Wednesday, November 18, 2015

Bulletin: Donald Gates; D.C. In U.S. court, man exonerated after 27 years alleges D.C. police framed him. "Police “had a hunch — a good hunch — that Donald Gates was good for the Schilling murder,” his attorney, Peter Neufeld, argued to jurors in the courtroom of Chief U.S. District Judge Richard W. Roberts. “The problem is, when the detectives had that good hunch, they did the wrong thing. They crossed the line,” feeding Gates’s name and other incriminating details to a paid police informer who later testified, Neufeld alleged..........Gates was exonerated in 2009 through DNA testing. He filed suit the next year, later learning that federal prosecutors found the real killer in 2012 after tracing genetic evidence at the scene to a convicted offender and temporary janitor at the Watergate who had died in 2011. Although it was not part of this month’s trial, Gates’s innocence triggered investigations that led to exonerations of four additional men in the District who had served up to 30 years for rape or murder since the 1980s based on flawed FBI forensic testimony about hairs. The FBI in April acknowledged that for more than 20 years before 2000, nearly every member of an elite FBI forensic unit overreached by testifying to the near-certainty of hair matches without a scientific basis."


STORY: "In U.S. court, man exonerated after 27 years alleges D.C. police framed him," by reporter Spencer Hsu, published by the Washington Post on November 17, 2015.

PHOTO CAPTION:  "Donald Gates was exonerated in 2009 through DNA testing after serving 27 years in prison."



GIST: A man who served 27 years in prison for a rape and murder he didn’t commit accused D.C. police of framing him, in the first federal civil rights claim for damages involving a wrongful conviction in the District. All sides agree that Donald E. Gates, 64, is “stone-cold innocent,” as his attorneys put it, of the June 1981 murder of Catherine T. Schilling, a 21-year-old Georgetown University student assaulted and killed in Rock Creek Park after leaving the Watergate office building where she worked as a paralegal. But they disagree about whether police actions violated Gates’s constitutional right to a fair trial. During a two-week trial, Gates’s allegation that two D.C. police homicide detectives and a lieutenant fabricated and withheld evidence has presented an emotional, legal and financial tangle to jurors, who began deliberations Tuesday. Over days of testimony about regrets and missed chances, the panel has revisited the trauma of the crime and weighed police liability for Gates’s subsequent conviction while facing the prospect of deciding what value to place on lost decades of freedom. The stakes for Gates and the District are high, although the court has barred any discussion of damages or amounts to the jury so far. Police “had a hunch — a good hunch — that Donald Gates was good for the Schilling murder,” his attorney, Peter Neufeld, argued to jurors in the courtroom of Chief U.S. District Judge Richard W. Roberts. “The problem is, when the detectives had that good hunch, they did the wrong thing. They crossed the line,” feeding Gates’s name and other incriminating details to a paid police informer who later testified, Neufeld alleged..........Gates was exonerated in 2009 through DNA testing. He filed suit the next year, later learning that federal prosecutors found the real killer in 2012 after tracing genetic evidence at the scene to a convicted offender and temporary janitor at the Watergate who had died in 2011. Although it was not part of this month’s trial, Gates’s innocence triggered investigations that led to exonerations of four additional men in the District who had served up to 30 years for rape or murder since the 1980s based on flawed FBI forensic testimony about hairs. The FBI in April acknowledged that for more than 20 years before 2000, nearly every member of an elite FBI forensic unit overreached by testifying to the near-certainty of hair matches without a scientific basis. Defendants are now being notified. However beneficial Gates’s exoneration has been to others, he would not have been prosecuted if not for the police informer’s account, according to testimony last week from the original prosecutor, J. Brooks Harrington..........According to Gates’s attorneys, police seized on Gates as a prime suspect within days of Schilling’s murder. They presented evidence that included a 1982 government legal brief and June 1981 arrest warrant that said police knew about Gates because he had been caught during a drunken purse-snatching attempt on a towpath near the Schilling crime scene on June 3 — three weeks before Schilling’s killing. Detectives said the first time that they heard Gates’s name was June 30, when they met with Gerald “Bear” Smith, an informer who was paid $1,300 by police after they said he named Gates as a drinking companion who confessed to robbing, raping and then killing a young woman. Both sides clashed over whether it was more likely that Smith knew Gates and concocted the false confession himself or had been fed Gates’s name and investigators’ theory of the case by police. “I never saw that man in my life,” Gates said about the informer. “Never saw him. Never spoke to him.” The police defendants denied in court that they gave the informer Gates’s name, although they gave conflicting accounts of their dealings with him."

The entire story can be found at:

https://www.washingtonpost.com/local/public-safety/in-us-court-man-exonerated-after-27-years-charges-dc-police-framed-him/2015/11/17/8f4d09d0-8c80-11e5-baf4-bdf37355da0c_story.html

PUBLISHER'S NOTE:

Dear Reader. Keep your eye on the Charles Smith Blog. We are following this case.
 
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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.ca/2013/12/the-charles-smith-award-presented-to_28.html
 
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Harold Levy; Publisher; The Charles Smith Blog