coworkers were
wrongfully convicted of his death, the result of a preordained theory
and a reckless prosecution.
Highly detailed and meticulously researched, The Monfils Conspiracy
reveals the true story of a botched case that landed six innocent men
in prison. Through extensive interviews, court documents, police
reports, and other documentation, Denis Gullickson and John Gaie
present a powerful look at the troubling events surrounding the death
of Thomas Monfils and the mistake-riddled investigation that followed.
Fifteen years after Monfils' death and a dozen years after his
coworkers' convictions, The Monfils Conspiracy shatters the myths
surrounding this case and opens the door to justice-and the truth.
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For
more information about the book, the defendants and the botched police
investigation, click HERE.
Click HERE
to read the 7th Circuit Court of Appeals decision
exonerating
defendant Michael Piaskowski.
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True Stories of False Confessions
by Rob Warden and
Steven A. Drizin
"When people ask the question: 'Why would anybody who is innocent
confess to something they know they did not do?' Well, maybe this book
will be their answer. It happens all the time." --- Dr. Rubin
(Hurricane) Carter
In True Stories of False Confessions,
Rob Warden and Steve Drizin of the Center on Wrongful Convictions
present 39 compelling accounts of false confessions. The stories are
organized into categories, such as, brainwashing, child abuse, and
fabrication, that will help readers understand the factors that lead
people to confess to crimes they did not commit.
True Stories of False
Confessions shows that these cases are not aberrations, but
rather evidence of systemic flaws in the criminal justice system that
demand reform. To this end, Warden and Drizin include an illuminating
introduction to each category as well as a postscript for each case,
providing legal updates and additional information.
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OF
NOTE: Phillip Finch's landmark book, 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.
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LINKS
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sure
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compelling
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