August 31: DNA testing or lack thereof: Griselda "Chris"Moore takes to the explains Village Vanguard to ask "How much is one man's time worth? (and many other questions) as she offers a wife's plea for accountability and DNA testing. Some of her other questions: What matters to me now is what we do with a case nearly 50 years later. Shouldn’t we be willing to look again? Shouldn’t we be willing to test evidence? Shouldn’t we be willing to correct a mistake if one was made?" Read on.

BACKGROUND: From a previous post of this Blog:  (Link below): "All 50 states and the federal government have legal mechanisms allowing prisoners to seek postconviction DNA testing, but many statutes require inmates to satisfy burdensome procedural requirements before courts will authorize testing. Legal scholars and innocence attorneys say those barriers have prevented postconviction DNA testing laws from delivering on their promise of making modern forensic testing available to prisoners with credible innocence claims. Brandon L. Garrett, a leading criminal justice scholar at Duke University School of Law, told Law360 in an email that DNA testing "has certainly taught us that our ideas about finality and strength of evidence are quite fallible and limited." "Given the lessons from those wrongful convictions, and all of the scientific research on how evidence can go wrong, we would expect that we would have clear pathways to investigate new evidence of innocence," Garrett said. "We've made some progress. And we still don't have adequate safeguards in place. Further, we have been backsliding."

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PASSAGE OF THE DAY:  "My husband is currently serving a life-without-parole sentence for a crime he has maintained since he was 19 years old that he did not commit. He is now 68. Nineteen years old. Sixty-eight years old. Nearly 50 years of his life have passed while he has continued to maintain his innocence. And there is DNA evidence. This is not something I dreamed up yesterday. I have documentation of my communications with the District Attorney’s Office concerning this evidence. Several years ago, the newly-elected district attorney told us that, if elected, she would make sure the DNA evidence issue was addressed and that we would be able to pursue testing. She was elected. The matter was subsequently referred to what was described to us as her “special department,” which would follow up on the DNA issue. Those representatives then instructed us to file the appropriate DNA petition. We did exactly what we were told to do. Immediately. And then? Nothing."

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COMMENTARY: "How much is one man's time worth? A wife's plea for accountability and DNA testing," by Griselda "Cris" Moore, published on August 26, 2026.

GIST: "How much is one man’s time worth?

That is the question I keep asking myself as I sit through hearing after hearing, listening to attorneys ask for more time, prosecutors ask for more time, and deadlines come and go.

My husband is currently serving a life-without-parole sentence for a crime he has maintained since he was 19 years old that he did not commit.

He is now 68.

Nineteen years old. Sixty-eight years old.

Nearly 50 years of his life have passed while he has continued to maintain his innocence.

And there is DNA evidence.

This is not something I dreamed up yesterday. I have documentation of my communications with the District Attorney’s Office concerning this evidence.

Several years ago, the newly-elected district attorney told us that, if elected, she would make sure the DNA evidence issue was addressed and that we would be able to pursue testing.

She was elected.

The matter was subsequently referred to what was described to us as her “special department,” which would follow up on the DNA issue.

Those representatives then instructed us to file the appropriate DNA petition.

We did exactly what we were told to do. Immediately.

And then?

Nothing.

The petition was set aside, and the DNA issue was never meaningfully addressed again.

That is difficult for me to understand.

If the District Attorney’s Office is confident that they have the right man, then test the evidence.

If the evidence supports the conviction, then let it say so.

If the evidence raises questions about the conviction, then the justice system has an obligation to confront those questions.

But allowing potentially important evidence to sit untouched while a man grows old behind bars is not justice.

More than eight years ago, California enacted legislation providing a process through which people convicted of crimes can petition for DNA testing when potentially relevant biological evidence exists.

So I must ask a very simple question:

If the District Attorney’s Office is confident they have the right man, what is the holdup?

What are we waiting for?

But for the moment, I want to set that question aside and talk about something else that has become impossible for me to ignore:

TIME.

Time is something none of us gets back.

My husband was a young Black man when he was convicted in the late 1970s. I am not interested in claiming that race explains every injustice or every delay in his case.

But history matters. We cannot pretend that the criminal justice system of that era was immune from racial injustice or that wrongful convictions were impossible.

What matters to me now is what we do with a case nearly 50 years later.

Shouldn’t we be willing to look again?

Shouldn’t we be willing to test evidence?

Shouldn’t we be willing to correct a mistake if one was made?

Instead, I continue to watch time disappear.

In recent years, attorneys have been appointed to represent my husband in proceedings involving his case. These are attorneys who are supposed to advocate for people who are incarcerated and who depend upon them to fight for their rights.

What I have witnessed has left me frustrated, angry and deeply disillusioned with our justice system.

I have watched attorneys request extensions.

I have watched hearings pushed further down the road.

I have watched deadlines established by judges and then watched those deadlines become flexible when another excuse or request for additional time is presented.

And all the while, someone is getting older in a prison cell.

Someone is missing birthdays.

Someone is missing holidays.

Someone is missing family members growing older.

Someone is missing an entire lifetime.

That person doesn’t get an extension on his life.

I am a retired government employee. I worked for the government for 20 years.

If I had repeatedly failed to complete my work, missed deadlines and continually asked for more time without producing results, I have a hard time believing I would have remained employed.

Yet when government-funded attorneys and government offices handle these cases, where is the accountability for getting the work done?

Who pays for all these hours?

The taxpayers do.

I am one of those taxpayers.

I am retired, and I am still paying taxes. I have no problem paying for a justice system that works.

What I have a problem with is paying for unnecessary delay and what appears to be a lack of urgency when someone’s freedom and remaining years of life are at stake.

Recently, I sat in court and listened to the District Attorney explain that more time was needed because all the transcripts had not yet been obtained.

This office has been involved with this same case for more than four years. I have personally communicated with the office throughout this process, and I have documentation of those communications.

So I must ask:

How much time does it take?

And more importantly:

How much time should a human being be expected to surrender while the people handling his case continue asking for more?

We have already spent approximately two and a half years with one court-appointed attorney. From the beginning, a six-month extension was requested.

During that time, there was, from our perspective, very little meaningful contact with her client. When we asked for a change of attorney, the judge defended her qualifications.

Perhaps she was a good attorney.

Perhaps she was not.

But the result was the same:

More time was lost.

And when you are 68 years old and have already spent nearly five decades incarcerated, two and a half years is not a small amount of time.

It is not simply paperwork.

It is not simply another continuance on a court calendar.

It is someone’s life.

I am not asking anyone to perform miracles.

I am not asking attorneys to work beyond what is reasonable.

I am not asking prosecutors to abandon their responsibilities.

I am asking for something much simpler:

DO YOUR JOB.

Do it thoroughly.

Do it competently.

Do it within a reasonable amount of time.

And when a judge establishes a deadline, perhaps that deadline should actually mean something.

Because justice delayed is not an abstract phrase when the person waiting for justice is sitting in a prison cell.

Our justice system is supposed to seek truth — not simply process paperwork until the years run out.

There is a cruel irony in telling an incarcerated person that his case matters while repeatedly telling him that the people handling it simply need more time.

More time for whom?

The attorneys have time.

The prosecutors have time.

The courts have time.

The government has time.

But the person sitting in the prison cell?

He has only the time left in his life.

My husband was 19 when this began.

He is 68 now.

I don’t know how many more years we have together. I don’t know how many more years he has.

What I do know is that none of us gets to add those lost years back onto the end of our lives.

So I am not asking for special treatment.

I am asking for accountability.

I am asking for urgency where urgency is warranted.

I am asking judges to stop routinely accepting delay after delay without meaningful consequences.

I am asking the District Attorney’s Office to remember the commitment that was made regarding the DNA evidence.

And I am asking that the evidence be tested.

Not next year.

Not after another extension.

Test it.

If it confirms their case, then let the evidence speak.

If it raises questions about the conviction, then let the justice system have the courage to face those questions.

Because there is a human being at the center of this case.

His name is my husband.

He was 19 years old when his life was taken from him.

He is 68 now.

Please stop wasting what little time he has left.

DO YOUR JOB."

The entire story can be read at:

https://davisvanguard.org/2026/08/dna-testing-wrongful-conviction/

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. 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. 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;

August 31: Rodney Reed: Texas: DNA: A saving grace? Not always, as Senior Reporter Marco Peggio reports on Law360 in his insightful commentary headed, "DNA can prove your innocence, if they let you test it," in which he notes that, as the Reed case illustrates, some prisoners face "obstacles" in obtaining potentially exculpatory DNA testing: "The case illustrates the central paradox of DNA testing: While advances in forensic science have made it easier than ever to answer questions of guilt and innocence, prisoners often face formidable legal hurdles before they can obtain testing in the first place. Reed's case isn't unique and the problem extends far beyond Texas."

QUOTE OF THE DAY: "Battles around access to DNA testing replicate a long-standing tension at the heart of the criminal justice system: the one between a defendant's claims of innocence and the resolution of criminal cases, known as finality. Prosecutors tend to oppose processes that risk delaying judgment becoming final. One example is the habeas corpus process, through which people seek to vacate their convictions based on claims of constitutional violations in their criminal cases. The process of obtaining DNA testing triggers a similar dynamic. Findley (Keith A. Findley, who co-founded the Wisconsin Innocence Project) said that some prosecutors embrace the use of postconviction DNA testing, and even initiate the testing process. Others vehemently resist it, even in cases where the same technology was used to secure a defendant's conviction. "It's a form of hypocrisy," Findley said. "To some prosecutors and some courts, finality to them becomes more important than ultimate justice, than getting it right, and that's deeply problematic."

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QUOTE TWO OF THE DAY: "All 50 states and the federal government have legal mechanisms allowing prisoners to seek postconviction DNA testing, but many statutes require inmates to satisfy burdensome procedural requirements before courts will authorize testing. Legal scholars and innocence attorneys say those barriers have prevented postconviction DNA testing laws from delivering on their promise of making modern forensic testing available to prisoners with credible innocence claims. Brandon L. Garrett, a leading criminal justice scholar at Duke University School of Law, told Law360 in an email that DNA testing "has certainly taught us that our ideas about finality and strength of evidence are quite fallible and limited." "Given the lessons from those wrongful convictions, and all of the scientific research on how evidence can go wrong, we would expect that we would have clear pathways to investigate new evidence of innocence," Garrett said. "We've made some progress. And we still don't have adequate safeguards in place. Further, we have been backsliding."

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QUOTE THREE OF THE DAY: "Jane Pucher, a senior staff attorney at the Innocence Project who represents Reed, called it "baffling" that DNA evidence could be used to secure convictions but resisted when it could potentially help the defense. "It's incredibly powerful evidence that is just sitting in the clerk's office available to be tested," Pucher said in an interview with Law360. "It makes no sense to have a statute that allows for access to postconviction testing, to have a murder weapon that is going to have on it the DNA from the person who committed this crime, and having that be sitting there and not tested."

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COMMENTARY: " by Senior Reporter Marco Peggio, published by Law360, on August 21, 2026.

Rodney Reed was convicted of murder but argues his innocence would be proved if Texas prosecutors would test the DNA on the likely murder weapon from the case.

Reed's case highlights the obstacles prisoners face in obtaining potentially exculpatory DNA testing. 

On April 23, 1996, the partially clothed body of 19-year-old Stacey Lee Stites was found along a rural road in Bastrop County, Texas. 

She was wearing only a black bra, underwear, torn blue jeans, socks and one tennis shoe. Investigators recovered semen from her vagina and rectum, and a medical examiner later concluded Stites had been sexually assaulted.

Near the body, police recovered part of a brown woven belt missing its buckle.

Another piece of the belt, with the buckle attached, was found inside the pickup truck Stites shared with her fiancée, Jimmy Fennell, a Giddings, Texas, police officer.

Investigators concluded the belt had been used to strangle Stites. The two pieces fit together and the belt's pattern matched marks on her neck.

DNA testing later identified Rodney Reed, a Black man from the Bastrop area, as the source of the semen recovered from Stites' body. Reed was convicted of capital murder and sentenced to death in 1998.

Reed has always maintained his innocence, arguing that he and Stites, who was white, were having an affair and had consensual sex shortly before she was killed.

 His lawyers later uncovered evidence they say points to Fennell, who's white, as the killer, including racist statements. 

In one, made while serving a prison sentence for an unrelated sexual assault, Fennell allegedly said he "'had to kill [his] n***rloving fiancé[e],'" as U.S. Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor wrote in a later opinion.

But for nearly three decades, the centerpiece of Reed's innocence claim has been the belt investigators said was the murder weapon.

 Since 1999, Reed has sought to get the belt tested for DNA, but Texas courts have repeatedly denied his requests.

The case illustrates the central paradox of DNA testing: While advances in forensic science have made it easier than ever to answer questions of guilt and innocence, prisoners often face formidable legal hurdles before they can obtain testing in the first place.

Reed's case isn't unique and the problem extends far beyond Texas. 

All 50 states and the federal government have legal mechanisms allowing prisoners to seek postconviction DNA testing, but many statutes require inmates to satisfy burdensome procedural requirements before courts will authorize testing.

Legal scholars and innocence attorneys say those barriers have prevented postconviction DNA testing laws from delivering on their promise of making modern forensic testing available to prisoners with credible innocence claims.

Brandon L. Garrett, a leading criminal justice scholar at Duke University School of Law, told Law360 in an email that DNA testing "has certainly taught us that our ideas about finality and strength of evidence are quite fallible and limited."

"Given the lessons from those wrongful convictions, and all of the scientific research on how evidence can go wrong, we would expect that we would have clear pathways to investigate new evidence of innocence," Garrett said. "We've made some progress. And we still don't have adequate safeguards in place. Further, we have been backsliding."

The Promise of DNA

The DNA Breakthrough

According to the National Registry of Exonerations, DNA testing has played a direct or circumstantial role in 648 exonerations since 1989. 

That figure includes cases in which DNA excluded the defendant and identified another perpetrator, or in which it helped undermine a prosecutor's theory.

Forensic scientist Edward T. Blake pioneered the technology in the United States. 

In 1986, he conducted the first DNA test ever admitted in an American court. 

Three years later, he helped exonerate Gary Dotson, one of the first people in the world to be cleared through DNA testing after he was rongfully convicted of kidnapping and raping a 16-year-old girl who later recanted her allegations.

Blake also helped secure the 1993 exoneration of Kirk Bloodsworth, the first person on death row to be cleared through DNA testing after his wrongful conviction for the rape and murder of a 9-year-old girl.

According to the Innocence Project, the nonprofit founded in 1992 by Barry Scheck and Peter Neufeld as a law clinic at the Benjamin N. Cardozo School of Law, Blake's exculpatory DNA reports helped free dozens of wrongfully convicted people during the technology's early years. 

Before DNA technology entered the picture, the dominant view — reflected in literature, Supreme Court opinions and media accounts — was that, although fallible, the criminal justice system only rarely produced a wrongful conviction.

So when DNA technology began being used to test crime scene samples and link them to suspects in the mid-1980s, it was a game changer. 

As testing began producing exonerations, starting with the clearing of David Vasquez for a rape and murder in 1989, assumptions about the accuracy of the criminal justice system began to shatter.

Keith A. Findley, who co-founded the Wisconsin Innocence Project in 1998 and recently retired from teaching at the University of Wisconsin Law School, told Law360 that the pre-DNA presumption that wrongful convictions were rare was so ingrained that even postconviction attorneys were wary about finding defendants who were truly innocent. 

But soon enough they discovered, case after case, that errors were rampant, Findley said.

"When the first DNA exonerations came along, they were shocking," Findley said. "They were stunning because not only did they prove with near certainty — as near as you can get — that an innocent person had been wrongly convicted, but they told us who it was: they gave us a name, a face, a story, a life."

Although DNA testing applied only in a small subset of cases — where a suspect left biological evidence at the crime scene — those exonerations provided unprecedented proof that many practices previously relied on in the justice system were actually faulty, and often led to wrongful convictions.

"DNA testing proved it was the gold standard. It proved definitively that wrongful convictions occur," said Maurice Possley, a Pulitzer Prize-winning former journalist at the Chicago Tribune who is now a senior researcher at the National Registry of Exonerations.

That reckoning helped focus the national attention on practices such as mistaken eyewitness identification procedures, coercive police interrogations, poor defense lawyering, withholding of exculpatory evidence and a wide range of error-prone forensic methods.

"DNA testing has led to a lot of criminal justice reforms that are designed to increase accuracy," Daniel Medwed, a leading legal scholar on wrongful convictions and postconviction remedies, told Law360.

With DNA testing providing scientific near-certainty of innocence, even nonscientific evidence pointing toward exoneration such as a witness recanting their testimony, or a defendant recanting self-incriminating statements, began to be regarded as more valuable overall.

In the decades since its onset, DNA technology itself has also continued to evolve, becoming more accurate and requiring less biological evidence than in the past.

Forensic investigators are able to extrapolate DNA profiles from skin cells left through casual contact on open surfaces, a method known as touch DNA.

 Mitochondrial DNA, which is stored inside parts of cells responsible for creating energy and can be recovered in skeletal remains, shed hairs or hair fragments, can be used to identify people in cases where samples are degraded or old.

"As DNA has become more precise, it's not only more accurate but it also requires less biological evidence, which means it's available in more cases," Medwed said. "Nowadays, DNA testing is often available at the beginning of cases, so you can weed out innocent suspects."

The Reality of Procedural Obstacles

In the initial years DNA testing was available, convicted people often faced uphill battles to access that testing.

 Prosecutors were often successful in persuading judges, typically the ones who presided over the original trials, to deny motions for DNA testing.

Over time, however, as exonerations occurred more often, political pressure increased on state legislators to enact laws creating a legal path for prisoners to obtain DNA testing. 

New York was first in 1994, followed by Illinois in 1997.

 A later wave of statutes created mechanisms to ensure that evidence was preserved so that it could be tested later.

In the mid-2000s, prosecutorial offices began creating conviction integrity review units. Dallas County District Attorney Craig Watkins formed the first substantial one in 2007.

But just as they created access, legislatures also imposed conditions on when courts may order testing. Depending on the state, defendants may have to either be incarcerated, file within prescribed deadlines, overcome restrictions tied to guilty pleas or confessions or to show that favorable DNA results likely would have changed the outcome of their trial.

Postconviction DNA testing isn't without downsides. It can be costly and time-consuming.

Still, the cumulative effect of these barriers is troubling because they eliminate a tool that could either confirm the integrity of a conviction or expose a wrongful one, Medwed said.

"Anything that reinforces accuracy — even if the test validates the conviction — that's a positive thing. It reinforces our sense of the integrity of the system," he said.

There have been cases in which DNA testing confirmed guilt.

 For example, Roger Keith Coleman, who maintained his innocence until his execution in Virginia in 1992 for the rape and murder of his sister-in-law, was posthumously linked to the crime by DNA testing in 2006, confirming the jury's verdict.

The Virginia PostConviction DNA Testing Program, a state-funded initiative that reviewed archived case files from 1973 to 1988, shows how postconviction DNA testing can be used to reinforce confidence in the original verdicts, in addition to exonerating innocent people. 

While the project led to 13 exonerations and identified previously unknown perpetrators in at least 16 cases, DNA testing also showed that, among 227 sexual assault convictions that produced determinate results, 187 yielded inculpatory results, meaning the convicted person was not excluded as the source of the biological evidence.

Not every procedural requirement carries equal weight, experts say. 

Attorneys who litigate postconviction DNA cases say the most consequential obstacle is often the "materiality" standard, which generally requires defendants to show that favorable DNA results would likely have changed the outcome of their trial.

"The biggest hurdle to overcome is the materiality standard," Chase Baumgartner, a staff attorney at the Innocence Project of Texas and former DNA analyst, told Law360. "The courts say, 'even if you got all the DNA testing you wanted, it wouldn't make a difference in your case. So we're not going to waste the time and effort and money to do this because it just wouldn't make a difference.'"

Mike Ware, executive director of the Innocence Project of Texas, said that requirement can force courts to speculate about the value of evidence before it has ever been tested.

"It's kind of almost putting the cart before the horse because you really cannot definitively say how material the results are going to be until you know what the results are," Ware said.

He pointed to the case of Steven Phillips as an example of why courts should be cautious about denying DNA testing based on predictions of what the evidence will show.

In Phillips' case, the state successfully argued that DNA testing was unnecessary because multiple eyewitnesses had identified Phillips as the perpetrator of a series of sexual assaults in the Dallas area, making identity irrelevant. Testing was ultimately conducted anyway, Ware said, and it excluded Phillips as the source of the biological evidence and identified the actual perpetrator through a direct DNA comparison.

Reed's Long Fight for DNA Testing

In 2001, Texas enacted Chapter 64, one of the nation's earliest postconviction DNA testing statutes. 

The law created a procedure allowing convicted defendants to seek DNA testing of biological evidence under specified conditions.

Reed turned to Chapter 64 in 2014 after years of unsuccessfully seeking DNA testing of the belt, asking a Bastrop County court to order modern testing of what prosecutors identified as the murder weapon. 

His attorneys argued that advances in forensic science since his 1998 trial could recover biological material from the woven belt and help determine who handled it.

Texas argued that Reed failed to satisfy several of Chapter 64's requirements, including demonstrating that the belt had been preserved with an adequate chain of custody. 

Prosecutors also contended that any DNA recovered could reflect genetic material that was casually transferred prior to the crime and, in any event, would not likely have changed the outcome of Reed's trial.

The Texas Court of Criminal Appeals ultimately denied the motion, finding that the belt was "contaminated" because it had been "handled by ungloved attorneys, court personnel, and possibly the jurors." 

The court also concluded that Reed had not shown that exculpatory testing results would have resulted in his acquittal.

Reed then sued in federal court, arguing that the state courts' interpretation of Chapter 64's chain-of-custody requirements violated his due process rights. 

In 2023, the U.S. Supreme Court held that Reed's lawsuit was timely and could proceed but did not decide whether he was entitled to DNA testing.

Jane Pucher, a senior staff attorney at the Innocence Project who represents Reed, called it "baffling" that DNA evidence could be used to secure convictions but resisted when it could potentially help the defense.

"It's incredibly powerful evidence that is just sitting in the clerk's office available to be tested," Pucher said in an interview with Law360. "It makes no sense to have a statute that allows for access to postconviction testing, to have a murder weapon that is going to have on it the DNA from the person who committed this crime, and having that be sitting there and not tested."

Pucher said testing could be completed in a matter of weeks, with the Innocence Project covering the cost, yet the litigation over access to the evidence has stretched on for more than a decade.

 During that time, Texas even sought an execution date for Reed in 2019 before it was ultimately stayed.

Pucher said testing the belt's inner grooves, areas less likely to contain DNA from ordinary handling, could help identify who strangled Stites.

"We know that the person who committed this crime, who strangled her, necessarily used a lot of force, held the belt for a long time, probably sweat on the belt," Pucher said. "If there is DNA in there, it's from the perpetrator."

In an amicus brief supporting Reed's latest appeal, Baumgartner, the former DNA analyst, argued that even accounting for possible contamination, testing the belt could still include or exclude Reed or Fennell "with above 95% accuracy."

In March, however, the U.S. Supreme Court declined to hear the appeal. Writing in dissent,Justice Sonia Sotomayor called it "inexplicable" that prosecutors continued to oppose DNA testing of the belt "despite the very substantial possibility that such testing could exculpate Reed and identify the real killer."

"The State will likely execute Reed without the world ever knowing whether Reed's or Fennell's DNA is on the murder weapon, even though a simple DNA test could reveal that information," Justice Sotomayor wrote, joined by Justices Elena Kagan and Ketanji Brown Jackson.

Finality Versus Innocence Claims

When Guilty Pleas and Confessions Bar DNA Testing

Findley said access to DNA testing exposes the coercive pressures embedded in the criminal justice system and an emphasis on finality that can come at the expense of defendants' constitutional rights. 

That tension is particularly evident in states that bar or restrict postconviction DNA testing for defendants who confessed to crimes or pled guilty.

About 94% of state criminal convictions and 97% of federal criminal convictions in the United States are obtained through guilty pleas rather than trials. 

Yet, according to the National Registry of Exonerations, 925 of the 3,846 people exonerated since 1989 — about 24% — had pled guilty. About 13% of exonerees falsely confessed to the crimes for which they were convicted.

"Two of the flaws of the current system — police coercion that leads to false confession and bargaining power that can lead innocent people to plead guilty — are sometimes used as barriers to access to the DNA that can prove they're innocent," Findley said.

Four states have laws that prohibit or restrict postconviction DNA testing for defendants who pled guilty or no contest, a plea in which a defendant accepts a conviction without expressly admitting guilt.

Medwed said those restrictions on DNA testing fail to account for the reality of plea bargaining and the coercive effect of what is known as the "trial penalty."

"Most people plead guilty, and they might plead guilty even though they're innocent because they're risk averse and they're worried about a much worse sentence after trial," Medwed said. "The idea is if you plead guilty, you forfeit your right to seek postconviction DNA testing."

The first iterations of Texas' Chapter 64 foreclosed testing for people who had confessed to crimes under the rationale that a confession makes any evidence subject to DNA testing immaterial. 

As statistics began showing that false confessions are a leading cause of wrongful convictions, the state legislature later removed that provision from the statute.

Battles around access to DNA testing replicate a long-standing tension at the heart of the criminal justice system: the one between a defendant's claims of innocence and the resolution of criminal cases, known as finality.

Prosecutors tend to oppose processes that risk delaying judgment becoming final. One example is the habeas corpus process, through which people seek to vacate their convictions based on claims of constitutional violations in their criminal cases. The process of obtaining DNA testing triggers a similar dynamic.

Findley said that some prosecutors embrace the use of postconviction DNA testing, and even initiate the testing process. Others vehemently resist it, even in cases where the same technology was used to secure a defendant's conviction.

"It's a form of hypocrisy," Findley said. "To some prosecutors and some courts, finality to them becomes more important than ultimate justice, than getting it right, and that's deeply problematic."

Findley said resistance is often fueled by confirmation bias: Prosecutors and courts are so convinced in the guilt of a defendant and so invested in the outcome of a case that they cannot conceive the possibility that DNA testing could produce a different result.

"The system is so attached to this notion of finality that often prosecutors and courts resist, even when the DNA could be fairly significant, principally because they remain convinced the person is guilty," Findley said. "Remember that in every one of the DNA exonerations, the system was convinced the person was guilty."

Baumgartner said Reed's case has taken on significance beyond his own conviction because the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals' interpretation of Chapter 64 is now being cited in other cases to oppose postconviction DNA testing.

One example, he said, is Paul Shoemaker, a client of the Innocence Project of Texas who was convicted of felony murder in the death of Richard Reyes, who was shot outside the Valle Vista Apartments in Harlingen, Texas. 

Shoemaker is seeking DNA testing of a lighter that prosecutors say the shooter used just minutes before the killing and that police recovered the following morning.

The lighter has remained stored in a sealed evidence envelope at the police station. 

Prosecutors successfully argued that the evidence should not be tested because, under the TCCA's ruling in Reed's case, the markings on the evidence envelope — such as officers' initials and dates — raise chain-of-custody concerns similar to those the court found dispositive in Reed. 

The state said there were many possible contributors to the DNA on the lighter, arguing it was unlikely that any identified DNA would identify the shooter.

"Reed's case has kind of exploded beyond his and has become a new way to deny testing when the DNA does matter in the case," Baumgartner said.

Ware said denying DNA testing based on technical interpretations of Chapter 64 undermines what the statute was designed to accomplish.

"You have to ask yourself: why would the state ever oppose a Chapter 64 motion?" he said. "They don't want to be embarrassed by an exoneration. Never mind that it might allow them to go out and catch the actual perpetrator and, you know, enhance public safety.""

The entire story can be read at:

https://www.law360.com/articles/2507387/dna-can-prove-your-innocence-if-they-let-you-test-it

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. 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. 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;

August 30: AI-powered surveillance networks: Startling Flock exposé: Mother Jones investigation (Assistant editor Schuyler) reveals that police are spending opioid settlement funds on Flock cameras - and although historic opioid settlements were supposed to be a lifeline for underserved communities, much of that money is flowing to law enforcement, noting that: "Public health advocates hoped the settlements would provide lifesaving resources for historically underserved communities ravaged by opioid addiction. But as the money has been disbursed, local officials have come under fire for putting crucial dollars toward policing instead of prioritizing addiction prevention, recovery, treatment, and harm reduction services: KFF Health News found that police spent settlement money on Tasers, firearm silencers, drones, and more; in West Virginia, some rural counties used the funds to pay off their jail bills."

QUOTE OF THE DAY: "Adam Menear, a 45-year-old father born and raised in Morgantown, started a petition in March calling on the Monongalia County Commission to halt the installation of Flock cameras that has received more than 1,500 signatures to date.

“There is not a single human being inside the state of West Virginia who was born and raised here who has not been adversely affected by the opioid crisis,” Menear told me. “The new crisis is the fact that the funds that are supposed to go to the public to help build back and reverse the nightmare that we lived through are being appropriated to use artificial intelligence to surveil us.”

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

PASSAGE OF THE DAY: "But little attention has been paid to how police departments have used those opioid funds to build out AI-powered surveillance networks like Flock, whose ALPRs have become increasingly popular with police even as they’ve drawn intense bipartisan pushback in the communities where they’ve been deployed. A review of meeting minutes, local reporting, state opioid expenditure disclosures, and invoices obtained via public records requests reveals that at least twelve sheriffs’ offices and police departments have since 2024 spent their opioid funds on Flock cameras. Another seven law enforcement agencies used the money to purchase similar ALPR technology from competitors Motorola, Axon, and Verkada. In sum, Mother Jones found that 19 agencies in ten different states spent more than $920,000 in opioid funds on Flock and other ALPRs, a likely undercount given the inconsistency with which opioid settlement expenditures are tracked and disclosed across states and local jurisdictions."

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

PASSAGE TWO OF THE DAY: "The surveillance industry has taken notice, explicitly encouraging cops to spend opioid money on the technology. A December blog post from the multinational security firm Leonardo called opioid settlement funds “a major new opportunity” for law enforcement to invest in license plate readers.

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

STORY: "Police Are Spending Opioid Settlement Funds on Flock Cameras," by Assistant Editor Schuyler Mitchell, published by 'Mother Jones' on August 27, 2026. (Schuyler Mitchell is an assistant editor at Mother Jones. She previously worked as an associate editor at The Intercept and a political columnist at Truthout. Her freelance writing and reporting have appeared in The Baffler, Dirt, New York magazine, Los Angeles magazine, and elsewhere. Currently based in New York, she was born in Texas and raised in North Carolina.)

SUB-HEADING: "Historic opioid settlements were supposed to be a lifeline for underserved communities. But much of that money is flowing to law enforcement."

GIST: "More than a dozen local law enforcement agencies across the country have used opioid settlement money to procure Flock cameras and other AI-powered automated license plate readers (ALPRs), an investigation by Mother Jones has found.

Settlement funds began flowing to states and localities in 2022, after major pharmaceutical companies agreed to resolve thousands of lawsuits over the industry’s role in the opioid crisis. Altogether, state and local governments secured more than $50 billion in funds, to be paid out over 18 years, from the various manufacturers, distributors, and pharmacies accused of fueling the deadly epidemic.

Public health advocates hoped the settlements would provide lifesaving resources for historically underserved communities ravaged by opioid addiction. But as the money has been disbursed, local officials have come under fire for putting crucial dollars toward policing instead of prioritizing addiction prevention, recovery, treatment, and harm reduction services: KFF Health News found that police spent settlement money on Tasers, firearm silencers, drones, and more; in West Virginia, some rural counties used the funds to pay off their jail bills.


“Whatever funds you’re spending on a camera, you’re not spending on getting someone into treatment.”

But little attention has been paid to how police departments have used those opioid funds to build out AI-powered surveillance networks like Flock, whose ALPRs have become increasingly popular with police even as they’ve drawn intense bipartisan pushback in the communities where they’ve been deployed. A review of meeting minutes, local reporting, state opioid expenditure disclosures, and invoices obtained via public records requests reveals that at least twelve sheriffs’ offices and police departments have since 2024 spent their opioid funds on Flock cameras. Another seven law enforcement agencies used the money to purchase similar ALPR technology from competitors Motorola, Axon, and Verkada.

In sum, Mother Jones found that 19 agencies in ten different states spent more than $920,000 in opioid funds on Flock and other ALPRs, a likely undercount given the inconsistency with which opioid settlement expenditures are tracked and disclosed across states and local jurisdictions.

In city council and county commission meetings, police sought to convince local officials that the cameras were a good use of the opioid money because they would help catch drug traffickers and reduce drug-related crimes. But Robyn Oster, director of policy at the nonprofit Partnership to End Addiction, said that this type of spending doesn’t honor the spirit of the settlements.


“It’s just really not the way to make the most impact in addressing addiction,” said Oster. “While $50 billion may seem like a lot of funds, once it’s divided up over 18 years and thousands of localities, a lot of places really aren’t getting that much, particularly given the scope of the crisis…Whatever funds you’re spending on a camera, you’re not spending on getting someone into treatment.”

At a June 2025 meeting in Sunnyside, Washington—an agricultural hub where roughly one in five people live in poverty—council members were thrilled by the prospect of spending their opioid settlement money on a Flock camera. Around $200,000 had been sitting, untouched, in the city’s coffers since 2022, even as the area faced a dire need for expanded treatment services: Yakima County lacks a medical detox center and has one of the highest overdose death rates in Washington state.

“We’ve had several people … in that strip mall next to the hotel … that have complained about drug use and things like that behind their business, and they’ve asked us to place a trailer there,” the Sunnyside police chief told city councilmembers. He requested the approval of $24,000 in opioid settlement funds to go to a one-year lease for a mobile Flock security trailer, which would integrate with the city’s existing Flock surveillance system.

“I was trying to find creative ways to pay for one because $24,000 wasn’t in our budget this year,” he added, “but we’ve got this opioid settlement money, and if we’re tying it to the drug use problem we’re having at these hotels, I think we can justify the expenditure there.”

The city council unanimously voted to approve the police chief’s request. “Can we afford two of them?” one councilmember asked with enthusiasm.

Thousands of miles away, in Ohio County, West Virginia, county commissioners also voted unanimously in favor of spending opioid money on Flock cameras. In September 2025, the commission approved the sheriff’s office’s request for six Flock ALPRs, totaling $57,900 for the first three years. According to meeting minutes, Chief Deputy Kent Lewis “said a representative from the company is able to come and give a presentation,” and “added that Walmart and Lowe’s use FLOCK, so we may be able to tie into their system as well.” When one commissioner asked whether the cameras were an appropriate use of the funds, the deputy sheriff responded that they would “[help] track drugs coming into our area.”

Three months later, Sheriff H. Nelson Croft Jr. gave an update on Flock to the commissioners. According to meeting minutes, the system logged 28,000 license plate readings on Black Friday alone. Ohio County has a population of around 40,000.

The surveillance industry has taken notice, explicitly encouraging cops to spend opioid money on the technology. A December blog post from the multinational security firm Leonardo called opioid settlement funds “a major new opportunity” for law enforcement to invest in license plate readers.

“Eligible spending categories vary by state,” the blog post noted, but approved uses often include “LPR technology due to its role in detecting vehicles tied to drug trafficking, overdose events, and fugitive recovery.” In June, 404 Media reported that Leonardo planned to add sensors to its ALPRs that “would also sweep up unique identifiers of mobile phones, wearables, and other Bluetooth-enabled devices” in passing cars, enabling the cameras to track not just cars but “the location of particular people.”

“The funds that are supposed to go to the public to help build back and reverse the nightmare that we lived through are being appropriated to use artificial intelligence to surveil us.”

Mother Jones identified four additional locations where local officials explored using opioid money to pay for Flock cameras but ultimately funded them through other parts of city or county budgets. In Green, Ohio, for instance, the city council approved the purchase of 14 Flock cameras in 2024, and the mayor stated at the time that the city could use $20,000 of opioid money to offset the cost. But Shelley Goodrich, Green’s director of finance, told me the city ultimately paid for the first two years of the contract using a different funding source. “We were planning to use Drug Task Force funds beginning in 2026; however, we have not made any payments in 2026,” she wrote. This month, the Green City Council voted against renewing its contract with Flock, citing concerns about privacy and oversight.

In Etowah County, Alabama, commissioners authorized two disbursements from the opioid settlement fund to pay for ten Flock cameras in August 2024 and March 2025, totaling $42,267. But minutes from October 2025 show that the sheriff department’s budget was increased by $42,267, “to reimburse the Opioid Settlement fund for the FY 2024 and FY 2025 annual contract for the Flock safety cameras.” The Etowah County Sheriff’s Office did not respond to questions about why it reimbursed the funds or whether it plans to use opioid money for future renewals of the Flock contract.

Opioid spending on police surveillance technology isn’t limited to ALPRs. Mother Jones also identified six locations that have used opioid settlement money to fund contracts with Peregrine Technologies, an AI-powered software platform that integrates law enforcement surveillance data from a variety of sources.

In October, the city of Campbell, California, approved a three-year, $71,500 annual contract with Peregrine using opioid settlement funds. A publicly accessible copy of the contract states that “the initial Customer Data sources and systems” integrated into Peregrine would include both Flock and Axon ALPRs, as well as Axon body cameras, police records, and the Axon Fusus intelligence platform. Two months later, the city council in Chicopee, Massachusetts, approved a five-year, $837,500 contract with Peregrine, to be paid using opioid funds.

Chicopee was among the western Massachusetts cities hit hardest by the opioid crisis, and in 2024, it still had the second-highest overdose rate in Hampden County. In meeting minutes, the Chicopee mayor noted there was “quite a bit of money in the opioid agreement account” and said that the Hampden County Sheriff’s Office supported increasing the Peregrine contract from three years to five years.

Peregrine itself has been proud to announce “new partnerships” with police departments in Cranston and South Kingstown, Rhode Island. “Both agencies leveraged opioid settlement funds to invest in their communities by strengthening interagency collaboration, operational awareness, and investigative workflows through Peregrine,” stated a July LinkedIn post from the company.

Revelations that local governments spent residents’ opioid money on Flock cameras has stoked furor in both Pensacola, Florida, and Monongalia County, West Virginia. In Pensacola, the mayor approved a two-year, $108,000 contract for 18 Flock cameras using opioid funds. After seven months of public backlash, the Pensacola City Council announced in June that it would no longer allow opioid money to be spent on Flock cameras when the contract next came up for renewal.

In Morgantown, West Virginia, constituents have shown up at the Monongalia County Courthouse every Wednesday morning to speak out against local officials’ support for Flock. In November, the Monongalia County Commission approved the sheriff’s request to use up to $180,000 of settlement funds to install 20 Flock cameras across the county. To some people in the area, this use of the opioid money felt like salt in an all-too-fresh wound.

“As somebody who has had family members directly affected by the opioid crisis, I find the use of these funds absolutely disgusting,” said Harrison York, a 25-year-old electrical engineering student at West Virginia University in Morgantown. “The thing that got my family members clean were methadone services, and that’s what this opioid settlement money should be used for.” He pointed to research showing that criminalization does little to help people struggling with drug addiction, and contended that further policing “would punish the poor and the working class, who are victims” of the opioid epidemic.

Adam Menear, a 45-year-old father born and raised in Morgantown, started a petition in March calling on the Monongalia County Commission to halt the installation of Flock cameras that has received more than 1,500 signatures to date.

“There is not a single human being inside the state of West Virginia who was born and raised here who has not been adversely affected by the opioid crisis,” Menear told me. “The new crisis is the fact that the funds that are supposed to go to the public to help build back and reverse the nightmare that we lived through are being appropriated to use artificial intelligence to surveil us.”

https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2026/08/police-opioid-funding-flock-alpr-camera-surveillance-tech/?utm_source=mj-newsletters&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=daily-newsletter-08-28-2026

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. 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. 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;

August 29: "Sue Neill-Fraser: Tasmania: (Australia): Major (Welcome) Development: Gag Removed. ABC (Reporter Scout Wallen) reports that she can now claim her innocence publicly, thanks to a ruling obtained by the Human Rights Law Centre, noting that: The new condition prevented her from communicating "directly or indirectly — including through third parties, written statements, electronic communications, social media platforms, television, radio, podcasts, streaming services, online video-sharing platforms, or any other public or broadcast media — to assert claims regarding your alleged innocence, wrongful conviction, or dispute the legitimacy of your conviction or sentencing". On her behalf, the Human Rights Law Centre challenged this new condition in the Supreme Court of Tasmania last year, arguing it was unreasonable and breached her freedom of political communication>"

BACKGROUND: (From a previous post of this Blog.)..."Rotten to its core’: No saying sorry in Tasmanian justice," by Hugh Selby," March 18, 2026:  ("The abominable list of serious errors blossoming into a complete cover-up continues): "Most recently they have made a mockery of “Right to Information” by using far-fetched excuses to refuse to release documents. They have even claimed in writing that sharing scientific information obtained from an interstate laboratory would damage relations among the States and so must be kept secret. Go figure! Their dirty tricks department has resorted to threats of defamation against publishers to have articles exposing the errors taken down, threats of contempt of court proceedings to keep misconduct under wraps, interference in court processes to delay the handing down of a decision and change the composition of a hearing bench.  People with nothing to hide don’t play those sorts of games."............"The paper also sets out serious shortcomings in the police investigation, not only in 2009 and 2010, but also up to and beyond Ms Neill-Fraser’s 2021 appeal. These shortcomings include the failure to carry out some basic investigations into the movements of people who should have been suspects because of their criminal history and associates, coupled with a failure to disclose relevant material to the prosecution. This in turn meant that Ms Neill-Fraser’s lawyers were short changed on information to which they were entitled. Worse, important scientific material that pointed to a young woman being on the yacht that Australia Day afternoon was not put before the 2021 appeal judges, despite it being in the papers prepared for that appeal."

https://draft.blogger.com/blog/post/edit/120008354894645705/2208801372188162250

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

QUOTE OF THE DAY: "Sarah Schwartz, legal director at the Human Rights Law Centre, said the removal of the condition was an important vindication of Neill-Fraser's rights. "Freedom of expression is a fundamental right, and we are pleased that Susan is no longer subject to a restriction that prevented her from being able to participate in public debate," Ms Schwartz said. "People who have experienced incarceration are often among the most important voices in discussions about the criminal legal system, and protecting their ability to speak out and advocate for change is an important safeguard against injustice."

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

PASSAGE OF THE DAY: "On her behalf, the Human Rights Law Centre challenged this new condition in the Supreme Court of Tasmania last year, arguing it was unreasonable and breached her freedom of political communication. In a statement, the law centre said the parole board agreed to remove that condition on Tuesday.

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

STORY: "Convicted murderer Sue Neill-Fraser can now talk to media after parole condition challenged, law centre says," by Scout Wallen, published by ABC, on August 25, 2026.

In short:

The Human Rights Law Centre says a restrictive parole condition that stopped Sue Neill-Fraser from being able to claim her innocence in the media has been removed after a court challenge.

Neill-Fraser was found guilty of murdering her partner Bob Chappell on their yacht in Hobart in 2009. She served 13 years in jail and was released on parole in 2022.

What's next?

The Parole Board would not confirm the removal of the condition. The case will return to the Supreme Court on Monday.

Convicted murderer Sue Neill-Fraser will be allowed to speak to the media after a gag order that was part of her parole conditions was removed, the Human Rights Law Centre says.

Neill-Fraser was found guilty of murdering her partner Bob Chappell aboard his yacht in Hobart in 2009.

She served 13 years in prison and was released on parole in 2022.

In December 2024, the Tasmanian Parole Board added a condition that she not speak "directly or indirectly with any media outlet to claim [her] alleged innocence and/or wrongful conviction".

This was replaced by a new parole condition in May 2025, which the Human Rights Law Centre said was more restrictive.

The new condition prevented her from communicating "directly or indirectly — including through third parties, written statements, electronic communications, social media platforms, television, radio, podcasts, streaming services, online video-sharing platforms, or any other public or broadcast media — to assert claims regarding your alleged innocence, wrongful conviction, or dispute the legitimacy of your conviction or sentencing".

On her behalf, the Human Rights Law Centre challenged this new condition in the Supreme Court of Tasmania last year, arguing it was unreasonable and breached her freedom of political communication.

In a statement, the law centre said the parole board agreed to remove that condition on Tuesday.


The Parole Board refused to confirm the condition's removal, telling the ABC it was unable to comment on individual matters or matters currently before the court.

In a statement, a spokesperson said the Tasmanian government had been "advised that the Parole Board has made a decision to withdraw a parole condition it had previously placed on Susan Neill-Fraser".

"The Parole Board makes its decisions entirely independent of government," the spokesperson said.
Neill-Fraser maintains innocence

Sarah Schwartz, legal director at the Human Rights Law Centre, said the removal of the condition was an important vindication of Neill-Fraser's rights.

"Freedom of expression is a fundamental right, and we are pleased that Susan is no longer subject to a restriction that prevented her from being able to participate in public debate," Ms Schwartz said.

"People who have experienced incarceration are often among the most important voices in discussions about the criminal legal system, and protecting their ability to speak out and advocate for change is an important safeguard against injustice."

Neill-Fraser was arrested in August 2009, about seven months after Mr Chappell disappeared, and was convicted of murder by a jury.

She has always maintained her innocence and has gained a loyal following of supporters over the years.

The parole conditions case returns to court on Monday."

The entire story can be read at:

https://www.abc.net.au/news/2026-08-25/murderer-sue-neill-fraser-can-now-talk-to-media-parole-change/107075266

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. 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. 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;

August 28: Robin (Rocky) Myers: Death Row, Alabama: Major (Unwelcome) Development: From our 'Enough to make one weep' - and 'How low can they go - departments: He has been a denied a new trial - in spite of evidence that his attorney at his first trial had ties to the Ku Klux Clan, The Alabama Reflector (Reporter Ralph Chapoco) reports, noting that: “No court has ever heard evidence or ruled on the central claim in this petition: that the lawyer appointed to defend Rocky Myers, a Black man on trial for his life, had spent the previous decade as the corporate counsel, public spokesman, and ideological champion for the United Klans of America,” said J. Mitchell McGuire, counsel for Myers. “That question has never been ‘tested.’ It has been avoided.”

QUOTE  OF THE DAY: "No murder weapon was ever found, and Myers maintains he never entered her home. No physical evidence connected Myers to the scene, and witnesses gave different descriptions of the potential assailant. A jury recommended sentencing Myers to life in prison, but the trial judge imposed the death penalty. Gov. Kay Ivey granted Myers clemency petition last year, saying she harbored doubts about his involvement in Tucker’s murder. “I am not convinced that Mr. Myers is innocent, but I am not so convinced of his guilt as to approve of his execution,” Ivey said in the news release when she announced that his clemency petition had been granted. “I therefore must respect both the jury’s decision to convict him and its recommendation that he be sentenced to life without parole.”

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

PASSAGE  OF THE DAY: "Myers filed his most recent request in September for a hearing to receive a new trial after members of his legal team learned that his attorney, John Mays, spoke at nine KKK rallies between 1977 and 1981 and defended Robert Shelton, an imperial wizard of the KKK, in a lawsuit filed against the FBI in 1977. According to a newspaper account, Mays used a racial epithet when he spoke at a 1977 KKK rally in Suffolk, Virginia before 200 people. The court filing from Myers also states that Mays spoke at KKK rallies in Alabama, Florida, Virginia, Kentucky, Mississippi and Tennessee. At one rally in Tennessee in 1981, Mays “exhorted caucasians to band together in the face of an oncoming race war,”according to a newspaper article published in 1981.

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

PASSAGE TWO OF THE DAY: "The DA’s Office for Morgan County opposed Myers’ request for a hearing because the accounts of Mays’ presence at rallies were already available and could have been presented at trial. Myers plans to appeal."

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

STORY: "Judge denies new trial for Alabama inmate who cited defense attorney’s ties to KKK," by Reporter Ralph Chapoco, published by The Alabama Reflector, on August 28, 2026. (Ralph Chapoco covers state politics as a senior reporter for States Newsroom. His main responsibility is the criminal justice system in Alabama. Alabama Reflector is part of States Newsroom, the nation’s largest state-focused nonprofit news organization.:

PHOTO CAPTION: "A Morgan County Circuit Judge Friday denied former death row inmate Robin "Rocky" Myers a new trial over his conviction for the 1991 murder of Ludie Mae Tucker in Decatur. Myers, who maintains his innocence, cited evidence that his defense attorney at his first trial had ties to the Ku Klux Klan.)

GIST: "A Morgan County judge Friday denied a new trial for a former Alabama death row inmate who cited evidence that his attorney at his first trial had ties to the Ku Klux Klan.

Morgan County Circuit Court Judge Charles Elliott denied the motion from Robin “Rocky” Myers, who is currently serving a life sentence for his alleged role in the death of Ludie Mae Tucker in Decatur in 1991. Myers, who maintains his innocence, was originally sentenced to death, but Gov. Kay Ivey commuted it to life in prison last year.

Elliott wrote that the Rule 32 appeals process, which allows people convicted of a crime the opportunity to present arguments for a new trial, “establishes a bright line rule on when a claim for ineffective assistance of counsel claim can be made.”

‘“In no event can relief be granted on a claim of ineffective assistance of trial or appellate counsel raised in a successive petition,’” Elliott wrote. “The only exception to this bright line rule is when a petition is filed to be able to obtain an out-of-time appeal.”

Messages seeking comment were sent Friday to John Mays, the attorney who represented Myers at his first trial, and the Morgan County District Attorney’s Office.

“No court has ever heard evidence or ruled on the central claim in this petition: that the lawyer appointed to defend Rocky Myers, a Black man on trial for his life, had spent the previous decade as the corporate counsel, public spokesman, and ideological champion for the United Klans of America,” said J. Mitchell McGuire, counsel for Myers. “That question has never been ‘tested.’ It has been avoided.”

Myers, who lived across the street from Tucker, was accused of entering her home in October 1991 to use the phone, getting into an argument with her cousin and husband, and stabbing Tucker, who died in the hospital a few hours later.

No murder weapon was ever found, and Myers maintains he never entered her home. No physical evidence connected Myers to the scene, and witnesses gave different descriptions of the potential assailant. A jury recommended sentencing Myers to life in prison, but the trial judge imposed the death penalty.

Gov. Kay Ivey granted Myers’ clemency petition last year, saying she harbored doubts about his involvement in Tucker’s murder.

“I am not convinced that Mr. Myers is innocent, but I am not so convinced of his guilt as to approve of his execution,” Ivey said in the news release when she announced that his clemency petition had been granted. “I therefore must respect both the jury’s decision to convict him and its recommendation that he be sentenced to life without parole.”

Myers filed his most recent request in September for a hearing to receive a new trial after members of his legal team learned that his attorney, John Mays, spoke at nine KKK rallies between 1977 and 1981 and defended Robert Shelton, an imperial wizard of the KKK, in a lawsuit filed against the FBI in 1977.

According to a newspaper account, Mays used a racial epithet when he spoke at a 1977 KKK rally in Suffolk, Virginia before 200 people.

The court filing from Myers also states that Mays spoke at KKK rallies in Alabama, Florida, Virginia, Kentucky, Mississippi and Tennessee. At one rally in Tennessee in 1981, Mays “exhorted caucasians to band together in the face of an oncoming race war,” according to a newspaper article published in 1981.

The DA’s Office for Morgan County opposed Myers’ request for a hearing because the accounts of Mays’ presence at rallies were already available and could have been presented at trial.

Myers plans to appeal."

The entire story can be read at:

https://alabamareflector.com/2026/08/28/judge-denies-new-trial-for-alabama-inmate-who-cited-defense-attorneys-ties-to-kkk/

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. 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. 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;

August 28, 2026: Khalid Shaikh Mohammed; Tossed Confessions; Guantánamo; Major Development: A judge has excluded a key confession in a September 11 case, published by The New York Times (Reporter Carol Rosenberg) reports, noting that: "In a major blow to the U.S. case against Khalid Shaikh Mohammed, the man accused of plotting the Sept. 11 attacks, a military judge ruled on Friday that the prisoner’s confessions to F.B.I. agents were not voluntary and cannot be used against him at trial. Prosecutors have described Mr. Mohammed’s interrogations in 2007 at the U.S. Navy base in Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, as the government’s most crucial evidence in the long-running death-penalty case."

PUBLISHER'S NOTE: This Blog is interested in false confessions because of the disturbing number of exonerations in the USA, Canada and multiple other jurisdictions throughout the world, where, in the absence of incriminating forensic evidence the conviction is based on self-incrimination – and because of the growing body of scientific research showing how vulnerable suspects are to widely used interrogation methods such as the notorious ‘Reid Technique.’ As all too many of this Blog's post have shown, I also recognize that pressure for false confessions can take many forms, up to and including physical violence, even physical and mental torture.

Harold Levy: Publisher; The Charles Smith Blog:

————————————————---

PASSAGE OF THE DAY: " Mr. Mohammed is accused of being the mastermind of the hijacking attacks that killed nearly 3,000 people in New York, Pennsylvania and the Pentagon. He was brutally interrogated by the C.I.A. in secret overseas prisons after his capture in 2003 and held incommunicado until his transfer to Guantánamo in 2006. Prosecutors excluded statements from those interrogations from the case. But the trial judge, Lt. Col. Michael Schrama, went further, concluding that Mr. Mohammed’s subsequent interrogations in 2007 at Guantánamo were also inadmissible."

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PASSAGE TWO OF THE DAY: "“The prosecution has failed to prove by a preponderance of the evidence that Mr. Mohammad’s statements to the F.B.I. were voluntarily given,” Colonel Schrama wrote in the conclusion of his 45-page ruling, which was not immediately released to the public but whose unclassified contents were confirmed by several lawyers who had seen it. Colonel Schrama cited several factors, including an “unbroken continuation of the C.I.A.’s psychological conditioning and severe coercion” at the time of Mr. Mohammed’s questioning at Guantánamo in 2007. He also found that F.B.I. agents intentionally failed to explicitly tell Mr. Mohammed that he had a right to be silent and to consult a lawyer, and that what he told them could be used against him at a trial."

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PASSAGE THREE OF THE DAY: "Defense lawyers had argued that Mr. Mohammed was essentially conditioned by the C.I.A. through torture coupled with years of isolation and solitary confinement to later tell the F.B.I. what they wanted to hear. He was not allowed to consult a lawyer until long after he had confessed and was charged."

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STORY: "Judge Excludes Key Confession in Sept. 11 Case," by Reporter Carol Rosenberg, published by The New York Times, on August 28, 2026. 

SUB-HEADING: "Prosecutors argued the statements by the defendant, Khalid Shaikh Mohammed, were crucial evidence for the eventual death-penalty trial." (Carol Rosenberg: "I report on national security related topics, including the U.S. Navy base at Guantánamo Bay with a focus on the wartime prison, policies and legal proceedings for The New York Times. I work for the Washington, D.C., bureau and I frequently report from Guantánamo Bay."..."Carol Rosenberg has been covering the Sept. 11 case at Guantánamo Bay for more than two decades."

GIST: "In a major blow to the U.S. case against Khalid Shaikh Mohammed, the man accused of plotting the Sept. 11 attacks, a military judge ruled on Friday that the prisoner’s confessions to F.B.I. agents were not voluntary and cannot be used against him at trial.

Prosecutors have described Mr. Mohammed’s interrogations in 2007 at the U.S. Navy base in Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, as the government’s most crucial evidence in the long-running death-penalty case.

The ruling, just before the 25th anniversary of the attacks, could further delay the start of a trial if prosecutors decide to appeal to reinstate it. Aging survivors and families of victims have said they worry they may never see a final resolution to the case.

Just this week, the judge set a trial date of June 5, 2028.

Mr. Mohammed is accused of being the mastermind of the hijacking attacks that killed nearly 3,000 people in New York, Pennsylvania and the Pentagon.

He was brutally interrogated by the C.I.A. in secret overseas prisons after his capture in 2003 and held incommunicado until his transfer to Guantánamo in 2006. Prosecutors excluded statements from those interrogations from the case.

But the trial judge, Lt. Col. Michael Schrama, went further, concluding that Mr. Mohammed’s subsequent interrogations in 2007 at Guantánamo were also inadmissible.

“The prosecution has failed to prove by a preponderance of the evidence that Mr. Mohammad’s statements to the F.B.I. were voluntarily given,” Colonel Schrama wrote in the conclusion of his 45-page ruling, which was not immediately released to the public but whose unclassified contents were confirmed by several lawyers who had seen it.

Colonel Schrama cited several factors, including an “unbroken continuation of the C.I.A.’s psychological conditioning and severe coercion” at the time of Mr. Mohammed’s questioning at Guantánamo in 2007.

He also found that F.B.I. agents intentionally failed to explicitly tell Mr. Mohammed that he had a right to be silent and to consult a lawyer, and that what he told them could be used against him at a trial.

The chief prosecutor, Rear Adm. Aaron C. Rugh, said his team would review the ruling “and will make a decision on whether to appeal in the near future.”

The judge gave prosecutors five days to decide but said they could request an additional five days.

The question of the taint of torture has hung over the case for years.

Defense lawyers had argued that Mr. Mohammed was essentially conditioned by the C.I.A. through torture coupled with years of isolation and solitary confinement to later tell the F.B.I. what they wanted to hear. He was not allowed to consult a lawyer until long after he had confessed and was charged.

Colonel Schrama has yet to rule on the confessions of two other defendants in the Sept. 11 case, Walid bin Attash and Mustafa al-Hawsawi. An earlier judge, Col. Matthew McCall, threw out the confessions of Mr. Mohammed’s nephew, Ammar al-Baluchi, who is accused of helping some of the 19 hijackers with finances and travel arrangements.

A different judge, Col. Lanny Acosta, suppressed the confession of the defendant in the U.S.S. Cole bombing case, Abd al-Rahim al-Nashiri, in an explicit finding that he had been tortured by the C.I.A. His death-penalty trial in the 2000 attack, which killed 17 U.S. sailors, is scheduled to start in October.

The Sept. 11 case has been mired in pretrial proceedings since arraignment in 2012. Over the years, four other judges gathered evidence on the question Colonel Schrama decided on Friday. An earlier judge found a fifth man, Ramzi bin al-Shibh, mentally incompetent to stand trial, a condition the defendant’s lawyer

The Secretive World of Guantánamo Bay

Sept. 11 Torture Case: The trial for four men accused of conspiring in the terrorist attacks could begin in June 2028, according to an order issued by the military judge. Prosecutors had asked for an earlier start.


Prisoner With No Lawyer in Death Penalty Case: The episode at the war court alarmed death penalty lawyers, who argued that the judge had a duty to suspend the proceedings to protect the rights of the defendant.


U.S.S. Cole: The Army judge in the bombing case ordered the prosecution to do its “due diligence” in providing defense lawyers with any evidence the U.S. government might have “regarding Iran’s role” in the attack off Yemen 25 years ago. President Trump has said Iran was “probably involved.”


Cuban Deportees: The long, circuitous journey of dozens of Cuban men who were designated for deportation from the United States last year but instead taken to a prison at the U.S. base at Guantánamo Bay ended when they were repatriated to Cuba.


A Curious Collaboration: An unlikely collection of portraits has given the public its only glimpse inside the U.S. military prison at Guantánamo Bay.""

The entire story can be read at:

september11-confession-trial.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. 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. 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;