July20: Former District Attorney Linda Stanley: Colorado; District Attorney Jeff Lindsay: Toni Gurule: From our 'Yikes. I've never seen anything quite like this before' department:. Ex-Prosecutor Stanley was disbarred in 2024, for a series of ethical violations tied largely to her handling of the high-profile prosecution of Barry Morphew. Now her successor, Jeff Lindsay (and his entire District Attorney's office) has been disqualified from handling a double homicide case (Toni Gurule) due to discovery allegations and lack of candour to the court," Yahoo News Reports: "Key Takeaways: Fremont County judge reduces first-degree murder charges against woman accused in double homicide and disqualifies entire 11th Judicial District Attorney's Office from the case due to discovery violations and lack of candor to the court. Special prosecutor appointed to take over case of Toni Gurule, one of three people indicted in shooting deaths of two men in Fremont County, after District Attorney Jeff Lindsey's office repeatedly failed to turn over evidence and made untrue representations to the court. Lindsey's predecessor, Linda Stanley, was disbarred in 2024 for ethical violations tied to handling of high-profile prosecution of Barry Morphew, and defense attorney Iris Eytan criticizes rare sanctions against Lindsey and his office as insufficient to address systemic problems in the criminal justice system."

QUOTE OF THE DAY: "Iris Eytan, a defense and civil rights attorney who represented Morphew and now runs a nonprofit called Protect Ethical Prosecutors, filed a complaint against Lindsey with state attorney regulators over his conduct in the Morphew case. She has been an outspoken critic of the office and pushes to end absolute immunity for prosecutors. "This was an extraordinary penalty against Jeff Lindsey and the DA's office," Eytan said. She called the sanctions rare but insufficient to change what she described as a systemic problem. "These are rare judicial sanctions, but they're not solving the underlying problem," she said."

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

QUOTE TWO OF THE DAY: "The original case against Morphew was dismissed without prejudice in 2022, shortly before he was set to stand trial after a change of venue moved the case to Fremont County. He was re-indicted in 2025 by a grand jury in the 12th Judicial District after his wife Suzanne's remains were found in that jurisdiction, and a trial is set for 2027. He has pleaded not guilty.

 "Linda Stanley was the first and only prosecutor in the state of Colorado that has ever been disbarred for case misconduct," Eytan said. Eytan spoke out about the concerns over ethical violations after the Morphew case. Now she's doing it again after a similar pattern of violations from the same DA's office in the same courthouse under a new district attorney. "Prosecutors aren't held accountable truly for the damage and abuse they cause to people and the criminal legal system," Eytan said."

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

PASSAGE OF THE DAY: "District Judge Lauren Swan issued the ruling July 13 in the case of Toni Gurule, ordering that all counts against Gurule be reduced to second-degree murder and that a special prosecutor be appointed to take over. Swan also removed District Attorney Jeff Lindsey and his entire office from the prosecution. Gurule is one of three people indicted in the shooting deaths of two men whose bodies were found off Phantom Canyon Road in Fremont County in February 2022. According to the court's ruling, prosecutors under Lindsey repeatedly failed to turn over evidence to the defense as required. Beyond the discovery failures, Swan found the office lacked candor to the court — meaning it made representations that proved untrue."

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

STORY: "Judge disqualifies entire 11th Judicial District Attorney's Office from murder case, reduces charges by,  9News Reporter Marc Salinger. published by Yahoo News, on July 16, 2026.

GIST: "A Fremont County judge has reduced the first-degree murder charges against a woman accused in a 2022 double homicide and disqualified the entire 11th Judicial District Attorney's Office from the case, sanctioning prosecutors for what she found was a pattern of discovery violations and a lack of candor to the court.

District Judge Lauren Swan issued the ruling July 13 in the case of Toni Gurule, ordering that all counts against Gurule be reduced to second-degree murder and that a special prosecutor be appointed to take over. Swan also removed District Attorney Jeff Lindsey and his entire office from the prosecution.

Gurule is one of three people indicted in the shooting deaths of two men whose bodies were found off Phantom Canyon Road in Fremont County in February 2022.

According to the court's ruling, prosecutors under Lindsey repeatedly failed to turn over evidence to the defense as required. Beyond the discovery failures, Swan found the office lacked candor to the court — meaning it made representations that proved untrue.

Lindsey declined an interview with 9NEWS but released a statement Wednesday saying his office "respects the authority of the court and will comply with all directives contained in the final order," including transferring evidence and records to the special prosecutor.

The office said its "first concern" is the impact on the victims' families, whom it said it would contact directly. Lindsey said he has directed independent outside counsel to review the court's findings and the office's discovery practices, and that the office is implementing new oversight measures, including additional supervisory review of serious felony cases, written verification of discovery deadlines and centralized documentation of confidential-informant agreements.

"We recognize that public confidence must be earned through transparency, accountability and consistent performance," Lindsey said in the statement. "We will comply with the court's order, cooperate with the special prosecutor and take concrete steps to ensure that our procedures meet the obligations the justice system places on prosecutors."

In a separate email, Lindsey told 9NEWS that the case "did not involve me as the individual prosecutor" and that he was "only involved peripherally," saying the discovery findings were made against the individual prosecutor assigned to the case. Lindsey is the elected district attorney; the prosecutors in the case work in his office.

The disqualification is a rare sanction, and it is not the first time the 11th Judicial District Attorney's Office has drawn exceptional scrutiny.

Lindsey's predecessor, Linda Stanley, was disbarred in 2024 for a series of ethical violations tied largely to her handling of the high-profile prosecution of Barry Morphew. A disciplinary hearing board ordered the disbarment in September 2024, and the Colorado Supreme Court upheld it 4-2 in September 2025.

Iris Eytan, a defense and civil rights attorney who represented Morphew and now runs a nonprofit called Protect Ethical Prosecutors, filed a complaint against Lindsey with state attorney regulators over his conduct in the Morphew case. She has been an outspoken critic of the office and pushes to end absolute immunity for prosecutors.

"This was an extraordinary penalty against Jeff Lindsey and the DA's office," Eytan said.

She called the sanctions rare but insufficient to change what she described as a systemic problem.

"These are rare judicial sanctions, but they're not solving the underlying problem," she said.

The original case against Morphew was dismissed without prejudice in 2022, shortly before he was set to stand trial after a change of venue moved the case to Fremont County. He was re-indicted in 2025 by a grand jury in the 12th Judicial District after his wife Suzanne's remains were found in that jurisdiction, and a trial is set for 2027. He has pleaded not guilty.

"Linda Stanley was the first and only prosecutor in the state of Colorado that has ever been disbarred for case misconduct," Eytan said.

Eytan spoke out about the concerns over ethical violations after the Morphew case. Now she's doing it again after a similar pattern of violations from the same DA's office in the same courthouse under a new district attorney.

"Prosecutors aren't held accountable truly for the damage and abuse they cause to people and the criminal legal system," Eytan said.

The entire story can be read at:

https://www.yahoo.com/news/us/articles/judge-disqualifies-entire-11th-judicial-002311340.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;

July 19:"Anthony Broadwater: Pace University law Prof. Bennett Gershman: Identification gone terribly wrong - and a law professor who faced prickly ethical complications in a story headed "How a Paid Expert Reversed His View of a Notoriously Flawed Prosecution in the Rape of a Bestselling Author," as reported by Joaquin Sapiens, in ProPublica, and sub-headed, "Law professor Bennett Gershman told ProPublica that the prosecution of a man for the rape of author Alice Sebold was laced with misconduct. Then he was hired by the city and county that prosecuted the man — and reached a very different conclusion."..."Syracuse’s paid expert, a veteran Pace University law professor named Bennett Gershman, filed a report in the civil suit in December 2025 asserting that the city’s prosecutors “did not engage in misconduct” in the Broadwater case. But a little over a year before that, Gershman told me that prosecutors had “manufactured a case” against Broadwater, calling it “the most heinous kind of prosecutorial misconduct — when the prosecutor is creating guilt.” He went on to say, “‘Misconduct’ is kind of glib in this case. … It’s so much worse than plain misconduct. This is tyranny.” In an interview for this article, Gershman said he changed his mind after delving deeper into the case. “The facts,” he said, are more “complex” and “nuanced” than how he initially understood them."

BACKGROUND: Ms. Sebold was an 18-year-old freshman at Syracuse University when she was raped in a park near campus in 1981. She described the assault in raw detail in her 1999 memoir, “Lucky,” a precursor to her best-selling novel “The Lovely Bones,” which also involves the rape of a teenager. In the memoir, she used the fictitious name Gregory Madison for the man who had raped her. As she wrote in “Lucky,” Ms. Sebold told campus security personnel about the attack immediately and then went to the police. After evidence was collected from a rape kit, she wrote, she described her attacker to the police, but the resulting composite sketch did not resemble him. Mr. Broadwater was arrested five months later, after Ms. Sebold passed him on the street and contacted the police, saying she might have seen the man who had raped her. She subsequently identified a different man in a police lineup. She wrote in “Lucky” that Mr. Broadwater and the man next to him looked alike and that soon after making her choice, she felt it was the wrong one. She later identified Mr. Broadwater in court. Mr. Broadwater’s lawyers argued that prosecutorial misconduct had sullied the police lineup — that the prosecutor had falsely told Ms. Sebold that Mr. Broadwater and the man next to him were friends who had purposely appeared in the lineup together to trick her. The lie, Mr. Broadwater’s lawyers said, improperly influenced Ms. Sebold’s testimony. Mr. Broadwater left prison in 1998 and was struggling to put his life back together when “Lucky” was published. His effort to start anew was hampered by the requirement that he register as a sex offender. Eventually, in part because of doubts raised by a planned film adaptation of the memoir, he hired Ms. Swartz and her colleague J. David Hammond to clear his name. In their motion to vacate the conviction, they argued that the case had relied entirely on Ms. Sebold’s identification of him in court and on a now-discredited method of microscopic hair analysis. William J. Fitzpatrick, the current Onondaga County, N.Y., district attorney, joined the motion to vacate the conviction. He noted that witness identifications of strangers, particularly across racial lines — Ms. Sebold is white; Mr. Broadwater, Black — are often unreliable. In 2021, Justice Gordon J. Cuffy of State Supreme Court in Onondaga County overturned Mr. Broadwater’s conviction for first-degree rape and five related charges. He was no longer required to register as a sex offender. “It’s a long day coming,” Mr. Broadwater said then."

https://www.nytimes.com/2023/03/27/nyregion/anthony-broadwater-alice-sebold-wrongful-conviction.html
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QUOTE OF THE DAY: "Certainly, lawyers retain paid experts of every stripe for all sorts of actions.  But it’s rare to see an expert take a position in court after expressing a different one to a reporter. “It’s not unethical to change your mind,” said Stephen Gillers, an emeritus professor and ethics expert at New York University School of Law.  But, he added, Gershman’s reversal is “an embarrassment and it’s going to undermine his credibility going forward.” A potential jury in the case might wonder what he truly believes."

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

QUOTE TWO OF THE DAY: "Rebecca Roiphe, a professor at New York Law School, who specializes in criminal law and ethics, offered a similar view.  She called it “odd” that Gershman would “be willing to give such a strongly worded comment and then take a position as an expert on behalf of one of the parties. That in itself is problematic. It raises concerns.”  She said she views the role of being a commentator for a news story as different from being an expert in a legal case.  Commentators should approach the task from a starting point of neutrality, she said. Being an expert, by contrast, has an inherently partisan aspect. “I think it gets confused if you do both,” Roiphe said."

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

QUOTE THREE OF THE DAY: "Broadwater’s attorneys contend that the detective and prosecutor engaged in misconduct by making “false and highly suggestive statements to [Sebold] that led her to identify Mr. Broadwater in court,” and then kept those statements to themselves, which further undermined his defense. That’s where Gershman comes in. As author of a textbook called “Prosecutorial Misconduct,” he is one of the nation’s foremost experts on the subject. 

The textbook catalogs the ways prosecutors can abuse their powers. 

He has also warned prosecutors to be wary of eyewitness identifications, citing them as “the largest single source of wrongful convictions.”

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

STORY: "How a Paid Expert Reversed His View of a Notoriously Flawed Prosecution in the Rape of a Bestselling Author," by Reporter Joaquin Sapien, published by Pro Public, on July 17, 2026. (Joaquin Sapien is a reporter at ProPublica covering criminal justice and social services)..."ProPublica is a nonprofit newsroom that investigates abuses of power." 

SUB-HEADING: "Law professor Bennett Gershman told ProPublica that the prosecution of a man for the rape of author Alice Sebold was laced with misconduct. Then he was hired by the city and county that prosecuted the man — and reached a very different conclusion."

GIST: "The upstate New York city of Syracuse seems at odds with itself when it comes to a notorious miscarriage of justice. 

Nearly five years ago, the district attorney of Onondaga County, William Fitzpatrick, stood up in court and excoriated his county’s decision decades earlier to prosecute Anthony Broadwater for the rape of author Alice Sebold. 

With the DA’s support, the conviction was thrown out. 

Today, the same county government and that of its main city, Syracuse, continue to fight a lawsuit filed by Broadwater that seeks financial damages for the years he lost behind bars.

The conflicts, it seems, aren’t simply between criminal authorities, who view Broadwater as a wronged man, and civil authorities, who defend the original prosecution.

 A key expert for the city and county seems to be experiencing an internal conflict of his own — or, at minimum, a dramatic change in opinion.

Syracuse’s paid expert, a veteran Pace University law professor named Bennett Gershman, filed a report in the civil suit in December 2025 asserting that the city’s prosecutors “did not engage in misconduct” in the Broadwater case. 

But a little over a year before that, Gershman told me that prosecutors had “manufactured a case” against Broadwater, calling it “the most heinous kind of prosecutorial misconduct — when the prosecutor is creating guilt.” He went on to say, “‘Misconduct’ is kind of glib in this case. … It’s so much worse than plain misconduct. This is tyranny.”

In an interview for this article, Gershman said he changed his mind after delving deeper into the case. “The facts,” he said, are more “complex” and “nuanced” than how he initially understood them.

Lawyers on both sides of the Broadwater litigation declined to comment for this article.

Certainly, lawyers retain paid experts of every stripe for all sorts of actions. 

But it’s rare to see an expert take a position in court after expressing a different one to a reporter.

 “It’s not unethical to change your mind,” said Stephen Gillers, an emeritus professor and ethics expert at New York University School of Law. 

But, he added, Gershman’s reversal is “an embarrassment and it’s going to undermine his credibility going forward.” A potential jury in the case might wonder what he truly believes.

Rebecca Roiphe, a professor at New York Law School, who specializes in criminal law and ethics, offered a similar view. 

She called it “odd” that Gershman would “be willing to give such a strongly worded comment and then take a position as an expert on behalf of one of the parties. That in itself is problematic. It raises concerns.” 

She said she views the role of being a commentator for a news story as different from being an expert in a legal case. 

Commentators should approach the task from a starting point of neutrality, she said.

 Being an expert, by contrast, has an inherently partisan aspect. “I think it gets confused if you do both,” Roiphe said.

ProPublica recently published an in-depth narrative investigation of the original criminal case that examined multiple lapses in the prosecution of Broadwater and uncovered a broader failure in the criminal justice system in Syracuse at the time, which allowed one or more serial rapists to continue their assaults — many of which bore similarities to the one that Broadwater had been convicted of — for years.

The original case dates back to the early hours of May 8, 1981, when Sebold, then a Syracuse University freshman, was brutally raped in a park near campus. 

Initially, the police did not believe her, even though a medical examination and physical evidence supported her account. 

Five months later, Sebold spotted Broadwater on a busy street and believed him to be her rapist. 

She reported the sighting to police, and Broadwater was arrested.

From the beginning, the case hinged on Sebold’s testimony.

But at a lineup, she identified a man other than Broadwater as her rapist. 

What happened right after that misindentification is at the heart of the current litigation.

In the view of the current DA, Fitzpatrick, the prosecution should have halted the moment Sebold picked somebody else: “You know, she didn’t pick out the wrong guy. She picked out the guy,” Fitzpatrick told me for the earlier article. “She picked out the guy that she thought had raped her. And it wasn’t Anthony. Case is over. Stop.”

But the prosecution continued. Sebold identified him as her rapist at trial.

 Broadwater was convicted and ultimately served 16 years in state prison, and lived as a registered sex offender for nearly 23 more.

How Sebold described what happened after the failed lineup identification has remained broadly consistent over the years.

 But there have been different shadings in the account presented in her 1999 memoir about the case and in her 2025 deposition testimony in the civil suit. 

Her memoir suggests she was influenced by police officers and a prosecutor. 

In “Lucky,” she wrote that after the lineup she “searched the eyes of the uniformed man for whether I had chosen the right one.”

 After that, she “felt a wave of nausea” and became convinced she had “chosen the wrong man.”

In her June 2025 deposition, Sebold testified that she knew before she spoke to officers or the prosecutor, Gail Uebelhoer, that she had gotten the lineup selection wrong. 

But she also testified that “there was no way for me to be sure at that time, and then certain things happened that kept reinforcing” that she had picked the wrong man, she said, including a look of disappointment from a detective and Uebelhoer’s remarks to her.

These distinctions matter because if police or prosecutors influenced Sebold, it could constitute misconduct. 

And what happened in those moments is particularly relevant because the prosecution made no attempt to pause the case or investigate further after the failed identification.

Uebelhoer had Sebold write an affidavit in which she explained that she picked the man who had been standing next to Broadwater because he was looking at her. 

They looked “almost identical,” she stated in the affidavit. 

Uebelhoer then told her, according to “Lucky,” that she had been duped by Broadwater, who had requested that another prisoner be included in the lineup because all the others differed from him noticeably in height or weight. 

“He uses that friend or that friend uses him, in every lineup they do,” Uebelhoer said. (Both men maintain they had never been in a lineup before. Uebelhoer declined to be interviewed by ProPublica. In a 2025 deposition, she testified that she had little memory of the Broadwater case.)

Sebold’s memoir later became a bestseller, and through a tangled series of events that began when producers decided to make a film version of the memoir, the book ultimately helped lead to Broadwater’s exoneration in 2021.

After his conviction was vacated, Broadwater sued the state of New York for wrongful imprisonment. 

The state agreed to pay $5.5 million in March 2023 to settle the case. 

The city of Syracuse and its surrounding county, by contrast, have so far resisted Broadwater’s claims in a separate lawsuit alleging that they violated his constitutional rights through a malicious prosecution.

Broadwater’s attorneys contend that the detective and prosecutor engaged in misconduct by making “false and highly suggestive statements to [Sebold] that led her to identify Mr. Broadwater in court,” and then kept those statements to themselves, which further undermined his defense.

That’s where Gershman comes in. As author of a textbook called “Prosecutorial Misconduct,” he is one of the nation’s foremost experts on the subject. 

The textbook catalogs the ways prosecutors can abuse their powers. 

He has also warned prosecutors to be wary of eyewitness identifications, citing them as “the largest single source of wrongful convictions.”

I had previously interviewed Gershman for a series I wrote on prosecutors who suffered no consequences when they withheld evidence or committed other transgressions. It seemed natural that he’d have insights on the Broadwater case.

When I spoke to Gershman in August 2024, I sent him the transcript of the original trial and the motions to vacate Broadwater’s conviction and asked if he could help me identify whether there were any elements of prosecutorial misconduct.

After he reviewed the materials (and also read a lengthy New Yorker story about the case), Gershman seemed beside himself. 

He told me that he had never seen anything quite like it in his 60-year legal career. “I can’t think of a case where a prosecutor has so clearly manipulated the witness into testifying against the person accused of a crime,” he said. “I haven’t seen anything so blatant; so grotesque as what I see here.”

That was 2024. Then came his assignment for the city and county and his 2025 report. (Gershman said he notified them at the outset that he had spoken to me.)

In his 2025 report, Gershman wrote that Uebelhoer had merely “expressed her opinions” about the lineup and was under no obligation to disclose what she said to the defense. She “behaved properly and professionally, and there is nothing in the record that could remotely be used to undermine her integrity and professionalism.”

When I called Gershman recently to ask about his reversal, he insisted that he knew “absolutely nothing about the case” when we first talked and had no recollection of reading the transcript. 

He noted that he had not yet read Sebold’s memoir at the time of our conversation.

His thinking, he said, had evolved as he studied the case more closely. Most important, he said, Sebold hadn’t yet testified in a deposition for Broadwater’s suit. “I don’t think it’s fair to say that I may have made contradictions between what we talked about way back then and what I later learned,” he said.

His new opinion fixates on the portion of Sebold’s 2025 testimony where she said she recognized her erroneous lineup pick on her own. In our most recent conversation, Gershman dismissed the account Sebold gave in her memoir and downplayed the parts of her testimony that were more ambiguous.

In Gershman’s view today, Uebelhoer’s remarks had no impact on Sebold or the verdict. 

Anything that the prosecutor or officers said after the lineup was “totally, almost, gratuitous. It didn’t have any bearing on her identification,” Gershman said. He noted that Sebold was asked at trial about her botched identification.

A few hours after our interview last week, Gershman called me again, unprompted. He offered what seemed like another zigzag. This time, he told me that Uebelhoer did, in fact, commit misconduct, but that it hadn’t affected the outcome.

When I pointed out that his report explicitly stated that the “prosecution engaged in no misconduct,” he said he now wanted to qualify that: “The prosecutors did not engage in misconduct, as I see it, which prejudiced the defendant’s constitutional rights. That’s what I intended to say.” As he summarized it, “She shouldn’t have said what she said, but it didn’t matter.” (Deeper in his report, he also referred to the statements from the detective and prosecutor as “irrelevant and incompetent.”)

Gershman emphasized that he had been asked to assess legality, not ethics. His assignment, he said, was to ascertain whether Uebelhoer should’ve disclosed her remarks to Broadwater’s lawyers before trial, not to render a judgment on whether it was appropriate to make them.

“I took a legal position that they didn’t have to be disclosed because they didn’t constitute Brady evidence,” he said, referring to the landmark Supreme Court ruling Brady v. Maryland, which requires prosecutors to disclose favorable evidence to the accused.

“I don’t do this for the money,” Gershman testified in his deposition, explaining that he was paid $10,000 for the assignment. “I do this because I’m interested in this kind of work. I’m an educator.”

Should Broadwater’s civil suit ever reach trial, Gershman will likely be questioned about his evolving positions. If that happens, one challenge will be to convince a jury that his current view is more believable than his previous one."

The entire story can be read at:

https://www.propublica.org/article/alice-sebold-anthony-broadwater-rape-case-prosecutorial-misconduct-bennett-gershman

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;

July 18: James Duckett: Florida: By advancing his execution date from March 31 to July 28, the state's own decisions have prevented a full and reliable DNA test that could have demonstrated his long-maintained innocence, his lawyers say, noting that: "After his first death warrant was signed in February, Mr. Duckett was granted DNA testing of biological evidence that had never been tested with modern forensic technology. Instead of ensuring the use of a test that would allow for the most complete analysis possible, the State insisted upon using a laboratory that it knew was not capable of performing the advanced Whole Genome Sequencing (WGS) test necessary to fully analyze this degraded DNA evidence." - and that, "Through their adamant refusal to allow no one but the Florida agency to perform the tests, the state destroyed the evidence most central to Mr. Duckett’s case by choosing a testing method and agency that they knew could not provide a definitive result."

ACTION NETWORK: STOP THE EXECUTION:

https://actionnetwork.org/petitions/stop-the-execution-of-james-duckett-in-florida-2/

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

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

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CONTEXT:  (Associated Press): "The state of Florida is set to execute two death row inmates on the same day for the first time in more than 60 years, now that a stay has been lifted for a former police officer who had been scheduled to die earlier this year for killing an 11-year-old girl in 1987. James Aren Duckett, 68, is scheduled to die at noon on July 28 at Florida State Prison near Starke, according to a death warrant signed Tuesday by Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis. Duckett was convicted of raping and drowning the girl while working as a police officer in a small central Florida city. The execution for Dominick Anthony Occhicone, 80, was previously scheduled for 6 p.m. that same day. He was convicted of killing his ex-girlfriend’s parents in 1986. "

https://apnews.com/article/florida-execution-duckett-occhicone-d9bbb823a386a60724eadf3ebac359f1

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PASSAGE OF THE DAY: "Through their adamant refusal to allow no one but the Florida agency to perform the tests, the state destroyed the evidence most central to Mr. Duckett’s case by choosing a testing method and agency that they knew could not provide a definitive result. 

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PASSAGE TWO OF THE DAY: "Mr. Duckett has consistently maintained his innocence. The State’s duty is to ensure that justice is done, and not rush to kill in a case with such serious doubts over guilt. We are committed to seeking every avenue of relief for Mr. Duckett ahead of his scheduled July 28 execution so that the State of Florida does not execute an innocent man.  We urge Governor DeSantis to re-open the clemency process and fully evaluate the serious issues in the integrity of Mr. Duckett’s conviction.” 

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

RELEASE: (On rescheduling the execution):  July 15, 2026. Floridians for Alternatives to the Death Penalty,

GIST:"The legal team for James Duckett, previously scheduled for execution on Tuesday, March 31, issued the following statement after Gov. Ron DeSantis rescheduled his execution for July 28:

“We are disappointed by the Governor’s decision to set a new execution date for our client James Duckett after the State’s own decisions prevented a full and reliable evaluation that could have demonstrated his long-maintained innocence. It is particularly shameful that the Governor chose a date just two weeks away and set the execution on the very same day as the already scheduled execution of Dominick Occhicone.

After his first death warrant was signed in February, Mr. Duckett was granted DNA testing of biological evidence that had never been tested with modern forensic technology. Instead of ensuring the use of a test that would allow for the most complete analysis possible, the State insisted upon using a laboratory that it knew was not capable of performing the advanced Whole Genome Sequencing (WGS) test necessary to fully analyze this degraded DNA evidence.

The State alleged this choice was for speed, arguing in court that it has “a strong interest in not having the execution delayed,” and wanted testing to be completed “as soon as possible.” Their argument, however, ignored the expert who testified that his lab could do the necessary WGS testing as quickly, if not quicker, than the lab chosen by the State to perform an inferior test. Through their adamant refusal to allow no one but the Florida agency to perform the tests, the state destroyed the evidence most central to Mr. Duckett’s case by choosing a testing method and agency that they knew could not provide a definitive result.

Only when a stay of execution was issued by the Florida Supreme Court allowing additional litigation was Mr. Duckett allowed to receive the underlying data so that an independent expert could attempt the analysis that should have been done from the outset. By then, it was too late. Because the State’s chosen laboratory had used a testing method not designed for the type of forensic testing that was needed, and that consumed all of that limited sample, the expert was left with data than could not provide an inclusion or exclusion.

The inconclusive test results are a direct consequence of the State’s own decisions. They chose the laboratory, chose the testing method, and chose expediency over the truth of what happened to Teresa McAbee. Now, they seek to execute our client without the full truth ever being revealed.

Mr. Duckett has consistently maintained his innocence. The State’s duty is to ensure that justice is done, and not rush to kill in a case with such serious doubts over guilt. We are committed to seeking every avenue of relief for Mr. Duckett ahead of his scheduled July 28 execution so that the State of Florida does not execute an innocent man.

We urge Governor DeSantis to re-open the clemency process and fully evaluate the serious issues in the integrity of Mr. Duckett’s conviction.”

The entire story can be read at:

https://www.fadp.org/statement-from-counsel-for-james-duckett-on-rescheduled-execution-date/

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;

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

July 18: Brian Kendall; Brooklyn; New York: From our 'How to convict the innocent' department: Senior Reporter Reuven Blau's story is headed, " Brooklyn Man Exonerated After 38 Years Says NYPD Framed Him for Murderm" and sub-headed, A new lawsuit alleges detectives manipulated witnesses, concealed evidence and built a 1988 murder case against Brian Kendall despite eyewitnesses identifying a different gunman."

QUOTE OF THE DAY: " Thirty-eight years later — after his murder conviction was overturned when prosecutors concluded he was “likely innocent” — Kendall is suing New York City, alleging detectives fabricated evidence, manipulated witnesses and hid exculpatory information that sent him to prison before he was deported to Guyana. “The suit is for the NYPD and district attorney to be held accountable,” Kendall, 55, told The City Reporter. “Back in the ‘80s there was a lot of misconduct. This was a practice happening all over.” 

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

QUOTE TWO OF THE DAY: "The case was before a judge, Francis Egitto, who had a reputation of doling out maximum sentences. Dusenberry, in turn, told the family that it would be “suicide” for Kendall to proceed to trial where he would almost surely be convicted and sentenced to 25 years to life, according to the CRU report.  “I had no choice,” Kendall remembered, adding that he was never told he’d be deported at the end of his sentence. Brian Kendall was 17 when, facing a possible life sentence, he pleaded guilty to a fatal 1988 shooting. He was freed in 2004 after more than 16 years in prison, and exonerated in 2025."

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

QUOTE THREE OF THE DAY: "Brian Kendall lost decades of his life because law enforcement built a case against him instead of following the evidence,” said Julia P. Kuan, a partner at Emery Celli Brinckerhoff Abady Ward & Maazel LLP. “He spent years in prison, was deported from the country he called home and separated from his family. This lawsuit is about holding those responsible accountable.”

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

PASSAGE OF THE DAY: "Kendall and his legal team argued that he was never given a fair chance by detectives and the prosecutor handling the case.  Inside the police precinct, officers put him in a lineup and refused to let him call a lawyer, according to his account.   His family hired a private attorney, Harry Dusenberry, who interviewed at least five people inside the game room at the time. They all said Kendall had nothing to do with the murder, according to the 35-page CRU report.  Many of the same people spoke to prosecutors at the time, the report said."

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

STORY: "Brooklyn Man Exonerated After 38 Years Says NYPD Framed Him for Murder" by Reuven Blau, published by The City Reporter, on July 8, 2026. (Reuven Blau  reports with a special focus on criminal justice, Rikers Island and New York City's jail system.)

SUB-HEADING: "A new lawsuit alleges detectives manipulated witnesses, concealed evidence and built a 1988 murder case against Brian Kendall despite eyewitnesses identifying a different gunman."

GIST: "Brian Kendall was 16 when Brooklyn detectives arrested him for a fatal shooting outside a Flatbush video game parlor, despite eyewitnesses describing an older, heavier gunman and telling police the teenager wasn’t the shooter.

Thirty-eight years later — after his murder conviction was overturned when prosecutors concluded he was “likely innocent” — Kendall is suing New York City, alleging detectives fabricated evidence, manipulated witnesses and hid exculpatory information that sent him to prison before he was deported to Guyana.

“The suit is for the NYPD and district attorney to be held accountable,” Kendall, 55, told The City Reporter. “Back in the ‘80s there was a lot of misconduct. This was a practice happening all over.”

About a week after the Feb. 24, 1988, shooting, police took Kendall from his parents’ Flatbush apartment in handcuffs. They said two eyewitnesses identified him as the gunman and charged him with the murder of 20-year-old Raphael Reyes, who was fatally shot inside the building on Cortelyou Road.

The lawsuit, filed in Brooklyn federal court, says detectives with the NYPD’s Brooklyn South Homicide Squad ignored eyewitness accounts that contradicted their theory of the case. Instead, they built a murder prosecution around manipulated witness statements and unreliable identifications, according to the suit.

“We’ll review the case and respond in the litigation,” said city Law Department spokesperson Nicholas Paolucci.

Kendall is seeking damages from the city, a former detective, and the estates of two case detectives who have since passed away. The lawsuit does not seek a specific dollar amount.

On July 19, 1989, Kendall pleaded guilty to first-degree manslaughter after his attorney warned he risked a far harsher sentence if he went to trial. He was sentenced on Aug. 7, 1989, to 8⅓ to 25 years in prison. After serving more than 16 years, he was paroled on Dec. 20, 2004, and deported to his native Guyana just over a month later, on Jan. 22, 2005.

According to the lawsuit, witnesses consistently described the shooter as a short, heavyset middle-aged man. Kendall was a skinny 16-year-old. One witness told police the gunman remained inside the Game Room while Kendall had been playing video games.

The lawsuit also alleges detectives used suggestive photo arrays until witnesses identified Kendall, withheld exculpatory witness statements from prosecutors and defense lawyers, relied on testimony that changed repeatedly after police interviews and pressured Kendall into falsely confessing by telling him he could go home if he admitted involvement.

“I thought it was a big mistake that they would correct,” Kendall told The City Reporter.

In 2022, the Brooklyn District Attorney’s Conviction Review Unit reopened the case after reinvestigating the evidence. Prosecutors ultimately concluded Kendall was “likely innocent,” citing eyewitness accounts that had been overlooked, unreliable witness testimony and evidence that had never been disclosed to the defense.

A judge vacated his conviction and dismissed the indictment.

Kendall and his legal team argued that he was never given a fair chance by detectives and the prosecutor handling the case.

Inside the police precinct, officers put him in a lineup and refused to let him call a lawyer, according to his account.

His family hired a private attorney, Harry Dusenberry, who interviewed at least five people inside the game room at the time. They all said Kendall had nothing to do with the murder, according to the 35-page CRU report.

Many of the same people spoke to prosecutors at the time, the report said.

The case was before a judge, Francis Egitto, who had a reputation of doling out maximum sentences.

Dusenberry, in turn, told the family that it would be “suicide” for Kendall to proceed to trial where he would almost surely be convicted and sentenced to 25 years to life, according to the CRU report.

“I had no choice,” Kendall remembered, adding that he was never told he’d be deported at the end of his sentence. Brian Kendall was 17 when, facing a possible life sentence, he pleaded guilty to a fatal 1988 shooting. He was freed in 2004 after more than 16 years in prison, and exonerated in 2025.

Kendall, who had been a legal permanent U.S. resident, served 16 years and eight months in prison before he was released in 2004. He was deported to Guyana, where he was born, the following year.

During his time in prison, Kendall’s mother and older sister both passed away.

The lawsuit says the detectives’ conduct reflected broader NYPD customs and practices that tolerated coercive interrogations, suggestive eyewitness identification procedures and failures to disclose exculpatory evidence.

“Brian Kendall lost decades of his life because law enforcement built a case against him instead of following the evidence,” said Julia P. Kuan, a partner at Emery Celli Brinckerhoff Abady Ward & Maazel LLP. “He spent years in prison, was deported from the country he called home and separated from his family. This lawsuit is about holding those responsible accountable.""

The entire story can be read at: 

https://www.thecityreporter.nyc/2026/07/08/brian-kendall-nypd-murder-exonerated-lawsuit/

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;

Alan Hall: New Zealand: The on-going trial of two police officers alleged to have withheld a key witness statement in the case from him, continues, As Journalist Matthew Theunissen reports on Radio New Zealand (RNZ)..."A witness's first description of a suspect should always be provided to the defence because it may be more accurate than later recollections. Those were the words from the judge presiding over the trial of Alan Hall for the 1985 murder of Arthur Easton. Why, then, was the ethnicity of a man seen running away from the crime scene not presented to the jury at Hall's trial and subsequent appeals? That's the crux of the case against two former police officers on trial in the High Court at Auckland, accused of perverting the course of justice."

PASSAGE OF THE DAY: "One of the officers continued giving evidence today and was asked why he failed to meet that basic legal principle. The former officers claim it was the Crown's responsibility - not theirs - to inform Alan Hall's defence team that witness Ronald Turner had said he saw a tall Māori man, who did not resemble Alan Hall, running away from the murder scene."

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

PASSAGE TWO OF THE DAY: "Even if Hall's team had been told, one of the officers' defence lawyers, David Jones KC, asked in court if it would have made any difference, considering the other evidence they had: the ownership of the bayonet used in the crime; a hat found at the scene connected to Hall; the lies told to police; or the fact both the offender and Hall were left-handed. The former officer replied that it did not. Nor, the court was told, did Turner's evidence affect the evidence of burnt clothing found in Hall's incinerator; that he had no alibi; or that the suspicious man spotted that night was running in the direction of Hall's home."

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

PASSAGE THREE OF THE DAY: "Crown prosecutor John Billington KC questioned the former officer about numerous requests from Hall's legal team for information relating to the case.   The former officer told the court that responsibility lay with his co-defendant. "Matters in terms of response to the solicitors was actioned by my colleague," he said."

 

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

PASSAGE FOUR  THE DAY: "Billington queried how an officer with over a decade's experience did not realise how important Turner's evidence could have been. "You were aware from the day of the homicide that Mr Turner had said he'd seen a Māori in the vicinity of the scene of the crime, is that correct?" The former officer acknowledged this, and also that Turner had given a more detailed statement the day after the murder. "As a result of that statement you publicised, not only were you looking for a Māori as the offender but also you were looking a Māori as a lookout, correct?" Billington asked. "That was certainly recorded in the news article. I can't remember today exactly what I said," the man replied."

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

PASSAGE FIVE OF THE DAY: "The defence called as an expert witness former Detective Inspector Maurice Whitham, who, along with investigating 19 homicides, was one of the lead officers investigating the sinking of the Rainbow Warrior in 1985. He was asked to give his assessment of the reliability of Turner's ethnicity evidence. "The descriptions vary - one minute he's five-foot-six, five-foot-seven on a job sheet. Now he's five-foot-six to six-foot. Why does that change overnight?" Prosecutor) Billington replied that this was a matter for the court. "Yes it is, but the same token, he on two or three occasions said that he could not identify facial features," Whitham said. Regardless, he said it was ultimately for the Crown - not police - to decide whether evidence should be included or not. "The police engage the Crown as their legal officers, if you like, to conduct the prosecution of the accused and the police would finish the inquiries and basically hand the file. "Our job was finished once we had completed the investigation and briefed the file."

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

STORY: " Arthur Easton Murder: Ex-Officer testifies about withheld evidence statement," by Journalist Matthew Theunissen, published by Radio New Zealand (RNZ) on July 16, 2026.

SUB-HEADING: "One of the officers said other evidence, such as the ownership of a hat and bayonet connected with the killing, wouldn't have been affected by the withholding of a witness's statement

GIST: "A witness's first description of a suspect should always be provided to the defence because it may be more accurate than later recollections.

Those were the words from the judge presiding over the trial of Alan Hall for the 1985 murder of Arthur Easton.

Why, then, was the ethnicity of a man seen running away from the crime scene not presented to the jury at Hall's trial and subsequent appeals?

That's the crux of the case against two former police officers on trial in the High Court at Auckland, accused of perverting the course of justice.

One of the officers continued giving evidence today and was asked why he failed to meet that basic legal principle.

The former officers claim it was the Crown's responsibility - not theirs - to inform Alan Hall's defence team that witness Ronald Turner had said he saw a tall Māori man, who did not resemble Alan Hall, running away from the murder scene.

Even if Hall's team had been told, one of the officers' defence lawyers, David Jones KC, asked in court if it would have made any difference, considering the other evidence they had: the ownership of the bayonet used in the crime; a hat found at the scene connected to Hall; the lies told to police; or the fact both the offender and Hall were left-handed.

The former officer replied that it did not.

Nor, the court was told, did Turner's evidence affect the evidence of burnt clothing found in Hall's incinerator; that he had no alibi; or that the suspicious man spotted that night was running in the direction of Hall's home.

Crown prosecutor John Billington KC questioned the former officer about numerous requests from Hall's legal team for information relating to the case.

The former officer told the court that responsibility lay with his co-defendant.

"Matters in terms of response to the solicitors was actioned by my colleague," he said.

Billington queried how an officer with over a decade's experience did not realise how important Turner's evidence could have been.

"You were aware from the day of the homicide that Mr Turner had said he'd seen a Māori in the vicinity of the scene of the crime, is that correct?"

The former officer acknowledged this, and also that Turner had given a more detailed statement the day after the murder.

"As a result of that statement you publicised, not only were you looking for a Māori as the offender but also you were looking a Māori as a lookout, correct?" Billington asked.

"That was certainly recorded in the news article. I can't remember today exactly what I said," the man replied.

Billington read the former officer an extract from the judge's closing statement at Hall's trial about the importance of descriptions first given by witnesses to police.

"That is because, for the obvious reasons, the first description may well be more accurate than the later recollections and it enables the defence to test the evidence relative to the identity which is given by the witness later on," he said.

"The Turner statements had not been provided at that date, had they?"

"I don't believe they had," the man replied.

Former detective called as expert witness

The defence called as an expert witness former Detective Inspector Maurice Whitham, who, along with investigating 19 homicides, was one of the lead officers investigating the sinking of the Rainbow Warrior in 1985.

He was asked to give his assessment of the reliability of Turner's ethnicity evidence.

"The descriptions vary - one minute he's five-foot-six, five-foot-seven on a job sheet. Now he's five-foot-six to six-foot. Why does that change overnight?"

Billington replied that this was a matter for the court.

"Yes it is, but the same token, he on two or three occasions said that he could not identify facial features," Whitham said.

Regardless, he said it was ultimately for the Crown - not police - to decide whether evidence should be included or not.

"The police engage the Crown as their legal officers, if you like, to conduct the prosecution of the accused and the police would finish the inquiries and basically hand the file.

"Our job was finished once we had completed the investigation and briefed the file."

The defence called two old colleagues of one of the former officers to provide character evidence, Stuart Mangnall and Stewart Mills.

"[The defendant] I'll say straight off was scrupulous and honest and was not one to cut corners," Mangnall said.

Mills said it was a pleasure to work with him

"He was fair, scrupulous, tended to be very good with people."

The trial continues."

The entire story can be read at:

https://share.google/HmOiMQHfqfd6D8U01

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;

Japan: The Mainichi: Tokyo (Kyodo); The Japanese government has passed a bill intended to prevent prosecutors from blocking 'retrials' (even in capital cases) and with some exemptions- - but critics say in doesn't go nearly far enough... "Calls to change the retrial system have gained traction following an acquittal in 2024 in the retrial of 90-year-old Iwao Hakamata over a 1966 quadruple murder case in Shizuoka Prefecture, which brought an end to his family's struggle against an unjust conviction that kept him on death row for nearly half a century."

QUOTE OF THE DAY: "After it comes into into force, the government will review the law every five years. "I am disappointed," Hideko Hakamata, the 93-year-old sister of Iwao Hakamata, said as she joined a press conference in Tokyo via online. "I had expected slightly better revisions at least." "I guess we just have to wait for what comes five years later," she also said."

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

QUOTE TWO OF THE DAY: " Junichi Matsuda, president of the Japan Federation of Bar Associations, expressed doubt on whether the reform will help bring justice to the falsely accused swiftly, saying that "many areas are left at prosecutors' discretion." He said in a statement that evidence disclosure should be broad so that those seeking retrials can prepare to make their case. On the other hand, a ban on the unintended use of evidence may discourage retrial seekers and their lawyers from pursuing new information as well as sharing the information with media to publicize their case."

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

PASSAGE OF THE DAY: "The issue of prosecutorial appeals was also a major sticking point when the LDP ( Liberal Democratic Party) examined the Justice Ministry's initial proposal, which allowed for such moves. The ministry modified the bill three times before submitting it to the Diet. In Hakamata's case, about 43 years passed between the first retrial request and his final acquittal. In 2010, prosecutors disclosed evidence at the court's insistence that fueled doubt about the death sentence finalized by the Supreme Court in 1980. Although Hakamata was released from prison in 2014, his long incarceration had deteriorated his mental state, making communication difficult."

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

STORY: "Japan Diet passes law to revise controversial retrial system for 1st time," published by Mainichi Japan, on July 17, 2026.

GIST: TOKYO (Kyodo) -- The Japanese parliament on Friday enacted a revised law that prohibits, in principle, prosecutors from appealing court decisions granting retrials, marking the first reform to the post-World War II criminal retrial system, which has been criticized for delaying justice to the wrongly convicted.

The amendment to the 1948 Code of Criminal Procedure has been hailed as a step to address prolonged retrial proceedings, which in some cases have lasted for decades, but still leaves room for prosecutorial appeals in a disappointment to the families of the unjustly convicted.

Although major opposition parties such as the Centrist Reform Alliance demanded an outright ban on such appeals, the bill passed the House of Representatives on June 16 and the House of Councillors on Friday.

In the upper house where the ruling camp is a minority, the ruling Liberal Democratic Party and its coalition ally, the Japan Innovation Party, were joined by smaller opposition forces including right-leaning populist, Sanseito, in voting in favor of the bill.

Following the enactment, the Supreme Public Prosecutors Office said it will strive to properly operate the new system so that it functions as an "extraordinary remedy procedure," while "taking seriously" the criticism prosecutors have faced in the past.

Calls to change the retrial system have gained traction following an acquittal in 2024 in the retrial of 90-year-old Iwao Hakamata over a 1966 quadruple murder case in Shizuoka Prefecture, which brought an end to his family's struggle against an unjust conviction that kept him on death row for nearly half a century.

Under the revised law, which will be implemented in phases within a year of its promulgation, prosecutors will only be permitted to challenge a court decision to reopen a case if there are "sufficient" grounds. If an appeal is filed, the government must disclose the reason.

The revision also allows courts to require prosecutors to submit new evidence, when necessary, though this is limited to "only evidence relevant to the reason" for seeking a retrial.

Critics say the criminal procedure law, prior to the change, lacked provisions for disclosing information in the possession of prosecutors and investigators for retrials, which prevented easy access to evidence that could favor the wrongfully convicted.

Using disclosed evidence for purposes other than retrial proceedings will be prohibited to protect the privacy of victims involved in a case, and violators could face imprisonment for up to one year or a fine of up to 500,000 yen ($3,100).

Meanwhile, a court screening process will be introduced to allow for the early dismissal of cases that fail to meet the formal requirements for retrial petitions.

After it comes into into force, the government will review the law every five years.

"I am disappointed," Hideko Hakamata, the 93-year-old sister of Iwao Hakamata, said as she joined a press conference in Tokyo via online. "I had expected slightly better revisions at least."

"I guess we just have to wait for what comes five years later," she also said.

Junichi Matsuda, president of the Japan Federation of Bar Associations, expressed doubt on whether the reform will help bring justice to the falsely accused swiftly, saying that "many areas are left at prosecutors' discretion."

He said in a statement that evidence disclosure should be broad so that those seeking retrials can prepare to make their case. On the other hand, a ban on the unintended use of evidence may discourage retrial seekers and their lawyers from pursuing new information as well as sharing the information with media to publicize their case.

The issue of prosecutorial appeals was also a major sticking point when the LDP examined the Justice Ministry's initial proposal, which allowed for such moves. The ministry modified the bill three times before submitting it to the Diet.

In Hakamata's case, about 43 years passed between the first retrial request and his final acquittal.

In 2010, prosecutors disclosed evidence at the court's insistence that fueled doubt about the death sentence finalized by the Supreme Court in 1980. Although Hakamata was released from prison in 2014, his long incarceration had deteriorated his mental state, making communication difficult."

The entire story can be read at: 

https://mainichi.jp/english/articles/20260717/p2g/00m/0na/022000c

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;

17 July: Unregulated experts in British family courts; The Bureau of investigative Journalism (Reporter Hannah Summers) reports on "new family court rules' which raise hope that 'days of bogus experts' are over, in a story. sub-headed, "Changes coming into effect this month will keep unregulated experts out of courts in all but exceptional cases."... "Psychological experts are used by the family courts to assess families and children – including in cases involving claims of domestic abuse, coercive control or child sexual abuse – and their evidence can have a huge influence over the proceedings. They might recommend which parent a child should live with, or whether they should be placed in state care. This advice can be a key factor in the judge’s final decision. Over the last three years we have reported extensively about the use of unregulated experts in family cases. In particular, the debate has focused on the psychologists who specialise in diagnosing parental alienation – a concept discredited as a “harmful pseudoscience”. The advice of one unregulated expert, Melanie Gill, has led to removal of at least a dozen children from their mothers, including in cases where fathers had been found to be abusive."

BACKGROUND: WIKIPEDIA: (Link Below): "Parental alienation is a theorized process through which a child becomes estranged from one parent as the result of the psychological manipulation of another parent.^[1][2] The child's estrangement may manifest itself as fear, disrespect or hostility toward the distant parent, and may extend to additional relatives or parties.^[3][4] The child's estrangement is disproportionate to any acts or conduct attributable to the alienated parent.^[5] Parental alienation can occur in any family unit, but is claimed to occur most often within the context of family separation, particularly when legal proceedings are involved,^[6] although the participation of professionals such as lawyers, judges and psychologists may also contribute to conflict.^{[7]..............................}Parental alienation remains controversial both within the psychological community and the legal system. The psychological community has not accepted parental alienation as a diagnosable mental condition.^[16] Critics note that alienating behaviors are common in high-conflict family situations such as child custody proceedings,^[17] but that the estrangement of a child from a parent remains rare.^[18] They assert that the research performed to date does not support the theory that parental alienation results in the harm described by proponents of the concept.^[19] They also express concern that a parent who has caused a child to become estranged, for example through acts of domestic violence or child abuse, may claim to be the victim of parental alienation to convince a court that the child's justified response to the abuse is the result of the other parent's misconduct and to potentially gain custody of the child.^[20] No diagnostic criteria have been established for parental alienation, and proposals made to date have not been established as reliable.^[19][21] No program of treatment has been demonstrated to be safe or valid,^[22] and proponents of parental alienation theory agree that more research into treatment is necessary.^[23]

Parental_alienation

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QUOTE OF THE DAY: "One mother, known as Erin*, whose two children were removed from her care following Gill’s advice, told the Bureau: “Six years ago my determined goal was that no other family would ever have to endure the loss and devastation I experienced at the hands of an unregulated person posing as an expert in the family court.  “This rule-change should now protect children from unregulated individuals ruining lives. But the families already destroyed will carry the scars forever.” 

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

STORY: "New family court rules spark hope that the ‘days of bogus experts are over,’ by Hannah Summers, published by The Bureau of Investigative Journalism, on July 10, 2026.  Hannah Summers reports on the family courts for Bureau Local under the Family Court Files project. ts on the family courts for Bureau Local under the Family Court Files project. She has a background in covering social affairs, women’s rights and the law. As a freelance journalist her stories have been published in newspapers including the Observer, the Guardian, the Times, the Telegraph, the Daily Mirror, the Mail on Sunday and the Independent. Prior to that she was a staff reporter for the Sunday Times. She won the news and investigations category in the Freelance Writing Awards 2021 for her coverage of violence against women and girls, and was shortlisted for freelance journalist of the year in the 2022 Media Freedom Awards for coverage including the treatment of pregnant women in prison and the NHS charging migrant women for maternity care. In 2023 she was named best specialist journalist in the Freelance Journalism Awards for her reporting on the family courts and was shortlisted for the Paul Foot Award for her investigation into mothers having their children removed following the evidence of unregulated experts appointed in child custody cases.)

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SUB-HEADING: "Changes coming into effect this month will keep unregulated experts out of courts in all but exceptional cases."

GIST" New rules barring unregulated psychologists from family court cases in England and Wales will come into force this month, sparking hope that the “days of bogus experts are over”.

The long-awaited change marks a victory for campaigners who have highlighted the dangers of using expert witnesses who are not registered with a regulator. Judges will, however, still be able to appoint them in exceptional circumstances, so the new rule-change stops short of an outright ban.

Psychological experts are used by the family courts to assess families and children – including in cases involving claims of domestic abuse, coercive control or child sexual abuse – and their evidence can have a huge influence over the proceedings.

They might recommend which parent a child should live with, or whether they should be placed in state care. This advice can be a key factor in the judge’s final decision.

Over the last three years we have reported extensively about the use of unregulated experts in family cases. In particular, the debate has focused on the psychologists who specialise in diagnosing parental alienation – a concept discredited as a “harmful pseudoscience”.

The advice of one unregulated expert, Melanie Gill, has led to removal of at least a dozen children from their mothers, including in cases where fathers had been found to be abusive.

One mother, known as Erin*, whose two children were removed from her carefollowing Gill’s advice, told the Bureau: “Six years ago my determined goal was that no other family would ever have to endure the loss and devastation I experienced at the hands of an unregulated person posing as an expert in the family court.

“This rule-change should now protect children from unregulated individuals ruining lives. But the families already destroyed will carry the scars forever.” 

A new era?

Part of the problem is that anyone can call themselves a “psychologist” – it’s not a protected title. According to Family Justice Council guidance, psychologists appointed by the courts should be regulated by the Health and Care Professions Council (HCPC), but under the current rules it is ultimately up to the judge which experts are appointed.

The new changes to the Family Procedure Rules, which take effect on 20 July, will tighten this loophole but not close it completely. 

Unregulated experts can still be appointed when an issue can only be resolved with their particular expertise, or to avoid a delay that could harm a child’s welfare. In these cases, the judge will also have to explain what efforts were made to find a regulated expert.

Jaime Craig, chair of the Association of Clinical Psychologists UK, told us that the new rules were “not perfect” but represented a huge step forward. “They give me real hope that the days of bogus experts are over,” he said.

The ACP-UK first issued a statement in 2021 raising concerns that “psychological experts” without the necessary qualifications were recommending the removal of children from their mothers.

Craig says the family courts should act in the spirit of the new rules. “We have for several years had guidance that says you shouldn’t use unregulated experts, and we have case law, but now there will be rules that must be followed. Hopefully no judge in the land would want to appoint an unregulated expert or exploit the exception to the rule.”

He added: “It’s hard to conceive why it would feel necessary to maintain a loophole for psychological experts. Poor-quality evidence from someone who is not sufficiently qualified to assess children and be properly regulated will never be in a child’s best interests.”

Family barrister Lucy Reed KC agreed that “even if there is a delay caused by finding or instructing a regulated expert, the answer is not going to be to instruct someone who is simply not suitable”.

Reed believes the new rules – which apply to all experts, not just psychologists – make it “practically impossible” to instruct the types of unregulated psychologists that have given cause for concern including in alleged alienation cases.

If someone wanted to instruct such an expert, she said, they will now have to “jump through a number of hoops and satisfy a judge who must give written reasons for permitting it”.

“Even in the past, unregulated experts should have been identified as unsuitable by lawyers and judges but proper scrutiny of CVs and credentials was not happening consistently. These rules demand the due diligence which should have been there but was sometimes lacking.”

The avoidance of an outright ban, she explained, will enable the court to use specialists in niche disciplines in the rare cases where there may be nobody else appropriate to advise.""

The entire story can be read at:

https://www.thebureauinvestigates.com/stories/2026-07-10/new-family-court-rules-spark-hope-that-the-days-of-bogus-experts-are-over

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;