Exonerations

Ray’s Story – wrongfully convicted

Ray Krone was sentenced to death for a crime he did not commit. He has been proven innocent and exonerated, and now helps other “exonerees” share their stories of unjust sentences and close calls with state-sanctioned death penalties. Ray works for Witness to Innocence, which receives support from Atlantic, toward abolishing the death penalty throughout America. Atlantic is the largest funder of work to abolish the death penalty in the U.S.

For more info see: http://www.atlanticphilanthropies.org/rays-story-death-penalty-mistake

Released From Prison, but Never Exonerated, a Man Fights for True Freedom

march, 31, 2012  source : http://www.nytimes.com

A couple of Fridays ago, Kerry Max Cook, who was released from Texas’ death row in 1997 after two decades, went to pick up his 11-year-old son, Kerry Justice, from his North Dallas school. Class was just letting out. As Mr. Cook approached a group of children and their parents, a little girl squirmed out of her mother’s arms and ran toward him. “Mr. Kerry!” she called. He laughed as she jumped into his arms. “Haleigh!” he shouted, and began tickling her. “She adores Mr. Kerry,” her mother said.

The same jolly scene followed Mr. Cook as he walked around the small campus — children calling out to him, laughing, jumping into his arms. Vicki Johnston, the school’s director, looked on, smiling. “Kerry’s such a big part of the school,” she said. “He’s like a pied piper to the kids.” Asked about his past, Ms. Johnston simply said: “We know him. We know what kind of man he is.”

Unfortunately for Mr. Cook, 15 years after his release, the State of Texas still does not share Ms. Johnston’s view. Though he is widely recognized as one of the country’s most famous exonerated prisoners, Mr. Cook is not legally exonerated. In fact, in the eyes of the state, he is still a killer — convicted of the 1977 rape and murder of Linda Jo Edwards.

Mr. Cook’s situation is complex. His death sentence was twice overturned by higher courts, and DNA taken from the victim’s underwear did not match his own, and the evidence used to convict him has been shown to be entirely fallacious — but because Mr. Cook pleaded no-contest to the murder on the eve of what would have been his fourth trial, he cannot be declared actually not guilty.

Nevertheless, Mr. Cook has become a high-profile spokesman for the wrongfully imprisoned. He has published a book about his experience and has been one of the subjects of a popular Off Broadway play, “The Exonerated,” which was later made into a film. He has given speeches all over the United States and Europe. His Facebook page contains pictures of Mr. Cook with actors like Robin Williams, Richard Dreyfuss and Ben Stiller, who have been drawn to his story.

Yet Mr. Cook lives in the shadows with his wife and their son, knowing that whenever he applies for a job or gets on an international flight, he will be identified as a convicted murderer. Now he hopes to change that, with two motions filed recently in Smith County, where the case was originally heard, that could finally clear his name.

Mr. Cook has always claimed to be innocent of the murder of Ms. Edwards, a woman who lived in the same Tyler apartment complex. The case against him was largely circumstantial, including the words of a jailhouse informant who said that Mr. Cook had confessed to him and the recollections of a man who said that on the night of the murder, he and Mr. Cook had had sex and watched a movie that involved a cat torture scene.

The prosecution’s theory was that Mr. Cook, aroused by the torture scene in the movie, had left his apartment to rape and kill Ms. Edwards.

In the years after, every piece of evidence used to convict Mr. Cook was revealed to be bogus. The informant admitted he had lied as part of a deal with prosecutors, and the witness who claimed to have had sex with Mr. Cook told a grand jury that there was no sex and that Mr. Cook had not paid any attention to the movie. The prosecution had also suppressed evidence showing that Mr. Cook and Ms. Edwards had known each other casually, which explained a fingerprint found at the scene.

Mr. Cook’s verdict was overturned on a technicality in 1988. When District Attorney Jack Skeen of Smith County tried him again in 1992, the case ended in a mistrial. Another trial in 1994 resulted in a guilty verdict and a new death sentence, but two years later the Court of Criminal Appeals, the state’s highest criminal court, reversed that conviction, noting that “prosecutorial and police misconduct has tainted this entire matter from the outset.”

Mr. Cook was released on bail in 1997, but the state prepared to try him for a fourth time. He was presented with an option: plead guilty in exchange for 20 years, which he had already served, and the charges would be dropped. He refused. As the trial date approached, in early 1999, Ms. Edwards’s underwear was sent to a lab for modern DNA testing. Mr. Cook, certain he would be exonerated, gave a blood sample.

On the morning of jury selection, the district attorney made another offer: if Mr. Cook pleaded no-contest with no admission of guilt, the case would be dismissed and he could go on with his life. Mr. Cook considered the deal. He had suffered terribly during his 19 years in prison — he had been stabbed, raped repeatedly and had tried to kill himself, once slitting his own throat after severing his penis, which was reattached.

He took the plea deal. Two months later, the DNA results returned. The semen belonged to James Mayfield, a married man with whom Ms. Edwards had been having an affair.

By then Mr. Cook was trying to move on with his life, but it was harder than he had imagined. The physical and emotional abuse he endured in prison causes nightmares and suicidal urges. And the murder conviction made him a second-class citizen.

“I couldn’t get a job, couldn’t sign a lease,” he said. “We’ve had to move five times because people would find out about me. One woman threatened to put up posters in the neighborhood saying ‘Convicted murderer lives here.’ ”

In 2009 Mr. Cook met Marc McPeak, a civil lawyer — with Greenberg Traurig in Dallas — who had read his book. Mr. McPeak’s firm began devising a legal strategy, pro bono, to navigate the difficult road of getting Mr. Cook an official exoneration. The first step was to get DNA testing on other items from the crime scene, including a hair found on Ms. Edwards’s body.

On Feb. 28, Mr. McPeak filed two motions in Smith County, one for the DNA testing and the other to recuse the judge who would decide whether to allow the testing — Mr. Skeen, the former district attorney. “We want it heard outside of Smith County,” Mr. McPeak said. “Not once in 35 years have officials there shown either the desire or the ability to treat Kerry fairly.”

They hope that further DNA evidence excluding Mr. Cook will help them to file a writ of habeas corpus to have him declared actually innocent.

Meanwhile, Mr. Cook waits. He dresses only in black (he swears he will not wear any other color until he is exonerated), and with his dark eyes and white hair, he cuts a striking figure. What he wants more than anything else are life’s simplest things.

“All I want is to be able to put my name on a lease,” he said. “I want to be able to walk my dog and have my neighbors over for cookouts. I want to live a normal life.”

Bill Would Make Wrongful Conviction Awards Tax-Free

march, 29 source : http://www.forbes.com

Congressmen Sam Johnson (R-TX) andJohn Larson (D-CT) have introduced legislation to prohibit the IRS from taxing compensation awarded to anyone wrongfully convicted of a crime and later exonerated. Is this bill necessary or a good idea? Yes on both counts.

More and more prisoners are being exonerated based on DNA or other evidence. Under statute, by lawsuit or even by legislative grant, exonerees may receive compensation for their years behind bars. See Ex-Inmate Struggles to Cash In on Texas Law That Pays for Years of Wrongful Imprisonment. In fact, are you ready for some shocking figures?

Since the first DNA exoneration in 1989, wrongfully convicted persons have served more than 3,809 years in prisons across 35 states before being exonerated. The nearly 300 DNA exonerees served an average of 13.5 years in prison, ranging from less than one year to 35 years. Whether you look at an individual case or at the averages, these are some astounding numbers. See Congressmen Sam Johnson and John Larson Press Release.

The tax issues have been surprisingly cloudy. In the 1950s and 1960s, the IRS ruled prisoners of war, civilian internees and holocaust survivors received tax-free money for their loss of liberty. In 2007, the IRS “obsoleted” these rulings suggesting the landscape had changed. The IRS now asks whether a wrongfully jailed person was physically injured/sick while unlawfully jailed. If so, the damages are tax free, just like more garden variety personal physical injury recoveries.  See IRS To Collect on Italian Cruise Ship Settlements.

What if an exoneree isn’t physically injured? In IRS Chief Counsel Advice 201045023, the IRS said a recovery was exempt, but the IRS sidestepped whether being unlawfully incarcerated is itself tax-free. The Tax Court (and Sixth Circuit) in Stadnyk suggest persons who aren’t physical injured may be taxed. See Why the Stadnyk Case on False Imprisonment Is a Lemon.

There are usually significant physical injuries and sickness but not always. Besides, what about the money just for being locked up?  What if an exoneree gets $50,000 for physical injuries and $450,000 for being unlawfully behind bars?

The loss of physical freedom should be tax-free in its own right. Many exonerated individuals experience severe hardship acclimating to society, finding jobs, housing and reconnecting with family. The Wrongful Convictions Tax Relief Act proposes to allow exonerees to keep their awards tax-free.

According to Congressman Larson, “Though we can never give the wrongfully convicted the time back that they’ve had taken from them, they certainly shouldn’t have to pay Uncle Sam a share of any compensation they’re awarded. This bill will make sure they don’t have to suffer that insult on top of their injury.”

The two Congressmen are right. It is bad social justice and bad tax policy to tax these recoveries.  It is also unfair to leave the tax law murky so some people are paying tax.

For more, see:

Freedom after nearly 25 years of wrongful imprisonment

Wrongful Imprisonment Tax Ruling Stirs Controversy

Tax On Wrongful Imprisonment Needs Reform

Tax-Free Wrongful Imprisonment Recoveries

Should False Imprisonment Damages Be Taxable?

Why False Imprisonment Recoveries Should Not Be Taxable

A ‘Get Out of Jail’ Card That’s Far From Free

Are False Imprisonment Recoveries Taxable?

Robert W. Wood practices law with Wood LLP, in San Francisco.  The author of more than 30 books, including Taxation of Damage Awards & Settlement Payments (4th Ed. 2009 with 2012 Supplement, Tax Institute), he can be reached at Wood@WoodLLP.com.  This discussion is not intended as legal advice, and cannot be relied upon for any purpose without the services of a qualified professional.

Mark Farley Grant: freedom but not exoneration

march, 29 source : http://www.baltimoresun.com

 

When Renee Hutchins, the University of Maryland law professor, got her client on the phone Thursday afternoon and told him the news — that the governor was going to commute his life sentence — Mark Farley Grant was “largely speechless and completely stunned.”

Hutchins said she will visit her client at the state prison in Hagerstown on Monday. By then, Grant should have a complete understanding of what’s happening: freedom after nearly 30 years in prison, but no exoneration and no pardon.

This was never simply a case of a convicted killer asking for parole as he approached middle age. There are plenty of such cases.This was a young man — 14 years old at the time of his arrest in a fatal shooting of another teenager in Baltimore in 1983 — with a credible claim of innocence. He had exhausted all his appeals over two decades since his trial.

Then, as a last resort, he’d asked Gov. Martin O’Malley to look at the facts of his case and consider his petition for clemency. Hutchins, together with another professor, Michael Millemann, and students at the University of Maryland law school (the governor’s alma mater) spent four years researching Grant’s 1984 conviction. They filed a report with the governor’s office in 2008. I caught wind of it a year later, and I first visited Grant in prison in September 2009. My first column on this case, drawing to the public’s attention the disturbing facts raised by the law school’s impressive investigation, appeared that month.

Each time I asked, a member of the governor’s staff said the case was “being reviewed.”

But it is clear by now that the governor never acted on the report. He never made a judgment about whether Grant had been wrongfully convicted.

Time went on, month after month, year after year.

From prison, Grant wrote several letters, asserting his innocence and stating his hope that Mr. O’Malley’s heart would be turned.

“Remember this, if nothing else,” Grant wrote me from prison in November 2010, “our creator, God, Lord of the Universe, created the sun, the moon and the Earth, and gave Earth life and everything in it. God is the turner of hearts.”

Still, nothing happened with regard to his claim of innocence.

And with Thursday’s executive order, O’Malley remains silent on the question of whether Mark Farley Grant ever belonged in prison.

All the governor has done is commute Grant’s sentence — something that would have happened on March 30 in the absence of gubernatorial action. The General Assembly made it so.

Legislators changed the law that gives the Maryland governor final say on parole recommendations for lifers. As of last Oct. 1, when the new law took effect, the governor had to act within 180 days of a Maryland Parole Commission recommendation or the recommendation automatically took effect. Grant’s was among those that were still pending on Oct. 1.

O’Malley denied 57 other recommendations.

So, in that regard, I guess Grant should be grateful. He has claimed his innocence since the night of his arrest 29 years ago. He had the help of law professors and students, who put in long hours to investigate the case and to locate witnesses, one of whom said he testified against Grant under threat of death from the real killer’s family. Grant’s advocates got the governor’s attention. Considering that the politically ambitious O’Malley has embraced the “life means life,” no-parole policy begun (but since disavowed) by the state’s previous Democratic governor, Parris Glendening, Grant is lucky.

But minus action by the governor, who has the authority and power to independently investigate Grant’s claim of innocence, Grant leaves prison under a cloud. It is disingenuous of Mr. O’Malley to say he is being just and fair in commuting Grant’s sentence while not acting on — perhaps even ignoring — his credible claim of innocence.

“60 Minutes” to Feature Michael Morton on Sunday

In a long-awaited segment, the CBS news program 60 Minutes will air its story this Sunday on the wrongful conviction of Michael Morton. 

The former grocery store manager was convicted in 1987 of murdering his wife, Christine Morton. Morton was sentenced to life in prison and served 25 years before DNA tests last year proved his innocence and connected another man to the brutal crime. Morton was freed in October and officially exonerated in December.

The man whose DNA was connected to Christine Morton’s murder was also found at the scene of another Austin murder in 1988. Mark Norwood, a 57-year-old Bastrop dishwasher, has been indicted for Christine Morton’s murder and is considered a suspect in the death of Debra Masters Baker.

Following Morton’s exoneration, Bexar County State District Judge Sid Harle authorized a court of inquiry to examine whether the prosecutor who oversaw Morton’s conviction commtited criminal misconduct in his handling of the case. Morton’s lawyers argue that former district attorney Ken Anderson, who is now a state district judge, deliberately hid evidence that pointed to his innocence during the original trial. That evidence includes a transcript of a phone conversation between a sheriff’s investigator and Morton’s mother-in-law in which she tells the officer that the couple’s 3-year-old son described watching a “monster” — who was not his father — beat his mother. The judge and jury also never saw police reports in which neighbors reported that they saw a man in a green van who appeared to be casing the home. They also didn’t see reports from a store owner in San Antonio who said someone tried to fraudulently use Christine Morton’s credit card after she died.

Anderson, who was appointed to the bench by Gov. Rick Perry, has vociferously denied that he did anything wrong in the prosecution, and he has said that he regrets that the justice system failed Morton. His lawyers have said that Anderson is looking forward to the court of inquiry as an opportunity to clear his name.

Tarrant County Judge Luis Sturns has been appointed to oversee the unusual process of investigating allegations of misconduct against a sitting official. And last week, Sturns appointedhigh-profile Houston defense lawyer Rusty Hardin to act as special prosecutor in the case.

Click here to watch a preview of the 60 Minutes episode.

In 2000 Illinois discovered we had 13 innocent men on death row waiting to be executed

And when I say innocent I don’t mean they got off because of a technicality or something like that. I mean they were truly innocent of the crimes they were scheduled to be put to death for. Think Illinois is the only state this kind of stuff happens in ?

Don 

source : http://www.democraticunderground.com

from Innocence Project, u can find exonerations by state (289)

http://www.innocenceproject.org/news/StateView.php

US – Wrongful convictions should bring maximum compensation, judge rules

Wrongful convictions should bring maximum compensation, judge rules.

Three men who were wrongfully convicted of murdering an alleged crack dealer near Westwego in 1992 are entitled to the maximum $250,000 in compensation allowed by law for the years they spent in prison, a state judge ruled Thursday. Glenn Davis of Marrero, Larry Delmore Jr. of New Orleans and Terrence Meyers of Avondale, all about 40 years old, spent up to almost 16 years in prison for their second-degree murder convictions in the Aug. 3, 1992, death of Samuel George, 34, who was gunned down while standing at Cabildo Lane and East Claiborne Parkway.

Davis would be entitled to $344,792 for the 13 years and 9 1/2 months he spent in prison, Murphy found. Delmore and Meyers were imprisoned 15 years and two months, for a total of $379,167, Murphy ruled.

I ask you: does 250’00 dollars can they make up 13 years of life lost? I do not think money can give 13 years of a life, you can not buy a ”miscarriage of justice”. They can not redeem the pain of being an innocent man in prison, and scars inside that person will keep forever

Innocence – Exonerations

Since 1973, 140 people have been released from death row due to evidence of their innocence. Some of these exonerees came within hours of their execution before it was stayed. There is no way to tell how many of the over 1000 people executed since 1976 may have been innocent, as courts do not generally entertain claims of innocence once the defendant is dead.

Joe d’ambrosio Convicted: 1989, Charges dismissed: 2012

On January 23, the U.S. Supreme Court declined to hear an appeal by the state of Ohio challenging the unconditional writ of habeas corpus and bar to the re-prosecution of Joe D’Ambrosio, thus ending the capital case. He has now been freed from death row with all charges dismissed. A federal District Court had first overturned D’Ambrosio’s conviction in 2006 because the state had withheld key evidence from the defense. The federal court originally allowed the state to re-prosecute him, but just before trial the state revealed the existence of even more important evidence and requested further delay. Also the state did not divulge in a timely manner that the key witness against D’Ambrosio had died. In 2010, the District Court barred D’Ambrosio’s re-prosecution because of the prosecutors’ misconduct. The court concluded that these developments biased D’Ambrosio’s chances for a fair trial, and hence the state was barred from retrying him. District Court Judge Kathleen O’Malley wrote: “For 20 years, the State held D’Ambrosio on death row, despite wrongfully withholding evidence that ‘would have substantially increased a reasonable juror’s doubt of D’Ambrosio’s guilt.’ Despite being ordered to do so by this Court … the State still failed to turn over all relevant and material evidence relating to the crime of which D’Ambrosio was convicted. Then, once it was ordered to provide D’Ambrosio a constitutional trial or release him within 180 days, the State did neither. During those 180 days, the State engaged in substantial inequitable conduct, wrongfully retaining and delaying the production of yet more potentially exculpatory evidence… To fail to bar retrial in such extraordinary circumstances surely would fail to serve the interests of justice.”

In 2011, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit upheld the bar to re-prosecution. (D’Ambrosio v. Bagley, No. 10-3247, Aug. 29, 2011). Even the dissent referred to the state’s “remarkable inability to competently prosecute D’Ambrosio.” The state appealed this decision to the U.S. Supreme Court mainly on jurisdictional grounds, but was denied certiorari on Jan. 23. (Bagley v. D’Ambrosio, No. 11-672, denying cert.).

Gussie Vann Convicted: 1994, Charges dismissed: 2011

Vann was originally convicted and sentenced to death in 1994 for a sexual assault and murder of his own daughter, Necia Vann, in 1992. However, in 2008 following state post-conviction review, Circuit Court Senior Judge Donald P. Harris held that Vann was entitled to a new trial because his defense attorneys failed to hire forensic experts to challenge the state’s allegations of sexual abuse. (Vann v. State, Order, Post-conviction No. 99-312, 10th Judicial Dist., McMinn Cty., May 28, 2008). Judge Harris wrote that this failure led to Vann being convicted on “inaccurate, exaggerated and speculative medical testimony.” (Id. Memorandum, at 23). At the post-conviction hearing, forensic experts contradicted the state’s earlier testimony and said there were no signs of recent sexual abuse on the victim. Judge Harris described the failings of Vann’s original attorneys as “not only prejudicial, but disastrous.” (Id.) The state elected not to appeal this ruling, though it did try to find grounds for a conviction on a lesser offense. Ultimately all charges were dropped by the state on September 22, 2011.

The Wrongful Conviction of David Thorne

David Thorne is serving a life sentence without the possibility of parole for allegedly hiring an acquaintance to kill the mother of his son, however, he never hired anyone nor did the acquaintance do the crime.
Sometime between the evening hours on March 31, 1999 and 12:00 p.m. on April 1, 1999, Yvonne Layne, a mother of 5, was murdered in her home with one solid and steady slit to her throat. 
David Thorne was convicted of complicity to aggravated murder/murder for hire on January 25, 2000 by a 12 person jury.
The police investigating the crime had tunnel vision throughout their investigation, narrowing in on David from the beginning. The investigators were unable to get David to confess, so instead they went after his acquaintance, Joseph Wilkes, who was barely 18 years of age and a high school dropout.  After a lengthy interrogation, during which they told Joseph that David was “next door ratting him out”, he confessed, utilizing the story that the police had fed to him to what the police were telling him happened. Joe took a plea deal and David went to trial.  Despite the lack of physical evidence of either Joe or David being at the scene and a poor police investigation, with very weak circumstantial evidence, an innocent man was convicted. (Read on – click to jump to Case Summary)