How people get wrongly convicted, part 2

Discussion in 'Law & Justice' started by kazenatsu, Oct 3, 2020.

  1. kazenatsu

    kazenatsu Well-Known Member Past Donor

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    Innocent on Death Row, Here's What You Actually Get When You're Released, Sep 21, 2020, The Infographics Show

    This video shows two examples of how persons could get wrongfully convicted.

    In the first story there were a string of armed robberies at fast food restaurants. In the first one, a manager was killed. In the second one, not far away, another manager was killed. In the third one, a person was shot but survived. Police believed that all the robberies had been committed by the same person.
    Police asked the survivor to take a look at some mug shots, and that person picked out Anthony Ray Hinton, a black man, as the person who looked like the one who had robbed the store.
    Police found a revolver at Hinton's mother's house, a gun they said "could have been used" in the crime. Hinton hired a ballistics expert for his defense with what little money he had, but that expert turned out not to be very expert at all and actually had little training. Had it been a good expert, the expert would have been able to confirm that the gun was probably not the one used in the shooting.
    The prosecutor was able to get a conviction based only on the identification from the mugshot and the discovery of the gun in the house. (There were not even any fingerprints on the gun)
    Hinton was sentenced to death. Hinton appealed the conviction, but the conviction was affirmed. A year later, the Supreme Court of Alabama affirmed his conviction again.
    After that, a non-profit organization helped Hinton, hiring several experts who said that the gun and the bullets did not match. Despite this, the state of Alabama refused to overturn the conviction or let it go back to trial, because Hinton had already had two appeals. 28 years after Hinton had been arrested, after intervention from the US Supreme Court, his conviction was finally overturned.

    In the second story, there was a brutal rape and killing of a 3 year old girl. The boyfriend of the girl's mom had been babysitting the child that night, along with 2 other smaller children that were biological offspring he had had with the woman. The boyfriend's name was Kennedy Brewer. The little girl victim had disappeared from the house that night. Police said there did not appear to be signs of forced entry to the house, despite the fact one of the windows was broken.
    The case did not go to court until 3 years after Brewer had been arrested. There it was revealed the bodily fluids taken from the victim's body could not be adequately tested. But there were also bite marks on the victim's body. A forensic expert testified that the bite marks had come from Brewer. (However, bite marks are not the most accurate or reliable way to match a suspect)
    3 years later, in 2001, with availability of new better technology, a test showed that the DNA of the bodily fluids left in the victim's body was not a match to Brewer. It wasn't until 2007 that Brewer was released from prison, but he was only released on bail.
    The DNA was tested again, and this time it matched another man. That man later confessed to police. It also turned out that there was another very similar crime that had happened nearby, and in that case, there had been yet another man who had also been sent to prison based on only the evidence of bite marks. That man was then released. He had spent 15 years in prison.
    Brewer had spent 15 years in prison, plus another 3 years release on bail with restrictive conditions.
    They were both Black men.
    Brewer said that it was very hard to find a good job with a history of having been locked up in prison.
    Brewer was fortunate enough to receive some compensation for his wrongful imprisonment, but the money quickly ran out, and after he suffered a stroke 12 years later the non-profit had to help set up a go-fund-me page for him to pay the medical bills.
     
    Last edited: Oct 3, 2020
  2. kazenatsu

    kazenatsu Well-Known Member Past Donor

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    Another case where a witness initially wrongly identified a man, but after the trial was over, that witness was shown a picture of someone else and identified him as the person they actually saw. And the car the suspect had been seen arriving in was then connected to that other person.
    But the justice system took a very long time to correct the mistake.

    Tennessee man exonerated after serving 15 years for a murder he didn't commit


    After serving 15 years for a brutal murder, a Tennessee man has been exonerated by a judge who ruled he was wrongly convicted.

    The Davidson County District Attorney's Office announced that after a four-year effort by Joseph Webster's attorney to exonerate him, it "no longer has confidence in the conviction against Mr. Webster" and recommended the charges against him be dismissed. His exoneration will be the first in Nashville history since the Davidson County Conviction Review Unit was established in 2016, according to a statement from Webster's attorney Daniel Horwitz.

    He was transferred from Tennessee Department of Corrections custody to the downtown Nashville detention center Tuesday night, where he was released, according to his attorney.

    Webster was convicted of first-degree murder in the death of Leroy Owens in 1998, according to court documents. Owens was at a friend's house when two men in a white station wagon arrived at the home and began beating Owens over what witnesses believed to be a drug debt, the documents said.

    Owens was able to escape, missing a shoe, and run to another home. The resident asked Owens -- who was disheveled, bruised and scared -- to leave. When he tried to run again, the men caught up with Owens, and he was fatally assaulted with a cinder block, according to court documents.

    Witnesses at the time identified the man who killed Owens as Webster.

    However, several of Owens' family members later told authorities that one of his relatives had admitted to the murder, court documents said. The car was then found to be owned by that relative.

    When one of the witnesses who had originally identified Webster saw a photograph of his relative, she identified him as the actual perpetrator she had seen commit the killing, not Webster.

    "The State and defense counsel submit that evidence not previously presented to the jury or to the Court indicates another individual committed the murder of Leroy Owens
    ," according to court documents.

    A hearing took place on Tuesday to enable Webster's release from prison.

    "After a decade and a half in prison for a murder that he did not commit, I am overjoyed that Joseph Webster's wrongful conviction will finally be overturned," said Horwitz. "Mr. Webster is also thinking of the entire Owens family at this time, which has to process the painful news of learning that the wrong person was convicted of committing this brutal murder."​

    https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/crim...er-he-didn-t-commit/ar-BB1aWqf1?ocid=msedgntp
     
    Last edited: Nov 12, 2020
  3. kazenatsu

    kazenatsu Well-Known Member Past Donor

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    Here is another story very similar to the second story of Kennedy Brewer.

    A man was convicted of killing a woman based on his teeth allegedly matching bite marks on the victim. He was sentenced to death. New DNA evidence became available that showed that there was blood on the victim neither belonged to the accused or the victim, and must have belonged to some third person, so there a second trial. During that second trial, the jury once again decided to choose to convict, based only on the evidence of the expert testimony of the bite marks. Finally after spending four years on death row, the Arizona Supreme Court dismissed the case and the man was freed. The defense had presented new evidence that the prosecutor had concealed the fact that one of the experts had said that the bite marks did not match, but the court did not specifically comment on that, instead citing as part of their justification that the prosecutor had concealed another video involving the bite marks, which was not made available to the defense at the time.
    The man's name is Ray Krone.
    http://www.forejustice.org/wc/ray_krone_JD_vol2_i9.htm
    The article goes on to say that it is unusual for anyone to be exonerated in that situation. Ray Krone was lucky in two ways: he had caring relatives with the money to hire a competent lawyer; and a DNA test existed which was capable of excluding him as the murderer. Otherwise he would have spent decades of his life in the nightmarish Arizona prison system before finally being executed.
     
    Last edited: Mar 18, 2022

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