James Hunter: Colorado: Bulletin: A discredited DNA Analyst Yvonne "Missy" Woods case: The Colorado Springs Gazette (Senior Investigative Reporter Christopher Osher) reports that a federal judge has denied his request for DNA testing which he says will prove his innocence…"A federal judge on Friday denied access to DNA evidence that defense lawyers say will exonerate a man whose 2003 conviction of a heinous rape at a Lakewood trailer park rape largely relied on the testimony of a former Colorado Bureau of Investigation scientist who was forced to resign last year for manipulating DNA data in other cases. U.S. District Judge Daniel Domenico dismissed the request for additional DNA testing filed on behalf of James Hunter, now 64, who contends that his 168-year prison sentence is a travesty of justice. Hunter has been incarcerated for more than 21 years. Hunter’s conviction is one of thousands now under scrutiny that involved former CBI state crime lab scientist Yvonne “Missy” Woods. The CBI in March announced the discovery of “anomalies” in the work of Woods put “all her work in question.”

"PUBLISHER'S  NOTE: WORDS TO HEED: FROM OUR POST ON KEVIN COOPER'S  APPLICATION FOR POST-CONVICTION DNA TESTING; CALIFORNIA: (Applicable wherever a state resists DNA testing): "Blogger/extraordinaire Jeff Gamso's blunt, unequivocal, unforgettable message to the powers that be in California: "JUST TEST THE FUCKING DNA." (Oh yes, Gamso raises, as he does in many of his posts, an important philosophical question: This post is headed: "What is truth, said jesting Pilate."...Says Gamso: "So what's the harm? What, exactly, are they scared of? Don't we want the truth?") 

https://smithforensic.blogspot.com/2018/06/kevin-cooper-2-california-application.html

--------------------------------------------

PASSAGE OF THE DAY: "Members of Hunter’s family and his defense team, initially defense lawyer Thomas Henry and now defense lawyer Kenneth Mark Burton, support his claims of innocence. He was convicted in 2003 of breaking into the trailer next to the one he lived in, of raping the woman living there and of also molesting her 5-year-old daughter during the more than four-hour attack. Hunter’s initial arrest for the rape in Lakewood hinged on Woods’ sworn statement that her microscopic analysis found two pubic hairs from the rape victim matched pubic hairs Hunter, then 43, had allowed police to collect from him. Her analysis turned out to be flawed, and a judge freed Hunter from jail after a lab in Pennsylvania determined the DNA from the pubic hairs actually matched the DNA of the victim. Woods and prosecutors two months after Hunter’s release took the case to a grand jury, citing new evidence. They secured an indictment against Hunter and eventual conviction on burglary and sexual assault charges. The heart of the prosecution case hinged on Woods’ testimony that additional DNA analysis by her showed a hair collected by police from the victim’s bed contained a mixture of the victim’s DNA and Hunter’s DNA, and a hair police found on the couch in the victim’s living room matched Hunter’s DNA. The defense lawyers in court filings have said there are problems with the chain of custody related to the hair samples. Even Lakewood police were confused as to why two crime scene hair packets were returned from the CBI crime lab, when there originally was only one crime scene hair packet, according to an evidence log obtained during discovery. The defense lawyers also note that fingerprints and a palm print taken at the crime scene do not match Hunter's prints. The defense in court filings said police and prosecutors have never submitted the fingerprints taken from the crime scene to a national database of fingerprints taken from individuals arrested for violent crimes. Hunter's lawyer did not initially comment on the ruling from Domenico."

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PASSAGE TWO OF THE DAY: "Hunter initially became a suspect after the victim told police the voice of her masked assailant might have sounded like Hunter, her neighbor. While under hypnosis, she told police something in the voice of her attacker sounded “a little” like her next-door neighbor, but that there also was something that didn’t sound like him. A 2024 internal investigation, still not released to the public, found that Woods deviated from standard protocols throughout her 29-year career with the CBI, which ended in November when she retired after state officials placed her on administrative leave. The internal affairs investigation found that Woods during her tenure tampered with DNA results and omitted material facts in official criminal justice records. The South Dakota Division of Criminal Investigation is conducting a criminal investigation into Woods on Colorado’s behalf to avoid a conflict of interest."

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STORY: "DNA test request denied for man claiming innocence in 2003  rape conviction," by Senior Investigative Reporter Christopher Osher,  published by The Colorado Springs Gazette, on April 19, 2024.

GIST: "A federal judge on Friday denied access to DNA evidence that defense lawyers say will exonerate a man whose 2003 conviction of a heinous rape at a Lakewood trailer park rape largely relied on the testimony of a former Colorado Bureau of Investigation scientist who was forced to resign last year for manipulating DNA data in other cases.

U.S. District Judge Daniel Domenico dismissed the request for additional DNA testing filed on behalf of James Hunter, now 64, who contends that his 168-year prison sentence is a travesty of justice. Hunter has been incarcerated for more than 21 years.

Hunter’s conviction is one of thousands now under scrutiny that involved former CBI state crime lab scientist Yvonne “Missy” Woods. The CBI in March announced the discovery of “anomalies” in the work of Woods put “all her work in question.”

Woods, through her lawyer, Ryan Brackley, has denied ever creating or falsely reporting “any inculpatory DNA matches or exclusions.” She also has denied that she ever “testified falsely in any hearing or trial resulting in a false conviction or unjust imprisonment.

It’s unknown how anomalies allegedly found in the work of 29-year CBI DNA veteran scientist Yvonne “Missy” Woods will affect Colorado’s judicial system. The 94-page internal affairs investigation file into her work has not been released to the public.

Despite defense assertions of flawed work by Woods in Hunter’s case, Domenico in his ruling stated that he did not have jurisdiction to order the Lakewood Police Department, the Jefferson County District Attorney’s Office and the CBI to allow Hunter’s lawyers to have the rape kit and other evidence tested for DNA.

Hunter and his lawyers claim in court documents that new DNA testing likely would establish the culprit of the 1 a.m. April 23, 2002, attack and rape as Kenneth Dale Smith, another man convicted in 2016 of a similar crime in Missouri. Smith has denied he was involved in the Lakewood rape.

Domenico ruled that Hunter’s efforts to obtain evidence for additional DNA testing already had been rejected by the Colorado Court of Appeals. Court precedents “preclude a losing party in state-court who complains of injury caused by a state-court judgment from bringing a case seeking review and rejection of that judgment in federal court,” Domenico stated in his ruling.

That doctrine “provides that only the Supreme Court has jurisdiction to hear appeals from final state-court judgments,” Domenico further ruled.

Challenges that assert a state statute is unconstitutional are permitted in federal court, but Domenico said the claims from Hunter and his lawyer that Colorado’s DNA statute was unconstitutional were “threadbare.”

“Plaintiff’s primary objection to the DNA statute has to do with the way state judicial officials chose to apply the law in this case, not with the constitutionality of the law itself,” Domenico wrote.

“While I take no stance here on the merit of plaintiff’s claims about the reliability of the evidence that was used to support his underlying conviction, I do note that the entire gist of the complaint is to suggest that the Colorado Court of Appeals made an incorrect determination when it found that a favorable DNA test result would not have been enough to make a showing of actual innocence,” Domenico further wrote in the ruling.

Members of Hunter’s family and his defense team, initially defense lawyer Thomas Henry and now defense lawyer Kenneth Mark Burton, support his claims of innocence. He was convicted in 2003 of breaking into the trailer next to the one he lived in, of raping the woman living there and of also molesting her 5-year-old daughter during the more than four-hour attack.

Hunter’s initial arrest for the rape in Lakewood hinged on Woods’ sworn statement that her microscopic analysis found two pubic hairs from the rape victim matched pubic hairs Hunter, then 43, had allowed police to collect from him. Her analysis turned out to be flawed, and a judge freed Hunter from jail after a lab in Pennsylvania determined the DNA from the pubic hairs actually matched the DNA of the victim.

Woods and prosecutors two months after Hunter’s release took the case to a grand jury, citing new evidence. They secured an indictment against Hunter and eventual conviction on burglary and sexual assault charges. The heart of the prosecution case hinged on Woods’ testimony that additional DNA analysis by her showed a hair collected by police from the victim’s bed contained a mixture of the victim’s DNA and Hunter’s DNA, and a hair police found on the couch in the victim’s living room matched Hunter’s DNA.

The defense lawyers in court filings have said there are problems with the chain of custody related to the hair samples. Even Lakewood police were confused as to why two crime scene hair packets were returned from the CBI crime lab, when there originally was only one crime scene hair packet, according to an evidence log obtained during discovery. The defense lawyers also note that fingerprints and a palm print taken at the crime scene do not match Hunter's prints. The defense in court filings said police and prosecutors have never submitted the fingerprints taken from the crime scene to a national database of fingerprints taken from individuals arrested for violent crimes. Hunter's lawyer did not initially comment on the ruling from Domenico.

Hunter initially became a suspect after the victim told police the voice of her masked assailant might have sounded like Hunter, her neighbor. While under hypnosis, she told police something in the voice of her attacker sounded “a little” like her next-door neighbor, but that there also was something that didn’t sound like him.

A 2024 internal investigation, still not released to the public, found that Woods deviated from standard protocols throughout her 29-year career with the CBI, which ended in November when she retired after state officials placed her on administrative leave. The internal affairs investigation found that Woods during her tenure tampered with DNA results and omitted material facts in official criminal justice records.

The South Dakota Division of Criminal Investigation is conducting a criminal investigation into Woods on Colorado’s behalf to avoid a conflict of interest.

https://gazette.com/news/courts/dna-test-request-denied-for-man-claiming-innocence-in-2003-rape-conviction/article_8fda818c-fe7a-11ee-8a01-e323b83c1ebd.html

PUBLISHER'S NOTE:  I am monitoring this case/issue/resource. Keep your eye on the Charles Smith Blog for reports on developments. The Toronto Star, my previous employer for more than twenty incredible years, has put considerable effort into exposing the harm caused by Dr. Charles Smith and his protectors - and into pushing for reform of Ontario's forensic pediatric pathology system. The Star has a "topic"  section which focuses on recent stories related to Dr. Charles Smith. It can be found at: http://www.thestar.com/topic/charlessmith. Information on "The Charles Smith Blog Award"- and its nomination process - can be found at: http://smithforensic.blogspot.com/2011/05/charles-smith-blog-award-nominations.html Please send any comments or information on other cases and issues of interest to the readers of this blog to: hlevy15@gmail.com.  Harold Levy: Publisher: The Charles Smith Blog.

SEE BREAKDOWN OF  SOME OF THE ON-GOING INTERNATIONAL CASES (OUTSIDE OF THE CONTINENTAL USA) THAT I AM FOLLOWING ON THIS BLOG,  AT THE LINK BELOW:  HL:

https://www.blogger.com/blog/post/edit/120008354894645705/4704913685758792985

---------------------------------------------------------------

FINAL WORD:  (Applicable to all of our wrongful conviction cases):  "Whenever there is a wrongful conviction, it exposes errors in our criminal legal system, and we hope that this case — and lessons from it — can prevent future injustices."

Lawyer Radha Natarajan:

Executive Director: New England Innocence Project;

—————————————————————————————————

FINAL, FINAL WORD: "Since its inception, the Innocence Project has pushed the criminal legal system to confront and correct the laws and policies that cause and contribute to wrongful convictions.   They never shied away from the hard cases — the ones involving eyewitness identifications, confessions, and bite marks. Instead, in the course of presenting scientific evidence of innocence, they've exposed the unreliability of evidence that was, for centuries, deemed untouchable." So true!

Christina Swarns: Executive Director: The Innocence Project;

————————————————————————————

YET ANOTHER FINAL WORD:

David Hammond, one of Broadwater's attorneys who sought his exoneration, told the Syracuse Post-Standard, "Sprinkle some junk science onto a faulty identification, and it's the perfect recipe for a wrongful conviction.

https://deadline.com/2021/11/alice-sebold-lucky-rape-conviction-overturned-anthony-broadwater-12348801

————————————————————————————————

Melissa Lucio: Texas: Columnist David Mills (Pittsburgh Post-Gazette) explains why her story, "should disconcert those of us who aren't likely ever to be in her place" - stressing that, 'only two years ago, Melissa Lucio was just two days from certain death.'…"The state of Texas was going to execute Melissa Lucio on April 27, 2022, based on a confession coerced by the police, using dirty tricks and intimidation; prosecution by a corrupt prosecutor running for reelection (he’s now in prison); when she was defended by an incompetent defense lawyer; when she faced a prosecution aided by testimony from a forensic expert who was full of crap, who claimed with an expert’s authority facts that were not true, and known not to be true by other experts. And that was not all the legal abuse she suffered. She was going to be killed after a trial in which the abundance of evidence of how much she loved her children was never presented in court, letting the prosecution (who must have known better) portray her as a bad and abusive mother (there was no evidence whatsoever that she ever abused her children, but the jury was not told that). Within two days And there’s still more. She came within two days of being executed thanks in part to a judge who prevented testimony in her favor, particularly expert testimony on how the extreme abuse she had suffered throughout her life left her very vulnerable to coercion; and who nevertheless allowed the Texas ranger who interrogated her, also full of crap, and covering his backside, to claim that he knew, as an experienced lawman, that she was guilty from the way she sat. And on top of that, she would have gotten another trial but for a legal technicality."

PASSAGE OF THE DAY: "This is good news for Melissa Lucio, but only in contrast to the bad news she’s been living through since 2007 — for almost 17 long unimaginable years — all of it imposed on her by agents of the state. Starting just two hours after she’d lost a child and continuing without stop since then. And worst of all, mostly imposed by supposed agents of justice, some of whom clearly didn’t give a rat’s behind for justice. "

--------------------------------------------------------------

COMMENTARY:  "The state of Texas almost killed an innocent woman," by David Mills, published by The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, on April 18, 2024. (David Mills is the deputy editorial page editor and a columnist for the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette); 

GIST:  "Only two years ago, Melissa Lucio was just two days from certain death.

 She’d been convicted of murdering her two-year-old daughter in 2008 and exhausted her appeals, every court in the long process approving the decision of the court that convicted her. She remained in prison the entire time.

And — you will have seen this coming — she was almost certainly innocent, and that was clear at the time to anyone who actually looked. 

But large systems like the justice system protect themselves, especially from the damage the system would suffer from admitting it had been that wrong. 

And the individuals who went wrong, either by accident or purpose, won’t admit it unless forced. The first has a narrative to maintain, the second reputations to maintain, and sometimes prison sentences to avoid.

A victim of justice [sic]

The justice system of the state of Texas has finally admitted it was wrong — pending the agreement of the body with the final authority, and from what I can tell it’s expected to agree but not certain to.

 But the whole story, and it’s not an uncommon one in America, should disconcert those of us who aren’t likely ever to be in Ms. Lucio’s place.

This is good news for Melissa Lucio, but only in contrast to the bad news she’s been living through since 2007 — for almost 17 long unimaginable years — all of it imposed on her by agents of the state. Starting just two hours after she’d lost a child and continuing without stop since then. And worst of all, mostly imposed by supposed agents of justice, some of whom clearly didn’t give a rat’s behind for justice. 

The state of Texas was going to execute Melissa Lucio on April 27, 2022, based on a confession coerced by the police, using dirty tricks and intimidation; prosecution by a corrupt prosecutor running for reelection (he’s now in prison); when she was defended by an incompetent defense lawyer; when she faced a prosecution aided by testimony from a forensic expert who was full of crap, who claimed with an expert’s authority facts that were not true, and known not to be true by other experts.

And that was not all the legal abuse she suffered. She was going to be killed after a trial in which the abundance of evidence of how much she loved her children was never presented in court, letting the prosecution (who must have known better) portray her as a bad and abusive mother (there was no evidence whatsoever that she ever abused her children, but the jury was not told that).

Within two days

And there’s still more. She came within two days of being executed thanks in part to a judge who prevented testimony in her favor, particularly expert testimony on how the extreme abuse she had suffered throughout her life left her very vulnerable to coercion; and who nevertheless allowed the Texas ranger who interrogated her, also full of crap, and covering his backside, to claim that he knew, as an experienced lawman, that she was guilty from the way she sat. And on top of that, she would have gotten another trial but for a legal technicality. 

You can read a ten-point summary of the miscarriage of justice in a post by the invaluable Innocence Project here. It did seem then that some Texas officials had the ungodly — and I mean that literally — desire to see people die, even if they might be innocent. 

Of course, there were many good guys fighting for Ms. Lucio, and good guys you might not expect. Republican Rep. Jeff Leach said the facts were “still in grave dispute” — as in not proven beyond a reasonable doubt, as in not nearly enough to convict a woman and send her to death row — and noted that “the system literally failed Lucio at every single turn."

He, a Republican, and not a liberal one, said there are “deep and substantive and substantial” problems with the way Texas imposes the death penalty. Ms. Lucio’s case was the “most shocking, the most problematic” example of this.

The good guys prevailed with two days left, but it was very close.

Heart-breaking but possible

Ms. Lucio’s story was heart-breaking, and it was heart-breaking before the state of Texas came after her. She has been suffering the effects of the state’s gross injustice for 17 years. Think back to what you were doing in 2007, and then think of everything you’ve done, and especially you’ve enjoyed, since. In particular, every simple exercise of your freedom, even it was just to take walks around the block or go to bed when you wanted. 

And think, if you have children, of not being able to be a father or a mother to them for all that time. The pain of that is unimaginable.

And imagine being someone to whom that could happen, and what that requires of those of us the state will never treat the way it treated Melissa Lucio."

https://www.post-gazette.com/opinion/david-mills/2024/04/18/david-mills-melissa-lucio-innocence-project-texas-false-conviction-capital-punis

PUBLISHER'S NOTE:  I am monitoring this case/issue/resource. Keep your eye on the Charles Smith Blog for reports on developments. The Toronto Star, my previous employer for more than twenty incredible years, has put considerable effort into exposing the harm caused by Dr. Charles Smith and his protectors - and into pushing for reform of Ontario's forensic pediatric pathology system. The Star has a "topic"  section which focuses on recent stories related to Dr. Charles Smith. It can be found at: http://www.thestar.com/topic/charlessmith. Information on "The Charles Smith Blog Award"- and its nomination process - can be found at: http://smithforensic.blogspot.com/2011/05/charles-smith-blog-award-nominations.html Please send any comments or information on other cases and issues of interest to the readers of this blog to: hlevy15@gmail.com.  Harold Levy: Publisher: The Charles Smith Blog.

SEE BREAKDOWN OF  SOME OF THE ON-GOING INTERNATIONAL CASES (OUTSIDE OF THE CONTINENTAL USA) THAT I AM FOLLOWING ON THIS BLOG,  AT THE LINK BELOW:  HL:

https://www.blogger.com/blog/post/edit/120008354894645705/4704913685758792985

---------------------------------------------------------------

FINAL WORD:  (Applicable to all of our wrongful conviction cases):  "Whenever there is a wrongful conviction, it exposes errors in our criminal legal system, and we hope that this case — and lessons from it — can prevent future injustices."

Lawyer Radha Natarajan:

Executive Director: New England Innocence Project;

—————————————————————————————————

FINAL, FINAL WORD: "Since its inception, the Innocence Project has pushed the criminal legal system to confront and correct the laws and policies that cause and contribute to wrongful convictions.   They never shied away from the hard cases — the ones involving eyewitness identifications, confessions, and bite marks. Instead, in the course of presenting scientific evidence of innocence, they've exposed the unreliability of evidence that was, for centuries, deemed untouchable." So true!

Christina Swarns: Executive Director: The Innocence Project;

————————————————————————————

YET ANOTHER FINAL WORD:

David Hammond, one of Broadwater's attorneys who sought his exoneration, told the Syracuse Post-Standard, "Sprinkle some junk science onto a faulty identification, and it's the perfect recipe for a wrongful conviction.

https://deadline.com/2021/11/alice-sebold-lucky-rape-conviction-overturned-anthony-broadwater-12348801

————————————————————————————————

Walter Gillespie: New Brunswick: The Toronto Star caption captures the tragedy of Walter Gillespie's death: "Wrongfully convicted New Brunswick man dies months after exoneration." Indeed, as Canadian Press Reporter Hana Alam reports, "Innocence Canada, which led the legal fight to exonerate Walter Gillespie and his friend Robert Mailman of their 1984 murder convictions, said Gillespie died Friday in his home in Saint John, N.B., at the age of 80. Founding director James Lockyer lamented the fact that Gillespie had such a brief time to enjoy the fruits of his decades-long fight. “It’s very sad,” Lockyer said. “I’m just glad that he managed to have his name cleared before he died. That was so important to him.”

PASSAGE OF THE DAY: "Ron Dalton, now co-president of Innocence Canada, took up the men’s case when he was fighting for freedom from his own wrongful conviction. He called Gillespie a “study in strength of character and friendship.” “For 40 years (Gillespie) refused to falsely implicate his friend, Robert Mailman, and paid dearly with his freedom,” Dalton said. “A sad end to a difficult but honourable life.” In an interview in January, about a week after he was formally exonerated, Gillespie recounted the offer of freedom dangled before him a year after Leeman’s murder. He said he was told by Saint John police that if he signed a statement against Mailman, he would be charged with aiding and abetting and only face three years in prison. “I said I was not going to do that,” he said. ”(The officer) said, ‘if you’re going to protect (Mailman), you’re going down with him.’” He spent 21 years in prison."

—————————————————————

STORY: "Wrongfully convicted New Brunswick man dies months after exoneration," by Canadian Press Reporter Hana Alam, published by The Toronto Star, on April 20, 2024.

FREDERICTON - A New Brunswick man who spent decades fighting a wrongful murder conviction that landed him and a friend behind bars had only a few months to relish his victory, the organization that helped in his legal battle said Saturday as it announced his death.

Innocence Canada, which led the legal fight to exonerate Walter Gillespie and his friend Robert Mailman of their 1984 murder convictions, said Gillespie died Friday in his home in Saint John, N.B., at the age of 80.

Founding director James Lockyer lamented the fact that Gillespie had such a brief time to enjoy the fruits of his decades-long fight.

“It’s very sad,” Lockyer said. “I’m just glad that he managed to have his name cleared before he died. That was so important to him.”

Details about Gillespie’s cause of death were not immediately known.

In January, New Brunswick Court of King’s Bench Chief Justice Tracey DeWare acquitted Gillespie and Mailman, 76, of the 1983 murder of Saint John resident George Leeman and apologized for the “miscarriage of justice.”

Her ruling came after federal Justice Minister Arif Virani ordered a new trial on Dec. 22, saying evidence had surfaced that called into question “the overall fairness of the process.”

Ron Dalton, now co-president of Innocence Canada, took up the men’s case when he was fighting for freedom from his own wrongful conviction.

He called Gillespie a “study in strength of character and friendship.”

“For 40 years (Gillespie) refused to falsely implicate his friend, Robert Mailman, and paid dearly with his freedom,” Dalton said. “A sad end to a difficult but honourable life.”

In an interview in January, about a week after he was formally exonerated, Gillespie recounted the offer of freedom dangled before him a year after Leeman’s murder.

He said he was told by Saint John police that if he signed a statement against Mailman, he would be charged with aiding and abetting and only face three years in prison.

“I said I was not going to do that,” he said. ”(The officer) said, ‘if you’re going to protect (Mailman), you’re going down with him.’”

He spent 21 years in prison.

Gillespie was born on Aug. 31, 1943, in Saint John and had a Grade 6 education. Most of his immediate family died in a house fire when he was about 20.

His friendship with Mailman predated their shared legal ordeal. The men previously told The Canadian Press they met in 1961, with Gillespie joking Mailman was checking out his then-girlfriend during one of their first encounters.

They became inseparable after their wrongful convictions, speaking to each other every day for decades.

“We’ve been joined at the hip for over 40 years through this. And he’s like a brother,” Mailman said of his friend.

Mailman was not available for comment on Gillespie’s death on Saturday, but said through Dalton that he hadn’t been able to sleep well after learning the news.

In an earlier interview, Mailman described the friend he called Wally as a man of few words.

“You never bother a sleeping junkyard dog,” he said with a laugh.

Gillespie is survived by a daughter with whom he only recently began to reconnect.

“We haven’t connected for almost the last 40 years,” he said shortly after having his name cleared. ”... I’m hoping I can help her out if we can get any money or anything like that. I talked quite a bit with her over the last couple days or so. Oh, it feels great.”

The New Brunswick government reached a settlement with the two men on March 1 for an undisclosed sum.

While on parole, Gillespie lived at a halfway house where he also worked as a cleaner for 15 hours a week.

After being declared innocent, he moved to an apartment in Saint John for which he paid $800 a month. The former hotel room he described as a jail cell was cramped even with his minimal belongings, brightened only by his own colourful paintings and the set of white towels and a white tea kettle Mailman gave him as housewarming gifts.

“Wally shouldn’t have to come out of the prison … and to a halfway house all them years, only to go into a place that’s even worse than he left behind,” Mailman said of his friend’s spartan quarters.

When Mailman was diagnosed with terminal cancer last November, Gillespie was the first person he called.

Gillespie signed out of the halfway house for a day and spent it with his friend as he learned of the life-changing diagnosis.

Apart from his quiet conviction and strength of character, Dalton recalled Gillespie’s love of American author Zane Grey’s westerns and his voracious reading habits. He also remembered Gillespie’s flashy fashion sense, noting his penchant for bright colours and the black patent shoes he saved for a special occasion and finally wore to court on the day his name was cleared.

But he said Gillespie’s most enduring impact stems from his efforts to uphold justice in Canada’s correctional system.

“Mr. Gillespie helped raise awareness of wrongful convictions in this country and that will be a part of his legacy.”

The entire story can be read at:

https://www.thestar.com/news/canada/wrongfully-convicted-new-brunswick-man-dies-months-after-exoneration/article_0ca69c14-babc-5659-b6c0-f008a6d5776c.html

PUBLISHER'S NOTE:  I am monitoring this case/issue/resource. Keep your eye on the Charles Smith Blog for reports on developments. The Toronto Star, my previous employer for more than twenty incredible years, has put considerable effort into exposing the harm caused by Dr. Charles Smith and his protectors - and into pushing for reform of Ontario's forensic pediatric pathology system. The Star has a "topic"  section which focuses on recent stories related to Dr. Charles Smith. It can be found at: http://www.thestar.com/topic/charlessmith. Information on "The Charles Smith Blog Award"- and its nomination process - can be found at: http://smithforensic.blogspot.com/2011/05/charles-smith-blog-award-nominations.html Please send any comments or information on other cases and issues of interest to the readers of this blog to: hlevy15@gmail.com.  Harold Levy: Publisher: The Charles Smith Blog.

SEE BREAKDOWN OF  SOME OF THE ON-GOING INTERNATIONAL CASES (OUTSIDE OF THE CONTINENTAL USA) THAT I AM FOLLOWING ON THIS BLOG,  AT THE LINK BELOW:  HL:

https://www.blogger.com/blog/post/edit/120008354894645705/4704913685758792985

---------------------------------------------------------------

FINAL WORD:  (Applicable to all of our wrongful conviction cases):  "Whenever there is a wrongful conviction, it exposes errors in our criminal legal system, and we hope that this case — and lessons from it — can prevent future injustices."

Lawyer Radha Natarajan:

Executive Director: New England Innocence Project;

—————————————————————————————————

FINAL, FINAL WORD: "Since its inception, the Innocence Project has pushed the criminal legal system to confront and correct the laws and policies that cause and contribute to wrongful convictions.   They never shied away from the hard cases — the ones involving eyewitness identifications, confessions, and bite marks. Instead, in the course of presenting scientific evidence of innocence, they've exposed the unreliability of evidence that was, for centuries, deemed untouchable." So true!

Christina Swarns: Executive Director: The Innocence Project;

————————————————————————————

YET ANOTHER FINAL WORD:

David Hammond, one of Broadwater's attorneys who sought his exoneration, told the Syracuse Post-Standard, "Sprinkle some junk science onto a faulty identification, and it's the perfect recipe for a wrongful conviction.

https://deadline.com/2021/11/alice-sebold-lucky-rape-conviction-overturned-anthony-broadwater-12348801

————————————————————————————————