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.
Shaken-baby case will rely on forensics
A case out of Ohio gaining national attention is looking at reliability of testimony of experts in ‘shaken-baby syndrome’ cases and of ‘short-fall’ injuries. Read more about the case here.
Mother cleared of murder: 13 years in prison; Pathologist’s faulty testimony led to verdict
A second-degree murder charge has been withdrawn against an Ontario woman who spent more than 13 years in prison for the death of her toddler son following the faulty testimony of disgraced pathologist Charles Smith.
The Crown told an Ontario justice Tuesday it does not wish to proceed with a new trial against 38-year-old Tammy Marquardt due to fresh evidence which has come to light.
Standing outside the courthouse, Marquardt held up a picture of her 2½-year-old son, Kenneth Wynne, and described the son she lost.
“Over the years, I’ve lost so much. This is the only picture I have left of him,” Marquardt said.
Click here to read more: http://www.montrealgazette.com/news/Mother+cleared+murder/4909733/story.html#ixzz1Ohqex7Z8
Courtesy of LINDA NGUYEN, POSTMEDIA NEWS, The Montreal Gazette• Wed Jun. 8, 2011
Read more: http://www.montrealgazette.com/news/Mother+cleared+murder/4909733/story.html#ixzz1Ohqex7Z8
Arizona murder mystery: Guilt of man in 1962 killings thrown into question
Part One: Conviction Questioned
They were dead before their bodies hit the ground.
In the moonlight, the gunman stood over the two of them and delivered one more shot for each, right in the temple.
It was 1962, and the area was still pure desert, creosote bushes and scrub grass that ran all the way out to the mountains.
By the time sheriff’s deputies arrived at the scene, just northeast of Scottsdale and Bell roads, it was morning. The bodies of Joyce Sterrenberg and Tim McKillop had been there all night.
The killings made no sense. The victims, a couple, were good kids. Everybody said so.
For the next 49 years, investigators, politicians, lawyers and family members would try to understand what happened.
A sociopath said he did it, but then he died.
A strung-out addict said she saw it happen, but then she denied it.
A lawyer who became a judge heard a confession he couldn’t forget, but he had to keep it secret.
A wife, angry and defiant, finally broke the case open. She was the one who led investigators to Bill Macumber and helped get him convicted.
But he said he didn’t do it. And there are many who now wonder if he did.
Read more: http://www.azcentral.com/news/articles/2011/06/03/20110603arizona-murder-william-macumber-part-1.html
Courtesy of John Faherty, The Arizona Republic• Sun Jun. 5, 2011 12:00am MT
DNA Testing Proves Gilbert Man’s Innocence in 2003 Rape
For all media inquiries please contact:
Lindsay Herf • Arizona Justice Project
Lindsay.Herf@asu.edu
For Immediate Release
December 22, 2010
DNA Testing Proves Gilbert Man’s Innocence in 2003 Rape
Phoenix, AZ – DNA testing proves that Arizona Justice Project client John Watkins did not commit the 2003 Gilbert rape for which he has served more than seven years in prison. Last Thursday evening, Watkins’ was released from custody after having his conviction vacated and the case against him dismissed.
On May 23, 2003, a 48-year-old woman was raped while walking in a residential neighborhood in Gilbert. Watkins, only 19 years old when the crime occurred, was convicted in 2004 and sentenced to 14 years in prison. Though the victim identified a different suspect from a home video taken of boys in the neighborhood, Watkins was arrested and his photo placed in a suggestive police lineup, in which he was the only suspect made to wear the same color shirt as the actual perpetrator. The victim wrongly identified Watkins in the lineup. After being subjected to 4.5 hours of police interrogation, Watkins falsely confessed to the sexual assault, inaccurately reporting the description of the crime that took place. Once Watkins was in custody, investigators failed to pursue other leads in the case. Facing a prison sentence on unrelated charges and at a time before the State of Arizona had newer DNA testing technology, Watkins accepted a plea deal in the case.
Throughout the last seven years, Watkins maintained his innocence claiming he was at home with his parents during the time of the crime. His parents signed affidavits confirming his alibi.
DNA testing on the victim’s rape kit conducted in 2010 confirms that John Watkins was not the perpetrator that committed this crime.
“John spent 7.5 years in prison for a crime somebody else committed,” stated Lindsay Herf, an attorney with the Arizona Justice Project. “Unless the state re-opens an investigation on this case, the true assailant will never be caught and may go on to commit another offense.”
To date, there have been 261 DNA exonerations nationwide. Faulty witness identification played a role in 75% and false confessions in 24% of these cases.
Since 1998, The Arizona Justice Project has been working to prevent and overturn wrongful convictions in the State of Arizona. In partnership with the Arizona Attorney General’s Office under a U.S Department of Justice DNA testing grant, the Arizona Justice Project was approached by Watkins for assistance on his case. After reviewing the case with the assistance of law students from ASU’s Sandra Day O’Connor College of Law and private defense attorney Ulises Ferragut, the Justice Project submitted the DNA evidence for testing by the Arizona DPS Crime Lab. The results provide the joint DNA testing program with its first DNA exoneration in Arizona.
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New film recalls ’70 Pioneer Hotel fire
JACK SCHAEFER / ARIZONA DAILY STAR 1970 Firefighters at the Pioneer Hotel fire bring down some of the survivors on an extended ladder. Many hotel guests weren't as lucky and died jumping from windows of the 11-story hotel.
Every December for the past 40 years, Albert Pesqueira thinks about the devastating fire at the Pioneer Hotel. He remembers what he saw and felt that night as a rookie firefighter.
But this December he will bring his memories to life.
Pesqueira is the creator of “Hot Pion: The Pioneer Fire Documentary,” a commemorative documentary of the 40th anniversary of the Pioneer Hotel fire that left dozens of people dead.
The documentary will premiere at the Fox Theatre Dec. 19 featuring a collection of photographs and video footage from the night of the fire, and recent interviews with people who were there that night, Pesqueira said.
Read more about the event here.
Contact reporter Fernanda Echavarri at 573-4224 or fechavarri@azstarnet.com
Courtesy of Fernanda Echavarri, Arizona Daily Star• Sun Dec 12, 2010 12:00am MT
Son confronts Brewer over clemency decision
PHOENIX – Governor Jan Brewer abruptly ended her own press conference Wednesday morning after facing questions about her controversial decision to deny clemency to a long-time inmate whose guilt has been doubted.
Brewer gave one answer before she turned to her staff, who then cut off any further questions and escorted her away.
The questions surrounded 75-year-old inmate Bill Macumber. ABC15 profiled his case in September after Brewer refused his release despite a unanimous recommendation from experts on the State Board of Executive Clemency.
Read ABC15′s original report on the Macumber case
Texan imprisoned for child sex assault exonerated
AP FILE - In this June 24, 2010 file photo, deaf inmate Stephen Brodie uses sign language to answer a question through an interpreter during a jailhouse interview in Dallas. A judge has set aside the 1993 conviction of Brodie, who was sent to prison for raping a 5-year-old girl despite an absence of physical evidence linking him to the attack. The district attorney's office supported 39-year-old Stephen Brodie's claim of innocence during a court hearing in Dallas on Monday Sept. 27, 2010.
DALLAS – A judge on Monday overturned the 1993 conviction of a deaf man who was sent to prison for raping a 5-year-old girl despite an absence of physical evidence linking him to the attack.
Stephen Brodie, 39, dropped his head in relief after an interpreter signed to him that Judge Lena Levario had set aside his conviction on the grounds of actual innocence. He then turned to face the courtroom audience, some of whom waved both hands in the air — sign language for applause.
“I feel like a burden has been lifted,” Brodie told reporters through a translator. “I feel light. I feel extremely happy.”
Read more at www.huffingtonpost.com/huff-wires/20100928/us-deaf-inmate-exoneration/