Registry Counts 873 Wrongful Convictions, Only a Fraction of Problem

Perjury, faulty eyewitness identification, and prosecutorial misconduct are the leading reasons for wrongful convictions, says the first national registry of exonerations compiled by university researchers. USA Today says the database, in a collaboration between the University of Michigan and Northwestern University, has identified 873 faulty convictions in the past 23 years that have been recognized by prosecutors, judges, or governors.

The registry's founders say the numbers, which do not include many cases in which innocent suspects plead guilty to avoid the risk of more serious punishments or cases that have been dismissed because of legal error without new evidence of innocence, represent only some fraction of the problem in the nation's criminal justice system. "What this shows is that the criminal justice system makes mistakes, and they are more common than people think," said University of Michigan law Prof. Samuel Gross, the registry's editor. "It is not the rule, but we won't learn to get better unless we pay attention to these cases." Despite the data, the registry concluded that the "overwhelming majority of convicted defendants are guilty."

Did Texas Execute the Wrong "Carlos" For 1983 Murder?

The Columbia University Human Rights Law Review published a 400-page article asserting that Texas executed in an innocent man in the 1983 Corpus Christi killing of Wanda Lopez, bypassing a potential suspect who had bragged of killing her. The Houston Chronicle calls the critique the latest in which death penalty opponents seek to prove that Texas, with 482 executions since 1982, killed an innocent man. Steve Schiwetz, lead prosecutor at the executed man's trial, disputed the authors' conclusions. "These guys are crusaders," he said. "What can I say?"

The journal article presents the stories of Carlos DeLuna and Carlos Hernandez, who shared darkly handsome looks and a history of substance abuse and violence against women. DeLuna, 27, executed for Lopez's murder in 1989, was "childlike" and a "follower," acquaintances told researchers. Hernandez bragged of killing Lopez and laughed about DeLuna taking the fall. He died in prison in 1999 at 45. The journal article grew out of a 2003 student project to examine Texas capital cases in which a single eyewitness account was key to conviction. "This case changed my whole view," said Columbia Law professor James Liebman. "I had thought the problem cases were ones where you have an out-of-town defendant, a scary person who commits a really bad crime that grabs the whole community. The police are under so much pressure to find someone that something goes wrong. Now, I think the worst cases are those that likely happen every day in which no one cares that much about the defendant or the victim."

Novelist's NC Murder Conviction Voided Over Witness Testimony

Scheck: Why Is So Little Done About Prosecutorial Misconduct?

The pending prosecutorial misconduct case against Texas Judge Ken Anderson in the Michael Morton wrongful conviction made national headlines because, as a recent article in the Yale Online Law Review documents, our system rarely disciplines, much less brings criminal charges against, prosecutors who have engaged in intentional misconduct. Barry Scheck of The Innocence Project writes in the Austin American-Statesman.

Far too often, prosecutors, who wield enormous power over our lives, aren't investigated at all, even for intentional misconduct that has led to a wrongful conviction, much less "harmless" intentional misconduct in cases in which the defendant was guilty, Scheck says. What can be done to reform the system? One remedy, civil litigation, is increasingly unavailable. Last year, the U.S. Supreme Court severely limited the ability of wrongfully convicted plaintiffs to hold a district attorney's office accountable for intentional acts of misconduct by line prosecutors. Scheck says that just because there are only a few bad actors doesn't mean we should sit back and do nothing. When a bridge collapses, we conduct an investigation to find the root of the problem. When an airplane crashes, we do everything in our power to find out what went wrong. When a prosecutor withholds evidence that could have prevented someone from being wrongly convicted, we're lucky if we ever find out about it.

Texas Murder Exoneree Michael Morton Tries to Fix Justice System

The past few years in Texas have seen a parade of DNA exonerations: more than 40 men so far, says NPR. The first exonerations were big news, but the type has grown smaller as Texans have watched a dismaying march of exonerees, their wasted years haunting the public conscience.

The Michael Morton case in Williamson County, north of Austin, is raising the ante. Morton had been sentenced to life in prison for murdering his wife. He was released six months ago — 25 years after being convicted — when DNA testing proved he was not the killer. Instead of merely seeking financial compensation, Morton is working to fix the system. His lawyers, including The Innocence Project, want to hold the man who put him behind bars accountable. They want new laws to make sure Morton's story is never repeated.

U.S. Drops Conviction Over Hair Evidence, Critics Seek National Review

Justice Department Stayed Mum on Tainted Evidence Work by FBI Lab

Justice Department officials have known for years that flawed forensic work might have led to convictions of potentially innocent people nationwide, but prosecutors failed to notify defendants or their attorneys even in many cases they knew were troubled, reports the Washington Post. Officials began reviewing the cases in the 1990s after reports that sloppy work by examiners at the FBI lab was producing unreliable forensic evidence in trials. Instead of releasing those findings, they made them available only to the prosecutors in the affected cases, the Post says.

In addition, the Justice Department reviewed only a limited number of cases and focused on the work of one scientist at the FBI lab, despite warnings that problems were far more widespread and could affect potentially thousands of cases in federal, state and local courts. As a result, hundreds of defendants remain in prison or on parole for crimes that might merit exoneration, a retrial or a retesting of evidence using DNA because FBI hair and fiber experts may have misidentified them as suspects. Justice Department officials said they met their legal and constitutional obligations when they learned of specific errors, that they alerted prosecutors and were not required to inform defendants directly.

NY Attorney General Plans New Unit to Check on Wrongful Convictions

Juan Rivera Discusses His Illinois False Confession Case

Juan Rivera, who spent nearly 20 years in prison before his murder conviction was overturned by an Illinois appeals court, told law students yesterday he is training to become a medical researcher. Rivera, 39, was released in January, says the Chicago Tribune. "Life is short," said Rivera, who got married and learned two new languages during his incarceration. "You have the power to correct a lot of wrong. Never think a person in prison is lost."

Jane Raley of Northwestern University's Center on Wrongful Convictions blamed the case on "arrogance and an inability or refusal to admit that one is wrong." Rivera was 19 when he was convicted of the 1992 rape and murder of baby sitter Holly Staker, 11, after a confession that his lawyers have long said was false. Raley said this "will be one of the most famous false confession cases in the country."

Virginia Lags In Exonerating Convicts Via DNA Evidence

Bennett Barbour, who was convicted in 1978 in Virginia of a rape he didn't commit, is one of only a handful who have enjoyed vindication, says Slate.com...

Citing Wrongful Convictions, Dallas DA Seeks Death Penalty Review

District Attorney Craig Watkins of Dallas County, where where more than two dozen wrongful convictions have been overturned, is calling for a review...

Wrongful Arrest Cases Top 600; City Vows Fixes

At least 600 times since 2002, Denver authorities, armed with warrants, arrested or jailed the wrong person, the American Civil Liberties Union tells the New York Times. As described in a lawsuit, similar names, stolen identities, and inaccurate records were sometimes the source of errors made by the police and jailers. In other cases, the arrests and detentions seemed inexplicable. "Denver law enforcement has knowingly tolerated an unjustifiable risk and frequency of these mistaken identity arrests, causing hundreds of innocent persons to be jailed for hours, days, even weeks on warrants for someone else," said the ACLU's Mark Silverstein.

In one case, the Denver police mistakenly arrested a man on three different occasions who had a name similar to the actual suspect’s. Even after a warning was inserted into a criminal database, the wrong man was arrested a fourth time and jailed for eight days in 2007, says an ACLU lawsuit. Since 2009, the Denver police and the sheriff’s department here have set up a system in which claims of wrongful arrest and detention are investigated immediately; fewer than 10 officers are either disciplined or retrained each year because of such mistakes, said Police Lt. Matt Murray. A group of local police experts who specialize in the process of identifying criminals is studying how to reduce the problem, said David Edinger, chief performance officer for the city. The findings are expected within the next three weeks.

Judge Orders Court of Inquiry for TX Prosecutor in Wrongful Conviction

Former Williamson County, Tx., District Attorney Ken Anderson should face a court of inquiry to examine allegations that he hid evidence that could have...

New York Advances Bill To Expand DNA Collection from Convicts

Preliminary Data Estimate VA Wrongful Conviction Rate At 6%

A first peek into Virginia's post-conviction DNA project data shows a potential wrongful conviction rate of 6 percent in the decade and a half before DNA testing was widely available, reports the Richmond Times-Dispatch. The preliminary figure from the Urban Institute, which is studying the results, roughly matches the exoneration rate found in 2005, when testing in a small sample of cases cleared two men of rapes and prompted Virginia's groundbreaking project.

The 6-year-old effort aimed at clearing innocent people was made possible by a trove of biological evidence samples discovered in Virginia Department of Forensic Science files dating from 1973 through 1988. John Roman of the Urban Institute's Justice Policy Center said researchers reviewing 638 Virginia cases have identified 37 "that might support exoneration and that certainly support further investigation." Roman hopes the study will indicate how many people were wrongfully convicted of serious crimes from 1973 through 1988. "I don't know how far we can go down that road," he said, "but this is probably the best attempt to get at that number that anybody's ever had. The Justice Department made a really substantial investment in this."