Man Wins Supreme Court Appeal For New Trial
In a ruling by the U.S. Supreme Court, a Louisiana man has won the right to a new trial after a major Brady Rule violation in his case has come to light. Juan Smith was convicted with for an armed robbery in which only one piece of evidence was used to convict him: a single surviving witness’ testimony in court. After investigation into the case, attorneys for Smith discovered that the witness’ statements to police and what he testified to in court were not only contradictory, but that the statements to Police were not disclosed to the Defense by Prosecutors. Read more about the ruling in an article by the Huffington Post here, and more about the Brady Rule here.
Death Sentence in Delaware Overturned
A man is once again free after serving 20 years on Delaware’s Death Row. Jermaine Wright’s sentence was overturned after his attorneys proved that, even with a videotaped confession, the evidence against him was not sufficient enough to prove beyond a reasonable doubt that Mr. Wright was indeed guilty. According to an article in the Delaware Times, Wright’s Superior Court Judge, John A. Parkins Jr., published a 101-page opinion responding to Wright’s fourth petition for post-conviction relief, saying that the evidence was “weak to non-existent”, and the article quotes that “there was no physical evidence linking Wright to the crime, no murder weapon was recovered, no fingerprints or shoe prints were recovered, no one was able to pick Wright out of a lineup and there were no security camera images of the crime.” Because of this ruling, Wright will be eligible to be released on bail sometime in the next week.
Perry v. New Hampshire and Eyewitness Testimony
In a case that was recently argued before the Supreme Court, questions have arisen regarding the reliability of eyewitness testimony. In Perry v. New Hampshire, the State Supreme Court ruled that a trial judge “cannot exclude witness identification based on suggestive circumstances, unless there was improper police manipulation of the identification” (e.g. witness tampering and threats)–the ruling was subsequently brought to the Supreme Court. The issue raised in the hearing was that, in a criminal case, should a court required to exclude eyewitness identification evidence, especially if the identification of the defendant was made under circumstances that make the it unreliable? So far, there has been no opinion from the Court published.
Wrong convictions spur Florida to rethink using jail informants
After the release of a man that was wrongfully convicted of a murder, Florida’s Innocence Commission is rethinking the use of jailhouse informants in their felony cases. The man, Chad Heins, spent 11 years in prison for a murder he was innocent of — his conviction was almost solely based on the testimony of two so-called “snitches” who lied to jurors, saying Heins had confessed to them while he was being held.
Because of this gross injustice, the Florida Innocence Commission is drafting proposed legislation that could make their state the only one in the nation that would require judges to review the reliability of jailhouse informants — as well as any witness with pending criminal charges — before allowing them to testify at a felony trial.
Read more about the proposed legislation here, and more about the Florida Innocence Commission here.
Injustice in Murder Cases
According to a new study recently published by the RAND Corporation, just providing an indigent defendant a lawyer is not enough to “obtain justice”. The issues that directly affect the outcome include: whether the lawyer assigned is screened for quality, whether they are trained to handle the client’s type of case, and whether they are paid enough to cover the time required. Based on the study and these factors, RAND was able to establish that the clients with court appointed representation (like in the felony cases that were provided) are unlikely to get fair treatment versus clients who are able to afford private representation— whether in the Philadelphia system (like in this study) or anywhere else.
Read more from the New York Times Editorial here and the complete RAND study here.
Prosecutorial Misconduct and a DNA Exoneration in Texas
After spending 25 years in prison for a crime he did not commit, Michael Morton was exonerated last month in Texas through the use of DNA evidence. In their attempt to prove Mr. Morton’s innocence, attorneys found evidence in court records that the prosecutor from his original trial had withheld critical evidence that may have helped Mr. Morton. According to a report by The Innocence Project, that prosecutor, who is now a state judge, disobeyed “a direct order from the trial court to produce the exculpatory police reports from the lead investigator” in this case.
Read more, including the full editorial by the New York Times here.
The Arizona Justice Project is appearing before the U.S. Supreme Court
Bob Bartels, faculty advisor for the Arizona Justice Project, takes the important issue of post-conviction review to the United States Supreme Court.
- Question Presented: Whether a defendant in a state criminal case – who cannot raise an ineffective assistance of trial counsel claim (IATC) on direct appeal but must wait to raise it on the first state post-conviction review proceeding – has a federal constitutional right to effective assistance of 1st PCR counsel, specifically with respect to the IATC claim?
Briefs on this case can be found here:
http://www.americanbar.org/publications/preview_home/10-1001.html
Understanding the Causes of Wrongful Convictions
Below, you’ll find an interactive resource courtesy of the Innocence Project in New York about the causes of wrongful convictions:
The Innocence Project has also released a chart on the DNA exonerations that have occurred throughout the nation in which convictions were obtained involving unvalidated or improper forensic testing. Read more about 166 of the first 225 DNA exonerations where these techniques played a role here.
New Jersey Supreme Court Issues Landmark Decision Mandating Major Changes in the Way Courts Handle Identification Procedures
Relying on Scientific Research on Memory and Identification, Court Says
Standard Set by U.S. Supreme Court 30 Years Ago Must Be Revised
Contact: Paul Cates, 212-364-5346, cell 917-566-1294, pcates@innocenceproject.org
(Trenton, NJ – August 24, 2011) — Today the New Jersey Supreme Court issued a landmark decision requiring major changes in the way courts are required to evaluate identification evidence at trial and how they should instruct juries. The new changes, designed to reduce the likelihood of wrongful convictions by taking into account more than 30 years of scientific research on eyewitness identification and memory, require courts to greatly expand the factors that courts and juries should consider in assessing the risk of misidentification.
“Today the New Jersey Supreme Court has said that the legal architecture set by the U.S. Supreme Court 30 years ago to evaluate identification evidence must be renovated. This is a decision that will ultimately affect every state and federal court in the nation,” said Barry Scheck, Co-Director of the Innocence Project, which is affiliated with Cardozo School of Law. “The court has recognized the tremendous fallibility of eyewitness identifications, and based on the most thorough review of scientific research undertaken by a court, has set up comprehensive and practical guidelines for how judges and juries should handle this important evidence.”
The court’s decision requires judges to more thoroughly scrutinize the police identification procedures and many other variables that affect an eyewitness identification. The court noted that this more extensive scrutiny will require enhanced jury instructions on factors that increase the risk of misidentification. These factors include:
- Whether the lineup procedure was administered “double blind,” meaning that the officer who administers the lineup is unaware who the suspect is and the witness is told that the officer doesn’t know.
- Whether the witness was told that the suspect may not be in the lineup and that they need not make a choice.
- Whether the police avoided providing the witness with feedback that would cause the witness to believe he or she selected the correct suspect. Similarly, whether the police recorded the witnesses’ level of confidence at the time of the identification.
- Whether the witness had multiple opportunities to view the same person, which would make it more likely for the witness to choose this person as the suspect.
- Whether the witness was under a high level of stress.
- Whether a weapon was used, especially if the crime was of short duration.
- How much time the witness had to observe the event.
- How far the witness was from the perpetrator and what the lighting conditions were.
- Whether the witness possessed characteristics that would make it harder to make an identification, such as age of the witness and influence of alcohol or drugs.
- Whether the perpetrator possessed characteristics that would make it harder to make an identification. Was he or she wearing a disguise? Did the suspect have different facial features at the time of the identification?
- The length of time between the crime and identification.
- Whether the case involved cross-racial identification.
To provide courts with these more enhanced jury instructions, the court gave the Criminal Practice Committee and the Committee on Model Criminal Jury Charges 90 days to submit proposed revisions to the current jury instructions on eyewitness identification, specifically directing them to consider the model jury instructions submitted by the Innocence Project.
The court’s decision stems from the 2004 conviction of Larry Henderson, a Camden man who received an 11-year prison sentence for reckless manslaughter and weapons possession related to a fatal shooting in January 2003. He appealed the photo lineup procedure because officers failed to follow the New Jersey Attorney General’s Guidelines, issued in 2001, for conducting identification procedures. The appeals court agreed and ordered a new hearing on the admissibility of the photographic identification of Henderson. Before that could occur, the state appealed, and the New Jersey Supreme Court decided that an extensive inquiry into witness identification procedures currently used by law enforcement was necessary.
The New Jersey Supreme Court appointed a Special Master to review the legal standard for the admissibility of eyewitness testimony known as the “Manson test,” established by the United States Supreme Court in 1977 and fully embraced by 48 out of 50 states, including New Jersey in 1988 in State v. Madison. In addition to the parties to the litigation, the court invited the Innocence Project and the Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers of New Jersey to participate in an inquiry by the Special Master who considered over 200 scientific studies and heard from some of the nation’s most respected experts on eyewitness identification before issuing findings to the court in June 2010.
The court remanded the Henderson case back to the trial court for further review in accordance with the decision. The decision will apply to all future cases, but will not be applied retroactively with the exception of the companion case, State v. Chen, in which the court held that suggestive identification procedures that resulted from private actors would also be subject to court scrutiny to ensure the reliability of the identification.
A copy of today’s decision is available at
http://www.judiciary.state.nj.us/opinions/supreme/A808StatevLarryHenderson.pdf . A copy of the legal findings that the Innocence Project submitted to the court, which includes the model jury instructions, is available at http://www.innocenceproject.org/docs/Henderson_Proposed_Legal_Findings_Innocence-Project.pdf
Eyewitness misidentification is the single greatest cause of wrongful convictions nationwide, playing a role in more than 75% of the 273 convictions overturned through DNA testing. Additional information about eyewitness misidentification is available at http://www.innocenceproject.org/understand/Eyewitness-Misidentification.php.
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Guilty Until Proven Innocent
A story about Californian Herman Atkins and his exoneration after serving a decade of his 47 year sentence. He was convicted in 1988 even though two witnesses gave inconsistent identifications at trial. Herman’s case is one that is featured in the documentary After Innocence (2005).
Read more about the case here.