Crime and Justice

Please take 5 min for read this juvenile case

I share with u a comment on my blog , maybe we can  help this mother and her son

blog link : http://therelentlessmom.wordpress.com/

Congrats, My son is in a Texas Prison, He has been since 15 yrs old. Soon he will be 18. On September 09-2012, and scheduled to be transferred over to notorious adult unit-open bay- cell. My minor child has been Wrongfully Convicted of a murder that he is not guilty of and not culpable for. What is a mother to do? As you know many people out there proclaim to be there to help people like my child Bryce, yet they are the polar opposite

do you accept links where by the writing is in Spanish?

https://lalistadepruebas.wordpress.com/

Thank you for your time.

 

Related articles

TAMPA – Oscar Ray Bolin back in court

april 16, 2012 source : http://www.myfoxtampabay.com

 It has been 26 years since three young women were murdered in Tampa.

Investigators say Stephanie Collins, Teri Matthews and Natalie “Blanche” Holley were each confronted and attacked by Oscar Ray Bolin.

The former truck driver is now 50 years old, about the same age as two of his victims would have been.

But Bolin is back in a Hillsborough County courtroom, on trial for the 10th time in the murders of the three women.

A jury has convicted him nine times, but he’s been retried trhee times each in the Matthews and Collins cases.

He’s being retried now for the 4th time in the Holley case. The trials were previously overturned for a variety of reasons — basically, mistakes that were found in the trials.

Kim Seace, a former prosecutor and now a defense attorney in Tampa, says it is unusual.

“It’s unusual for it to be overturned that many times, but you have to remember when it’s a death penalty case, it’s held to a very high level of scrutiny at the appellate level. So they are going to scrutinize absolutely everything that took place,” Seace said.

During jury selection on Monday, out of a pool of 70 potential jurors, only 12 were dismissed for having prior knowledge of the case or of Bolin.

But because it was 26 years ago, most of the jurors have no recollection.

Bolin is currently serving two death sentences for Stephanie Collins and Teri Matthews, both of which have been upheld so far.

Kim Seace says the prosecutors may be going for a 3rd death sentence for a few different reasons.

“It’s something they would consult the victim’s family, and take their wishes into account. I think that would be a decision by each state attorney that is prosecuting him. And you don’t want to run the risk something is going to get overturned and you’re not going to have a death sentence in place on him,” Seace said.

US – Estimates of Time Spent in Capital and Non-Capital Murder Cases

A Statistical Analysis of Survey Data from Clark County Defense Attorneys
Terance D. Miethe, PhD.
Department of Criminal Justice
University of Nevada, Las Vegas
February 21, 2012

I. Introduction
A survey was designed to provide average estimates of the time spent at various stages of criminal processing for the defense of capital and non-capital murder cases. Defense attorneys were asked to use their personal experiences over the past three years to estimate the number of hours they spent in pretrial, trial, penalty, and post-conviction activities in a “typical” capital and non-capital murder case. Separate questions were asked about their experiences as “lead attorney” and “second chair” in these typical cases. A total of 22 defense attorneys completed the survey. The largest group of survey respondents were attorneys within the Public Defender’s office (n=10), followed by the Special Public Defender’s office (n=9) and the Office of Assigned Counsel (n=3). To provide some context for the time estimates provided by these defense attorneys, this survey data was also supplemented with general case processing information on a sample of 138 murder cases sentenced in District Court between 2009 and 2011. The Clark County Court’s electronic record system was used to identify these murder cases and to construct summary statistics on case processing (e.g., average time between court filing and sentencing; number of total meetings with parties present, number of orders and motions filed). These court statistics were analyzed separately for each major type of sentence (i.e., yearly maximum sentences, life with possibility of parole, life without possibility of parole, and death sentences). For the survey data included in this report, the median score (i.e., the middle score of a distribution) is used as the average estimate of time spent at each stage of criminal processing. The median is the most appropriate measure for these analyses because (1) it minimizes the impact of extreme ratings and (2) the distribution of time estimates across respondents is not normally distributed. Under these conditions, the median, rather than the mean, is the appropriate summary measure of central tendency.

read the full report : click here

Death Row Kids

January 2005
In the last five years, more juvenile offenders were killed in Texas than in the rest of the world combined. America continues to defend its right to execute children.

“They think we’re beasts. And we deserve nothing else other than our execution,” despairs Oswaldo. He’s been on death row since he was 17, after accidentally killing a man during an armed robbery. “In 12 years, I haven’t had a hug or a kiss.” In Louisiana, Lawrence Jacob Jr is also fighting for his life. Like Oswaldo, he was only 17 when he was sentenced to death. “I’m not asking you to release me. I’m only asking you for the chance to rehabilitate,” he reasons. Cerebral research proves that the brains of 17 year olds have not developed as much as adults. “Youths at that age are much too impulsive and don’t have the control,” explains one expert. But in America, that’s no bar to their execution.

‘I put my daddy on death row – but he’s innocent’: Man who testified against his father is campaigning for his release

april, 8 source : http://www.dailymail.co.uk

A man who testified against his father when he was seven years old is proclaiming his innocence and campaigning for his release – 23 years after he was sentenced to life in prison.

Jerry Michael Burgos, now 29, was called to the witness stand to give evidence against his father in 1989.

Jerry Burgos, who was 29 at the time, was charged with strangling his wife Nilsa – who was seven months pregnant – and setting their Polk Township, Pennsylvania, house on fire in an attempt to cover up the crime.

Campaign: Jerry Michael Burgos, right, and his brother Jason, left, are starting a Facebook group to proclaim the innocence of their father Jerry, centre

Campaign: Jerry Michael Burgos, right, and his brother Jason, left, are starting a Facebook group to proclaim the innocence of their father Jerry, centre

When investigators asked the boy what had happened on that fatal night, he said: ‘My dad took me and my brother out of the house and put us in his truck,’  according to the New York Post.

Burgos had told jurors that thick smoke engulfed their home and that he had managed to save his two sons from the blaze – but not his wife.

But the boy could not remember seeing signs of a fire, which allowed prosecutors to use his testimony to discredit his father’s.

The father-of-two had purchased a $75,000 life insurance policy four months before his wife’s death so prosecutors had reason to believe he had committed the crime.

The couple were also said to be involved with other lovers, which gave jurors another motive for the murder.

In 1989 Burgos was sentenced to the electric chair and found guilty of murder, arson and abuse of a corpse.

But Jerry Michael does not believe his father committed the crime. ‘I never hated my dad. I never felt like he did this,’ he told the New York Post. ‘I was always happy to see him when we went to trial.’

‘I feel like parents are a little bit of us. I really don’t think he did it. I can’t see myself doing it, and I couldn’t see him doing it either,’ he added.

The case that has been plagued by controversies went to retrial in 1993 because Burgos’s lawyer argued that prosecutors improperly used Jerry Michael’s testimony. But the second jury still found Burgos guilty.

Then, in 2004, Burgos’s attorney Philip Lauer won an appeal to test for genetic clues, as the previous trials had relied mainly on circumstantial evidence and had ignored DNA testing.

‘It seems like its standard fare in every case that everything gets tested, but in rural counties that isn’t the case,’ Lauer told the New York Post.

But even though a t-shirt found inside Nilsa’s body bag revealed somebody else’s DNA, it was not enough to overturn the verdict.

Now Jerry Michael and his brother Jason are creating a Facebook page to raise awareness about their father’s case. 

‘I love my mom, but I also lost my dad,’ Jerry Michael said. ‘I really don’t think he did it. I’m 99.9 percent sure that he didn’t do it. There’s no way.’

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

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.

TEXAS – Hank Skinner – one more innocent on the death row

Filmmaker Werner Herzog’s segment on Hank Skinner, who is on Texas death row and fighting to prove his innocence with more DNA testing.

official website : http://www.hankskinner.org/

Freed death row inmate will speak at Penn State Beaver

march, 26, 2012 source :http://www.br.psu.edu

 

the public is invited to attend a free presentation by Juan Melendez at 6 p.m., Wednesday, March 28 in the auditorium of the Penn State Beaver Student Union Building.

Melendez was imprisoned on death row in Florida for almost 18 years until his conviction was overturned and he was released in 2002. Upon his release, Melendez became the United States’ 99th death row inmate to be exonerated and released since 1973. 

In his presentation, Melendez will discuss his story of injustice and wrongful imprisonment on death row as one of many problems pervasive throughout the nation’s legal system and will describe the high rate of wrongful convictions based on poverty, race, and ethnicity.

Melendez will also share how he survived his experiences while imprisoned and how he maintained his spirit while he and others worked to free him.

Since his release, he has spoken here and abroad about the crisis of wrongful imprisonment, especially on death row, and his story has been reported in French, Spanish, Italian, and Arabic.

The administration of justice program and the Beaver campus Student Activity Fee are sponsoring the presentation as part of the Unique Perspectives for Selecting Your Career Path Speaker Series.

For information, contact Larissa Ciuca, student personal and career counselor, at lbm12@psu.edu or 724-773-3961 or LaVarr McBride, instructor in administration of justice at Beaver, Penn State New Kensington, and Penn State Shenango, atlwm13@psu.edu or 724-773-3866.

480th Texas Execution Set for Today; 241st Execution Under Rick Perry

Wednesday’s execution will be the 480th in Texas since 1982 and the 241st since Rick Perry became Governor. More than 50 percent of all executions in Texas in the modern era have been conducted under Rick Perry. Call the Office of Governor Rick Perry at 512 463 2000 to give him your opinion on the death penalty.

Read more : Texas Moratorium