The StandDown Texas Project

The Plight of the Exonerated

"Walking free from death row -- and into a new nightmare," is by Agence France-Presse (AFP), via GlobalPost.

Sabrina Butler can lay claim to a dubious honor -- she is the only female death row prisoner in the United States to be exonerated.

But while she may finally be free, the stain on her character has proven far harder to erase, while adjusting back into normal life is an everyday struggle. Getting compensation is a whole new battle.

"I get to meet other people that are just like me, you know? Well, the guys, rather, because I'm the only female," Butler said at a meeting in Philadelphia of 30 former death-row convicts who were all exonerated -- the victims of false testimonies, judicial errors, wrongful confessions and worse.

And:

Steve Honeyman, interim executive director at Witness to Innocence, said being freed is only the start of a long battle, especially when it comes to compensation. Those freed are often broke and jobless.

"Some of them sue the state that they're in and they get some compensation, but most of them get out and don't get anything," said Honeyman.

Related posts are in the exoneration, innocence, and wrongful incarceration category indexes.

Continuing Coverage of the North Carolina Exonerations

Today's Raleigh News & Observer publishes the editorial, "NC brothers are cleared after system failed."  Here's the beginning of this must-read:

The chain of evidence that freed Henry McCollum and his half-brother Leon Brown after 30 years in North Carolina prisons was a chain of delicate links.

If the man now suspected of the 1983 rape and murder of an 11-year-old girl hadn’t smoked, if an investigator had not stooped to collect a discarded cigarette butt found in the bean field near the victim’s body, if the evidence had not been kept over the decades, if the N.C Innocence Inquiry Commission had not been formed and its staff had not decided to act on Brown’s request to have his case reviewed, if the DNA on the cigarette had not matched Roscoe Artis – a man convicted of a similar rape and murder in the same Red Springs area – the brothers would be still in the prisons they left this week. Henry McCollum would still be on death row. Leon Brown would be serving life.

It is a great thing that these random acts and decisions joined against high odds to free the brothers. But it is also disturbing to consider how close this proof came to never surfacing and how many other people have been wrongly convicted and never redeemed by such rare good fortune. In the United States since 1989, 312 people convicted of crimes have been exonerated by DNA evidence.

"Freed pair will seek pardons; Could then seek compensation," is the AP report by Jonathan Drew, via the Robesonian

Henry McCollum and Leon Brown are planning to ask for pardons after they were freed this week from North Carolina prisons following the discovery of evidence that they didn’t kill a young girl 30 years ago.

Vernetta Alston, an attorney for McCollum, says lawyers representing him and Brown, his half brother, are preparing petitions for a pardon of innocence and plan to file within the next couple of weeks. McCollum was freed from death row after three decades, while Brown had been serving a life sentence.

If the men are pardoned, they would be eligible to claim compensation under a state law that allows up to $750,000 for people wrongly convicted of felonies. Alston said Brown and McCollum had not yet explicitly discussed petitioning for compensation.

"McCrory praises vacated convictions," is by Joseph Neff in the News & Observer.

Gov. Pat McCrory said he was pleased by recent headlines about the exonerations of Henry McCollum and Leon Brown, who were freed this week after almost 31 years in prison.

"Yesterday, I was heartened to see the convictions of Henry McCollum and Leon Brown vacated by the court," McCrory said in a statement released Thursday. "My office has a process in place to review applications for pardons of innocence. If they apply, we will begin reviewing their applications as soon as they are received."

And:

"That's awesome," said Vernetta Alston, attorney for Henry McCollum. Alston said she has begun the pardon application.

"We're thrilled the governor has sentiments that echo what the district attorney said and the court found, that these fellows are innocent," said James Payne, a laywer for Leon Brown.

The Fayetteville Observer reports, "Sabrina Buie's family stunned by release of two men convicted of killing her in 1983," by Nathan Hardin.

Buie was 4 years old when her sister was found in the field half-naked and choked to death by her underwear.

Reliving the murder investigation of her sister, Buie said, is nearly unbearable.

"It's the worst nightmare you could ever imagine," she said.

Buie declined to go into detail about the court's decision or the two men convicted 30 years earlier, but she said the ruling and timing of the hearing - near the anniversary of Sabrina's death - was especially painful.

Earlier coverage of the North Carolina exonerations begins at the link.

Revisiting the Tangled Case of Jerry Hartfield

Andrew Cohen writes, "Texas has been holding this man hostage for 12,600 days," of the Week.  Here's the beginning of this must-read:

Last week, in a decision that contorted both law and fact, a state judge ruled against an illiterate, intellectually disabled black man named Jerry Hartfield.

Hartfield has been imprisoned for more than 33 years — without a valid conviction or sentence authorizing his confinement. In the latest decision, the judge ruled that even though state and local officials clearly were negligent in letting Hartfield slip through the cracks all these decades, there is nothing in the Constitution that provides him with any protection from being retried. Not the Sixth Amendment's guarantee of a speedy trial. Not the undisputed fact that key evidence in that long-ago trial — like the alleged murder weapon, for example — has disappeared. Not the fact that there is no proof that Hartfied, with an IQ testing far below standards for mental retardation, strategized to keep himself in prison for 30 years as a way of avoiding a retrial.

It's not just the third of a century of unlawful confinement that is egregious here. It's the fact that 10 months have passed since the state courts in Texas (after many years of prodding) first acknowledged the terrible mistake that was made in this case. Even this lesser period of delay is unconscionable. Jerry Hartfield, who first would have been eligible for parole in 2003 had Texas followed the law, should be free.

Earlier coverage of Jerry Hartfield's case begins at the link.  You can also jump to Andrew Cohen's earlier commentary on the case.

Glenn Ford's First Days of Freedom After 30 Years on Death Row

That's the title of Andrew Cohen's latest post at the Atlantic.  It's subtitled, "Krispy Kreme doughnuts. Metal spoons. What's re-entry like for a man who last breathed free during Ronald Reagan's first term as president?"

That moment, the moment Glenn Ford hesitated inside that car on his way to get his first doughnut since Ronald Reagan was president, crystallizes the challenges that exonerees face upon their release from prison. In an instant they go from a world where they have virtually no choices to a world in which their choices seem limitless. And they go from a world in which they have no control—over opening a door, for example—to one in which they can, indeed, control their own fate.

Some exonerees make the transition to free life more smoothly than others. Some, like John Thompson, become selfless advocates for other exonerees. But some promptly get in more trouble with the law or with people seeking to take advantage of them.

Earlier coverage of Glenn Ford's exoneration begins with the preceding post.

Continuing Coverage of Glenn Ford's Exoneration

The Brennan Center posts, "The Meaning of the Exoneration of Glenn Ford," by Andrew Cohen.

There are dozens of reasons why capital cases take so long to resolve, only a few of them involve unreasonable delays by defendants, and almost all of them have a central theme: garbage in, garbage out. From the outset of these cases, judges and prosecutors too often fail to ensure basic fairness by giving capital defendants all of the due process rights to which they are entitled. Often these errors are so significant, and so obvious, that they demand aggressive appellate litigation on the part of defense attorneys. This litigation takes time and that time is compounded not, as Justice Scalia asserts, by wimpy procedural rules, but rather by the nature of judicial decision-making itself.

Let me take the most recent example, the exoneration of Glenn Ford in Louisiana, to illustrate this point. He was convicted of murder and sentenced to death in 1984 after a trial that was unconstitutional in virtually every respect. He was scheduled for execution in 1991. He was set free Tuesday. His case took three decades to resolve (fortunately without the execution of an innocent man) not just because his trial lawyers were incompetent, his prosecutor excluded blacks from the jury, and the evidence against him was woefully weak. It took that long because the Louisiana courts, aware of these manifest deficiencies, nevertheless failed to muster up the courage to remedy them.

At any point along the way, for decade after decade after decade, Louisiana’s judges could given Ford a new trial based upon the grave flaws that ruined his first trial. They could have said that the Constitution does not permit the conviction of a black man by an all-white jury after prosecutors systematically removed blacks from the jury pool. They could have said that the right to counsel necessarily includes a capital lawyer who has tried a case before and who knows how to hire a defense expert. They could have said that there were overwhelming concerns about the strength of the prosecution’s case.

"St. Paul lawyers play driving role in release of Louisiana death row inmate," is by Rochelle Olson for the Minneapolis Star Tribune.

For years, when she’d walk into her downtown St. Paul office, criminal defense lawyer Deborah Ellis would see a photo of Louisiana death row inmate Glenn Ford perched at eye level on the reception desk.

It was “a reminder to fight the good fight,” she said.

On Tuesday night, Ellis watched on television as Ford, 64, walked out of Louisiana State Prison in Angola. He was one of the longest-serving death row inmates in U.S. history to be exonerated and released. “I’ve been crying ever since,” Ellis said.

Minnesota Lawyer posts, "Minnesota attorneys joyful at death row inmate’s release," by Elizabeth Ahlin.

The Minnesota criminal defense attorney who got her involved, Doug Thomson, died in 2007. Thomson underwrote the pro bono effort for years, until Ellis started her own firm in 1993 and took the Ford case with her. In the beginning, while working round the clock on a post-conviction relief petition, several other Minnesotans were by her side.

Elliot Olsen and Charles Jones both described joy at seeing Ford freed from prison this week. While the two attorneys did not stay with the case for decades like Ellis, they sunk many hours, over a couple years, pushing for serious consideration of Ford’s post-conviction relief petition, Olsen said. It’s rewarding, both said, to see Ford released.

“It’s just shocking that it took so long,” Olsen said.

The Shreveport Times reports, "Sheriff's detective credited with uncovering evidence freeing Ford," by Vickie Welborn.

Law enforcement’s job not only is to arrest the bad guys but to get at the truth of a crime. So when a Caddo sheriff’s investigator last year came across new information on a 30-year-old cold case, he went straight to the district attorney’s office.

Caddo Sheriff Steve Prator is crediting that investigator, Detective Terry Richardson, with uncovering information that ultimately led to freedom for former Shreveporter Glenn Ford, who at age 64 walked out of Louisiana State Penitentiary at Angola on Tuesday after being sentenced to death row nearly 30 years ago.

“Cpl. Richardson developed this information while working on other homicides,” Prator said. “He came across information pertinent to this old case and, to his credit, he immediately notified the district attorney’s office and from there continued to follow up on information and work with the district attorney.”

"Death row inmate Glenn Ford released 30 years after wrongful conviction," is by Ed Pilkington for the Guardian.

Richard Dieter, an authority on capital punishment at the Death Penalty Information Center, said that Ford’s case “painfully reveals the fallibility of the death penalty and the risks we take with every death sentence. Some states are trying to speed up executions instead of addressing the underlying problems that have led to such mistakes.”

David Love, executive director of Witness to Innocence, an organisation of exonerated death row survivors and their loved ones, said that attempts to speed up the time from conviction to death showed that for some politicians “it’s more important to have finality than to have justice. I believe that’s a misguided approach. As we see more and more innocent people like Glenn Ford released from death row, that’s a wake up call that we have to look at our broken system.”

Ford will now go through the long process of trying to rebuild his life on the outside. Under Louisiana law he can apply for compensation of up to $25,000 for each year lost to detention, but only up to a ceiling of $250,000.

"After 30 years on death row, can a wronged man forgive?" is the Christian Science Monitor report by Lisa Suhay.

The news of the release of Glenn Ford after being released from a Louisiana prison after 30 years behind bars for a murder he didn’t commit, is a dialogue opener for parents to discuss with children how to get past feelings of resentment to forgive and move forward.

Additional coverage includes:

"Louisiana Prisoner Exonerated, Freed After 30 Years on Death Row," at Democracy Now.

"Release ordered for Louisiana death row inmate," in the Baton Rouge Advocate.

"Man Exonerated, Freed After 3 Decades On Louisiana's Death Row," by Scott Neuman at NPR.

Slate posts, "Louisiana's Longest-Serving Death Row Inmate Freed After Three Decades," by Kelly Tunney.

"Black Man Sentenced To Death By All-White Jury Freed After 30 Years," by Nicole Flatow at Think Progress.

WAFB-TV posts, "Ford's ex-wife: I knew he was innocent," by Fred Childers, and, "Death row inmate freed, family of victim looks for answers," by Sasha Jones.

Earlier coverage of Glenn Ford's exoneration begins at the link.

Initial Commentary on the Glenn Ford Exoneration

New Orleans Times-Picayune columnist James Varney writes, "Glenn Ford didn't commit murder, so after 30 years he's leaving Death Row at Angola."

The fact some innocent men languish on death rows is not the sole reason to get rid of the macabre death penalty once and for all. But it is a reason.

The truth of that was highlighted in Louisiana this week when Caddo Parish prosecutors dropped murder charges against one Glenn Ford. The same district attorney's office that sent Ford to Angola's Death Row in 1984 now acknowledges it did so for a crime he did not commit.

That's the only just course for them to take, of course, and good for Caddo Parish for righting a wrong. After thirty years, Ford will once again be a free man, albeit one who can never recover the three decades of his life stolen from him.

How do death penalty proponents square this case with their belief the state should be in the killing business?

The record shows Ford was ill-served at nearly every point in his laborious and terrifying trip through the Louisiana criminal justice system.

"Louisiana to free innocent man who spent 30 years on death row," is the Los Angeles Times Opinion LA post by Scott Martelle.

Ford was convicted based on testimony by what turned out to be incompetent scientific witnesses, evidence that went unchallenged by his two court-appointed lawyers, an oil-and-gas specialist and an insurance defense lawyer two years out of law school. Neither had ever tried a case before a jury before. And, it turns out, the prosecutor had hidden exculpatory evidence, including information from two informants that Ford was innocent, from those lawyers.

It's hard to have faith in a system that can fail so badly.

Earlier coverage of Glenn Ford's exoneration begins with the preceding post.

Glenn Ford Freed, Exonerated in Louisiana

"Man who spent decades on La. death row in 1983 killing freed after judge vacates conviction," is the AP report, via the Tribune.

A man who spent nearly 26 years on death row in Louisiana walked free of prison Tuesday, hours after a judge approved the state's motion to vacate the man's murder conviction in the 1983 killing of a jeweler.

Glenn Ford, 64, had been on death row since August 1988 in connection with the death of 56-year-old Isadore Rozeman, a Shreveport jeweler and watchmaker for whom Ford had done occasional yard work. Ford had always denied killing Rozeman.

Ford walked out the maximum security prison at Angola on Tuesday afternoon, said Pam Laborde, a spokeswoman for Louisiana's Department of Public Safety and Corrections.

Asked as he walked away from the prison gates about his release, Ford told WAFB-TV, "It feels good; my mind is going in all kind of directions. It feels good."

The Shreveport Times reports, "Glenn Ford is a free man," by Vickie Welborn.

Glenn Ford’s freedom began at 5:40 p.m. Tuesday.

That’s when he walked out of Louisiana State Penitentiary in Angola after sitting on death row as a condemned man for nearly 30 years. The time spent behind bars for the Nov. 5, 1983 murder of Shreveport businessman Isadore Rozeman gave him the distinction of being the longest serving death row inmate.

“We are very pleased to see Glenn Ford finally exonerated, and we are particularly grateful that the prosecution and the court moved ahead so decisively to set Mr. Ford free,” Gary Clements and Aaron Novod, attorneys with the Capital Post Conviction Project of Louisiana who have been representing Ford, said in a prepared statement released after Ford’s departure from prison.

Undisclosed new evidence in the crime obtained last year set the wheels in motion toward Ford’s release. A court order vacating Ford’s first-degree murder conviction and death sentence was filed Tuesday.

The attorneys say that new information corroborates what their client claimed all along: “That he was not present at nor involved in the crime for which he had been convicted and sentenced to death.”

CNN reports, "Louisiana's longest-serving death row prisoner walks free after 30 years," by Dana Ford.

There are many ways to measure 30 years, but for Glenn Ford, the yardstick is simple.

"My sons -- when I left -- was babies. Now they grown men with babies," he said, speaking as a free man for the first time in nearly three decades.

Ford, Louisiana's longest-serving death row prisoner, walked free Tuesday after spending nearly 30 years behind bars for a murder he did not commit.

"After nearly 30 years on death row, Glenn Ford is exonerated — and free," by Lindsey Bever for the Washington Post.

Here’s the motion to vacate filed March 11 in which prosecutors acknowledge that had they known then what they know now, Ford would not have been charged.

And:

Last week, prosecutors filed a motion to exonerate Ford, stating that in late 2013 evidence was presented “supporting a finding that Ford was neither present at, nor a participant in, the robbery and murder of Isadore Rozeman,” according to Reuters.

On Monday, State District Judge Ramona Emanuel moved to void Ford’s conviction and, on Tuesday, Ford walked free.

The Los Angeles Times reports, "After 30 years on Louisiana death row, inmate exonerated of murder," by Michael Muskal.

Ford, who had done occasional yardwork for Rozeman, repeatedly denied any part in the killing. He voluntarily went to the police when he learned they wanted to talk to him.

During a series of interviews with police, his lawyers said, Ford had stated that he had gone to see Rozeman on the day of the murder and that Rozeman had told him that he did not have any work for him. Ford also discussed meeting and spending time with a man named “O.B.” According to Ford, O.B. asked Ford to sell a .38 revolver though O.B. never actually gave Ford the weapon. O.B. did give Ford jewelry, which he wanted Ford to pawn.

Ford pawned the jewelry. Receipts showed that the jewelry was similar to goods taken from Rozeman’s shop.

Ford later identified a suspect named Jake Robinson from a set of photographs, and identified Jake’s brother Henry, also a suspect in the murder, as O.B. Ford said that identifying the Robinson brothers as suspects caused him to be afraid for his life. About three months later, Robinson’s girlfriend, Marvella Brown, was interviewed by Shreveport detectives and implicated Ford in the shooting.

Ford’s trial began on Nov. 26, 1984. Whenshe testified then, Brown admitted she had “lied about all of it,” Ford’s attorneys stated.

Still, the all-white jury returned a guilty verdict and the jury recommended a sentence of death during a penalty phase. The charges against Jake and Henry Robinson were later dismissed.

"Minnesota legal team helps man who spent decades on La. death row go free," is by Associated Press, via the Minneapolis Star-Tribune.

Six Minnesota attorneys worked on the case for more than 20 years, said St. Paul Attorney Deborah Ellis.

Ellis said attorneys in non-death penalty states were recruited to assist Ford beginning in the 1980s. She said she began working on it “furiously” in 1990 filing numerous appeal motions, meeting with Ford several times, and putting in thousands of volunteers hours. She said without her work and others from Minnesota, Ford likely would have been put to death..

“He wouldn’t have been alive at the time that somebody else confessed to the murder,” she said.

"Death-row inmate released after 30 years; evidence shows he was elsewhere at time of murder," is by Martha Neil for the ABA Journal.

Experts for the prosecution testified against Ford without solid bases for their findings, and Ford's defense lawyers, under the mistaken impression that they themselves would have to pay for the costs of expert witnesses, did not present any competing testimony, news reports now say.

Meanwhile, prosecutors withheld evidence that could have helped Ford's defense, and appellate courts upheld his conviction despite what judges recognized as a troubling lack of evidence.

Ford was represented by the Capital Post Conviction Project of Louisiana in his successful effort to win his release.

Additional coverage includes:

"Glenn Ford, Black Man Wrongfully Convicted By White Jury, Freed After Nearly 3 Decades On Death Row," by Kathy Finn for Reuters, via HuffPost.

"Louisiana inmate Glenn Ford released after 30 years on death row," by Kate Stanton of UPI.

"Louisiana man walks free after 30 years on death row: ‘It feels good’," by AFP, via Raw Story.

CBS News posts, "Glenn Ford, La. death row inmate, released after 30 years."

"Freed death row inmate: 'I want to go get something to eat'," by Nick Foley of WAFB-TV.  There is video at the link.

Aljazeera America posts, "Man on death row for 26 years walks free."

Earlier coverage of Glenn Ford's exoneration begins at the link.

According the the Death Penality Information Center, which maintains a list of exonerations, "Glenn Ford is 144th Death Row Inmate to be Cleared of All Charges Since 1973 and the 10th in Louisiana."

State Bar of Texas Investigating Former DA Charles Sebesta

Today's Houston Chronicle reports, "State Bar investigating DA in wrongful conviction," by Brian Rogers.

The State Bar of Texas is investigating former Burleson County District Attorney Charles Sebesta in the capital murder conviction of Anthony Graves in 1994, a state senator announced Tuesday.

Rodney Ellis, D-Houston, tweeted a picture of the letter Graves received from the State Bar's Office of Chief Disciplinary Counsel with Friday's date confirming the investigation.

In January, Ellis, state Sen. John Whitmire and state Rep. Senfronia Thompson, all Houston Democrats, joined Graves in urging the state bar to investigate and punish Sebesta.

Earlier coverage of Anthony Graves is in the category index.  His wrongful conviction was based on gross prosecutorial misconduct.

News Coverage of National Registry of Exonerations Report

Today's New York Times reports, "Study Puts Exonerations at Record Level in U.S.," by Timothy Williams.

The number of exonerations in the United States of those wrongly convicted of a crime increased to a record 87 during 2013, and of that number, nearly one in five had initially pleaded guilty to charges filed against them, according to a report to be released on Tuesday as part of a project led by two university law schools.

Nearly half of the exonerations — 40 — were based on murder convictions, including that of a man wrongly convicted and subsequently sentenced to death in the fatal stabbing of a fellow inmate in a Missouri prison in 1983, according to the report by the National Registry of Exonerations. The registry is a joint program of the University of Michigan Law School and the Center on Wrongful Convictions at Northwestern University School of Law.

The previous record of known exonerations in the country came in 2009, when the group reported 83. The organization said it has documented 1,300 exonerations since 1989, most of them after convictions for murder, rape or other sexual assaults.

Fewer exonerations than in the past involved DNA evidence, a circumstance the registry attributed to the police and prosecutors exhibiting greater concern about the problem of false convictions.

But the report also found that 17 percent of those exonerated in 2013 had originally pleaded guilty to a crime they did not commit — usually because the defendant had been offered a plea bargain that guaranteed a lesser sentence on the condition of a guilty plea.

 "Prosecutors help set record number of exonerations," is the Associated Press coverage filed by Alan Scher Zagier.

A nationwide push by prosecutors and police to re-examine possible wrongful convictions contributed to a record number of exonerations in 2013, according to a report released Tuesday.

The National Registry of Exonerations says 87 people falsely convicted of crimes were exonerated last year, four more than in 2009, the year with the next highest total. The joint effort by the Northwestern University and University of Michigan law schools has documented more than 1,300 such cases in the U.S. since 1989 while also identifying another 1,100 "group exonerations" involving widespread police misconduct, primarily related to planted drug and gun evidence.

The new report shows that nearly 40 percent of exonerations recorded in 2013 were either initiated by law enforcement or included police and prosecutors' cooperation. One year earlier, nearly half of the exonerations involved such reviews.

"Police and prosecutors have become more attentive and concerned about the danger of false conviction," said registry editor Samuel Gross, a Michigan law professor. "We are working harder to identify the mistakes we made years ago, and we are catching more of them."

"U.S. criminals exonerated in 2013 climbs to record high: study," is by Mary Wisniewski of Reuters, via GlobalPost.

The states with the most exonerations last year were Texas, Illinois and New York, according to the National Registry of Exonerations, a project of the Center on Wrongful Convictions at Northwestern University School of Law and the University of Michigan Law School.

"Claims that were being ignored in a previous era are being given serious attention," said Rob Warden, executive director of the Center on Wrongful Convictions and co-founder of the registry.

An exoneration means a person is found innocent based on evidence not presented at his or her trial. This may include DNA evidence linking another person to the crime and evidence of perjury or false accusation.

The Guardian reports, "Record number of people exonerated of crimes in US in 2013," by Ed Pilkington.

The “Exonerations in 2013” report, which is produced jointly by the University of Michigan law school and the Center on Wrongful Convictions at Northwestern University school of law, lists the top 10 states in terms of the number of falsely convicted prisoners who walked free as Texas (13), Illinois (9), New York (8), Washington (7), California (6), Michigan and Missouri (5), Connecticut, Georgia and Virginia (4).

Gross cautions against assuming that the top 10 are the states that are most at fault in terms of making judicial mistakes, pointing out that a high number of exonerations can actually be an indication of progressive penal thinking.

"2013 was a record year for exonerations of prisoners," is by Elizabeth Chuck at NBC News.

There are no statistics on how many of the 2.3 million people who are currently in custody in the U.S. might be imprisoned for false convictions, but estimates based on various prison populations suggest the rate ranges from 2.3 percent to 5 percent, Gross said.

For innocent people who get exonerated, life isn't always easy after serving time.

"People will shy away from you," Gross said. "They've lost 10 years, or in some cases, 30-some years of their life. Their children have grown up if they had children, their spouse may have left them, their parents may have died, they have no skills. For many people, the destruction that has occurred is irreparable."

"Exonerations On The Rise, And Not Just Because Of DNA," by Laura Sullivan of NPR, via WBUR-FM.

Only one-fifth of the exonerations last year relied on newly tested DNA. More than 30 percent occurred because law enforcement agencies reopened a long-closed case or handed over their records to someone else who wanted to take a look.

Gross says that's a sea change from just 10 years ago.

"The sharp, cold shower that DNA gave to the criminal justice system has made us realize that we have to re-examine other cases as well," he says. "That was a serious wake-up call, because that showed we made mistakes in a lot of cases where it never occurred to anybody that a mistake had been made."

Nowhere is this change more visible than in district attorneys' offices across the country. New York, Miami, Chicago, Los Angeles and others have opened "conviction integrity units," with the sole function of reviewing old cases and ensuring that the agency got it right.

Additional coverage includes:

"Record number of exonerations in 2013," by Natasha Lennard at Salon.

"Exonerations were at record high in 2013, report says," by Debra Cassens Weiss for ABA Journal.

"Texas Exonerates 13 in 2013," by Jordan Smith at the Austin Chronicle.

"4 of record 87 exonerations were in Va.," is by Frank Green with the Richmond Times-Dispatch.

Earlier coverage of the National Registry of Exonerations latest report begins at the link.

Clemency Urged for Randy Steidl in Illinois

"Attorneys push Quinn to pardon Randy Steidl," is the AP report, via the Springfield State Journal-Register.

Attorneys for the Center for Wrongful Convictions have sent an open letter to Gov. Pat Quinn in an attempt to push the Democrat into acting on a pardon for Gordon "Randy" Steidl.

The letter dated Wednesday seeks action on an 11-year-old petition.

The letters says, "This matter has lingered for far too long. Please do the right thing."

It says at the least, Quinn should meet with Steidl in person to explain why he has not acted on Steidl's request while deciding thousands of other clemency petitions since taking office in 2009.

Steidl wrongfully spent 17 years in prison — a dozen on death row — for the murder a young couple in Paris, Ill. in 1986.

"Center on Wrongful Convictions asks Quinn to pardon former death row inmate," is by Joseph Diebold at the Daily Northwestern.

The Center on Wrongful Convictions on Wednesday asked Illinois Gov. Pat Quinn to pardon a former death row inmate whose conviction was overturned in 2004.

Attorneys from the center, which operates as part of the Northwestern School of Law, wrote an open letter to Quinn calling on him to act on the innocence pardon petition of Randy Steidl, whose 2002 petition is the oldest awaiting executive action.

“Governor Quinn, this matter has lingered for far too long. Please do the right thing now, and allow this innocent man to clear his good name," Steidl's attorneys wrote in the letter. "At a bare minimum, please do Randy the honor of sitting down with him, face to face, and explain to him why you have decided so many other pardon petitions during your tenure in office — including 65 grants of clemency this past Friday — but have repeatedly passed over his.”

Steidl was sentenced to death in 1987 for the murders of Karen and Dyke Rhoads. After several appeals, a U.S. District Court judge ordered a new trial. Although she initially said she would appeal the decision, Illinois Attorney General Lisa Madigan announced she would not pursue the appeal in March 2004.

And:

Steidl's conviction was overturned and he has settled civil suits with law enforcement agencies involved, but Quinn has so far declined to act on his petition.

All charges against Herb Whitlock, Steidl's co-defendant, were dropped in 2008.

Earlier coverage of Randy Steidl's case begins at the link.

Steidl was an active player in Illinois' 2011 repeal of the death penalty.

Kerry Max Cook Pressing His Innocence

"Ex-death row prisoner still trying to clear name," is by Patrick Beach in the Austin American-Statesman.

A decade before Michael Morton, there was Kerry Max Cook.

Cook was sentenced to death in the 1977 rape and murder of Linda Jo Edwards, 21, in Tyler. He survived assaults and suicide attempts on Death Row, multiple retrials and was at one point 11 days from execution. In 1999, heading into a fourth trial, technicians found DNA evidence on Edwards’ underwear belonging to another man, not Cook. A no-contest plea was negotiated. Cook was free. Sort of. Free but still a convicted felon.

We first brought you Cook’s story in 2007, when he published “Chasing Justice: My Story of Freeing Myself After Two Decades on Death Row for a Crime I Didn’t Commit.” He was already something of a celebrity. His story was one of those dramatized in “The Exonerated.” He appeared on “Nightline,” “The Today Show” and “Frontline.” He’s posed for photos with Tom Hanks and many other celebrities.

And still he’s not free. Now 57 and living in Asheville, N.C. (in part to escape the “long arm of influence” of Smith County officials), Cook teaches perseverance to teenagers and adults at leadership camps around the world. He’s recently returned from one such camp in Dublin, Ireland.

And:

Cook — who lives with his wife, Sandra Pressley and son, Kerry Justice Cook, who turns 13 Monday — said his lawyers will soon file a petition for actual innocence in Smith County. The case may then be referred to the Court of Criminal Appeals. He hopes, at long last, to clear his name. The process has been slow because he relies heavily on lawyers working pro bono, and those lawyers are more likely to have their sights on inmates who are still incarcerated.

Earlier coverage of Kerry Max Cook begins at the link.  You can also jump to coverage of his 2007 book, Chasing Justice.

Continued North Carolina Editorials

Today's Greensboro News-Record publishes the editorial, "False convictions cost the state dearly."

More than $12 million in settlement money for two wrongly convicted men only hints at the total cost. The state and the people involved paid a higher price in many ways.

Last week, the State Bureau of Investigation and insurers agreed to pay Floyd Brown $7.85 million and Greg Taylor $4.625. Both were falsely charged with murder.

And:

In any human enterprise, mistakes are inevitable. Sloppy work and manipulation, however, are not errors and are not acceptable when so much is at stake. Fortunately in these cases, the defendants were not sentenced to death. Nevertheless, they paid dearly. The high cost is shared by everyone in North Carolina.

"Justice still lacking in the Floyd Brown case," is the Charlotte Observer editorial.

The Floyd Brown case is a travesty of justice in North Carolina that should never be forgotten. Because of corrupt, incompetent and negligent law enforcers, an innocent, mentally impaired man spent 14 years in a mental hospital for a crime he didn’t commit.

The corrupt lawmen – two Anson County sheriff’s deputies – finally got caught and went to prison for racketeering, bribery and soliciting payoffs from accused criminals. But the State Bureau of Investigations officer whose fabricated evidence sealed Brown’s fate remains on the job.

The misconduct in this case, as Duke University law professor and co-director of the Wrongful Convictions Clinic Jim Coleman rightly notes, “is another black eye for the criminal justice system.” That Mark Isley remains employed by the SBI blackens both eyes of Lady Justice.

Earlier coverage of the two North Carolina exonerations begins with additional editorials at the link.

North Carolina Editorials

Today's News & Observer of Raleigh publishes the editorial, "Time for SBI agent to be disciplined."

Roy Cooper, North Carolina’s four-term attorney general, needs to terminate the employment of SBI agent Mark Isley or justify why he shouldn’t. Isley not only didn’t do his job properly in a 1993 murder case in Wadesboro, but he also put an innocent man in jail for 14 years by essentially writing a phony confession. Isley certainly conveyed the impression that he had taken down the confession of Floyd Brown verbatim. But one expert after another said that Brown, a mentally disabled man with an IQ of about 50, couldn’t possibly have recounted the “murder” with such coherent detail. Then when Brown, who was ordered freed in 2007 by Durham Superior Court Judge Orlando Hudson, sued the state, Isley said the “confession” he wrote down was really a summary.

Such behavior by an SBI agent is outrageous and inexcusable. A man who committed no crime – in this case the beating death of a retired teacher – lost 14 years of his life thanks to Isley. This same agent, The News & Observer’s Joseph Neff and Mandy Locke reported Sunday, demonstrated curious professional behavior in the 1990s when he was in Anson County working with a couple of sheriff’s deputies.

It seems Isley heard about those deputies getting payoffs to reduce charges on defendants. Yet Isley, according to information that came to light in Brown’s lawsuit, failed to file any reports for several years, though he says he told somebody about it. Both those deputies went to federal prison.

Links to those stories are below.

"State faces a steep price for injustice," is the Rocky Mount Telegram editorial.

North Carolina has experienced a heavy dose lately of the price of inexcusable errors on the part of the State Bureau of Investigation. Injustice doesn’t sit well – nor is it cheap.

The company that insures the N.C. Attorney General’s office has paid most of the millions of dollars in settlements to two men who were wrongly convicted of crimes based on faulty evidence analyzed and reviewed by the SBI crime lab.

Floyd Brown of Anson County will receive $7.85 million for spending 14 years in Dorothea Dix Hospital’s psychiatric unit. Greg Taylor of Wake County is owed $4.625 million for the 17 years he spent in prison. Both were wrongly convicted of murders they did not commit.

State taxpayers have to meet a deductible in each case. The insurance company will pay the rest. Twelve million dollars sounds like a lot of money, but 31 years taken away from two men’s lives is hardly a bargain.

"SBI settlements: The high cost of injustice," is the Winston-Salem Journal editorial.

North Carolina taxpayers will pay dearly for inexcusable mistakes made by the State Bureau of Investigation over the years. But men who will collect multi-million dollar settlements for those mistakes paid an even higher price: They lost their freedom for years.

Attorney General Roy Cooper, a Democrat, and his department’s insurers have agreed to pay two men who had been incarcerated due, in part, to misconduct by SBI agents, The News & Observer of Raleigh reported.

And:

But there is one more thing Cooper could do: He could indicate the state’s true remorse for these injustices by doing the honorable thing. On behalf of the state, he could finally apologize to these men.

The News & Observer report, noted above, is, "Despite SBI settlement in Brown case, discredited agent is still on the job," by Joseph Neff and Mandy Locke.

The misconduct of State Bureau of Investigation Agent Mark Isley has rung up all sorts of costs: a $7.85 million payout for taxpayers and their insurers; 14 years behind bars for an innocent man with a severe mental disability; and another scar for law enforcement.

Isley, however, still has his job at the SBI, and there’s no indication from Attorney General Roy Cooper that it’s in jeopardy.

Cooper, a four-term Democrat, refused to be interviewed last week about Isley and the Brown case. Isley, head of the bureau’s Medicaid Fraud Section, could not be reached for comment.

Jim Coleman, a Duke University law professor and co-director of the Wrongful Convictions Clinic, says wrongdoers in law enforcement are rarely held accountable.

“The misconduct in this case is another black eye for the criminal justice system,” Coleman said. “They simply take the loss and move on as if nothing happened. Until there are consequences, nothing will change.”

"SBI agent Mark Isley slow to report tips on cop conspiracy," is the other News & Observer report, also by Neff and Locke.

For nearly two years, SBI agent Mark Isley failed to file reports involving serious allegations of wrongdoing against his colleagues at the Anson County Sheriff’s Department, according to documents attached to a lawsuit against Isley.

The information turned out to be on target: The two officers ended up in federal prison for soliciting payoffs from accused criminals.

The new details about Isley surfaced in the lawsuit filed by Floyd Brown that was settled last week. The two cases have followed Isley during his 24-year career, but SBI leaders have taken no public action.

Only in 2010, after The News & Observer chronicled Brown’s confinement based on an implausible confession, did the SBI launch an internal investigation. It followed at least five years of documented concerns about Brown’s arrest.

Earlier coverage of the North Carolina exonerations begins at the link.

NC Exonerations Update

"Men wrongly held for murder get millions, but no apology, from the state," by Mandy Locke and Joseph Neff for the News & Observer.

This summer, the state and its insurers will pay nearly $12.5 million for missteps that cost two men decades of freedom. 

Here’s what Floyd Brown and Greg Taylor won’t get from state leaders: an apology.

"NC man wrongly convicted of murder released from jail," by Mitch Weiss for the AP, via the News & Observer. 

A North Carolina man says he's excited about being released after spending 20 years behind bars for a homicide he didn't commit. 

A judge last week vacated Larry Lamb's 1993 murder conviction, and prosecutors dismissed the charges Tuesday, said one of Lamb's attorneys, Christine Mumma of the North Carolina Center on Actual Innocence.

"Man wrongly convicted of murder walks free from Wake prison," by Kevin Holmes for WRAL-TV.

A man imprisoned for more than 20 years for the murder of a Duplin County bootlegger was released Tuesday evening from the Wake Correctional Center in Raleigh. 

A judge on Thursday ordered that Larry Lamb be exonerated in the fatal shooting of Leamon Grady, who was robbed and found dead in his home in 1987. On Tuesday, the Duplin County District Attorney's Office dropped the charges against Lamb, clearing the way for his release.

Earlier coverage from North Carolina begins at the link.

North Carolina Settlement in Exonerations

"State agrees to $12 million settlement for two wrongly imprisoned men," by Joseph Neff and Mandy Locke for the News & Observer. Also a video of Floyd Brown and Greg Taylor attached to this story.

North Carolina’s State Bureau of Investigation and its insurers have agreed to pay $12.475 million to two innocent men who spent a total of 31 years behind bars.

The state agreed to pay $7.85 million to settle the state lawsuit filed by Floyd Brown, a mentally disabled man locked up for 14 years in a psychiatric hospital based on what his lawyers said was a false confession created out of whole cloth by an SBI agent. Brown has also reached a separate settlement with Anson County, whose sheriff’s deputies helped investigate the case. A federal judge has sealed the Anson County settlement; North Carolina law requires that all such court settlements be public records.

The state also agreed to pay $4.625 million to Greg Taylor, a Wake County man convicted in 1993 for the murder of a woman found beaten and abandoned in an East Raleigh cul-de-sac. Taylor spent 17 years behind bars before a three-judge panel declared him innocent in 2010, the first such exoneration by an independent innocence commission in the United States.

The settlements are not the first large payouts stemming from SBI misconduct.

Earlier coverage from North Carolina begins at the link.

Court: Texas Inmate's Decades-Old Sentence Invalid

That's the title of an AP report by Michael Graczyk, via WBAY-TV.  It's also available through Huffington Post as, "Jerry Hartfield, Texas Inmate, Has Life Sentence For Murder Deemed Invalid By Court of Criminal Appeals."

The Texas Court of Criminal Appeals ruling in Hartfield v. Thaler is available in Adobe .pdf format.

Here's an extended excerpt from the AP report:

The life sentence given to a Texas man who has remained in prison for 33 years since being pulled off of death row isn't valid, Texas' highest criminal court said Wednesday, possibly paving the way for a new trial or the inmate's release.

The Texas Court of Criminal Appeals said once it overturned Jerry Hartfield's murder conviction in 1980 for the killing of a bus station worker four years earlier, there was no longer a death sentence for then-Gov. Mark White to commute.

The opinion was given in response to a rare formal request by the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals to confirm the validity of its ruling overturning Hartfield's conviction, in light of the governor's 1983 commutation. The New Orleans-based federal court made the request, which upheld a lower state court's ruling that the sentence was invalid.

"The status of the judgment of conviction is that (Hartfield) is under no conviction or sentence," Judge Lawrence Meyers wrote in a decision supported by the court's other eight judges. "Because there was no longer a death sentence to commute, the governor's order had no effect."

Hartfield, now 57, was convicted and sentenced to death for the 1976 robbery and killing of a Southeast Texas bus station employee. The criminal appeals court overturned his murder conviction, ruling that a potential juror improperly was dismissed after expressing reservations about the death penalty.

White commuted Hartfield's sentence in 1983 at the recommendation of the Texas Board of Pardons and Paroles, and he has remained in prison since then, unaware until a few years ago that his case was in legal limbo. Court documents in his case described him as an illiterate 5th-grade dropout with in IQ of 51, although Hartfield says he's learned to read and write while in prison.

In its failed appeal to the 5th Circuit, the state argued that Hartfield's life sentence should stand because he missed a one-year window in which to appeal aspects of his case.

Earlier coverage of Jerry Hartfield's case begins at the link.

Exonerated Prisoners Are Winning the Fight Against the Death Penalty

That's the title of an article in the current edition of the Nation, written by David Love, the executive director of Witness to Innocence.  The subtitle is, "'I killed the thing that almost killed me,' said Kirk Bloodsworth, who faced execution in Maryland, the latest state to outlaw capital punishment."

Earlier this month, I was at the State House in Annapolis when Maryland Governor Martin O’Malley made history, erasing a centuries-old practice with the stroke of the pen. On May 2, O’Malley signed a law repealing the death penalty, making it the eighteenth state to abolish capital punishment, and the sixth state in six years, after New Jersey, New Mexico, New York, Illinois and Connecticut.

Standing with me were two men who had a very personal stake in the governor’s actions: Kirk Bloodsworth and Shujaa Graham, both of whom were exonerated from death row. They are just two of the 142 death row prisoners who have been released due to their innocence over the past forty years. Shujaa was number twenty, and Kirk was number forty-eight. Along with organizers and lawmakers, such exonerated death row survivors—who spent an average of ten years on death row for crimes they did not commit—are leading the charge to halt executions throughout America.

Earlier coverage of Maryland's repeal of the death penalty begins at the link.  Also available, more from David Love.

Nebraska Repeal Bill May Be Stuck

"Bill abolishing the death penalty could be in peril," is the Lincoln Journal Star report by Kevin O'Hanlon.

For the first time in 34 years, a majority of Nebraska lawmakers seems to support abolishing the state's death penalty.

But a bill they considered Monday to do so appears to be going nowhere since a "test vote" showed there probably is not enough support to stop a filibuster.

Lawmakers began debate on the bill (LB543) by Sen. Ernie Chambers of Omaha to change the death penalty to life in prison without the possibility of parole -- Chambers' 37th attempt to do so.

Custom dictates first-round debate on a bill can last as long as eight hours. At that point, it takes 33 of the 49 senators' votes to end debate and move to a vote.

But after Omaha Sen. Beau McCoy launched a filibuster against the measure, Sen. Brad Ashford of Omaha decided to float a trial balloon by filing a motion to kill the bill and then asking for a vote to gauge support.

A vote against killing the bill was, in essence, a vote in support of abolishing the death penalty. The tally was 18 for killing the bill and 26 against -- more than the 25 needed to advance the bill to second-round debate but not the 33 needed to end the filibuster or even the 30 required to override an expected veto by Gov. Dave Heineman.

Lawmakers will reach the eight-hour limit Tuesday. Speaker Greg Adams usually will not bring a bill back for further debate at that point unless supporters can prove they have the 33 votes to end the filibuster.

The Omaha World-Herald reports, "Push to end death penalty in Nebraska probably will fall short," by Paul Hammel and Joe Duggan.

The Nebraska Legislature has shifted on the death penalty, but perhaps not far enough to end capital punishment this year.

A test vote during floor debate Monday suggested that Sen. Ernie Chambers of Omaha may have 26 votes, one more than necessary, to pass his bill repealing the death penalty. But he will need 33 votes to end a filibuster by those who want to keep capital punishment on the books.

If death penalty supporters successfully extend debate, they can ensure that the bill doesn't come up for a vote this session. It was a strategy decried by Sen. Brad Ashford of Omaha, who supports repealing the death penalty.

“These are the bills that define us as an institution, as a people,” he said. “Please give us an up or down vote.”

Omaha Sen. Scott Lautenbaugh, one of the Legislature's staunchest death penalty supporters, said he is unconvinced by arguments that capital punishment doesn't deter crime or that it's fraught with racial disparity. “I won't apologize for doing everything I can within the rules to prevent the repeal,” he said.

Opponents of capital punishment were not giving up the fight as the bill headed into a second day of debate today. If they manage to pass the repeal bill, however, they likely would face the governor's veto. They would then need at least 30 votes for an override.

Still, lawmakers who oppose the death penalty were pleased when a motion to kill the bill failed by a vote of 26 to 18. As recently as 2009, only 13 senators voted in favor of abolishing executions.

Legislative Bill 543 would make life in prison without the possibility of parole the state's harshest penalty for murder.

Nebraska is one of 32 states that have the death penalty. Three men have been executed since capital punishment was reinstated in 1973.

"Nebraska death-penalty repeal could be in jeopardy," is the Associated Press coverage, via the Fremont Tribune.

A proposal to abolish the death penalty in Nebraska appeared to be in jeopardy on Monday, despite a majority of lawmakers who signaled a willingness to end capital punishment in the state.

Supporters of the repeal initiated a "test vote" on a procedural motion to kill the legislation, to publicly gauge their support in the 49-member Legislature. The vote showed that 26 senators supported repealing the death penalty, but lawmakers would need at least 30 votes to override the veto of Republican Gov. Dave Heineman, who supports the death penalty, and 33 votes to force an end to debate.

Five lawmakers didn't participate in the test, while the remaining 18 voted to keep the death penalty in place after roughly four hours of emotional debate. Lawmakers adjourned Monday evening without reaching a vote.

The repeal measure was introduced by longtime Sen. Ernie Chambers of Omaha, who has fought for nearly four decades to end capital punishment.

"People who support the death penalty from a distance don't know what a grotesque ceremony it is," Chambers said.

Chambers has proposed repealing the death-penalty each year between 1973 and 2008, when he was forced to sit out for four years because of new term limits. He was re-elected in 2012. His death penalty bill passed out of the Legislature once, in 1979, but was vetoed by then-Gov. Charles Thone.

The debate didn't fall neatly on party lines in the officially nonpartisan Legislature, which is dominated by Republicans.

Many Republicans who previously opposed the death penalty argued that efforts to carry out an execution have only led to expensive legal appeals. Some argued that even with the death penalty, Nebraska would never again follow through with an execution because of legal problems with sodium thiopental, a lethal-injection drug.

"I've been very pro-death penalty for most of my life, but I've come to the conclusion that it does not work," said Sen. Galen Hadley, of Kearney.

Another Republican, Sen. Colby Coash of Lincoln, said the death penalty has kept constant news attention on the killers and served as a constant, painful reminder for their victims' families.

Also from AP, "Lawmakers advance Neb. wrongful-conviction payout," by Grant Schulte.  It's via the San Francisco Chronicle.

A man who spent nearly 14 years in a Nebraska prison after he was wrongly convicted of murdering his wife came one step closer Friday to a $500,000 settlement that will pay for his dream home.

Lawmakers gave first-round approval to a $450,000 payment for Darrel Parker, more than four decades after a federal appeals court overturned his conviction on grounds that his confession to police was coerced.

The State Claims Board has already approved $50,000 in compensation, but lawmakers are required to approve the rest. Reached by phone earlier this week, the 81-year-old said the money would help cover the final payments on a house that he shares with his current wife in Moline, Ill.

And:

Nebraska passed its 2009 wrongful convictions law in an effort to compensate the so-called "Beatrice 6" and others wrongly imprisoned in Nebraska. Six people were convicted in the 1985 rape and murder of 68-year-old Helen Wilson, of Beatrice. They spent a combined total of more than 90 years in prison, until DNA evidence exonerated them all in 2008.

Some later brokered settlements with the state over their convictions, including at least one for the maximum $500,000.

Sen. Ernie Chambers of Omaha said Friday that he plans to introduce a bill next year that would eliminate the $500,000 cap on compensation for prison inmates who are wrongly convicted.

You can watch today's continued floor debate via NET, Nebraska's PBS and NPR stations.

Earlier coverage of the Nebraska repeal legislation begins at the link.

The Voices of the Exonerated

David Love posts, "Building the Grassroots Foundation to Abolish the Death Penalty," at Huffington Post.  He's the Executive Director of Witness to Innocence.

I'm the Executive Director of Witness to Innocence. WTI was founded 10 years ago, originally as a project of Sister Helen Prejean of the book and the film Dead Man Walking. The mission of WTI is to empower exonerated death row survivors and their loved ones to become effective leaders in the movement to abolish the death penalty. WTI is the only nonprofit of exonerated death row survivors and their families. Our members spent an average of 10 years on death row for crimes other people committed. Since 1973, 142 death row prisoners in the U.S. have been released due to innocence.

Witness to Innocence has two purposes: First, we serve as a support network for former death row prisoners, and seek justice for the wrongfully convicted, including state and federal compensation. Second, our members work with state abolition groups across the country, testify before legislatures, and speak to audiences across the nation about their experiences and the compelling issue of innocence and the death penalty. WTI and its members were involved in repeal efforts in New Jersey, New Mexico, New York, Illinois, Connecticut and most recently Maryland. And we're involved in Delaware, Colorado, Montana, Kansas, Arkansas, Alabama and other death belt states.

Related posts are in the abolition, exoneration, and innocence category indexes.

Remembering a Death Row Exonoree

That's the title of David Protess' latest essay at Huffington Post.  He's the president of the Chicago Innocence Project.

"Dennis Williams, a former death-row inmate whose exoneration became a rallying cry for opponents of the death penalty in Illinois, died on Thursday at his home. He was 46. An autopsy has not yet been performed..." -- The New York Times: March 25, 2003

To outsiders a decade ago this month, Dennis Williams had it all. He was vibrant and gregarious, with a sharp wit and infectious laugh. Women were drawn to him, and his latest "fiancee," Alicia, was as bright as she was beautiful.

Related posts are in the exoneration, innocence, and wrongful incarceration indexes.

Wrongful Convictions Pricetag

"Tab for wrongful convictions in Texas: $65 million and counting," is Mike Ward's report in today's Austin American-Statesman.  Here's an extended excerpt from the beginning of this must-read:

For a state perhaps best known as the leader in executing murderers, Texas now has another distinction: It is the most generous in compensating those who were wrongly locked up.

In all, the state has paid more than $65 million to 89 wrongfully convicted people since 1992, according to updated state figures.

And if legislation being discussed at the Texas Capitol becomes law, that tab could soon grow.

“The justice system in Texas had fundamental flaws, and this is the result,” said state Sen. Rodney Ellis, a longtime champion of the falsely imprisoned. “At this point, I don’t think anyone can seriously doubt that we had a problem — a big problem.”

For a hint of how off-track Texas’ justice system once was, and how expensive those mistakes have become for taxpayers, consider the case of Michael Morton, the exonerated former Austin-area resident who served 25 years in prison for a murder he didn’t commit. A Williamson County court convicted him in 1987 of killing his wife Christine.

Morton, who was 57 when he was freed from prison in 2011, so far has received $1.96 million for his mistaken imprisonment, state records show.

Under a law signed by Gov. Rick Perry in 2009, some exonerees will receive $80,000 each year for the rest of their lives and are eligible for the same health insurance as employees of the Texas Department of Criminal Justice, where the ex-prisoners did their time.

Twenty-six other states and the District of Columbia also provide compensation to exonerees — but they pay less, according to statistics compiled by the Innocence Project, a privately funded national initiative that works on behalf of the wrongfully convicted. Currently, Ellis, D-Houston, serves as its board chairman.

Since the first wrongful conviction through DNA was logged in 1989, 65 percent of exonerees nationally have received some form of compensation, according to the Innocence Project.

Related posts are in the wrongful incarceration category index.

Assisting Exonerees - A Largely Unmet Need

"Cleared death-row inmates need help adjusting to the world outside prison," is the Wilmington Star News editorial on North Carolina exonerations.  Here's the beginning of this must-read:

The journey from death row to a normal life is a lonely one for former inmates who have been cleared of murders they did not commit. Walking out the prison door is but the first difficult step. People like Alan Gell, sentenced to death for a murder he did not commit, are given a pat on the back, possibly some financial compensation and not much else.

What they really need is help adjusting to the outside world.

Two University of North Carolina system professors have done a public service with their book, "Life After Death Row," which examines the difficult transition from the grimmest of cell blocks to complete freedom – and absolutely no guidance as to what comes next.

Kimberly Cook, who heads the UNC Wilmington sociology and criminology department, and Sandra Westervelt, associate professor of sociology at UNC Greensboro, relate the struggles of Gell and others who have found themselves going from an institutionalized life where every decision is made for you into an unfamiliar world that expects you to get on with your life without missing a beat.

It doesn't work that way, and it is a disgrace that, after wrongly imprisoning someone, our justice system does not have procedures to help exonerated inmates make that transition. In North Carolina, it is not as though it would break the bank to provide some help.

Earlier coverage of the new book referenced in this editorial begins at the link.

Kerry Max Cook's Exoneration Fight Gets Personal

That's the title of Brandi Grissom's Texas Tribune post.

Kerry Max Cook, who spent two decades on death row for a 1977 murder, says Smith County prosecutors are fighting dirty in their mission to stymie his efforts to prove his innocence.

In a motion filed Wednesday in Smith County state district court, Cook argues that prosecutors have resorted to lies and fabrications to prevent DNA testing on evidence he hopes will prove, more than 35 years after the crime, that he did not kill Linda Jo Edwards.

"Our motion to strike contains an absolutely irrefutable record of deliberate egregious misrepresentations by" prosecutors, Cook said in a prepared statement.

Cook, 56, was convicted in 1978 of the rape and murder of Linda Jo Edwards in Tyler. His first conviction was overturned, a second trial ended in a hung jury and a third ended with a conviction that was reversed after a court found it was tainted by prosecutorial misconduct. Before Smith County attempted to try Cook a fourth time, he agreed to a plea deal in 1999. Pleading no contest, he was set free. Subsequent testing revealed another man’s DNA on the victim’s clothes.

After Cook's lawyers requested additional DNA testing on evidence in the case, they discovered some evidence had been destroyed and the storage of other evidence had presented questions regarding its chain of custody.

The lawyers have asked for a hearing to decide whether the evidence has been so tainted that accurate DNA testing could be impossible. Smith County prosecutors argue the request for a hearing is an effort by Cook to delay the testing because they allege he is worried the testing will confirm his guilt. In their motion to strike the prosecutor’s motion opposing the hearing, Cook’s lawyers say the document is full of misrepresentations and should be stricken from the case record.

Earlier coverage of Kerry Max Cook's fight to completely clear his name begins at the link.

Reentry for Exonerees

Today's Wilmington Star News in North Carolina reports, "Exonerated death row inmates readjust to society after release."  It's by Brian Freskos.

In 2004, Alan Gell walked out of a Bertie County courtroom a free man.

After languishing nearly five years on death row for a murder he did not commit, a new jury overturned his original conviction. But despite the sense of vindication that accompanied his freedom, Gell felt uneasy and scared.

He was released into a foreign world where toilets flushed automatically "and scared the crap out of you," he said. On the outside, he had no access to health care or social services. And with an erroneous murder conviction on his record, it felt impossible to find a job.

"They threw me to the wolves," he said in a telephone interview earlier this week. "If it was not for my family, I don't know what I would have done."

Gell is among 18 exonerated death row inmates whose post-release odysseys form the subject of a recently released book entitled, "Life After Death Row: Exonerees' Search for Community and Identity," co-authored by professors at University of North Carolina campuses in Wilmington and Greensboro.

And:

Cook and Westervelt say only a small proportion of exonerees receive compensation. Only 23 states have compensation laws. North Carolina boasts one of the most generous, awarding $50,000 for each year of wrongful incarceration. But the process often takes years. And to qualify, exonerees must obtain a governor's pardon – a task that often proves elusive. As a result, only about 23 percent of them win compensation through the law, Westervelt said.

Gell believes he should not have to ask the state to correct a wrong that it perpetrated. He instead filed a lawsuit against prosecutors and investigators and in 2009, settled for $3.9 million, according to the book.

Today, Gell's life has assumed a degree of normalcy. He is in a healthy relationship and has kids. But the stigma of being "that guy" who once served time on death row still sticks to him.

"You never really get over the whole deal," he said.

The article notes that proceeds from the book are being dontated to two nonprofit organizations that assisted the exonerated, Witness to Innocence and Centurion Ministries.

More on Life after Death Row: Exonerees' Search for Community and Identity is at Amazon.com.

Related posts are in the wrongful incarceration index.  Texas has one of the most generous compensation laws in the nation for those wrongfully convicted and incarcerated.

Michael Blair Seeks Compensation for Wrongful Death Penalty Conviction

"Inmate who admitted rape seeks compensation," is the AP report by Nomaan Merchant.  It's via the Austin American-Statesman.

When Michael Blair was sent to death row for the infamous murder of a 7-year-old girl, he insisted he never killed anyone. More than a decade later, genetic testing showed he was telling the truth.

But during those long years behind bars, Blair did something else that ensured he would never leave prison: He confessed to raping two other children — a crime for which he’s serving multiple life sentences.

Blair hasn’t forgotten the murder case, and now he’s made an unlikely demand, asking the state for nearly $1 million as compensation for being wrongfully convicted. His request has gone all the way to the Texas Supreme Court and is forcing a re-examination of laws designed to offer exonerated inmates a new start.

And:

Though he has almost no chance of leaving prison, his attorney, Roy Greenwood, said Blair could still use the money, particularly for medical fees charged by the prison system.

“He spent 10 years in prison for a crime he didn’t commit,” Greenwood said. “Why he pled guilty to these cases, I have no clue.”

Like many of the nearly 30 states that compensate inmates, Texas denies compensation to anyone who is serving time for multiple crimes at once and has one conviction overturned. It also denies annual payments beyond the initial lump sum and other benefits to exonerated inmates who then commit another crime.

But Greenwood argued last month before the state Supreme Court that the law doesn’t specifically exclude someone like Blair, who was imprisoned on a wrongful conviction, then confessed to other crimes and had the first conviction thrown out.

The Texas Tribune reported, "Exoneree, Still in Prison, Demands Compensation," on October 17.  It's written by Maurice Chammah.

A Texas man who was wrongfully convicted of murder and spent more than a decade on death row says he is entitled to compensation under the Texas Wrongful Imprisonment Act. But the state comptroller’s office, which oversees the payment of compensation, says that because he is not a free man — he is serving four life sentences for sexually assaulting four children — he does not qualify.

On Wednesday at the Supreme Court of Texas, lawyers for Michael Blair, who spent 14 years on death row, and attorneys with the comptroller's office argued over whether Blair is entitled to more than $1 million dollars. Blair was declared innocent of capital murder in 2008 and removed from death row to a general population prison. He is currently serving four life sentences on sexual assault charges, the molestation of four children to which he confessed only after going to prison for the false capital murder conviction.

And:

Less than a year after Blair’s exoneration, the Texas Legislature passed the Tim Cole Act (HB 1736), officially the Texas Wrongful Imprisonment Act, which increased compensation for exonerees to $80,000 per year and added lifetime annuity payments and educational benefits. Since 1992, Texas has paid more than $42 million to compensate 74 innocent men and women who collectively spent more than 700 years behind bars. Blair would be entitled to more than $1 million.

Since the bill was passed, several exonerees have undertaken lengthy legal battles with the Comptroller’s Office, which oversees the payment of compensation. Last year, three exonerated men fought a decision that rendered them ineligible for full compensation because they had been on parole at the time of their wrongful imprisonment. The judges who reversed that decision noted in their ruling that the men would not have broken parole if they had not been wrongfully convicted.

But Blair’s case is different. In 2003, while in prison for murder, he wrote letters of apology to four children he had molested. Collin County officials investigated his claims and charged him with four counts of child molestation. He pleaded guilty and received four life sentences. The comptroller denied his application for compensation because Blair was “not a free man." 

Blair said that the rulings in favor of defendants who were on parole should apply to him as well, since his crimes would not have been discovered had he not been wrongfully imprisoned. His attorney, Roy Greenwood, said the investigations that led to the child molestation convictions would not have been investigated if he had been in the free world, because it is unclear whether Blair would have written apology letters. “Had he not been on death row,” Greenwood told the Justices, “none of this would have happened.”

Earlier coverage of Michael Blair's case begins at the link.

Errors in Judgment

That's the title of a Texas Tribune series reported by Brandi Grissom.  It features an interactive with additional information on the cases analyzed, an overview article, and a look at Kerry Max Cook's long fight for freedom and now, official exoneration.  Here's the introduction:

The Texas Tribune analyzed 86 overturned convictions, finding that in nearly one quarter of those cases courts ruled that prosecutors made mistakes that often contributed to the wrong outcome. This multi-part series explores the causes and consequences of prosecutorial errors and whether reforms might prevent future wrongful convictions.

"Courts Found DA Error in Nearly 25% of Reversed Cases," is the overview that examines several of the cases.

From the moment 4-year-old April Tucker died, Debbie Tucker Loveless and John Harvey Miller told police and prosecutors that she had been mauled by dogs. But in 1989, the couple was convicted of murdering her and sentenced to life in prison. 

Four seemingly endless years later, in 1993, the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals overturned their convictions, after a state district judge ruled prosecutors had withheld critical evidence that vindicated the couple.

Between 1989 and 2011, at least 86 Texas defendants including Loveless and Miller had their convictions overturned, according to the National Registry of Exonerations. In an extensive analysis of court rulings, news reports and pardon statements, The Texas Tribune found that in nearly one-quarter of those cases — 21 in total — courts ruled that prosecutors made mistakes that in most instances contributed to the wrong outcome. The wrongfully convicted in those cases spent a combined total of more than 270 years in prison.

In the cases, judges found that prosecutors broke basic legal and ethical rules, suppressing important evidence and witness testimony and making improper arguments to jurors. Despite the courts’ findings of some serious missteps, the State Bar of Texas reports very little public discipline of prosecutors in recent history.

The State Bar does not track discipline of prosecutors separately from other lawyers. But Linda Acevedo, the chief disciplinary counsel for the State Bar who has been at the agency since 1985, said she could recall three prosecutors who were publicly reprimanded. None of the reprimands were related to the 86 wrongful convictions.

"Interactive: Texas Wrongful Conviction Explorer," compiled by Ryan Murphy.

Grissom also writes, "Prosecutor Errors Haunt Long Exoneration Fight," on the case of Kerry Max Cook.  It appears in the Texas edition of today's New York Times as, "As Former Death Row Inmate Tries to Clear His Name, His Life Is on Hold."

Kerry Max Cook had been out of prison for about three years when his son was born.

As Kerry Justice Cook slept in his crib, his father would peer down at him and cry, battling suicidal thoughts that he says have haunted him since his 20 horrific years on Texas’ death row.

“I’d tell K. J., ‘You’ve got to hurry up so you can talk to me. I’m so alone,’” Mr. Cook said.

K. J. is 11 now, and talking seems to be one of the mature youth’s fortes. He introduces his father to crowds at speaking engagements across the world.

“I find it quite amazing that he was able to go there for 22 years and go through every obstacle which he had to go through,” said the fifth grader, wearing a Mickey Mouse T-shirt and brushing shoulder-length blond hair away from his face. “I think he’s the most respectable man that I know.”

Mr. Cook, 56, was convicted of the 1977 rape and murder of Linda Jo Edwards in Tyler, Tex. His first conviction was overturned, a second trial ended in a hung jury and a third ended with a conviction that was reversed after a court found it was tainted by prosecutorial misconduct. Before Smith County attempted to try Mr. Cook a fourth time, he agreed to a plea deal in 1999. Pleading no contest, he was set free. DNA testing subsequently revealed another man’s biological matter on the victim’s clothes.

Mr. Cook has written a book, actors like Tim Robbins have portrayed him in a play about exonerations and he teaches courses about overcoming adversity. In the eyes of the law, though, Mr. Cook is still a convicted murderer. Normal life, he said, is beyond his reach.

“This freedom means nothing with a conviction,” he said.

Thirteen years after his release, Mr. Cook is battling with Smith County prosecutors to officially clear his name.

Earlier coverage of Kerry Max Cook and the National Registry of Exonerations begins at the links.  Related posts are in the exoneration, prosecutorial misconduct, and wrongful incarceration category indexes.

Innocent, But Broke

That's the title of an article at Salon on North Carolina exoneree Glen Chapman, subtitled, "Glen Chapman was exonerated from death row in 2008. Why hasn't he received the $750K he deserves in compensation?"

Glen Edward Chapman, or “Ed,” was exonerated in 2008 after spending 15 years on death row for crimes he did not commit. Though North Carolina is one of the 27 states with statutes that provide some level of compensation for the wrongfully convicted, the state continues to refuse Chapman any compensation for the loss of his freedom, reputation, family, friends and much more.

Chapman was sentenced to death in 1994 at the age of 26 for the murders of Betty Jean Ramseur and Tenene Yvette Conley in Hickory, N.C. After more than a decade of court appeals, Superior Court Judge Robert C. Ervin ordered a new trial based on revelations that detectives “lost, misplaced or destroyed” several pieces of evidence that pointed to another suspect. It was also discovered that lead investigator Dennis Rhoney lied on the witness stand at Chapman’s original trial. Shortly thereafter, the district attorney dismissed all charges against Chapman due to lack of sufficient evidence leading to his exoneration in 2008.

Chapman is just one of a growing number of wrongfully convicted inmates who have been cleared thanks to criminal justice reforms and new DNA testing laws put in place over the last decade. But oftentimes the hardship doesn’t end there.

And:

In North Carolina, the exonerated are eligible to receive $50,000 for each year of wrongful imprisonment capping out at $750,000 but only if they are granted a pardon of innocence by the governor who is not required to give a reason for her decision. Chapman filed a pardon request in 2009 but a decision has yet to be made. The office of North Carolina Gov. Bev Perdue did not respond to a request for comment.

Chapman’s experience is consistent with statistics from the Innocence Project that show it takes an average of three years to secure compensation. Meanwhile, the wrongfully imprisoned face an uphill battle almost immediately upon release, starting with where they will sleep that night and how they will get their next meal. Only 10 states even offer the kinds of services — housing, transportation, education, healthcare, job placement, etc. — crucial to helping exonerees transition back into society as free citizens.

The article notes that Chapman has an interview scheduled for May 30 with the state's clemency office.  Related posts are in the wrongful incarceration index.

The Exoneration of Billy Frederick Allen

"Texas Supreme Court defines 'actual innocence' more broadly," is the Fort Worth Star-Telegram editorial. 

After decades of legal motions challenging two murder convictions, it appears that Billy Frederick Allen will receive $2 million from the state of Texas for wrongfully imprisoning him for almost 26 years.

The Texas Supreme Court on Friday issued a significant interpretation of the Tim Cole Act that allows compensation even in cases where DNA evidence is not available to nullify a conviction.

In a unanimous opinion by Justice Dale Wainwright, the court said the definition of "actual innocence" in the law includes claims like Allen's in which the trial was constitutionally flawed enough to undermine confidence in the conviction.

And:

Allen kept challenging his conviction, and a trial judge repeatedly ruled that he should receive a new trial. After the law changed for raising claims of new evidence, the Court of Criminal Appeals in 2009 threw out Allen's conviction based on the ineffective assistance of his trial lawyer in not presenting evidence pointing to someone else as the killer. Prosecutors later dropped the charges.

When Allen filed a claim with the Texas comptroller's office for compensation that's available to exonerated inmates, he was denied.

The comptroller argued that the Court of Criminal Appeals' ruling didn't amount to the declaration of "actual innocence" required by the law.

But the Supreme Court said the Legislature had made clear its intent to cover cases like Allen's.

In a detailed examination, the court said "actual innocence" encompasses both claims such as exonerations based on new evidence from DNA testing and those in which "the constitutional error at trial probably resulted in the conviction of one who was actually innocent."

"The Legislature has drawn no distinctions between the two types of 'actual innocence' claims," Wainwright wrote.

The Texas Supreme Court Ruling in In RE: Billy Frederick Allen is available in Adobe .pdf format.  Here's additional news coverage of the ruling.

Jim Vertuno writes, "Texas high court orders state to pay ex-inmate $2M," for AP.

The Texas Supreme Court ordered the state Friday to pay about $2 million to an ex-inmate who spent 26 years in prison for murder before his conviction was overturned, a decision legal experts said could set a new standard for when ex-prisoners should be compensated.

Texas has paid nearly $50 million to former inmates who have been cleared. But state Comptroller Susan Combs had resisted paying Billy Frederick Allen, arguing that his conviction was overturned because he had ineffective lawyers, not because he had proven his innocence.

The state Supreme Court, in a unanimous opinion written by Justice Dale Wainwright, disagreed, saying the state's criminal courts had shown Allen had a legitimate innocence claim and he should be paid.

Jeff Blackburn, chief counsel of the Innocence Project of Texas, which works to free wrongfully convicted inmates, said Friday's ruling could open the door for more compensation claims from ex-prisoners.

"The floodgates are not opening, but what this will do is give a fair shake to people who are innocent," Blackburn said. "This is a major step forward in terms of opening up and broadening the law of exoneration in general."

Texas' compensation law is the most generous in the U.S., according to the national Innocence Project. Freed inmates who are declared innocent by a judge, prosecutors or a governor's pardon can collect $80,000 for every year of imprisonment, along with an annuity.

What makes Allen's case different is that he didn't have an innocence declaration. What he had instead was a Court of Criminal Appeals ruling that reversed his conviction based on ineffective counsel and supported a lower court's finding that the evidence against him was too weak for a reasonable jury to convict him.

In effect, the Court of Criminal Appeals, the state's highest court in criminal matters, supported Allen's claim of "actual innocence" and he should be paid, the state Supreme Court ruled.

"Court to Texas: Pay $2 million to man imprisoned for 26 years," is the Los Angeles Times report by Molly Hennessy-Fiske.

Billy Frederick Allen, now in his 60s, was convicted of two 1983 Dallas-area murders. Unlike other inmates freed after DNA evidence proved their innocence, Allen was freed in 2009 after a court found problems with witness testimony and his trial attorneys' representation. Allen sued the state for compensation for wrongful imprisonment.

Allen's attorney said the Supreme Court ruling may prove key to developing standards for when the state must compensate former prisoners.

"There are many cases where people are struggling and they don't have DNA, but they now have hope," Allen's attorney, Kris Moore of McKinney, Texas, told The Times. "The implications of this for the Texas justice system are probably larger than people realize."

He said the ruling may make it easier for inmates such as Richard Miles of Dallas -- who served 14 years for crimes he didn't commit, then spent two years awaiting a court ruling that finally came in February -- to be  compensated more quickly.

But he said it's not clear what bearing Allen's case may have on other ongoing high-profile exoneration battles. In one such case, Kerry Max Cook has written a book and attracted celebrity supporters in his fight to prove his innocence and receive compensation for serving 22 years on Texas' death row for an East Texas murder he says he never committed.

Courthouse News Service posts, "Texas Owes $2M to Man Exonerated of Murder."  It's by David Lee.

The comptroller said Allen was freed because of ineffective assistance of counsel, not actual innocence.

A unanimous panel of the state Supreme Court concluded otherwise Friday, saying the habeas relief amounted to actual innocence.

Substantive claims based on newly discovered evidence, such as DNA, are not the only permissible actual innocence claims under the act, according to the 19-page decision.

Procedural claims that are "intertwined" with constitutional errors are permissible as well

"He asserted a constitutional claim for ineffective assistance of counsel, which coupled with a proper defense of his case at trial would probably have concluded in a not guilty verdict," Justice Dale Wainwright wrote for the panel.

The court based its holding on Schlup v. Delo, a 1995 ruling in which the U.S. Supreme Court defined actual innocence as "not merely require a showing that a reasonable doubt exists in the light of the new evidence, but rather that no reasonable juror would have found the defendant guilty."

Under Schlup, the standard does not address the trial court's independent judgment as to whether reasonable doubt exists. Rather the standard requires the court to make a probabilistic determination about what reasonable, properly instructed jurors would do.

In 2001, for example, the Texas Legislature changed the term "not guilty" in the statute to "actual innocence." This gives credence to the idea that lawmakers wanted to include Schlup claims of actual innocence, the judges found.

More on Schlup, via Oyez.

Relates posts are in the wrongful incarceration index.

w.star-telegram.com/2012/05/20/3973424/texas-supreme-court-defines-actual.html#storylink=cpy

Dallas County Records 31st & 32nd Exonerations

"Two more Dallas County men cleared after serving decades for rape they didn’t commit," is the title of Jennifer Emily's Dallas Morning News report.

Raymond Jackson and James Williams returned to the same Dallas County courtroom Monday where they were wrongly convicted of rape nearly 30 years ago.

This time, though, court was in session to clear their names.

State District Judge Susan Hawk and District Attorney Craig Watkins shook their hands and apologized for the miscarriage of justice. Hawk declared the men “actually innocent” in the 1983 kidnapping, rape and shooting of a Canadian woman.

“To say I’m sorry is not enough,” Hawk said to the beaming Jackson, 67, and Williams, 54. “But I hope you both have very full and happy lives.”

They are the 31st and 32nd men to be exonerated in Dallas County since 2001. Dallas County has had so many exonerations because, unlike in other jurisdictions, evidence was preserved at the county crime lab, sometimes dating back to the late 1970s.

And:

An all-white jury sent the men, who are black, to prison based on eyewitness testimony, which has been proven notoriously unreliable in recent years. Most DNA exonerations in Dallas County and around the country involve the victims or witnesses wrongly identifying defendants as the perpetrator.

Jackson and Williams had alibis, but the jury did not believe them. They were sentenced to 99 years in prison.

Related posts are in the exoneration and wrongful incarceration indexes.

An Update on Kerry Max Cook

Today's Texas Tribune reports, "Filing by Cook Alleges Prosecutor Kept Murder Weapon."  It's by Brandi Grissom.

The prosecutor who sent Kerry Max Cook to death row in 1978 for a gruesome stabbing death has kept the blood-soaked murder weapon at his home for the last decade as a macabre “souvenir” of one of Tyler’s most infamous and brutal killings, according to a motion the former inmate’s lawyers filed Monday in Smith County.

Along with the knife, former Smith County District Attorney A.D. Clark III — now with the Texas attorney general’s office — also kept a slide with samples of Cook’s hair, the former inmate’s lawyers allege. 

“The rather odd practice of Mr. Clark keeping evidence of a murder case in his personal possession raises many questions, both legal and psychological,” lawyers wrote in a motion asking an administrative judge to reconsider his decision last month to allow Cook’s case to remain in Smith County despite court findings of prosecutorial misconduct there in the past.

What’s more, Cook’s lawyers argue, former Smith County prosecutors illegally destroyed much of the remaining evidence in the case that may have contained DNA that could have been tested to help prove Cook’s innocence. And, they said, the current district attorney lied about facts of the case during a court hearing last month.

“These acts of prejudice and malice have crippled Mr. Cook's efforts to defend himself and establish his innocence over the past 35 years,” Cook’s lawyer, Marc McPeak, wrote. “For the reasons stated and discussed herein, among many others, no Smith County judge should be permitted to preside over Mr. Cook's case.”

And:

Administrative Judge John Ovard granted Cook’s request for DNA testing, but he declined to remove the case from Smith County.

Cook’s lawyer, in the motion filed Monday, asked Ovard to reconsider his decision not to move the case based on the new discoveries about the destroyed evidence and “souvenirs” and based on what he described as misrepresentations of the facts by the current district attorney, Matt Bingham.

Earlier coverage of Kerry Max Cook begins at the link.

Examining When Justice Goes Awry

That's the title of Gary Craig's column in today's Rochester Democrat & Chronicle of New York state.  Here's an extended excerpt:

Jonathan Gradess sees a certain logic in holding a conference on wrongful convictions in Monroe County.

“I like the idea that (the conference) is going to be in a jurisdiction that has been in the vanguard of mistakes,” said Gradess, who heads the New York Defenders Association. “It’s sort of like taking the death penalty to Texas. It’s taking wrongful convictions to Rochester.”

A statement that stings some in law enforcement but can’t be denied is that Monroe County has had its share of high-profile wrongful convictions.

Growing research into misidentifications by victims and false confessions by the accused show that wrongful arrests and convictions likely can be curbed. And on Friday, April 20, the Rochester Institute of Technology’s criminal justice and psychology departments will host a conference with the leading experts in these topics as well as others.

Among the speakers at the conference, titled “Justice Miscarried: Convicting the Innocent,” will be John Jay College psychology professor Saul Kassin, an expert in false confessions; Peter Neufeld, co-founder of the Innocence Project; John Jay College professor Jennifer Dysart, an expert in eyewitness identification; Steven Barnes, who spent 20 years in prison for a murder he didn’t commit; and Eugene Pigott Jr., an associate judge on New York’s highest court, the Court of Appeals.

“This conference will help people truly understand the peer-reviewed research that explains why — despite their best intentions — eyewitnesses so often misidentify innocent people as the perpetrators of crime,” said LaVerne McQuiller Williams, associate professor and head of RIT’s criminal justice department. “It will also address why innocent people falsely confess to having committed crimes and the threat that prosecutorial misconduct presents in convicting the innocent.”

The 2012 New York State Wrongful Convictions Conference will be held April 20.  Registration is free, but ends on April 12.

CBS News '48 Hours" to Revisit Anthony Graves' Exoneration

This Saturday's edition of CBS News "48 Hours" will revisit the wrongful conviction and exoneration of Anthony Graves.  A preview of this updated telling of "Grave Injustice," is available from CBS News.  The program is scheduled to air at 10:00 pm (EDT), 9:00 pm (CDT); check local listings for your CBS affilliate.

You can also view CBS News' press release, announcing the program.

“If it hadn't been for 48 Hours Mystery, I don't think I would be getting my compensation,” said Anthony Graves following the announcement that he would be awarded restitution after nearly 20 years of wrongful incarceration.

On April 23, 2011, 48 HOURS MYSTERY correspondent Richard Schlesinger reported the story, “Grave Injustice,” of Anthony Graves, a Texas man who walked free in October 2010 when it was proven that he had been wrongfully convicted in 1994 on six counts of capital murder. Formerly known as Inmate #999127, Graves was on death row when a group of journalism students from the University of St. Thomas in Houston began looking at his case. After four years of investigating, they uncovered the truth: Anthony Graves was an innocent man.  

Despite gaining his freedom and good name back, Graves did not receive complete justice. According to a 2009 Texas law, those exonerated can receive $80,000 for every year they were imprisoned; however, because two words – “actual innocence” – were missing from Graves’ prison release papers, Texas refused to compensate him.

“They (48 HOURS MYSTERY) laid out my case for the whole world to see and as a result it made Texas do the right thing. I owe it all to 48 Hours, for first taking an interest in my case, seeing the injustice for what it was, and then showing the rest of the world,” said Graves.

Earlier coverage of Anthony Graves' wrongful conviction and exoneration begins at the link.  All coverage is in the Anthony Graves index.  Additional coverage of Texas compensation for those wrongfully incarcerated is also available.

Attorney Fees & the Exonerated

AP reports, "Attorney: Lawyer earned fees paid by exonerees," by Betsy Blaney.  It's via the Austin American-Statesman.  Here's an extended excerpt:

An attorney credited for pushing a law that made Texas the most generous state in the nation in compensating the wrongly convicted earned his fees by fighting to get two clients as much money as possible after they were exonerated by DNA, his lawyer said Monday.

Opening statements were held in the State Bar of Texas' lawsuit against Kevin Glasheen. The bar association has accused Glasheen of charging the men unreasonable fees for obtaining compensation, but his lawyer said the pair received more money than they would have under the old compensation system.

"These two clients (of Glasheen's) are millions of dollars better off because of Kevin Glasheen fighting for them," Jim Hund said. "This was not an easy fight. It was a knock-down, drag-out fight."

Glasheen received millions of dollars in compensation for 12 men cleared after DNA evidence showed they were innocent of charges that put some in prison for more than two decades. Two of the men, Steven Phillips and Patrick Waller, filed complaints with the state bar, saying Glasheen's 25 percent contingency fee was too much. The state bar then sued Glasheen, saying his fees were illegal and unconscionable and constituted professional misconduct. Lawyers charging contingency fees usually only get paid if their clients win and receive compensation.

But Phillips and Waller were guaranteed millions under a 2009 law — pushed by Glasheen — that upped compensation for the wrongly convicted from $50,000 to $80,000 for every year of confinement and provided an annuity for lifetime income. Phillips' annuity was set at $3.7 million, or $11,624 per month, and Waller's was $2.8 million, or $6,424 per month.

State Bar of Texas attorney Paul Homberg III said in his opening remarks that the problem was that Glasheen got 25 percent not only on the lump sum each man received but also on their annuities. He called that "outrageous."

"We're not here to say Kevin Glasheen is a bad person or a bad lawyer," Homberg said. "He's an able lawyer. But, judge, with millions of dollars on the table, Mr. Glasheen had some blinders on."

If the court determines Glasheen committed misconduct, he could face punishments ranging from a public reprimand to disbarment.

The bar's lawsuit also accuses Glasheen of fee sharing, which has been illegal in Texas since 2005.

Glasheen collected about $5 million in fees from clients, keeping $3.5 million for his firm and paying the rest to Jeff Blackburn, the chief counsel for the Innocence Project of Texas. Glasheen said in a statement emailed last week that Blackburn helped on the cases because of his expertise and experience in wrongful convictions.

Earlier coverage of Glasheen fee dispute begins at the link.  Related posts are in the wrongful incarceration index.

The Morton Exoneration & Prosecutorial Misconduct

"Justice and Prosecutorial Misconduct," is the New York Times editorial from the December 29th issue.

Prosecutors have enormous power in determining who is subjected to criminal punishment because they have broad discretion in deciding criminal charges. The Brady rule, established by the Supreme Court in 1963, is supposed to be an important check on that power. It requires prosecutors to disclose evidence favorable to the defendant. But their failure to comply is rarely discovered, and, even then, prosecutors are almost never punished.

The Supreme Court, in an outrageous decision earlier this year, further weakened the ability of wronged defendants to make prosecutors’ offices liable by giving them nearly absolute immunity against civil suits. Justice Clarence Thomas justified the ruling, noting that an “attorney who violates his or her ethical obligations is subject to professional discipline, including sanctions, suspension, and disbarment.” But bar associations hardly ever punish this behavior; judges seldom discipline prosecutors for such violations; and criminal sanctions are rarely imposed against prosecutors.

This is why the Morton inquiry is crucial. The Innocence Project report found that Mr. Anderson willfully failed to disclose police notes that another man committed the murder, concealed from the trial judge that he did not provide the full police report and advised his successor as prosecutor “to oppose all of Mr. Morton’s postconviction motions for DNA testing.” If a court confirms these findings, it must hold Mr. Anderson accountable — or it will send a message to prosecutors in Texas and elsewhere that the criminal justice system is incapable of deterring or punishing this conduct.

There are, however, a small but growing number of prosecutors’ offices around the country that have systems to prevent the gross miscarriage of justice that Mr. Morton suffered. Like the New York County District Attorney’s Office, they allow open records so defendants can have a copy of almost anything in the case file, and they support having courts audit their compliance with Brady.

"Let Anderson's record be heard by a court," is the Austin American-Statesman editorial of December 27.

Michael Morton ends 2011 an innocent man. Meanwhile, District Judge Ken Anderson ends the year under a cloud of suspicion about his conduct prosecuting Morton for the murder of his wife almost 25 years ago.

Last week, District Judge Sid Harle formally dismissed the murder charge against Morton. Morton, wrongly imprisoned in 1987 and not released until October, was always actually innocent of beating to death his wife, Christine, in their Williamson County home in 1986. Now the state concurs; Morton is innocent.

With Morton's innocence legally declared, Harle now should convene a special court of inquiry to investigate allegations by Morton's lawyers that Anderson, who was Williamson County's district attorney when he prosecuted Morton, concealed evidence that might have exonerated Morton of the charge that he killed his wife.

Anderson denies the allegations. In our view, let a court of inquiry consider Anderson's denials.

"Inquiry warranted in Morton case," is the Dallas Morning News editorial of December 23.

One thing is now cleared up for good in the Michael Morton murder case in Williamson County. He was proclaimed officially, unequivocally innocent this week.

One thing is far from being cleared up — whether the man who put him in prison for nearly 25 years, Ken Anderson, is a scheming, unethical district attorney. If there’s an explanation for why the defense never saw critical exculpatory evidence investigators collected before trial, for why the evidence stayed hidden for nearly all of the quarter-century that Morton was imprisoned, the state of Texas hasn’t gotten a straight answer. And it needs to.

Anderson, now a judge, should be held to account, just as Morton once had to defend himself against a far thinner dossier of evidence.

A request for a special court of inquiry in the Anderson matter is now before a state district judge, in a damning, 144-page report filed Monday by Morton’s attorneys. That special proceeding should be held to get direct answers from Anderson and weigh whether he should face charges.

"Stop the prosecutorial misconduct," is the title of an OpEd by Houston criminal defense attorney Robert Fickman in the Houston Chronicle of December 31.

It is past time for us to draw another line in the sand. Too many innocent men and women have had their liberty stolen by some puffed-up bureaucrat with a law degree. It's time to fight back and demand accountability.

What has become of the men who prosecuted Graves and Morton? What is their punishment for apparently fabricating and withholding evidence?

Have they been sent to jail, disbarred or hounded from our midst? No. Nothing has happened to them.

There is no punishment for them. Their lives go on unfettered. There is no accounting for their apparent raw inhumanity. None.

This needs to change. When a prosecutor willfully withholds exculpatory evidence in a murder case, he must be held to answer. When a prosecutor willfully fabricates evidence in a murder case, he must be held to account. Prosecutors who willfully falsify evidence to rob innocent men of their liberty must be held to answer under the law.

The next time the state Legislature meets we must demand accountability. The Legislature must enact stiff laws to punish those prosecutors who willfully break the law to rob men of their liberty. Nothing less is acceptable.

"Special holiday for lawyer John Raley, innocent client," is Patricia Kilday Hart's December 26th Houston Chronicle column.

Christmas, that celebration of miracles, new life and truth, can find expression in unlikely settings.

This year, for Houston attorney John Raley and his family, it arrived six days early in a nondescript Georgetown courtroom, when a state district judge stepped down from his imposing dais to declare the innocence of Michael Morton, a man who spent 25 years in prison wrongly accused of the murder of his wife, Christine.

And:

Raley's involvement in the case began when a mutual acquaintance in Houston's legal community suggested to Innocence Project attorney Nina Morrison that she solicit his help as a volunteer.

Morrison now laughs when she recalls the naiveté that Raley, a civil litigator with expertise in medical malpractice, brought to the criminal court arena: "He said, 'Of course the prosecutors will want to do DNA testing. Who wouldn't want to do DNA testing?' "

Morrison, jaded from years of fighting injustices that occur all too often in the criminal court system, knew better. Prosecutors do not like to admit mistakes.

Brandi Grissom wrote, "Murder Cases Put 'Junk Science' in the Spotlight," for the December 26 Texas edition of the New York Times.  It's also available at the Texas Tribune.  Here's an extended excerpt from this must-read:

Undigested bits of mushrooms and tomatoes from Christine Morton’s last meal — a celebratory birthday dinner she had with her husband — were still in her stomach when the medical examiner performed his autopsy in 1986.

Those remnants, the prosecutor told the jury during Michael Morton’s trial, “scientifically proved” that Mr. Morton had beaten his wife to death.

Twenty-five years later, DNA science revealed that someone else had actually killed Mrs. Morton and that her husband’s murder conviction and more than two decades in prison were a tragic mistake. His exoneration based on DNA evidence is the 45th in Texas.

Before he dismissed the wrongful murder charges against Mr. Morton last week, Judge Sid Harle recounted the faults the case exposed in the Texas justice system. Among them: the use of so-called junk science in the courtroom.

“The courts and the sitting judges need to be ever mindful about their role as gatekeeper in regard to the admission of science,” Mr. Harle said. “Your case illustrates the best and the worst of what can happen.”

Despite scientific advancements like DNA testing, the use of unreliable scientific techniques in the criminal justice system persists. While some judges say they work to ensure only reliable scientific evidence is presented to juries, criminal justice advocates say that more must be done to root out an array of pseudoscientific practices that can have life-or-death consequences.

“What passes for science in courtrooms is not always, in fact, science,” said Kathryn Kase, interim executive director of the Texas Defender Service, which represents death row inmates.

In recent weeks, the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals has agreed to review cases that indicate it may also see a need to address the types of evidence that meet scientific standards.

In November, the state’s highest criminal court agreed to review the case of Megan Winfrey, who is serving a life sentence for murder. She was convicted largely on the testimony of a sheriff’s deputy who said his bloodhounds “alerted” to her scent on the murder victim’s clothing. The court has previously ruled that dog-scent evidence, used to convict Ms. Winfrey’s father for the same murder, was insufficient without corroborating evidence. The court acquitted her father on appeal.

This month, the court also agreed to review the cases of two men awaiting execution. Both men, convicted of murder, were sentenced to death after a psychologist who was an expert witness in several death penalty cases told jurors that they were mentally competent to face execution.

Earlier coverage of Michael Morton's exoneration begins at the link.

The responsibility of the state to provide exculpatory evidence to the defense was articulated in the 1963 Supreme Court ruling in Brady v. Maryland; more via Oyez.  Related posts are in the prosecutorial misconduct index. 

There is also more in the junk science index.

Texas AG to Act as Special Proseuctor on Morton Murder Case

"Texas attorney general to lead new investigation of Morton murder," is the title of Chuck Lindell's report in today's Austin American Statesman.

A special prosecutor from the Texas attorney general's office will lead the reinvestigation of the 1986 murder of Christine Morton after DNA evidence recently revealed that her husband, Michael Morton, was wrongly convicted of the crime.

Williamson County District Attorney John Bradley said Monday that he requested a special prosecutor because the state agency has expertise leading complex cases, particularly cold cases that require considerable investigation — from finding witnesses again to developing new evidence.

"Given the complexities and age of the Morton case, I wanted to make sure that we had an office and a special prosecutor with substantial experience who could carry this case forward," Bradley said.

Bradley also urged Michael Morton's trial prosecutors, including former District Attorney Ken Anderson, to cooperate in a separate investigation — led by Morton's lawyers — into allegations that evidence favorable to Morton was improperly hidden to ensure his conviction and life sentence.

Details of that investigation remain in sealed court files, but Anderson, now a district judge in Georgetown, and former Assistant District Attorney Mike Davis, now a Round Rock lawyer, are expected to be subpoenaed to give Morton's lawyers depositions under oath.

"I encourage Mr. Anderson and Mr. Davis to provide Mr. Morton with an explanation of what happened 25 years ago during the discovery process for his trial," Bradley said.

And:

Bradley, saying he will remain involved in the investigation into the misconduct allegations, also promised to cooperate fully with Morton's lawyers.

Morton's Houston lawyer, John Raley, welcomed Bradley's pledge.

"As the husband of the murder victim and someone who was wrongfully convicted of the crime, Mr. Morton has a deep personal interest in seeing justice done, so we will want to consult with the attorney general as the new investigation proceeds," Raley said Monday.

The Texas Tribune has, "Bradley Announces Special Prosecutor in Morton Case," by Brandi Grissom.

Williamson County District Attorney John Bradley this morning announced the appointment of the Texas Attorney General's office as special prosecutor in the Michael Morton case and the ongoing investigation and possible prosecution of any new suspect in the 1986 murder of his wife, Christine Morton. A special grand jury is also being formed to investigate and hear any witnesses related to the case, he said.

“Given the complexities and age of the Morton case, I wanted to make sure that we had an office and a special prosecutor with substantial experience who could carry this case forward,” Bradley said in a statement.

Molly Hennessy-Fiske posts, "Texas attorney general reinvestigating botched murder case," for the Los Angeles Times.

The Texas attorney general's office is reinvestigating a murder case that sent the wrong man to prison for nearly 25 years.

"We have taken over the investigation and prosecution in the Christine Morton murder case," Lauren Bean, a spokeswoman for Texas Atty. Gen. Greg Abbott's office, told The Times on Monday.

Christine Morton was found bludgeoned to death at her home in Williamson County, about 20 miles north of Austin, on Aug. 13, 1986. Her husband, Michael Morton, was convicted of murdering her and sentenced to life in prison the following year. Morton insisted that he was innocent, that he was at work at the time his wife was killed and that she had been attacked by an intruder.

Earlier this month, Morton, 57, was released from prison and exonerated after DNA tests identified another man as a suspect in the death of his wife and the 1988 murder of another woman in the area under similar circumstances. According to court records, the suspect, identified only as John Doe, lived in the area at the time and has felony convictions or charges in four states, including California.

Williamson County sheriff's officers reinvestigating the Morton case will now report to Abbott's office.

Earlier coverage of Michael Morton's exoneration begins at the link.

Jim Dunnam on the Michael Morton Exoneration

"Another innocent man freed from a Texas jail," is the title of Jim Dunnam's OpEd in the Houston Chronicle.  Dunnam is a former state representative from Waco.  He's now a senior fellow at the Texas First Foundation.

In 1986 the Space Shuttle Challenger blew up shortly after launch. Lady Gaga was born and the forensic use of DNA technology in criminal courtrooms began. 1986 is also the year Christine Morton was murdered. Christine's husband, Michael Morton, was convicted of that murder and sent to prison for life. Twenty-five years have passed.

This year brought us the final Space Shuttle mission and Lady Gaga at the top of the charts. Since 1986, the science and accuracy of DNA testing has progressed to incredible levels, and this month DNA testing exonerated Michael Morton.

The prosecutors claimed Michael Morton was a sex-crazed lunatic who beat his wife to death one morning before work. Michael maintained his innocence, insisting his wife was alive when he left that morning.

The jury that convicted Michael was never shown a blood-stained bandana found behind the Morton home. The jury never learned that Morton's 3-year-old son witnessed the assault on his mom, had described the murderer and said that his father was not home at the time. The jury also was not told that Christine Morton's purse had been stolen from the house, or that her credit card and a check were later used by someone other than Michael. Instead, prosecutors misled the jury, arguing that since nothing was stolen there was no evidence to support Michael's claim of a burglar. The prosecutors also withheld this evidence from Michael's lawyers, even though required by law to turn it over.

The new evidence was ultimately discovered in the prosecutor's files years later by pro bono lawyers representing Morton. In 2006, these new lawyers asked that the bandana be tested using the latest DNA test methods. John Bradley, the Williamson County district attorney, refused the request and successfully won a hearing to prevent it. Five years passed.

And:

In the 11 years surrounding 1986, 51 people were executed in Texas. The 234 executions presided over by Perry in his 11 years as governor now serve as an applause line during Republican presidential debates. Currently, Texas houses 8,500 inmates serving life sentences, and Texas will spend more than $3 billion this year on criminal justice. Forgetting for a moment the real loss of 25 years for Michael Morton, it cost Texans more than $400,000 to incarcerate him all this time. Meanwhile, the real murderer walked through America committing more crimes and another murder. Shouldn't we use all the tools science has to offer and a little of that money to assure we've got the right man?

Earlier coverage of Michael Morton's exoneration begins at the link.

Is John Bradley Trying to Close Prosecutorial Misconduct Inquiry?

Today's Austin American-Statesman reports, "DA files, retracts motion called hindrance to Morton case inquiry."  It's by Chuck Lindell.

Williamson County District Attorney John Bradley filed, but later withdrew, a motion to speed Michael Morton's appeal after Morton's lawyers objected Thursday, calling the move a cynical attempt to short-circuit an investigation into alleged misconduct by former county officials.

Morton, freed last week after serving almost 25 years in prison for a murder he did not commit, has made the investigation a priority in hopes of fleshing out charges that evidence was hidden that could have prevented his guilty verdict in 1987, his lawyers said.

Bradley denied trying to impede the investigation and said Morton's lawyers overreacted. Still, he said via email that he was "sorry for the misunderstanding."

Thursday's contretemps surrounded an agreement, negotiated two weeks ago between Bradley and defense lawyers, that allowed Morton to go free on only a signature bond. The agreement acknowledged that recent DNA tests pointed to another man as the killer of Morton's wife, Christine, in the bed of their Williamson County house in 1986.

The agreement also gave defense lawyers limited time to pursue an investigation into their allegations that then-District Attorney Ken Anderson, now a district judge in Georgetown, hid evidence that could have established Morton's innocence. Morton's lawyers also claim investigators ignored leads that could have caught the killer.

But the agreement stipulates that the investigation would end if the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals were to establish Morton's innocence, which it did Wednesday.

Morton's lawyers believe they have until Nov. 7, when the court issues its mandate and the ruling becomes official, to complete their investigation, which was to be overseen by District Judge Sid Harle.

But in a motion filed late Wednesday, Bradley asked the appeals court to "immediately" issue its mandate on the Morton case.

The motion said the request was being made for Morton's good, freeing him from the conditions of his bond and allowing him to more quickly seek state compensation for his wrongful conviction.

And:

Morton was prepared to delay his release from prison to ensure that his claims of misconduct were investigated by the courts, the brief said. He agreed to the signature bond only because he believed his lawyers would be allowed to conduct the same investigation, the brief added.

"Mr. Morton is entitled, at a minimum, to hold the State to its promise to let him make a limited inquiry as to how and why he was wrongfully convicted in the first place," the brief said.

"The State should not be permitted to use this Court's procedural rules to short-circuit that process," the brief said. "Mr. Morton did not request, and does not agree to, an expedited issuance of the mandate under these circumstances."

The objections prompted Bradley to withdraw the motion to expedite.

"Bradley Withdraws Motion to Rush Morton Case," is the Texas Tribune post by Brandi Grissom.

Williamson County District Attorney John Bradley this afternoon withdrew a motion he filed on Wednesday asking the court to quickly finalize its decision to exonerate Michael Morton.

The filing drew quick criticism from Morton's attorneys, who worried that Bradley was attempting to stymie efforts to investigate allegations of prosecutorial misconduct.

In the two-page withdrawal motion filed today, Bradley wrote that his filing to expedite the dismissal of the case "was a simple misunderstanding of the terms of the agreement" he had made last week with Morton's lawyers.

And:

In his motion, Bradley — who was not the prosecutor at the time of Morton's original trial — wrote that an expedited dismissal would benefit Morton because it would release him from the personal recognizance bond of the court and allow him to "immediately pursue any compensation" from the state for the nearly 25 years he was wrongfully imprisoned.

John Raley, a Houston pro-bono lawyer, and Nina Morrison and Barry Scheck, of the New York-based Innocence Project, however, argue in an unusual court filing opposing Bradley's request that his motives are not purely to help the newly exonerated man move on with his life. The request to hurry-up the process, they indicate, is an effort to stymie an investigation into whether prosecutors intentionally and illegally suppressed evidence that could have prevented Morton's wrongful conviction.

Morton's lawyers allege that the district attorney's office withheld a transcript of a conversation between Rita Kirkpatrick, Christine Morton's mother, and a sheriff's investigator in which she told the officer that Morton's 3-year-old son saw a "monster" who was not his father attack and kill his mother.

They also allege prosecutors withheld information about Christine Morton's credit card being used in San Antonio two days after she was killed and about a check made out to her that was cashed with her forged signature nine days after her death.

Bradley's office has denied allegations of wrongdoing. Ken Anderson, who was the prosecutor at the time of Morton's trial and is now a Williamson County district judge, has not commented publicly.

In an agreement that Morton's lawyers said they negotiated over a three-day period with Bradley, the two sides agreed that an investigation into the alleged wrongdoing would continue while the appeals court was considering the motion to overturn Morton's conviction. If the discovery process was not completed by the time the appellate court issued an order, then the two sides agreed the investigation could continue for at least 30 days. Typically, the court takes a month or longer to issue a decision, but in this case, the court took just a week.

The ABA Journal focuses on another issue, "Ex-Prosecutor, Now a Judge, Accused of Hiding Exculpatory Evidence."  It's by Mark Hansen.

A former Texas prosecutor, now a sitting judge, has been accused of withholding exculpatory evidence in the prosecution of an Austin-area man who spent 25 years in prison for a murder he didn't commit.

Lawyers for Michael Morton, whom DNA evidence has exonerated in the 1986 murder of his wife, Christine, say former Willamson County District Attorney Ken Anderson, now a sitting judge in the same county, failed to turn over evidence to the defense that cast doubt on Morton's guilt, the Associated Press reports.

The evidence includes a statement by the victim's mother, who told investigators at the time that her 3-year-old grandson—Morton's son—had described seeing a "monster" beat his mother to death. It also includes evidence that the victim's credit card was used in San Antonio two days after her murder and that a forged check in her name was cashed a week later.

"I think everybody can see how offensive this conduct is, if true," said Innocence Project co-founder Barry Scheck, one of Morton's lawyers. "I am profoundly troubled by this. Profoundly troubled, and determined to get answers."

Earlier coverage of Michael Morton's exoneration begins at the link.

The Latest News Coverage of Michael Morton's Exoneration

"Prosecutor misdeeds may have let killer kill again," is the title of Will Weissert's AP report.  It's via the Fort Worth Star-Telegram.

Caitlin Baker was 3 when her mother, Debra, was beaten to death and left naked in bed in her Austin home. Although the pain of the loss has faded in the 23 years since, her anger that her mother's killer was never caught has not.

Less than two years before that January 1988 slaying, unbeknownst to all but a few people until recently, the mother of another woman bludgeoned to death in bed during an attack at her home about 15 miles away told an investigator that her 3-year-old grandson watched a "monster" do the killing, not his father, as police suspected. She urged him to pursue other leads, but her daughter's husband, Michael Morton, was instead convicted of murder and sentenced to life.

New DNA testing linked the killings of Debra Baker and Christine Morton to another man with a prison record in several states. Police have not publicly identified the suspect, whom they are trying to locate, but his genetic links to both slayings led to Morton's release from prison last week after nearly 25 years behind bars, and his formal exoneration by an appeals court on Wednesday.

But lawyers for the Innocence Project, a New York-based group that spent years fighting for DNA testing in Morton's case and the release of his police case files, say he likely never would have been convicted if the prosecutor in charge of the case hadn't withheld key evidence from the defense, including his mother-in-law's statements. And if, as the lawyers contend, investigators disregarded and hid evidence that cast doubt on Morton's guilt, could they have more doggedly pursued leads that might have helped them prevent Baker's killing?

In filings before state District Judge Sid Harle, the Innocence Project has alleged misconduct by Ken Anderson, now a sitting judge in Williamson County just north of Austin, who was the county's district attorney at the time, and prosecuted Morton's case. The charges could lead to the state bar taking disciplinary action against Anderson, or Harle himself possibly urging state and federal prosecutors to investigate, said Barry Scheck, the Innocence Project's co-founder.

"I think everybody can see how offensive this conduct is, if true," Scheck said. "I am profoundly troubled by this. Profoundly troubled, and determined to get answers."

At Time, "In Perry’s Texas, a Well-Connected DA with a Knack for Blocking New Evidence," is the title of Mark Benjamin's post.

Michael Morton faced a throng of reporters last Tuesday just after a Texas judge freed him following 25 years in prison for a murder he did not commit. Now gray-haired and 57, Morton looked on the bright side. “I thank God that this was not a capital case,” he said.

In the final years of a legal battle spanning more than two decades, attorneys at the New York-based Innocence Project fought for DNA testing that ultimately exonerated Morton in the murder of his wife and pried loose exculpatory information from Texas government files that officials had withheld from Morton’s attorneys since before his 1987 trial.

These efforts probably would have sprung Morton from prison years ago were it not for the role of Williamson County District Attorney John Bradley, a well-connected ally of Texas Governor Rick Perry, who fought tenaciously for six years to keep Morton behind bars. Twice a Perry appointee to influential legal posts, Bradley has generated controversy in his handling of two high-profile cases: Morton’s incarceration and the forensic review of evidence against Cameron Todd Willingham, a man who was executed in 2004 despite a cloud of uncertainty around the expert testimony that led to his conviction.

In early 2005, Morton’s attorneys sought DNA testing on a blood-stained bandana found outside the Morton home on the day after the brutal murder, which took place on Aug. 13, 1986. Court records show that Bradley, who was appointed by Perry in 2001 and was not Morton’s original prosecutor, sought to prevent that testing from ever taking place and tried to limit its effect on the case.

At first, Bradley argued that testing the bandana would open the floodgates to an indeterminable amount of new evidence. “One has to wonder whether petitioner would file another motion at some future date seeking additional testing of even more items,” he wrote in October of 2005. In a 2009 filing, Bradley argued that the bandana was irrelevant because it was found “a football field’s length” from the Morton’s house, and that if any DNA testing did take place “it should not incorporate the possibility of a match of any DNA profile recovered from the bandana to a known offender.

District attorneys vary widely in their willingness to consider new evidence, but Bradley’s efforts make him an outlier. The Innocence Project says it has to fight a prosecutor’s objections to DNA testing in less than half of its cases, and most resistance dries up quickly. Death penalty opponents are particularly critical of prosecutors who resist DNA testing. Steve Hall, director of the StandDown Texas project, called Bradley’s behavior in the Morton case “abhorrent.”

"Texas man jailed 25 years for murder is exonerated," by Molly Hennessy-Fiske for the Los Angeles Times, via the Sacramento Bee.

Morton has been staying with his parents in East Texas since his release. Nina Morrison, an Innocence Project lawyer, told the Times that she called Morton on Wednesday to tell him about the ruling.

"He's thrilled and relieved and looking forward to the next chapter in his life, but also still determined to get to the bottom of how and why he was wrongfully convicted in the first place and make sure it doesn't happen to anyone else," Morrison said. "There's still a lot of unanswered questions and he very much wants answers."

Chuck Lindell, who broke the story of the tangled case in mid-August writes, "Court affirms Morton's innocence," for today's Austin American-Statesman.

Wednesday's ruling by the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals qualified Morton for compensation from Texas — $80,000 for each year he was wrongly imprisoned, or about $2 million, with another $2 million annuity that would earn 5 percent interest and pay out monthly.

But the rapid ruling may jeopardize Morton's plans to pursue evidence supporting allegations that then-prosecutor Ken Anderson, now a district judge, improperly suppressed pretrial evidence that pointed to Morton's innocence. Defense lawyers also accused sheriff's investigators of ignoring leads that could have solved Christine Morton's murder.

Under an agreement reached last week with Bradley, Morton's lawyers were given a chance to conduct a limited investigation into the allegations of misconduct — but only until the appeals court ruled on Morton's innocence claim.

Defense lawyers believe they have until Nov. 7 to complete that investigation because appellate court rulings do not become final until a mandate issued 25 days after a ruling is announced.

"I am confident we will find a way to get it done in the next (month), if not after," Morrison said, providing no details because District Judge Sid Harle placed the investigation agreement under seal in court files.

But if defense lawyers hope to force Anderson and others to answer questions under oath, they may have trouble convincing Harle to order the depositions.

The claims of official misconduct were included in the same petition that urged the appeals court to declare Morton innocent. Now that appellate judges have established Morton's innocence, the petition is disposed of and the remaining claims are considered moot.

Bradley declined to comment on the defense-led investigation, citing the sealed court records.

And:

John Raley, a Houston civil lawyer who has represented Morton for free since 2005, said Morton is considering additional schooling after earning a master's degree in literature from the University of Houston while in prison.

"He said something about Shakespeare during one of our phone calls years ago," Raley said. "So I sent him the complete works of Shakespeare, and he was thrilled."

Their letters and conversations, Raley said, are frequently sprinkled with Shakespearean quotes and references to literary works by John Milton and others.

Beyond suddenly having a future to plan, however, Morton is still adapting to life outside prison, Raley said.

"All of the everyday things people take for granted, Michael thinks are wonderful. This is a brave new world for him," Raley said.

Earlier coverage of Michael Morton's exoneration begins with the preceding post.

Webcast Today

The Constitution Project's Constitution Day program on wrongful convictions will be webcast today, live from Georgetown Law School in Washington, DC.

Annual Celebration of Constitution Day
Fifth Annual Constitutional Commentary Award Presentation and Discussion with the Honorees

Join The Constitution Project, the Mid-Atlantic Innocence Project, and Georgetown University Law Center as we recognize distinguished authors Jim and Nancy Petro and Brandon Garrett for their respective books, False Justice: Eight Myths that Convict the Innocent  and Convicting the Innocent: Where Criminal Prosecutions Go Wrong. In both works, the authors discuss the flaws in our criminal justice system that continue to result in wrongful convictions. The Constitution Project will present the three authors with its Constitutional Commentary Award, given annually to the author or producer of an outstanding work that has improved the quality of public discourse through insightful, articulate analysis of a constitutional issue of the day.  Following the award presentation, Jeffrey Rosen will host a discussion with the three authors.

The webcast will be available here.

WHO:  
Brandon Garrett, Professor of Law, University of Virginia School of Law, author of Convicting the Innocent: Where Criminal Prosecutions Go Wrong

Jim Petro, Former Republican Attorney General of Ohio (2003-2007), and Nancy Petro, co-authors of False Justice: Eight Myths that Convict the Innocent 

Jeffrey Rosen (moderator), Legal Affairs Editor, The New Republic; Professor of Law, George Washington University

WHAT:
Fifth Annual Constitutional Commentary Award Presentation and  discussion with the authors.

WHEN:
Thursday, September 15, 2011 from 3:30-6:30 pm EDT/ 2:30-5:30 pm CDT/ 1:30 pm MDT/ 12:30 pm PDT

WHERE:
Georgetown University School of Law  
Gewirz Student Center, 12th Floor
120 F Street N.W.  
Washington, D.C. 20001

More information at the Constitution Project website.  Earlier coverage of this event is at the link.

An Update on Paul House

"Thriving at home after 13 years on death row with multiple sclerosis," is the title of a CNN report by Emanuella Grinberg.

Paul House left Tennessee's death row nearly four years ago a crippled man. Sure, he was free, but after 13 years of living with multiple sclerosis in prison, he was a gaunt shell of a man, unable to walk or barely talk, scared to go out in public for fear of being harassed.

Now, he’s a different person, says his mother, Joyce House. He has new teeth, and an affinity for Arby’s beef-and-cheddar sandwiches has helped him gain weight. Thanks to treatment and medication, he can communicate with others and play online poker. When it’s not too hot outside, he exercises on parallel bars in his mother's backyard so that one day, he can hopefully transition from a wheelchair to a walker.

Most importantly, he has overcome a fear of public scrutiny that had haunted him since his release in 2008, after a U.S. Supreme Court ruling that new DNA evidence could have led a jury to acquit him in the 1985 murder of Carolyn Muncey. House spent 22 years on death row before his release.

And:

His lawyer said he has filed a petition for executive clemency, which would provide for financial compensation. "He’ll never be able to walk, but he still strives to one day reach the walker,” Joyce House said.

"He says, 'whenever I get to where I can walk with the walker, we're going to see Mr. Kissinger,' the lawyer who set him free," she said.

Earlier coverage of Paul House begins at the link.

An Update of Exonerees' Fee Dispute

The Dallas Observer reports, "Kevin Glasheen Fought to See Innocent Prisoners Compensated, Then Fought To Take Millions For Himself."  It's written by Brantley Hargrove, and it's a lengthy examination of the issues in this case.

Steven Phillips was about to boil over. This, the attorneys in the room must have known, wasn't good for anyone.

At 51, Phillips had a delicate drawl, but the rest of him was all rangy wildcat sinew. He was a bit of a genetic oddity. He didn't lift weights, yet his neck was thick, tapered upward from a large pair of muscles that sat like small hillocks on his shoulders. He was a native Texan, born in Abilene, but he'd grown up in the Arkansas Ozarks and had, until just recently, handled himself just fine for 25 years in a couple of Texas prisons, including the Coffield Unit, populated by violent felons.

Now, here he was, in January 2010, in a Dallas skyscraper getting prodded about his marginal history as a sex addict and a peeping Tom. Phillips wasn't denying any of that. He knew he'd come a long way since his parole got revoked in '97, when he scaled a woman's balcony and peered through her window. But those turbulent nights lay in the distant past. He worked at keeping it that way every single day, adhering to a rigid 12-step program. "Every man is responsible for working out his own salvation," Phillips liked to say.

As far as he was concerned, this lawyer was just flinging mud. He thought he was there to get grilled about a lawsuit he'd filed against a guy named Jeff Blackburn, a famed Amarillo defense attorney known for his work with the Innocence Project of Texas, and against Kevin Glasheen, a top-gun personal-injury lawyer from Lubbock, who was in the room at this very moment, monitoring the deposition. What did any of this have to do with his case?

Phillips' suit was over the $1 million and change he'd been charged by Glasheen. Their partnership, he says, began as a plan to file a lawsuit against the city of Dallas, whose police force decades before had made the arrest that sent Phillips away. The lawsuit never got filed, but in the spring of 2009, not long after Phillips hired Glasheen, Texas lawmakers passed a bill more than tripling the amount of money the state pays the wrongfully convicted. The law had been championed by Glasheen and Blackburn. According to Glasheen, that championing was part of their work as Phillips' lawyers. But after the law passed, Phillips fired Glasheen and filed the compensation papers with the state himself. Now he wanted a judge to void that contract and block Glasheen from collecting 25 percent on the $4 million coming Phillips' way.

And:

The Innocence Project of Texas defends Blackburn's right to make a living. But others inside the organization see it differently. John Stickels, a UT-Arlington professor who served on the organization's board, left the organization over the fee arrangements. Michelle Moore, a Dallas public defender who works innocent-prisoner cases, split with the Innocence Project of Texas for similar reasons.

Phillips' lawsuit is scheduled for a jury trial in November, but it's not just exonerees who are pursuing legal action against Glasheen. In January, the State Bar of Texas, the member organization for the state's attorneys, sued Glasheen in a Lubbock court, citing professional misconduct. They accused him of drawing up a contract that claimed an interest in an "administrative action" — filing a one-page compensation form — and for lobbying for a contingency fee. They also dinged him for taking cut of an annuity that hadn't been paid.

Earlier coverage of the fee dispute case begins at the link.  Related posts are in the wrongful incarceration index

Constitution Day - September 15

For Constitution Day, the Constitution Project has put together a great program dealing with wrongful convictions.  The Constitution Project has teamed with the Mid-Atlantic Innocence Project and Georgetown Law.

Fifth Annual Constitutional Commentary Award Presentation and Discussion with the Authors

Join TCP and the Mid-Atlantic Innocence Project on Thursday, September 15, 2011 as we recognize distinguished authors Jim and Nancy Petro and Brandon Garrett for their respective books, False Justice: Eight Myths that Convict the Innocent and Convicting the Innocent: Where Criminal Prosecutions Go Wrong. In both works, the authors discuss the flaws in our criminal justice system that continue to result in wrongful convictions. Following the award presentation, Jeffrey Rosen, Legal Affairs Editor for The New Republicand Professor of Law at George Washington University, will host a discussion with the three authors.

The event will take place on the 12th floor of the Gewirz Student Center at Georgetown University School of Law from 3:30-6:30 pm. Be sure to RSVP ([email protected]) to reserve a seat.

More on the participants:

• Brandon Garrett, Professor of Law, University of Virginia School of Law, author of Convicting the Innocent: Where Criminal Prosecutions Go Wrong
• Jim Petro, Former Republican Attorney General of Ohio (2003-2007), and Nancy Petro, co-authors of False Justice: Eight Myths that Convict the Innocent
• Jeffrey Rosen (moderator), Legal Affairs Editor, The New Republic; Professor of Law, George Washington University

The program is open to the public.

There will also be a live webcast of the September 15 program for individuals and groups unable to be in Washington, DC.  The webcast will be archived for later viewing, as well.  I'm hoping that innocence projects in the states and other groups involved in criminal justice reform will consider organizing local screenings of the event.

Earlier coverage of Brandon Garrett's recently published, Convicting the Innocent: Where Criminal Prosecutions Go Wrong is at the link.

The High Cost of Wrongful Convictions

That's the title of a new report on Illinois exonerations issued today by the Better Government Association and the Center on Wrongful Convictions at Northwestern University.

Wrongful convictions of men and women for violent crimes in Illinois have cost taxpayers $214 million and have imprisoned innocent people for 926 years, according to a seven-month investigation by the Better Government Association and the Center on Wrongful Convictions.

The joint investigation, which tracked exonerations from 1989 through 2010, also determined that while 85 people were wrongfully incarcerated, the actual perpetrators were on a collective crime spree that included 14 murders, 11 sexual assaults, 10 kidnappings and at least 59 other felonies.

"I am astounded," said former U.S. Attorney Thomas Sullivan, who chaired the Capital Punishment Reform Committee established by the Illinois General Assembly. "Those are astounding numbers in terms of total years in prison and dollars spent."

Moreover, the 94 felonies in that crime spree may be just a fraction of the total number of crimes committed by the actual perpetrators. The investigation found that the 85 exonerations left 35 murders, 11 rapes, and two murder-rapes with no identified perpetrators and thus no way to add up their accumulated crimes.

While the BGA/CWC study revealed that almost all of the wrongful convictions were caused by multiple factors, the cause most commonly alleged was government error and misconduct by police, prosecutors, and forensic officials.

The investigation was conducted by the non-profit, non-partisan BGA and the Center on Wrongful Convictions, a non-profit organization, based at Northwestern University School of Law, which has been instrumental in the exoneration of 23 innocent men and women in Illinois.

The investigation’s findings are based on the cases of 83 men and two women who were charged with murder, attempted murder, rape, kidnapping, and armed robbery, and who were exonerated between the years 1989 (chosen because it is the start of the DNA-exoneration era in Illinois) and 2010.

"Wrongful convictions cost Illinois $214 million," is the title of the AP report, via the Munster (IN) Times.

A new investigation has found that the wrongful convictions of 85 people have cost Illinois taxpayers $214 million.

The seven-month investigation by the Chicago-based Better Government Association and the Center on Wrongful Convictions at Northwestern University's law school found the bulk of the cost -- $156 million -- was settlements and judgments paid to those exonerated.

"While the BGA/CWC study revealed that almost all of the wrongful convictions were caused by multiple factors, the cause most commonly alleged was government error and misconduct by police, prosecutors, and forensic officials," the groups said in a report published on the BGA website.

The groups predict the cost of wrongful convictions will rise because 16 civil lawsuits filed by exonerated individuals still need to be settled or go to trial, including some by men who allege torture by officers under a decorated former Chicago police lieutenant.

Former Lt. Jon Burge was convicted last year of federal perjury and obstruction of justice charges for lying about torture. Suspects for decades had alleged that Burge and his officers tortured them into confessing to crimes ranging from armed robbery to murder.

The Chicago News Cooperative post is, "Adding Up the Costs of Wrongful Convictions," by Kari Lydersen.

A few days later, the cashier picked Jerry Miller out of a police lineup. Miller, who had never been arrested before, had been stopped by an officer in the area several days earlier while seeking a job at a doughnut shop. The officer thought he resembled the composite sketch of the rapist.

Miller was convicted of rape, robbery and aggravated kidnapping and spent 25 years in prison. Robert Weeks, the man later linked to the rape by DNA evidence, went on to rape or assault four more women, injure police officers in three other attacks and commit other robberies and beatings over 23 years.

Weeks was eventually convicted of two of the rapes and sentenced to life in prison. Miller received $6.3 million in the settlement of a lawsuit against the city.

Miller’s case is one of 85 analyzed in a sweeping report being released Monday by the Better Government Association and the Center on Wrongful Convictions at Northwestern University School of Law.

The association, a nonprofit watchdog and advocacy group, said the study was the first to document the economic and social costs of the 85 convictions in the state that were overturned between 1989 — the advent of modern DNA testing — and 2010. In all, the study said, those wrongful convictions have cost Illinois taxpayers $214 million, and the amount will probably increase to $300 million once 16 pending lawsuits are settled.

“The public pays in multiple ways” for errors or willful misconduct by law enforcement officials, said John Conroy, a veteran reporter, association senior investigator and co-writer of the report. “The whole community pays when the real criminal is left on the street and goes out and commits other felonies.”

The perpetrators of crimes for which others were convicted went on to commit at least 94 more felonies, including 14 murders and 11 sexual assaults, according to the study. It said 83 men and 2 women spent a total of 926 years behind bars for crimes they did not commit.

And:

In 81 of the 85 cases, the study found what it said was either misconduct or error by state officials — in 66 cases by the police, in 44 by prosecutors and in 29 by forensic specialists.

“These aren’t garbage men; these are highly trained police officers and prosecutors who passed bar exams and took an oath on the Bible to do their jobs,” said Andy Shaw, executive director of the association. “But they didn’t.”

In Miller’s case, his lawyers alleged police misconduct, including suppression of a photo lineup in which the parking garage cashier and another witness may have identified people other than Miller. The lawyers also said the state crime lab’s early DNA testing was erroneous and was contradicted by independent experts.

Related posts are in the cost, exoneration, and report indexes.

An Anthony Graves Update

Texas' most recent death row exoneree, Anthony Graves, is interviewed by Brandi Grissom of the Texas Tribune.  You can watch streaming video at the link.  Here's an excerpt from the introduction:

The state of Texas incarcerated him for nearly two decades — and nearly executed him twice — for murders he didn't commit. And now, the state is balking at giving him the $1.4 million he's owed for all the years he spent wrongfully imprisoned.

Despite it all, Anthony Graves is remarkably positive. He's just happy to be off death row, and elated to be working to bring hope to his friends who are still there. Last week, Graves sat down with the Tribune at his downtown Austin office at the Texas Defender Service, a nonprofit organization that works with death row inmates.

Graves was convicted in 1994 of killing five family members in Somerville before lighting the house ablaze. The other young man convicted in the slayings, Robert Carter (who was executed in 2000), eventually admitted he was the lone killer, but it took another decade before the Burleson County district attorney dropped the charges against Graves and released him from custody. He has been free since October.

Getting used to a world that has changed dramatically since he was a part of it has been surreal and at times scary, Graves said. But he said he's just happy to have the opportunity now to make choices in his life and help others who are in the same situation he faced.

The Tribune interview came a day after Graves' first return visit to death row. This time, he talked with his friends — who are also now his clients — on the free side of the plexiglass, wearing a suit and investigating their cases. For him, it was the fruition of 18 years of death row dreams.

The exonerated 45-year-old talked about life on death row, about the scariness of the free world and the work he said is now his life's mission: abolishing the death penalty.

Earlier coverage of Anthony Graves' exoneration and battle for compensation begins at the link.  All coverage is in the Anthony Graves index.

Revisiting the Case of Paul House

Radley Balko writes a lengthy article for the July edition of Reason, "Wrongful Convictions: How many innocent Americans are behind bars?"  Here's the beginning of this must-read:

When Paul House was finally released from prison in 2008, he was a specter of the man who had been sentenced to death more than 22 years earlier. When I visit his home in Crossville, Tennessee, in March, House’s mother Joyce, who has cared for him since his release, points to a photo of House taken the day he was finally allowed to come home. In that photo and others from his last days in prison, House is all of 150 pounds, ashen and drawn, his fragile frame nearly consumed by his wheelchair. In most of the images he looks days away from death, although in one he wears the broad smile of a man finally escaping a long confinement.

When House’s aunt called to congratulate him on his first day back, his mother handed him her cell phone so he could chat. He inspected the phone, gave her a frustrated look, and asked her to find him one that worked. That kind of Rip Van Winkle moment is common among people freed after a long stint in prison. Dennis Fritz, one of the two wrongly convicted men profiled in John Grisham’s 2006 book The Innocent Man, talks about nearly calling the police upon seeing someone use an electronic key card the first time he found himself in a hotel after his release. He thought he’d witnessed a burglar use a credit card to jimmy open a door.

 “Paul’s first meal when he got home was chili verde,” Joyce House says. “It’s his favorite. And I had been waiting a long time to make it for him.” And apparently quite a few meals after that. House, now 49, has put on 75 pounds since his release. More important, he has been getting proper treatment for his advanced-stage multiple sclerosis, treatment the Tennessee prison system hadn’t given him.

The years of inadequate care have taken a toll. House can’t walk, and he needs help with such basic tasks as bathing, feeding himself, and maneuvering around in his wheelchair. His once distinctively deep voice (which had allegedly been heard by a witness at the crime scene) is now wispy and high-pitched. He spends his time playing computer games and watching game shows.

In the hour or so that I visit with House, his mental facilities fade in and out. Communicating with him can be like trying to listen to a baseball game broadcast by a distant radio station. He will give a slurred but lucid answer to one question, then answer the next one with silence, or with the answer to a previous question, or just with a random assortment of words. He frequently falls back on the resigned refrain, “Oh, well,” delivered with a shrug. The gesture and phrasing are identical every time he uses them. It’s what House says to kill the expectation that he will be able to deliver the words others in the room are waiting for. It’s his signal to stop waiting for him and move on.

In 1986 House was convicted of murdering Carolyn Muncey in Union County, Tennessee, a rural part of the state that shoulders Appalachia. He was sentenced to death. His case is a textbook study in wrongful conviction. It includes mishandled evidence, prosecutorial misconduct, bad science, cops with tunnel vision, DNA testing, the near-execution of an innocent man, and an appellate court reluctant to reopen old cases even in the face of new evidence that strongly suggests the jury got it wrong.

Earlier coverage of the Paul House case begins at the link.

More on House v. Bell -- the 2006 Supreme Court ruling -- via Oyez.  House's case is one of those covered in Capital Punishment Stories, a book published by Foundation Press and the subject of a 2007 symposium at UT Law.

Dallas Morning News Editorial - The Lege

"A mixed bag of wins and losses in Austin on our priorities," is the title of an editorial in today's Dallas Morning News.

At the beginning of 2011, this newspaper identified six priority areas where we wanted leaders to “stand and deliver” solutions to stubborn problems. Here is our assessment of how lawmakers did in the regular legislative session that just ended in Austin.

And:

Getting it right on criminal justice

Give the Legislature high marks for adopting safeguards against wrongful convictions.

Shepherded by Sen. Rodney Ellis , D-Houston, and Rep. Pete Gallego, D-Alpine, the most badly needed reform sets standards for police agencies in conducting eyewitness lineups. Another allows defendants new post-conviction access to DNA evidence. Legislation by Sen. Wendy Davis, D-Fort Worth, sets a timeline for police agencies to have rape kits tested to try to solve cases. And one more bill extends compensation eligibility to Anthony Graves, who was railroaded and put on death row for a killing spree that took six lives; he was exonerated last year.

The governor should sign these bills.

Lawmakers leave important unfinished business, including reforms to record confessions of felony suspects and to ban the offer of leniency in exchange for accomplice testimony in a death penalty case. And at long last, lawmakers should create a special commission to study wrongful convictions and find ways to improve the system.

Earlier coverage of the Texas Legislature's 82nd Regular Session begins at the link. Related posts are in the Texas Legislature index.

The Regular Session eneded Monday.  Lawmakers are currently meeting in a Special Session.  The agenda is limited to items specified by the governor.

An Update on Clarence Brandley

Today's Houston Chronicle reports, "Brandley denied compensation from state fund."  It's by Mike Tolson.

Clarence Lee Brandley, whose release from Texas' death row in 1990 helped pave the way for a special fund to compensate victims of wrongful conviction, has been denied payment from the fund.

Brandley was notified last week by the comptroller's office that his claim for nine years of improper incarceration was made too late and lacked either a pardon based on innocence or a court ruling declaring him innocent.

Brandley, 59, was convicted of capital murder in the death of Cheryl Ferguson, a 16-year-old killed during a 1980 volleyball tournament at Conroe High School, where Brandley was employed as a custodian. His conviction quickly became a cause celebre as his supporters claim he was singled out as a suspect only because he was black.

An appeals court all but agreed years later, saying his trial lacked even "the rudiments of fairness," and ordered a new trial.

Montgomery County prosecutors eventually were forced to drop charges against him, while insisting he was guilty.

"Don't tell an innocent man about a statute of limitations," said his brother, Ozell Brandley, at a Wednesday news conference called to announce the beginning of a public campaign on Clarence Brandley's behalf. "Morally there is no statute of limitations on doing what is right. They have never done what is right for him."

Referring to a bill passed this week on behalf of Anthony Graves — rejected for compensation because of technicality after spending 18 years on death row for a crime in which he was not involved — Ozell Brandley urged state legislators to make the same effort for Clarence.

Earlier coverage of Clarence Brandley's post-exoneration life is at the link.

Cary Clack on the Anthony Graves Case & Journalism

The San Antonio Express-News columnist writes, "Praising the Fourth Estate," for today's paper.

Most people fortunate enough to find their way into journalism aren't Don (or Doña) Quixotes intent on a futile career of tilting at windmills.

The actual giants dotting landscapes are real problems, real issues and real systems that harm people and their communities.

These are the giants who inspire journalists to be knights-errant - people who seek to right wrongs while telling a story accurately and well.

One of the best journalists in the land, one of the great magazine writers in America, is Pamela Colloff of Texas Monthly. She may have written and may yet write better stories than her October 2010 cover story, "Innocence Lost," but she may never write a more important piece or one that had so swift and positive an impact.

The story is about the outrageous case of Anthony Graves, who in 1994 was convicted and sentenced to die for six horrific murders in the Central Texas town of Somerville. The victims were Bobbie Davis, her teenage daughter and four grandchildren, ages 9, 6, 5 and 4.

The only thing that incriminated Graves was the word of the man who was eventually executed for the murders and who, until his death, insisted that he'd lied about Graves' involvement. In 2006 the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals overturned Graves' conviction, and he was removed from death row. A new trial was scheduled for last February in his hometown of Brenham.

To read Colloff's brilliantly reported 14,000 words is to be left with no doubt of Graves' innocence. Brenham's district attorney felt the same way and, within a month of the story's appearance, dropped all charges against Graves.

"Innocence Lost" and Colloff`s January 2011 follow-up, "Innocence Found," made Texas Monthly a finalist in the Public Interest category at Monday night's National Magazine Awards. Although The New Yorker won, Colloff's journalism served the public interest by exposing the incompetence and corruption that came perilously close to killing an innocent man and stole 18 years of his life.

And no award can compare with winning that man his freedom. Graves, for one, is grateful. Now 46, Graves, whose case became an international cause, is touring overseas talking about what happened to him.

Colloff's two Texas Monthly articles are noted at the links.

"Graves should not have to accept an IOU on justice," is the title of a Dallas Morning News editorial from last week.

The absurdity of Texas Attorney General Greg Abbott seizing a $250 check due to Anthony Graves underscores the point that the state’s best-known exoneree still has not received justice.

Graves, wrongfully convicted of capital murder in 1994, was released in October after 18 years of incarceration, most of it on death row. A special prosecutor handling a retrial of his case cited fabricated evidence and unethical pressure on witnesses by her predecessor when prosecutors asked a state court to drop all charges. The court readily agreed.

The obvious next step would have been for Graves to receive compensation from the state under the Timothy Cole Compensation Act, which allots $80,000 to wrongfully convicted people for every year of their life taken by the state. Instead, because the court did not use the words “actual innocence” in its release order, Comptroller Susan Combs said the state should not pay. Despite criticism from Gov. Rick Perry — and pretty much everyone else — the comptroller has stood by this decision, which has prompted a lawsuit.

Now, while all of this is going on, an automated system in the Texas attorney general’s office tagged Graves for owing back payments of child support for 1998-2002. Why was he behind? The fact that he was locked up on death row might have had something to do with it. The person most responsible for a lack of support for Graves’ children during that time is former Burleson County District Attorney Charles Sebesta, the man who almost single-handedly forced the Graves case through the courts using lies by the real killer to convict a man with a solid alibi. But we digress.

Graves agreed to have his paychecks garnisheed to pay the child support, but when the state seized an entire check from Prairie View A&M University for a speaking engagement, Graves called foul.

The attorney general’s office shrugged, telling the Houston Chronicle that there was nothing Abbott could do and that the automated system “regularly files wage withholding orders without any involvement from the executive office.” If only payments to exonerees were so automated!

This newspaper has credited Abbott for modernizing the state’s child support collection efforts. That modernization should include the application of basic common sense in a case such as this.

Houston Chronicle journalist Harvey Rice wrote the article, "Freed, but not from his bills: Ex-inmate, like Graves, has been dunned 21 years for child support owed during time he served for crime he didn't commit," for the May 7th paper.

Anthony Graves isn't the only Texan found innocent of capital murder to be billed by state officials for thousands of dollars in child support payments that built up while he was on death row.

The attorney general is seeking more than $4,000 in child support from Graves, but Clarence Brandley, who spent nearly 10 years on death row for a murder he didn't commit, has been paying child support nearly every year since he was released from prison in 1990.

In 30 years on the bench, "… No case has presented a more shocking scenario of the effects of racial prejudice, perjured testimony, witness intimidation (and) an investigation the outcome of which has been predetermined," state District Judge Perry Picket wrote about Brandley's case after a hearing in 1987.

To relieve Graves of the responsibility of child support payments, his attorneys are citing a 2007 law enacted because of Brandley's experience that compels the state to take over payments for time spent in prison by the unjustly convicted.

Brandley testified at the hearings, and his attorney, state Rep. Harold Dutton, D-Houston, introduced the legislation.

Dutton said the law came too late to help Brandley. Graves hasn't benefited because state Comptroller Susan Combs must verify his eligibility, but she says the order dismissing his murder charge didn't contain the legally required wording.

Twenty-one years after being freed from prison, Brandley, 59, is still being billed every month by the attorney general's office for his child support payments.

Brandley's paycheck was garnisheed every month until he lost his job in the economic downturn of 2008. He has since lost his car and house, forcing him to live with relatives. But the child support bills keep coming as the interest mounts. The last bill sought a $260 monthly payment on a balance of $12,683.

"I just tear them up," said Brandley, who has lost nearly everything he owns.

Earlier coverage of Graves' exoneration begins at the link.  All coverage is in the Anthony Graves index.  Related posts are in the journalism and  wrongful incarceration indexes.

Exoneration Fee Battle Continues

"Exonerated Inmates Fight Lawyer’s Lobbying Fees," is the title of John Schwartz' New York Times report.

If you are a wrongly convicted inmate in Texas and are exonerated,  you stand to receive a very rewarding apology from the state.

Steven C. Phillips, proved innocent of rape by DNA tests in 2008 after serving nearly 25 years, got a $2 million lump sum payment, with substantial annual payments to come.

 But then came a legal bill: $1,024,166.67.

The tab did not come from the lawyer who helped free him. Instead, it came from the lawyer he hired afterward to sue the City of Dallas and the state for his wrongful imprisonment, with an agreed contingency fee of 25 percent of any award.

But no suit was filed on Mr. Phillips’s behalf. Instead, the lawyer, Kevin Glasheen, lobbied the state Legislature to pass a bill that in 2009 increased the payout to exonerated prisoners. What had been a simple payment of $50,000 for every year served became $80,000 for every year behind bars; the bill also called for paying freed inmates an additional $80,000 a year. Those who had been exonerated still had the option of suing, but the richer terms for settling outright significantly shifted the balance of the decision.

It was on that basis, as a successful lobbyist, that Mr. Glasheen claimed a share of Mr. Phillips’s compensation for himself and another lawyer.

Mr. Phillips was astonished.

“I was trembling,” he said. He called his mother and said, “I’m not fixing to give those dudes a million bucks.” So he sued Mr. Glasheen.

So did Patrick Waller, another exonerated inmate billed by Mr. Glasheen who had served nearly 16 years after a false conviction for aggravated robbery and kidnapping. And now so has the state bar association, which asserts that the fees are “prohibited by law” and “unconscionable.”

The disputes have bitterly divided the community of lawyers and activists who struggle to help the falsely accused, and they have brought an uncomfortable spotlight on the practices of some within the Innocence Project of Texas, whose co-founder and chief counsel, Jeff Blackburn, is in line to collect $413,000 of the Glasheen fee for referring the Phillips civil case to him.

And:

Mr. Phillips’s lawyer in the suit against Mr. Glasheen, Randy Turner, called Mr. Glasheen’s actions “obscene.” The Innocence Project “does great work,” he said, but argued that Mr. Glasheen — who in turn sued Mr. Turner for pursuing the case — “wants a million dollars for being a lobbyist when he wasn’t hired to be a lobbyist.”

In fact, the word “lobbying” does not appear in the contracts, and perhaps with good reason. Much of the legal world operates on contingency fees, allowing people with no money to get to court. The lawyer takes on the financial risk and, if successful, reaps a healthy chunk of the reward. But in Texas it is a felony to lobby the Legislature on a contingent-fee basis, because it can skew the incentives underlying public policy.

Mr. Glasheen did not even file the one-page state compensation forms for Mr. Phillips and Mr. Waller, who filled them out themselves. The state bar suit notes that the form can be completed by “a lay person with no legal skill.”

Mr. Turner also disputed Mr. Glasheen’s accounting of the money owed to him, which includes a portion of a lifetime’s worth of annual $80,000 payments. Under the 2009 law, those payments end when the former inmate dies, or if he is convicted of another felony. “Glasheen is attempting to charge Steven 25 percent of the amount that Steven Phillips might, someday, recover if all goes well and he lives to a ripe old age,” he said. The exoneration bill that Mr. Glasheen helped to pass expressly prohibits “assignment” or “encumbrance” of anticipated annuity money.

Charles Silver, a professor at the University of Texas law school, said that whenever a contract is vague, “the fact of the matter is the law tends to favor the clients.” He said he doubted that any court would allow a contingency fee for lobbying, despite Mr. Glasheen’s contention that he operated under a narrow judicial exception to the law. “The Legislature has declared it against public policy,” Professor Silver said.

Also:

State Representative Rafael Anchia, who sponsored the Texas measure that increased the payments to exonerated prisoners, introduced a new bill in the Legislature’s current session that would expressly prohibit the kind of contract that Mr. Glasheen is defending and allow only a simple hourly fee for helping to file the forms. “I’m closing the door on that,” Mr. Anchia said.

Meanwhile, a trial date in the contract dispute, set for June, has been pushed back to January. Mr. Waller said the delay did not worry him. “I’m used to waiting,” he said. “I’ve waited for a better thing, for a longer time.”

Earlier coverage of the fee dispute begins at the link.  Related posts are in the wrongful incarceration index

48 Hours on Anthony Graves' Exoneration

"Students help free wrongfully convicted man," is the title of the CBS News program, "48 Hours Mystery" segemtn on Anthony Graves.  Richard Schlesinger reports; the segment is produced by Lourdes Aguiar, Jenna Jackson and Jennifer Simpson Ashmawy.  In addition to the video, you can also read the transcript of the report.

Here's the beginning:

Before the early morning hours of Aug. 18, 1992, the police in Somerville, Texas found six bodies in the burned rubble of what used to be the Davis home.

"This was such a horrific event in that town and continues to be an event that really haunts the people of Somerville..." Texas Monthly reporter Pam Colloff told "48 Hours Mystery." "This was a family that almost everyone in town knew, liked, respected."

The victims: A grandmother, her daughter, and four grandchildren who were staying with them.

Colloff is still moved by the fact that the family never had a chance.

"There was Bobbie Davis, the grandmother to the four children who was bludgeoned and then stabbed to death," Colloff explained. "There was 16-year-old Nicole, her daughter, who was a high school student and athlete, who was bludgeoned and shot. And then there were the four grandchildren. They were 9-year-old Denitra, 6-year-old Brittany, 5-year-old Lea'Erin and 4-year-old Jason."

Glenda Rutledge is Lea'Erin and Brittany's mother.

"And my daughters, "Rutledge sighed, "were exotically beautiful. Beautiful...They were my legacy..." she continued in tears. "I was so looking forward to the chance to get it right... You know, to raise strong, sure, confident, successful women. You know, I wanted to do that so bad."

Rutledge's ex-husband, Keith Davis, lost almost his entire family that night.

"I mean these were little babies, and - and my mother, who... you know, who we adored, who was the center of our life," he said.

He was convinced it was a random crime.

"I just couldn't imagine someone from that area harming anyone in my family, 'cause we had never...we didn't have any enemies, we hadn't been in any trouble," said Davis.

Roy Rueter lived and worked not from the murders. Five days after the crimes, he remembers hearing there was a break in the case.

"I could hear the radio and the news would always come up..." he recalled. "And - it was early in the morning and they came up and they said, you know, arrest had been made...and they said uh - Anthony Charles Graves, age 27."

Anthony Graves was one of Rueter's best friends. Graves had worked for him for a while at his machine shop and the two became so close that Graves had even been in Rueter's wedding party.

"And it just it just freaked me out," he told "48 Hours Mystery" correspondent Richard Schlesinger. "But my immediate thing was, yeah, right. No way. And what - you know, what - what could possibly be going on here, you know?"

"You didn't believe it?" Schlesinger asked Rueter.

"Well of course not. Absolutely not."

Rueter knew Anthony Graves as a gentle man, a father of three. He was now hearing his friend was a murderer - of women and children.

"In my heart, my convictions were that's impossible," he said. "Anthony would never do that. Anthony would never - hurt or raise a hand to a woman. And especially not a child, especially the way he loved his children."

And when Graves was arrested, he seemed equally stunned.

Earlier coverage begins with a preview of the 48 Hours report.  All coverage is in the Anthony Graves index.