Iris Seabolt: Indiana: Prosecutors failed to disclose "crucial exculpatory evidence. Major (Welcome) Development; Wrongly convicted, and sentenced to 45 years in prison , she has been exonerated: The crucial exculpatory evidence? Stay tuned!...As noted by Writer Adriane Calling, in a University of Notre Dame publication: The court found that the State withheld material exculpatory and impeachment evidence, including evidence concerning misconduct by former Elkhart Police Department Detective Stephen Rezutko, who played a significant role in the investigation and development of witness testimony against Seabolt. According to court pleadings submitted by the EJC, there was no forensic evidence linking Seabolt to the crime, and the State's case relied heavily on jailhouse informants. Evidence uncovered during post-conviction proceedings showed that Rezutko fabricated witness statements, including by sharing details of the crime with informants to shape their statements and testimony. "

PUBLISHER'S NOTE: For years I have been searching for cases - wherever they might be - in which key evidence has been 'buried' by the police, as in the Tim Rees case in Ontario, in which  decade after he had been convicted of murdering a little girl, miraculously an audio video was found  in the offices of the Chief of police discovered,,,If that had been disclosed....Take it from there.  Several months ago I found my first case of the magnitude of Tim's case - a case in which - and now I have found yet another...Iris Seabolt  Slso involving a video --- go through it - as much detail as possible... Why am I doing this. It's more than just an exercise. Its because in Tim's case the is probably one of the most glaring examples of  police misconduct in Canadian history  - and yet over the years there has been barely a peep. There should be a roar! Go ahead. Then. wind up:

PASSAGE OF THE DAY: "In April 2026, Judge Spataro granted Seabolt's petition, vacated her conviction, and ordered a new trial.  The court found that the State withheld material exculpatory and impeachment evidence, including evidence concerning misconduct by former Elkhart Police Department Detective Stephen Rezutko, who played a significant role in the investigation and development of witness testimony against Seabolt. According to court pleadings submitted by the EJC, there was no forensic evidence linking Seabolt to the crime, and the State's case relied heavily on jailhouse informants.  Evidence uncovered during post-conviction proceedings showed that Rezutko fabricated witness statements, including by sharing details of the crime with informants to shape their statements and testimony."

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PASSAGE TWO OF THE DAY: "The State also failed to disclose a video-recorded interrogation of Seabolt's co-defendant threatening to have him “strap[ped]” to a “gurney” and executed if he did not cooperate with the prosecution, a video which Rezutko had previously testified did not exist. Finally, the State failed to disclose internal affairs records documenting that Rezutko had paid his informants in homicide cases for sexual acts."

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 PASSAGE THREE OF THE DAY: "In Seabolt's case, Judge Spataro found that she had been deprived of evidence that could have been used to challenge both the State's case and Rezutko's credibility."

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PASSAGE FOUR OF THE DAY: "Second, beyond Seabolt's case, Gurulé is calling for an independent investigation of every post-conviction case involving Rezutko, with a special prosecutor appointed to conduct the investigation, in light of the malfeasance uncovered in Seabolt's case and evidence of misconduct in other wrongful conviction cases in Elkhart County.:

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POST: Notre Dame Exoneration Justice Clinic Client Iris Seabolt Exonerated," by Adrienne Calling, published by Notre Dame University, on September 2, 2026.

GIST: "Notre Dame Exoneration Justice Clinic (EJC) client Iris Seabolt has been fully exonerated more than two decades after she was wrongfully convicted of felony murder in Elkhart, Indiana.

Special Prosecutor Nelson Chipman, the elected prosecutor of Marshall County, moved to dismiss the case against Seabolt, and, on September 2, 2026, Elkhart Superior Court Judge Christopher Spataro granted the motion to dismiss, bringing to an end a case that began more than 25 years ago. 

Judge Spataro previously vacated Seabolt's conviction in April 2026 after finding that constitutional violations, including the State's failure to disclose critical exculpatory evidence, undermined her conviction.

In 2004, Seabolt was convicted of felony murder in connection with the August 2000 killing of A.J. Williams in Elkhart. 

After the State presented its case at trial, Seabolt entered a guilty plea and was later sentenced to 45 years in prison. 

She attempted to withdraw her plea at sentencing, stating that her guilty plea was coerced and maintaining her innocence, but the request was denied.

Seabolt was released on parole in May 2022 after serving nearly 19 years in prison. 

At 12:01 a.m. on May 5, 2022, EJC students and attorneys greeted Seabolt as she walked free from Madison Correctional Facility.

Although she had regained her freedom from prison, her murder conviction remained in place for nearly four more years as the EJC continued to litigate her claims of innocence. 

While this litigation continued, EJC students assisted Seabolt with her reentry and reintegration into society.

“All of my success is due to the help and the friendships that have come out of this horrible situation,” said Seabolt.

EJC students and attorneys helped Seabolt secure housing, transportation, and other resources as she adjusted to life outside prison.

“They helped me find resources that I wouldn't have known how to find because I had been away so long,” she said.

Seabolt also recalled the moment she learned that the EJC would take her case after years of trying to find someone who would listen to her claims of innocence.

“Of course I cried because I spent so many years just trying to get somebody to listen,” she said.

The EJC filed Seabolt's petition for post-conviction relief in June 2021. 

The petition presented newly discovered evidence, including recantations from key witnesses and evidence of gross police and prosecutorial misconduct in the investigation and prosecution of her case.

In April 2026, Judge Spataro granted Seabolt's petition, vacated her conviction, and ordered a new trial.

 The court found that the State withheld material exculpatory and impeachment evidence, including evidence concerning misconduct by former Elkhart Police Department Detective Stephen Rezutko, who played a significant role in the investigation and development of witness testimony against Seabolt.

According to court pleadings submitted by the EJC, there was no forensic evidence linking Seabolt to the crime, and the State's case relied heavily on jailhouse informants.

 Evidence uncovered during post-conviction proceedings showed that Rezutko fabricated witness statements, including by sharing details of the crime with informants to shape their statements and testimony. 

The State also failed to disclose a video-recorded interrogation of Seabolt's co-defendant threatening to have him “strap[ped]” to a “gurney” and executed if he did not cooperate with the prosecution, a video which Rezutko had previously testified did not exist.

 Finally, the State failed to disclose internal affairs records documenting that Rezutko had paid his informants in homicide cases for sexual acts.

In his order vacating Seabolt's conviction, Judge Spataro wrote, "The State's blatant violation of Seabolt's rights under the Due Process Clause voids her conviction and, therefore, voids her plea."

For Professor Jimmy Gurulé, founder and director of the Notre Dame Exoneration Justice Clinic, Seabolt's exoneration underscores several significant issues surrounding her case and other wrongful convictions in Elkhart County.

First, the dismissal fully vindicates Seabolt after more than two decades of maintaining her innocence and nearly 19 years of wrongful incarceration.

“Dozens of law students worked on Iris Seabolt’s case over several years. These students used their legal knowledge and training to correct the miscarriage of justice Iris suffered. These students should be commended for their hard work,” Gurulé stated.

Among those students was Lenora Popken ’20 J.D., now a staff attorney with the EJC, who began working on Seabolt's case during her first year at Notre Dame Law School.

“After nearly 20 years of wrongful imprisonment, the world finally knows what we have always known—that Iris is innocent,” Popken said. “Fighting alongside her since my first year of law school has been the privilege of a lifetime. Iris’s unwavering strength throughout this decades-long legal battle is nothing short of extraordinary. Today is about long-overdue justice for her, and I am deeply honored to stand with her as both her attorney and her friend.”

Second, beyond Seabolt's case, Gurulé is calling for an independent investigation of every post-conviction case involving Rezutko, with a special prosecutor appointed to conduct the investigation, in light of the malfeasance uncovered in Seabolt's case and evidence of misconduct in other wrongful conviction cases in Elkhart County.

Rezutko has been involved in at least four proven wrongful convictions in Elkhart.

Internal affairs investigations also documented misconduct during his tenure with the Elkhart Police Department.

 In Seabolt's case, Judge Spataro found that she had been deprived of evidence that could have been used to challenge both the State's case and Rezutko's credibility.

Finally, Seabolt's case adds to a troubling history of wrongful convictions in Elkhart County. 

According to the National Registry of Exonerations, Seabolt’s exoneration marks the eighth exoneration in Elkhart County since 1989. 

There are now more proven wrongful convictions in Elkhart County than any other county in Indiana, including Marion County.

“Elkhart County holds the record of being the exoneration capital of Indiana,” said Gurulé.

Seabolt's exoneration marks the EJC's fifth exoneration, after the exonerations of Reginald "Reggie" Dillard in February 2026, Kara Beaty in April 2025, Anthony Bedolla in August 2024, and Andy Royer in July 2021.

Gurulé praised the EJC team that investigated and litigated Seabolt’s case, which included staff attorney and term teaching professor Kevin Murphy '14 J.D., staff attorney Lenora Popken '20 J.D., executive assistant Anne Peterson ‘92, ‘02 J.D., adjunct professor Elliot Slosar, and at least 11 EJC students since 2021. Exoneration Project investigator Patti Fayed also worked on Seabolt’s case.

“I am so proud of the army of Notre Dame Law School students who fought for justice for Iris over the past several years,” Murphy said. “Their work was in the best tradition of Notre Dame lawyers.”

For Seabolt, her exoneration brings not only the clearing of her name, but gratitude for the people who stood beside her throughout the process.

“I am thankful to God for finally clearing my name and for using the people that He used to do it, because now, I have a whole other family,” Seabolt said.

Since its founding, the EJC has remained committed to criminal justice reform, litigating wrongful conviction cases, and educating the public about miscarriages of justice.

Learn more about the Notre Dame Exoneration Justice Clinic at exoneration.nd.edu."

The entire story can be read at:

https://law.nd.edu/news-events/news/notre-dame-exoneration-justice-clinic-client-iris-seabolt-exonerated/

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;

September 6: Miguel Cruz. Racine County: Wisconsin: (Defence expert Greg Hampikian): Retrial, (to be held in September ) had been ordered in part because his defence lawyer did not challenge misleading DNA evidence provided to the jury, The Racine County Eye reports, noting that: Craig vacated the conviction from the bench Aug. 21, 2025, after finding Cruz received ineffective assistance from his trial lawyers. In the transcript reviewed by Racine County Eye, (Judge) Craig said the decision “did not come easily.” He cited several failures that, taken together, required a new trial. Among them:DNA evidence: Jurors were told a key fingernail-DNA comparison was “inconclusive.” Craig said Cruz’s lawyers did not properly challenge that point, even though there is “a distinct difference” between being excluded and saying no determination can be made."

PASSAGE OF THE DAY: (Other reasons for retrial): "A detective’s credibility: (Judge) Craig faulted the defense for failing to pursue testimony or impeachment evidence regarding Detective Gilbert Hernandez.  The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel reported in 2015 that a federal jury found Hernandez and another Milwaukee detective liable in William Avery’s wrongful conviction case, which centered on a confession Avery said he never gave.  Witnesses and constitutional rights: Craig also pointed to failures involving incarcerated witnesses and testimony that referenced Cruz’s request for an attorney."

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PASSAGE TWO OF THE DAY: "Why one word mattered: At Cruz’s 2021 trial, prosecutors did not present DNA, fingerprint, ballistic or eyewitness evidence placing him at the Highway K scene.  The case rested on cooperating witnesses and a theory tying the killing to a Milwaukee double homicide the same day. One disputed piece of evidence involved Y-STR testing from fingernail clippings taken from Zdroik’s right hand. Jurors were told the comparison was “inconclusive.” Defense expert Greg Hampikian testified in January 2025 that exclusions are rule-based. “Those exclusions are absolute,” Hampikian said. Crime Lab analyst Sharon Polakowski also acknowledged the original conclusion was wrong. “I used incorrect protocol in the interpretation for the report that was written in 2018,” Polakowski testified. The lab later issued an amended report excluding Cruz. That distinction matters. “Inconclusive” can leave a juror thinking the evidence might still point to a defendant. “Excluded” means it does not."

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STORY: Miguel Cruz faces September retrial in Juanita Zdroik killing as plea talks continue, by Reporter Denise Lockwood, published by The Racine County Eye, on August 24,  2026.

GIST: "The Miguel Cruz retrial in the killing of Juanita Zdroik is set for September after a Racine County judge threw out Cruz’s 2021 conviction, reopening a 26-year-old homicide case that could play differently before a second jury.

District Attorney Tricia Hanson said no plea agreement has been reached. Prosecutors and the defense have discussed whether the case could be resolved before trial, and Hanson said prosecutors met with Zdroik’s family because the court’s evidence rulings could change the shape of a second trial.

“The case remains in a trial posture,” Hanson said.

Hanson said a plea agreement could secure a conviction rather than risk an acquittal.

 She also said the ultimate decision on whether to enter a plea agreement remains with the prosecutor’s office, even after victim-family consultation.

Miguel A. Cruz is not cleared.

The charge has not been dismissed. 

But Judge Scott Craig ruled last year that Cruz’s trial lawyers failed him in several ways. 

The result is that the next jury, if the case goes to trial, may hear a different case than the first jury heard.

The case has forced Zdroik’s family back into a courtroom fight they thought was over.

“The legal system is causing us constant trauma at this point,” said Zachrey Zdroik, who was 13 when deputies told the family his mother, Juanita, 39, had been found shot to death along Highway K in February 2000. “Now we’re forced to relive it all over again.”

🧭 The short version

What is clear: Cruz’s 2021 conviction has been vacated, but the homicide charge remains active.

What is not clear: Whether the case will go to trial. Plea discussions have happened, but Hanson said there is no agreement and prosecutors decide whether to enter one.

Where Cruz stands now: The court reinstated his previous $500,000 cash bond when the conviction was vacated, according to CCAP docket entries.

What is next: A final pretrial conference is scheduled for Sept. 8. Trial is scheduled for the week of Sept. 21 in Room MC304 at the Law Enforcement Center–North Courtroom. 

Dates can change; check case 2017CF001138 before going to court.
The ruling that reopened the case

Craig vacated the conviction from the bench Aug. 21, 2025, after finding Cruz received ineffective assistance from his trial lawyers.

In the transcript reviewed by Racine County Eye, Craig said the decision “did not come easily.” He cited several failures that, taken together, required a new trial.

Among them:DNA evidence: Jurors were told a key fingernail-DNA comparison was “inconclusive.” 

Craig said Cruz’s lawyers did not properly challenge that point, even though there is “a distinct difference” between being excluded and saying no determination can be made.

A detective’s credibility: Craig faulted the defense for failing to pursue testimony or impeachment evidence regarding Detective Gilbert Hernandez. 

The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel reported in 2015 that a federal jury found Hernandez and another Milwaukee detective liable in William Avery’s wrongful conviction case, which centered on a confession Avery said he never gave.

Witnesses and constitutional rights: Craig also pointed to failures involving incarcerated witnesses and testimony that referenced Cruz’s request for an attorney.

Hanson, in a statement forwarded to Racine County Eye, described the ruling as turning on two issues.

 She said Cruz’s trial attorney failed to obtain additional information about a credibility problem involving a former Milwaukee Police Department investigator who participated in the investigation. 

The investigator was not called at trial, but Hanson said the court has now ruled that the investigator’s history in other cases is admissible if the defense calls that person as a witness.

Hanson also said Cruz’s trial attorney did not hire an expert to review the DNA reports. 

Such an expert, she said, could have pointed out that testing standards at the State Crime Lab changed between initial testing in 2012 and later testing after Cruz was located in 2017. 

Other case materials reviewed by Racine County Eye refer to a 2018 Crime Lab comparison report, which may reflect a later step in the same testing history. 

Hanson said the state is now bound by the 2012 testing standards and technology that excluded Cruz as a contributor.

The transcript reviewed by Racine County Eye shows Craig cited additional failures as part of his cumulative ruling, including issues involving incarcerated witnesses and testimony that referenced Cruz’s request for an attorney.

Why one word mattered

At Cruz’s 2021 trial, prosecutors did not present DNA, fingerprint, ballistic or eyewitness evidence placing him at the Highway K scene. 

The case rested on cooperating witnesses and a theory tying the killing to a Milwaukee double homicide the same day.

One disputed piece of evidence involved Y-STR testing from fingernail clippings taken from Zdroik’s right hand.

Jurors were told the comparison was “inconclusive.” Defense expert Greg Hampikian testified in January 2025 that exclusions are rule-based.

“Those exclusions are absolute,” Hampikian said.

Crime Lab analyst Sharon Polakowski also acknowledged the original conclusion was wrong.

“I used incorrect protocol in the interpretation for the report that was written in 2018,” Polakowski testified.

The lab later issued an amended report excluding Cruz.

That distinction matters. “Inconclusive” can leave a juror thinking the evidence might still point to a defendant. “Excluded” means it does not.

What could happen before the Miguel Cruz retrial?

At an April 20, 2026, hearing, Assistant District Attorney Dirk Jensen had tried the week before to meet with the defense “to try to negotiate this matter,” according to the court record, but the parties were unable to connect. 

The defense then asked to reset the final pretrial, saying it wanted time to negotiate and to “move forward without this coming back on appeal.” The state did not object, and the court reset the trial for September.

Hanson said plea negotiations “can be ongoing,” but no agreement exists.

 She said potential plea discussions are explained and discussed with victims’ families in homicide cases under the office’s practice and Marsy’s Law obligations, but the final decision remains with prosecutors.

A second legal fight is also playing out over what a new jury may hear. 

The defense wants to introduce more evidence of alleged misconduct by Milwaukee detectives. Prosecutors objected, arguing it would create a “trial within a trial.”

Craig ruled on that issue March 13, 2026. Racine County Eye does not yet have that decision and has not reviewed it.

Cruz is represented by attorneys Natalie Wisco, Mackenzie Renner and Mark Richards. Renner filed a notice of retainer Feb. 18, 2026, and appeared for Cruz at the April 20 final pretrial. Wisco did not respond to questions Racine County Eye emailed Saturday before publication.

The Miguel Cruz retrial is not a replay of the first case.

 Pretrial rulings can change what jurors hear.

In this case, those changes could affect DNA testimony, investigator credibility evidence and how jurors hear testimony from incarcerated witnesses. 

A vacated conviction is not a finding of innocence, and Cruz is presumed innocent unless proven guilty.

Editor’s note: This story was updated Aug. 25, 2026, to note that attorneys Mackenzie Renner and Mark Richards also represent Cruz, and to add court-record detail showing the defense asked to reset the April 20 final pretrial to allow time to negotiate."

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Track this case:Beyond the 2000 Highway K homicide of Juanita Zdroik: A family’s fight to reclaim a mother’s legacy

Juanita Zdroik homicide case: court timeline

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The entire case can be read at:

https://share.google/ucvl7f4Qc09xsHuPR

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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;

September 5: Robin (Rocky) Myers: CNN (Reporter Alaa Elassar) tells the alarming story of this Black man, once sentenced to death for murder, who has claimed his innocence from the outset and is now fighting for freedom after discovering that his attorney, Edmund Mays, had defended the Ku Klux Klan, noting that: "There was no DNA evidence tying him to the crime scene, where Tucker had been stabbed in the heart, according to court documents. His conviction rested on circumstantial evidence and testimony from witnesses Myers’ lawyers said were unreliable, including one witness who later recanted his testimony. A nearly all-White jury recommended life without parole, but the judge overrode them and imposed a death sentence. The attorneys now representing Myers are hoping new information about the lawyer originally appointed to defend him may finally bring the freedom he has spent decades fighting for."

QUOTE  OF THE DAY: Jaffe  (a friend of Mays) said Mays was just a lawyer representing the klan. While Mays defended the klan in court on multiple occasions, Myers’ lawyers argue his involvement went beyond his role as an attorney, citing archived newspaper reports and photographs they say portray Mays as an outspoken public defender of the klan. “You hear a lot about civil rights of the (N-word) and the civil rights of murderers and of every kind of pervert known to humanity,” Mays is quoted as saying during a 1977 Klan rally in Virginia, according to the Suffolk-News Herald. “But what about the civil rights of the decent, law-abiding White man, or the law-abiding Black man, for the matter?”

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MORE QUOTES OF THE DAY: "In 2004, one of the witnesses, Marzell Ewing, wrote a declaration for the courts on behalf of Myers, saying he lied in his trial testimony because of pressure and he did not see who brought the VCR. One of the jurors who sat through his trial, Mae Puckett, wrote a letter in 2011, urging Alabama to spare Myers’ life. “Mr. Myers’ son testified and basically begged us to spare his father’s life,” she wrote. “That is a part of the trial that I wish I could forget.” Puckett, one of the 11 White jurors, could not forget how deeply “unfair” the trial felt. “I do not want to sit in silence while someone I believe to be innocent is executed,” Puckett wrote. Even Mays maintains he is innocent, Jaffe emphasized."

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STORY: "A Black man once sentenced to death for murder fights for freedom after discovering his attorney defended the Ku Klux Klan," by Alaa Elassar, published by CNN, on August 25 2026. (Alaa Elassar is a general assignment reporter and writer for CNN’s National Hub. She is based in New York City. Elassar joined CNN in 2016 and was a three-time intern and freelance writer before enlisting with the National team, where she splits her time between breaking news, explanatory articles and in-depth features. As an Arab and Muslim American journalist, Elassar is interested in stories about culture, identity and representation, especially those from minority and marginalized communities. Her reporting has spanned topics across Native-American affairs, the Black Lives Matter movement, Asian-American hate, Islamophobia, women’s rights, the war in Gaza and more.)

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GIST: "A phone line rings. It clicks, and an automated message is recited in a woman’s strict, dull monotone.

“You are receiving a call from the St. Clair Correctional Facility. To accept this call, press 5. This call will be recorded and subject to monitoring at any time.”

The line clicks again and a new voice floods into the receiver.

Robin “Rocky” Myers, dressed in a khaki jumpsuit, is calling from the recreation yard of an Alabama prison about 30 miles northeast of Birmingham. 

For a few minutes, the prison seems to recede behind his voice.

He has spent the afternoon outside and wishes he never had to go back in.

“I’ve been locked up in one cell for 31 years. I don’t want to be inside no more. When I get out, I don’t want a house. I don’t want an apartment. I want a car where I can drive everywhere,” he said, with the certainty of someone who has spent too long dreaming about something most people take for granted.

“I want to be free.”

Myers, a Black man, was sentenced to death in 1994 for the murder of his White neighbor, Ludie Mae Tucker, a crime he maintains he did not commit. 

There was no DNA evidence tying him to the crime scene, where Tucker had been stabbed in the heart, according to court documents.

His conviction rested on circumstantial evidence and testimony from witnesses Myers’ lawyers said were unreliable, including one witness who later recanted his testimony. 

A nearly all-White jury recommended life without parole, but the judge overrode them and imposed a death sentence.

The attorneys now representing Myers are hoping new information about the lawyer originally appointed to defend him may finally bring the freedom he has spent decades fighting for.

“He had a lawyer that didn’t care about him,” LeAndrew Hood, Myers’ son, told CNN.

But on Monday evening, that hope dimmed slightly when the Morgan County District Attorney filed a brief on behalf of the state opposing Myers’ petition to overturn his conviction. 

Agreeing with Myers’ petition would likely have strengthened his case, but the matter now rests with a judge. The setback has left Myers’ dream of reuniting with his family on hold, at least for now.

For years, Myers, a father of four, sat on death row. 

Then, in 2025, with his execution approaching, Alabama Gov. Kay Ivey granted him clemency, commuting his death sentence to life without parole. 

Ivey, a Republican who is a staunch supporter of the death penalty, said because there was enough uncertainty surrounding Myers’ guilt, she could not allow the execution to go forward.

But clemency did not answer a larger question: Is Alabama prepared to let a man die in prison for a crime he maintains he did not commit?

Justice in the shadow of Jim Crow

Rocky Myers’ legal team cited a September 28, 1980, article from The Courier-Journal in Louisville, Kentucky, as being among the multiple contemporaneous accounts they say prove attorney John Mays’ relationship with the Ku Klux Klan extended beyond his role as a lawyer representing the organization. 

The article quoted Mays, who did not respond to CNN's request for comment on the article. From Louisville Courier-Journal

When Myers was arrested and tried, America was only a generation removed from the formal end of Jim Crow. 

The ghosts of segregation still walked the streets. 

And the Ku Klux Klan, though diminished from its earlier power, had not disappeared. It was still rallying, preaching racial hatred.

Among the men who publicly defended the klan, representing them in court cases in the 1970s and ’80s, was an attorney named John Edmond Mays.

In 1987, the United Klans of America was ordered to pay $7 million for the gruesome 1981 murder of Michael Donald, a Black teenager whose body was found hanging from a tree in Mobile, Alabama.

 Donald had been kidnapped, beaten and killed by klansmen in retaliation for the killing of a police officer – a crime Donald had no involvement in – and to intimidate Black jurors from ruling in favor of Black defendants.

Mays defended the Klan in the case, according to Richard Cohen, the president of the Southern Poverty Law Center and one of the lawyers who represented Donald’s family.

In court, Mays called Donald’s murder a “gross and horrible atrocity” but argued the organization itself should not be held responsible, according to a 1987 article in The Buffalo News. 

Robert Shelton, who was the United Klans of America’s imperial wizard, the highest-ranking leader, told the jury, “White supremacy is a political goal, nothing more.”

Then, in 1992, Mays became Myers’ lawyer.

Mays declined to speak to CNN but a friend and fellow lawyer, Richard Jaffe, passed along a statement from him.

“I took Rocky’s case because I hate the death penalty and I felt I could provide him with effective representation,” Mays told CNN, through Jaffe. 

He was appointed by the Circuit Court of Morgan County to represent Myers.

Jaffe, who said he has Mays’ permission to speak with CNN, believes Mays’ previous representation of the klan does not diminish the “effective and passionate” advocacy he provided for Myers or other Black clients he has represented throughout his career, which continues today.

“It was not a popular thing for him to do in that small town. Think ‘To Kill a Mockingbird,’” Jaffe told CNN, referring to Harper Lee’s novel about a Black man falsely accused of raping a White woman in the Jim Crow South and who was defended by a White man. “Rocky deserves a new trial, but not because of John,” he later added.

For decades, activists and Myers’ legal team have dug through the wreckage of his case. 

What they found was not one isolated mistake but a trail of failures, including his representation, according to Kacey Keeton, one of Myers’ attorneys in his federal habeas proceedings.

“A Black person on trial for their life would not make that choice for that to be their lawyer,” Keeton, who represented Myers from 2007 to 2025, when he was granted clemency, said. “When you are poor and Black in Alabama, you get what the state gives you. And that’s what they gave Rocky Myers.”

Attorney represented klan in court and attended KKK rally

Jaffe told CNN Mays denies being a klansman. 

Jaffe said Mays was just a lawyer representing the klan.

While Mays defended the klan in court on multiple occasions, Myers’ lawyers argue his involvement went beyond his role as an attorney, citing archived newspaper reports and photographs they say portray Mays as an outspoken public defender of the klan.

“You hear a lot about civil rights of the (N-word) and the civil rights of murderers and of every kind of pervert known to humanity,” Mays is quoted as saying during a 1977 Klan rally in Virginia, according to the Suffolk-News Herald. “But what about the civil rights of the decent, law-abiding White man, or the law-abiding Black man, for the matter?”

Asked about the newspaper report, Jaffe said Mays helped klan leader Shelton get a permit for the rally and regrets attending it.

Mays also expressed regret for using the N-word, attributing it to growing up in “a racist environment” in the segregated South, Jaffe said.

“If John represented someone from the klan, it doesn’t make him racist,” Jaffe told CNN.

Myers’ lawyers see something more troubling, arguing Mays’ history followed him into Myers’ trial and compromised the defense of a Black man whose life depended on him.

Fighting for another chance in court

In August 2025, after Myers was granted clemency, his attorneys jumped at what they perceived to be an opening. 

They filed a petition asking a judge to vacate his conviction, arguing Myers is innocent, and the failures surrounding his original defense make his conviction fundamentally unreliable.

The Morgan County District Attorney’s Office, representing the State of Alabama, opposed the petition in March 2026. Myers’ lawyers filed a reply in May.

The District Attorney on Monday evening filed its answer, once again opposing Myers’ petition and adopting its prior arguments in its motion to dismiss.

The state argued that Myers is trying to revive his untimely claim of ineffective assistance of counsel by repackaging it as a conflict-of-interest argument, but has failed to meet the heavy burden of showing that the prior Klan case actually conflicts with his own.

The District Attorney’s decision does not necessarily mean Myers will never walk free. A Morgan County Circuit Court judge must now decide whether to set an evidentiary hearing or dismiss the petition without a hearing.

“If the hearing occurs, Myers will be able to put on evidence that his attorney, John Mays, was conflicted to the point of not providing representation and evidence of innocence and lying witnesses,” Keeton told CNN. “During such a hearing, the district attorney decides how much to fight versus agree with what Rocky presents.”

The judge will then decide whether Myers met his burden of showing his conviction should be overturned. If he rules in favor of Myers’ petition, the district attorney will decide whether to appeal or to retry Myers. If not, Myers’ team will appeal.

This is the question now hanging over Myers’ case: In a conviction built on disputed testimony and a defense led by someone who spent a decade representing an organization that viewed people like you as less than human, was your trial fair?

A judge will now have the final say, but there is no clear timeline for when a decision, or the next word in Myers’ quest for freedom, will come.

Weighing the evidence in a new light

The evidence at the heart of Myers’ conviction, his lawyers say, is just as troubling as the representation surrounding his case and raises questions of its own.

Before succumbing to her injuries on October 4, 1991, the victim described her attacker as a stocky, short Black man — a description Myers’ attorneys argue points to his innocence; he was her neighbor and frequently visited her to buy ice. If Myers had been her attacker, they contend, she could have identified him by name or simply said it was her neighbor.

Investigators initially suspected Anthony “Cool Breeze” Ballentine after a VCR was stolen from victim Ludie Mae Tucker’s home. 

Three witnesses said they saw Ballentine with the VCR at a neighborhood drug house, where he allegedly traded it for crack cocaine. Police arrested him.

But then, witnesses began implicating Myers instead. 

A later November 30 police report said Ballentine was released “on a joint recommendation” by the police department and district attorney’s office because “new evidence” suggested the witnesses lied about Ballentine selling the VCR. 

Now Myers, newly identified as the person who brought the VCR to the drug house, was the suspect.

The VCR used against Myers was eventually identified as Tucker’s through the serial number and was never tied to Myers by fingerprints or other forensic evidence. 

The petition for a new trial argues the original accounts were more consistent with the evidence.

 One witness said Ballentine was wearing a bloodstained white shirt, according to the initial October 18 police report. CNN was unable to reach Ballentine for comment.

In 2004, one of the witnesses, Marzell Ewing, wrote a declaration for the courts on behalf of Myers, saying he lied in his trial testimony because of pressure and he did not see who brought the VCR.

One of the jurors who sat through his trial, Mae Puckett, wrote a letter in 2011, urging Alabama to spare Myers’ life.

“Mr. Myers’ son testified and basically begged us to spare his father’s life,” she wrote. “That is a part of the trial that I wish I could forget.”

Puckett, one of the 11 White jurors, could not forget how deeply “unfair” the trial felt.

“I do not want to sit in silence while someone I believe to be innocent is executed,” Puckett wrote.

Even Mays maintains he is innocent, Jaffe emphasized.

“People on crack testified for the state, and when they testified for the state, they lied, and that’s what the jury chose to believe,” Jaffe told CNN.

Myers also has an intellectual disability, an issue Miriam Bankston, the chief investigator on Myers’ legal team, said affected how he interacted with police and his attorneys.

 Yet after his conviction, the lawyer appointed to handle his appeal abandoned the case entirely, filing nothing, she added.

Myers missed his chance to have claims of innocence and other constitutional issues heard in court, according to the state. 

Eventually, a letter arrived telling him he had missed multiple state and federal court deadlines — a letter his lawyers said he could not read himself.

Despite the jury recommending life without parole, the judge went against their wishes and imposed a state execution.

Alabama has since abolished judicial override, the practice that allowed judges to order the state to kill a person even though a jury of one’s peers requested otherwise.

Myers’ lawyers argue his own defense attorney helped turn the jury against him. In his opening statement, Mays described Myers’ neighborhood as “the very pit of hell” and told jurors, “You’re people who are not used to being around criminals. You’re people who are not used to being around crackheads.”

“He was just up there calling him a crackhead, calling him a no-good, wasn’t good for society,” Hood said. “Like he didn’t have a mother that loved him, or kids, or a wife. He was just up there talking about him like he was nothing.”

When asked about Mays’ use of that language to describe Myers during the trial, Jaffe pointed instead to the outcome Mays secured: “How did he get a life verdict in a place where a Black man stabbed a White woman? I know that the performance he did (got) a life verdict for Rocky, who was innocent, in spite of the fact that crackheads lied.”

The petition argues Mays’ language during the trial revealed something deeper than a poor defense strategy — a worldview that dehumanized the man he was supposed to defend.

“Mr. Myers was a family man who lived with his wife and children,” Mitchell McGuire, Myers’ current attorney, wrote in the petition. “Yes, they were poor. And, yes, Mr. Myers struggled with addiction issues. But they were good, decent people, just not White.”

The state, he argued, was asking the court to dismiss the history of Mays’ klan advocacy as nothing more than “stale newspaper gossip,” even though the history goes directly to the question of whether Myers received a fair defense at the most consequential proceeding of his life, McGuire wrote in his response.

While the state’s decision is another setback in a legal fight that has stretched across more than 30 years, the fight for Myers and his family is not over yet.

A family wants their father back

Myers’ case has haunted many. Perhaps none more than Hood, who was 12 when he testified for his father.

He told the judge he was lying in bed with his dad watching a New York Giants game while his three siblings were coloring and playing with toys when ambulance lights flashed across their window. “Son, what’s going (on) out there don’t have nothing to do with us,” Hood told CNN, recalling his father soothing him.

For three decades, Hood has waited for his father to come home. He still mourns what he lost but tries to swallow the anger and grief to make space in his heart for the seed of hope to bloom.

He is 47 now, with a son of his own, but he still calls Rocky “Daddy.”

“My father really shouldn’t be in there,” Hood said. “They don’t have no evidence on him at all.” He speaks of feeling betrayed by his country and government and wants the case back in court, believing everything uncovered over the years could give his father the chance he never had.

Myers admits the mistakes he made before prison, including drug use, but his first day behind bars became the first day of decades of sobriety. He has learned to forgive even those he feels betrayed him, including Mays.

“It hurts he’s like that. Whatever he did to me is over with,” Myers said. “I’m not really bitter or nothing about that.” What remains is the belief that his life can still become something other than the story told about him.

“I am not who they say I am. I’m not no killer,” he continues. “When the judge sentenced me, he told me that I was a threat to society and it broke my heart. I literally cried over that.”

It is a story that sits uneasily inside the history of Alabama, a state whose past is still visible through the cracks in its institutions. By August 25, the district attorney must decide whether to seek to vacate Myers’ conviction or if the story needs to be heard by a jury again.

The prison gives Myers and Hood only 15 minutes at a time to talk. They fill them with ordinary things — Giants, the Yankees, news about Myers’ grandchildren. Once, Myers celebrated a Knicks win from one side of the prison wall while Hood cheered from the other. For a moment, they were simply father and son again.

Myers has lost many years, memories and dreams, but he has not lost faith.

“What I’m gonna do?” He ponders the question. “I’m just gonna keep on believing that I’m gonna get out of here.”

Myers has resisted giving in to the rotting fester of anger. He finds joy in simple things – music, passing on wisdom to the young men imprisoned with him, making friends.

The same flat, automated woman’s voice that announced the beginning of the call now announces its end.

“One minute remaining on the call.”

Myers rushes to say what he misses most about the world beyond the prison walls.

“I miss my family because I love, love, love my family,” he said. There is a smile in his voice. Then the line clicks.

And just like that, Rocky Myers is cut off from the world again.""

The entire story can be read at:

https://www.cnn.com/2026/08/25/us/rocky-myers-alabama-trial-petition-kkk?cid=ios_app

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;

Michael Stone: Levi Bellfield; UK: The Mirror (Reporter Lucy Thornton) reports that Levi Bellfield, one of Britain's most notorious serial killers demanded to be returned to his cell instead of giving his DNA to prove he is the real killer of mum Lin Russell and her daughter Megan - after his solicitor was blocked from attending, noting that: "The experts from the Criminal Cases Review Commission (CCRC) had travelled to HM Prison Frankland to take a swab from the notorious killer of schoolgirl Milly Dowler. They had already taken mouth swabs from Michael Stone, who has spent 29 years behind bars after being convicted of the Kent double murder but had travelled back to the same high security prison to take a sample from Bellfield. They made the trip after Bellfield confessed to the killings of the mum and her youngest daughter. The eldest daughter Josie Russell, then aged nine, survived the deadly attack despite suffering devastating head injuries. But on Thursday Bellfield returned to his cell without giving a sample after his solicitor was refused entry. The inmate was said to be left "furious" and claimed he was being 'treated like a dog'."

PASSAGE OF THE DAY: "Solicitor Theresa Clark had arrived at the prison to witness her client giving fresh DNA samples in a bid to prove he was behind the Chillenden murders. The profile was to be used by the CCRC, who investigate miscarriages of justice, to compare with any DNA they may discover on exhibits linked to the crime scene including a swimming string bag full of bloodied towelling strips used to bind and gag the family. Levi Bellfield and Michael Stone were both expected to give DNA samples but Bellfield refused after his solicitor was refused entry."

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

PASSAGE TWO OF THE DAY: "She says her client had been keen to give a DNA sample, adding: "He wants to do this. He’s made admissions and is trying to assist. He’s absolutely furious and rang me six times in the last hour. He’s so upset by it.” The solicitor explained how a visit had been arranged by the CCRC for this week and she had been included in that meeting: "They asked me to send a letter of introduction which we did on August 6th." But when she arrived at the prison today (Thursday), she said she was told they needed photographic ID despite Ms Clark having been there several times. "My details are on their system, my finger prints and my photograph. I’ve been advised by the CCRC that the visit had been confirmed. I did my best to resolve the situation when I was there but they would not facilitate a visit. I waited for the CCRC and explained the situation to them I attended at their request. "He (Levi Bellfield) is angry and he has spoken to me and he would refute any suggestion he had refused to give a sample," she added."

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

STORY: "Serial killer Levi Bellfield moans ‘I’ve been treated like a dog’ and refuses to give DNA sample in prison row," by  News Reporter Lucy Thornton, published by The Mirror, on September 3, 2036." (Lucy Thornton is a News Reporter who has worked for the Daily Mirror for more than 30 years.)

SUB-HEADING: "One of Britain's most notorious serial killers demanded to be returned to his cell instead of giving his DNA to prove he is the real killer of mum Lin Russell and her daughter Megan - after his solicitor was blocked from attending

GIST: Serial killer Levi Bellfield was expected to give his DNA today to prove he killed a mum and daughter(Image: PA)

Serial killer Levi Bellfield returned to his cell on Thursday just as he was about to give a DNA sample to investigators looking at the murders Dr Lin Russell and her six-year-old daughter Megan.

The experts from the Criminal Cases Review Commission (CCRC) had travelled to HM Prison Frankland to take a swab from the notorious killer of schoolgirl Milly Dowler.

They had already taken mouth swabs from Michael Stone, who has spent 29 years behind bars after being convicted of the Kent double murder but had travelled back to the same high security prison to take a sample from Bellfield.

They made the trip after Bellfield confessed to the killings of the mum and her youngest daughter. The eldest daughter Josie Russell, then aged nine, survived the deadly attack despite suffering devastating head injuries.

But on Thursday Bellfield returned to his cell without giving a sample after his solicitor was refused entry. The inmate was said to be left "furious" and claimed he was being 'treated like a dog'.

Solicitor Theresa Clark had arrived at the prison to witness her client giving fresh DNA samples in a bid to prove he was behind the Chillenden murders.

The profile was to be used by the CCRC, who investigate miscarriages of justice, to compare with any DNA they may discover on exhibits linked to the crime scene including a swimming string bag full of bloodied towelling strips used to bind and gag the family.

Levi Bellfield and Michael Stone were both expected to give DNA samples but Bellfield refused after his solicitor was refused entry.(Image: PA)

Bellfield's solicitor said she had travelled from Leeds on a pro bono basis for the meeting with investigators and told The Mirror: “I’m very disappointed. It’s a situation that could be resolved. The CCRC have confirmed they won't be going back, which is disappointing but understandable. It's just a massive miscommunication which could have been dealt with better."

She says her client had been keen to give a DNA sample, adding: "He wants to do this. He’s made admissions and is trying to assist. He’s absolutely furious and rang me six times in the last hour. He’s so upset by it.”

The solicitor explained how a visit had been arranged by the CCRC for this week and she had been included in that meeting: "They asked me to send a letter of introduction which we did on August 6th."

But when she arrived at the prison today (Thursday), she said she was told they needed photographic ID despite Ms Clark having been there several times.

"My details are on their system, my finger prints and my photograph. I’ve been advised by the CCRC that the visit had been confirmed. I did my best to resolve the situation when I was there but they would not facilitate a visit. I waited for the CCRC and explained the situation to them I attended at their request.

"He (Levi Bellfield) is angry and he has spoken to me and he would refute any suggestion he had refused to give a sample," she added.

In a statement given to The Mirror, Bellfield said: ‘I was told my solicitor had not turned up so it would not be going ahead, so I went back to the wing and phoned her immediately. I feel like they have treated me like a dog. I remain willing to provide a DNA sample and if the CCRC do not want to travel to see me I can provide a sample to police liaison who are based at the prison.'

The news was greeted with "dismay" from Stone's solicitor but he told us: "This does not stop the forensic team continuing with the investigation to identify DNA from the exhibits and hopefully if they recognise the DNA is likely to be Levi Bellfield's then a further attempt can be made to obtain a sample from him."

They were hoping Bellfield's DNA could be compared with any found on crime scene exhibits, including a white string swimming bag dumped by the killer. Other items to be tested again include a bootlace left at the scene by the killer and clothes worn that day by the victims.

The Criminal Cases Review Commission (CCRC) is looking at the murders again after Bellfield, now 58, signed a detailed confession. Bellfield, who is in the same jail as Michael Stone, murdered 13 year old Milly, 19-year-old Marsha McDonnell, and 22-year-old Amelie Delagrange. He also tried to kill 18-year-old Kate Sheedy, who survived.

It is believed he has since confessed to several murders including missingElizabeth Chau, whom he claims to have buried in woodland, giving the location to police who have yet to search it. They insist his confession was false.

It is hoped new state-of-the-art DNA tests on a swimming bag containing the strips of towels used to tie the family up and gag them would provide new evidence. The bag was found by gardener who had watched a man acting "jittery" near some woods a mile from the crime scene. The witness later returned to investigate and found a string bag stashed in some bushes at the top of a bank.

He left the bag there until the next day when he heard about the attack and contacted the police, leading them to the spot. They showed it to Megan Russell's father, Dr Shaun Russell, who identified it as his wife’s.

Blood, which matched the blood groups of Dr Russell and her two daughters, was found on the strips of the stained blue towel.

It is believed state-of-the-art forensic tests will be used, which can isolate a mix of male and female DNA. It’s this same advance in testing that saw wrongly convicted Andrew Malkinson exonerated after serving 17 years for a brutal rape he did not commit.

Michael Stone has been behind bars for 29 years and is 'moderately hopeful' confident his name will be cleared(Image: SWNS)

Stone is now serving three life prison sentences after exhausting his legal options with two trials, two appeals and two rejected applications to the CCRC.

Michael Stone’s solicitor Paul Bacon said his client is ‘moderately hopeful’ the tests could lead to him being cleared and are hoping either Levi Bellfield’s DNA or another unidentified male’s profile could be on the items.

Recently it emerged there may be a third suspect, Raymond Buck, who committed suicide at 2000 at the age of 45. A member of his family is to give a DNA sample too.

Buck was reportedly heard to confess to a family member on the day of the attacks: "I've done something unforgivable. I've killed three people."

Stone's solicitor Mr Bacon, said: “It could be Bellfield, it could be anybody - but it is important we get a result. The answer is in the DNA, that’s what will eventually lead to the real culprit being found."

Mr Bacon told The Mirror. "I am sure the CCRC investigators will go back if appears likely the DNA identified is from Bellfield.'

The experienced lawyer, who has represented Mr Stone for 20 years, says he is confident his client's DNA will still not be found on the exhibit. Instead he believes the forensic tests could uncover either Bellfield’s profile or an entirely new suspect. This, he said, will then allow them to return the case to the Court of Appeal to clear him.

He said Michael Stone was “moderately hopeful" the real killer may now be found.

Mr Bacon explained: "We had a Zoom meeting with the CCRC a few weeks ago and forensic people to talk about the order in which they should start looking at exhibits. We’ve picked out what we think should be the first two or three items, exhibits from the scene.

“The string bag which had fallen into the hedge with towelling strips in it. The assailant tore up one of the towels because they had come from swimming, then used the strips to tie them all up. They were taken off them when they were dead and injured and put into the string bag.

“Later a man was seen throwing a bag into the hedge with the bloodied strips of towelling. In my opinion the bag is the most likely source of any result we might get.”

His client gave his DNA six weeks ago after a mouth swab and Bellfield was booked for today. Forensic tests are also soon to be carried out on a swimming bag made of net, which had strips of towel inside used to bind and gag Dr Russell and her two daughters.

About E-fits issued after the 1996 Chillenden murders, which remarkably resembled serial killer Levi Bellfield, he said: "This is all speculative.

"No matter, whatever people say they saw, it has got to be a DNA find and with all the advanced techniques it should happen I think.”

Mr Bacon said his encounters with Levi Bellfield began in January 2020. "He contacted me to say 'I have evidence and information that may assist your client Michael Stone'. So I went to see him for an hour and a half five times. On the fifth interview he’d written out for me his confession to the murders. “

He told The Mirror Levi Bellfield later withdrew that confession before writing another one, reigniting the CCRC’s interest in the case.

“I thought his confessions were detailed enough to be true but everything was in the public domain. On balance, I think it’s more likely than not that he is telling the truth. There’s a reasonable chance they are true but equally because he has two full life sentences he might see it as a bit of a distraction, me going to visit him for an hour-and-a-half at a time."

About the murders he said Bellfield told him he'd seen "this family walking along in to Cherry Garden Lane and suddenly had the idea to attack them. He said he was just cruising around when he saw the family and followed them in there, attacking them.

“You do wonder what was in his head. Look at his other murders and he sneaks up on people. It is extraordinary. “

Asked if he believed Bellfield was behind the murders, he said: “It was his body language, sometimes in his responses to me that made me think sometimes: ‘I think you could have done it’. It is quite likely because of his record attacking females.

“But it is difficult to know and we will only know when we get the DNA results. And whatever I think, the Court of Appeal is not going to look at anything other than a DNA result.

“If they can get a DNA hit they can find a match with a person on the police database and that will be excellent.”

A CCRC spokesperson has previously confirmed its review was ongoing, adding it was the fourth time it had investigated Stone's case.

The fresh review commenced in November 2023 "exploring the possibilities the application raises to determine whether Mr Stone may have suffered a miscarriage of justice".

Their test for referring a case is that there is a real possibility that the Court of Appeal would overturn his conviction, a test which was not met in any of the earlier applications, they have said.

On Thursday when contacted by The Mirror, the spokesperson said: "CCRC staff made a pre-arranged visit to HMP Frankland today (Thursday 3 September) to obtain a DNA sample from Levi Bellfield. Once there, our staff were informed that Mr Bellfield refused to provide a sample in the absence of his solicitor, and our staff left the prison. A review of an application from Michael Stone continues.”

A Ministry of Justice spokesperson said: "Any prisoner is allowed to see their solicitor, but there are strict rules about entering a prison and every prisoner must book a visit with their solicitor in advance.""

The entire story can be read at: 

https://www.mirror.co.uk/news/uk-news/levi-bellfield-russell-murders-dna-37622318

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;

September 4: Criminalizing Reproduction: Attacks on science, medicine and the right to choose: 'Reason,' (Assistant Editor Tosin Akintola) reports that, "The war on drugs has come to the maternity ward", and that, "Doctors are drug testing pregnant women without their consent, then handing their results over to the state," noting that: "At first glance, a new mother taking part in a drug screening seems reasonable. For the sake of the mother and child, a doctor performs a clinical test to rule out any complications or signs of risks to the newborn. But the story quickly takes a dark turn. If there's a positive test result, it doesn't stay between the doctor and the patient. In 24 states and Washington, D.C., a positive test alone is enough to initiate a child welfare report, according to a report by the Legislative Analysis and Public Policy Association. "

PUBLISHER'S NOTE: In recent years, I have taken on the theme of 'criminalizing reproduction' - a natural theme for a Blog concerned with flawed science in its myriad forms - as I am utterly appalled by the current movement in the United States (and some other countries) emboldened by the overturning of Roe V Wade, towards imprisoning and conducting surveillance on women and their physicians and others who help them secure a safe abortion, on the basis of sham science (or any other basis). I can’t remember the source, but agree totally with the sentiment that control over their reproductive lives is far too important to women in America - or anywhere else - so they can participate equally in the economic and social life of their nations without fear for loss their freedom at the hands of political opportunists and fanatics. (Far too many of those those around these days.) '

Harold Levy: Publisher; The Charles Smith Blog.

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

PASSAGE OF THE DAY: "Depending on the state, that test could land the mother on a child abuse registry. Worse still, the mother may be notified the test has occurred only after the fact. This seems to run afoul of the Supreme Court's ruling in Ferguson v. City of Charleston(2001), where the Court found it unconstitutional to drug test pregnant women without consent solely for "law enforcement purposes."  However, Erinma Ukoha, an obstetrician-gynecologist and maternal-fetal medicine specialist at the Mount Sinai Hospital in New York, tells Reason this practice—known as "test and report"—is "common" and "often happens in non-consensual ways."*  In fact, over six years, The Marshall Project found "at least 70,000 cases in 21 states" where parents were referred to law enforcement after a positive test for drug or alcohol use."

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

STORY:: "The War on Drugs Has Come to the Maternity Ward," by Tosin Akintola, published by Reason, on August 11, 2026. (Tosin Akintola is an assistant editor at Reason. He was previously a Burton C. Gray Memorial intern at Reason and has been published in The American Spectator, InsideSources, and the NewBostonPost.

He received his B.A. in political science from the University of Maryland, Baltimore County.)

SUB-HEADING: "Doctors are drug testing pregnant women without their consent, then handing their results over to the state."

GIST: "At first glance, a new mother taking part in a drug screening seems reasonable. 

For the sake of the mother and child, a doctor performs a clinical test to rule out any complications or signs of risks to the newborn.

But the story quickly takes a dark turn. 

If there's a positive test result, it doesn't stay between the doctor and the patient.

 In 24 states and Washington, D.C., a positive test alone is enough to initiate a child welfare report, according to a report by the Legislative Analysis and Public Policy Association. 

Depending on the state, that test could land the mother on a child abuse registry. Worse still, the mother may be notified the test has occurred only after the fact.

This seems to run afoul of the Supreme Court's ruling in Ferguson v. City of Charleston(2001), where the Court found it unconstitutional to drug test pregnant women without consent solely for "law enforcement purposes."

However, Erinma Ukoha, an obstetrician-gynecologist and maternal-fetal medicine specialist at the Mount Sinai Hospital in New York, tells Reason this practice—known as "test and report"—is "common" and "often happens in non-consensual ways."* 

In fact, over six years, The Marshall Project found "at least 70,000 cases in 21 states" where parents were referred to law enforcement after a positive test for drug or alcohol use.

Ukoha says a lot of medical professionals are influenced by "stereotypes and stigma" associated with people who use substances in pregnancy, leading them to make "false assumptions about their ability to parent."

The practice developed as part of the response to the opioid crisis roiling the nation. Each year, nearly 10 percent of births in the U.S. are affected by drug or alcohol use.

To deal with the issue, Congress amended the Child Abuse Prevention and Treatment Act of 1974 in ways that made it easier for these nonconsensual tests to occur. 

The 1974 law ties federal grant funding to state-level development of "plans of safe care" for infants "born and identified as being affected by substance abuse or withdrawal symptoms." 

It also requires healthcare providers involved in the "delivery or care" of affected infants to "notify the child protective services system"; however, it also states that nothing in the law should be read as requiring "prosecution for any illegal action."

In 2016, Congress passed an amendment changing the requirement to include infants affected by all substance abuse by striking the word illegal from its substance abuse clause.

In 2018, lawmakers passed another amendment that put money behind the idea, authorizing grants to assist state agencies with "developing, updating, implementing, and monitoring" their plans of safe care. 

And in 2019, the law was again amended to provide "civil and criminal liability" to anyone who makes a "good-faith report of child abuse or neglect."

There is no federal definition for child abuse or neglect. Left to their own devices, each state has adopted different standards for reporting and treatment.

 Ukoha says the process "varies across providers, institutions, and states," but the result is that "individuals are tested in pregnancy without their knowledge or consent."

Apart from potentially being separated from their newborns, mothers risk placement on child abuse registries—which would prevent them from holding certain jobs or participating in school activities—or incarceration. 

In the case of Idaho mom Nicole Hamann, one positive test for THC got her 10 years on the state's child protection registry, according to a joint report by CBS News and The Marshall Project.

But moms can find themselves facing criminal charges even when the substances are legal. In South Carolina, Ayanna Harris-Rashid was arrested and faced a 10-year felony sentence after testing positive for THC. 

Harris-Rashid admitted to using CBD, which is legal in the state and can contain trace amounts of THC, to "relieve cramping and nausea."

 Her charges were dropped a year after her arrest.

Contrary to what one might think of this paternalist approach to neonatal care, Ukoha says the goal isn't to connect people to treatment or provide them with resources on substance abuse, but to "penalize" them.

While the practice is widespread, it's been denounced by medical associations for years. 

The American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists "opposes any policies or practices that seek to criminalize individuals for conduct alleged to be harmful to their pregnancy or based on pregnancy outcomes."

In the opinion of its medical professionals, clinical urine tests should only be performed "with the patient's consent." 

The guidance also states mothers should be "informed of the potential ramifications of a positive test result, including any mandatory reporting requirements."

 Further, experts do not consider positive drug tests alone to be proof of a substance abuse disorder, just as a negative test wouldn't necessarily rule out substance use. 

The war on drugs has not meaningfully deterred Americans from using drugs. Now, unassuming mothers and their newborns are being targeted through overzealous policies that do nothing but expand the criminal class.""

The entire story can be read at:

https://share.google/bX5ZaItUDxBuSIGGd

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;

September 3: Jimmie "Chris" Duncan; Louisiana: Bite mark 'junk science:' ProPublica. Question of the day: "He Spent 27 Years on Death Row as a Wrongfully Convicted Man. What Comes Next?", as probed by Richard A. Webster, Verite News and Kathleen Flynn for ProPublica, co-published with Verite News... "An investigation by Verite News and ProPublica last year showed that prosecutors had relied on key evidence that appeared to be fabricated by a pair of forensics experts whose use of bite mark analysis has since been widely discredited as junk science. Nevertheless, Louisiana prosecutors continued to argue that Duncan should be put to death. The threat became ever more real as Gov. Jeff Landry began expediting executions, despite the state’s track record of convicting and sentencing to death people later found to be innocent. It wasn’t until June that the Louisiana Supreme Court threw out Duncan’s murder conviction, ruling that the bite marks found on the child’s body, the only physical proof tying Duncan to the alleged crime, could not have been made by a human."

QUOTE OF THE DAY: "Chief Justice John Weimer was so outraged by the prosecution of Duncan that he compared it to 17th-century witch trials. “We now look back at those practices as asinine and absurd” with “no basis whatsoever in logic,” he wrote. Some of the evidence against Duncan, he said, was “similarly specious.”

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PASSAGE OF THE DAY: "The trauma that the state imposed on Duncan as a result of his wrongful conviction continues today. Although Louisiana’s top jurist tore apart the state’s case against Duncan, the 57-year-old West Monroe native still isn’t truly free. Steve Tew, district attorney for Ouachita Parish, where the crime allegedly took place, had warned the justices during an April hearing that he would retry Duncan if the court vacated his conviction. Tew, who did not respond to requests for comment, has said in court that he still believes that Duncan is not only guilty but deserves to be executed. Tew has until next June to decide on a retrial, though his term ends in January and he is not running for reelection. Until then, Duncan said, he is trapped in limbo, both mentally and financially."

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PASSAGE TWO OF THE DAY: "Duncan had been on death row for about a decade when he learned from his lawyers and the news that there were others like him — people convicted based on inaccurate evidence, including discredited bite mark science, presented by Hayne or West. Four of them had been exonerated by 2008, and five more would follow."

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PASSAGE THREE OF THE DAY: 'Signs of hope.'..."Then in 2016, Duncan’s attorneys contacted the American Bar Association, which put him in touch with an Atlanta firm that took Duncan on as a client pro bono. (The Innocence Project in New York signed on six years later.) They filed a series of discovery requests that unearthed a trove of evidence pointing to Duncan’s innocence. This included expert witnesses who said the child’s death was an accidental drowning brought on by a seizure and a jailhouse informant who recanted his trial testimony that Duncan had confessed to the crim Most important was a recording of West’s 1993 examination of Haley. In that grainy black-and-white video, West can be seen taking a mold of Duncan’s teeth and grinding it into and across the girl’s body, seemingly creating bite marks where none previously existed — the marks later used to secure a death sentence against Duncan. The trial judge had not allowed the jury to see the video on the grounds that it was not an indication of Duncan’s innocence."

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STORY: "He Spent 27 Years on Death Row as a Wrongfully Convicted Man. What Comes Next?, by Richard A. Webster, Verite News and Kathleen Flynn for ProPublica, co-published with Verite News, on August 31, 2026.

SUB-HEADING: "23-hour solitary confinement. 115-degree heat. Jimmie Duncan is haunted by the decades he spent in Louisiana’s Angola prison — and how, even after being released, he still isn’t truly free."

GIST: "Jimmie “Chris” Duncan wiped the sweat off his forehead as he assessed his temporary home from the parking lot of a rundown motel in central Louisiana. Sure, there’s drug dealing and prostitution, he said on a recent summer afternoon. 

And he suspected his neighbors were cooking meth on a floor below the room he paid $350 a week to rent.

But, he said, “I feel safe here. I mean, I’ve been on death row. I feel safe anywhere.”

Duncan had spent the last three decades trying to prove his innocence after a jury convicted him of killing his former girlfriend’s toddler. 

An investigation by Verite News and ProPublica last year showed that prosecutors had relied on key evidence that appeared to be fabricated by a pair of forensics experts whose use of bite mark analysis has since been widely discredited as junk science.

Nevertheless, Louisiana prosecutors continued to argue that Duncan should be put to death. The threat became ever more real as Gov. Jeff Landry began expediting executions, despite the state’s track record of convicting and sentencing to death people later found to be innocent. It wasn’t until June that the Louisiana Supreme Court threw out Duncan’s murder conviction, ruling that the bite marks found on the child’s body, the only physical proof tying Duncan to the alleged crime, could not have been made by a human.

Chief Justice John Weimer was so outraged by the prosecution of Duncan that he compared it to 17th-century witch trials. “We now look back at those practices as asinine and absurd” with “no basis whatsoever in logic,” he wrote. Some of the evidence against Duncan, he said, was “similarly specious.”

The trauma that the state imposed on Duncan as a result of his wrongful conviction continues today. Although Louisiana’s top jurist tore apart the state’s case against Duncan, the 57-year-old West Monroe native still isn’t truly free. Steve Tew, district attorney for Ouachita Parish, where the crime allegedly took place, had warned the justices during an April hearing that he would retry Duncan if the court vacated his conviction. Tew, who did not respond to requests for comment, has said in court that he still believes that Duncan is not only guilty but deserves to be executed. Tew has until next June to decide on a retrial, though his term ends in January and he is not running for reelection.

Until then, Duncan said, he is trapped in limbo, both mentally and financially. He came out of Angola with nothing in the bank and now makes $17 an hour working the night shift at Walmart unloading and stocking freight. While he enjoys the job — he was named employee of the month in June — Duncan said he is barely scraping by.

There is a state restitution program designed to compensate exonerees up to $480,000 over a decade for wrongful convictions, but he is not eligible until either the district attorney decides not to retry him or he is acquitted in another trial, which can take years. And even then, there is no guarantee he will ever be awarded any money. Attorney General Liz Murrill has opposed nearly all applications for compensation, telling lawmakers last year that defending the state against such claims consumes an enormous amount of time and resources and that the fund should be abolished altogether.

“The foreseeable future for me is the year between now and when they can’t prosecute me no more. That’s the only future I get to play with,” Duncan said. “I’m 100% factually innocent, but not 100% free from prosecution.”

Surviving His First Decade in Angola

Over the course of more than six hours of interviews with Verite News and ProPublica, Duncan described in harrowing detail the nightmare he lived since police arrested him on Dec. 18, 1993. By far the worst of it all, he said, was thinking that his neighbors, friends and even relatives could believe he had committed such an unspeakable crime against a child.

It felt as if everything he was as a person was “being torn out of you, violently, in an emotionally painful way,” Duncan said. “Just having your identity eviscerated.”

Duncan was babysitting Haley Oliveaux in the home he shared with the girl’s mother, Allison Layton Statham, in West Monroe when the 23-month-old died. Duncan told law enforcement he had put the child in the bath, then went to wash dishes. When he heard a noise coming from the bathroom, he rushed to check on her and found Haley floating face down in the water. She was pronounced dead a few hours later.

Police initially arrested Duncan for negligent homicide, but prosecutors upped the charge to first-degree murder after pathologist Steven Hayne and dentist Michael West conducted Haley’s medical exam and claimed they discovered evidence, including the purported bite marks, that she had been sexually assaulted and intentionally drowned. Following two weeks of testimony during the trial in 1998, the jury found Duncan guilty; months later, the 30-year-old was sentenced to death.

His first decade at the Louisiana State Penitentiary at Angola was the hardest, Duncan said. Not only did he lose his initial appeal in 2002, and with it the dream he could convince the courts of his innocence, but he was forced to watch helplessly as his family gradually fell to pieces.

His mother, Barbara Oren, used to visit him every Thursday, and then in 2004, she stopped coming without explanation. Duncan would stare out the window across the hall from his cell, “almost obsessing, like my mom’s gonna show up any time now,” he said.

Three years later, Oren died of complications from excessive drinking, her sister, Elaine Whiteside, said. But in truth, Whiteside said, grief killed her.

“She fought for Chris for so long, and she turned to alcohol,” Whiteside said. “It’s been very traumatizing for everybody. For the last 32 years, how do you tell someone your nephew’s on death row for the rape and murder of a baby?”

Fourteen years after his mother passed, Duncan’s brother, David, died of an overdose. During the first several years of his incarceration, Duncan said he spoke with his brother often, but those calls grew less frequent as David’s addictions took hold.

“My brother ended up going from being the region’s No. 1 car salesman to being addicted to drugs to eventually dying of overdose,” he said. “He just couldn’t take it. He couldn’t escape being my brother.”

Duncan wasn’t allowed to attend either of their funerals.

Daily life on death row nearly robbed him of his sanity, Duncan said. Like all inmates awaiting execution, Duncan remained in solitary confinement for 23 hours a day. This lasted almost 20 years. And there was never a set schedule for that one hour he would be let out and allowed to use the phone. Some days, it would be 2 a.m. Who could he call at that hour? (Death row inmates were eventually allowed to spend at least four hours outside their cells following a 2017 class-action lawsuit.)

The concept of time gradually disappeared. Duncan tried to keep a strict routine: wake up, drink coffee, watch the news, exercise and read books, mainly about other cultures and religions. He learned Hebrew so he could better understand the Bible. He became a tutor and helped other inmates earn their GEDs.

But the years of confinement began to take their toll physically. After about four years, Duncan started experiencing severe heart pain caused by a bacterial infection. “By the time I was 34 years old, my health had went all the way downhill,” he said. “A lot of nights, I went to sleep, said my prayers and really didn’t think I was going to wake up the next day.”

During the summer months, when the heat inside could rise to 115 degrees, Duncan said he experienced seizures. “I’m pretty sure I got brain damage as a result of it,” he said. “There were times when I got out of bed and I didn’t even know if I was left-handed or right-handed. There were a few times when I got up, I didn’t even know my name.”

In 2013, three death row inmates sued the Louisiana Department of Public Safety and Corrections for “appalling and extreme conditions” as a result of the high temperatures. Their experiences described in the lawsuit closely matched Duncan’s. For 85 straight days in 2012, the heat index in one section of death row exceeded 126 degrees, according to the suit. A judge ordered the state to provide air conditioning throughout death row, but a federal appeals court overturned the order. The corrections department did not respond to questions about conditions within the prison.

Instead of breaking him, Duncan said the brutal conditions hardened his resolve to keep fighting. But it didn’t seem as if anyone was listening.

“Sometimes the louder you scream, the more people look at you and laugh, like, ‘There’s another one claiming he’s innocent,’” Duncan said. “I was suicidal at one point because I was hopeless.”

Signs of Hope

Duncan had been on death row for about a decade when he learned from his lawyers and the news that there were others like him — people convicted based on inaccurate evidence, including discredited bite mark science, presented by Hayne or West. Four of them had been exonerated by 2008, and five more would follow.

In 2009 journalist Radley Balko wrote about Duncan’s case in Reason, a libertarian magazine, and how it was part of a larger pattern of “forensics fraud” perpetrated by Hayne and West. At the time, Duncan’s attorneys with a New Orleans nonprofit had filed a post-conviction appeal but did not have the resources to conduct a fuller investigation and uncover new evidence required to win. That left his case largely dormant.

Then in 2016, Duncan’s attorneys contacted the American Bar Association, which put him in touch with an Atlanta firm that took Duncan on as a client pro bono. (The Innocence Project in New York signed on six years later.) They filed a series of discovery requests that unearthed a trove of evidence pointing to Duncan’s innocence. This included expert witnesses who said the child’s death was an accidental drowning brought on by a seizure and a jailhouse informant who recanted his trial testimony that Duncan had confessed to the crime.

Most important was a recording of West’s 1993 examination of Haley. In that grainy black-and-white video, West can be seen taking a mold of Duncan’s teeth and grinding it into and across the girl’s body, seemingly creating bite marks where none previously existed — the marks later used to secure a death sentence against Duncan. The trial judge had not allowed the jury to see the video on the grounds that it was not an indication of Duncan’s innocence.

West, who has not responded to multiple earlier requests for comment, had previously said he was simply using what he called a “direct comparison” technique — in which he presses a mold of a person’s teeth directly onto the location of suspected bite marks. He admitted in a 2011 deposition in another case that he no longer believed in bite mark analysis. Hayne died in 2020.

Atlanta attorney Christian Bromley, who had joined the case, recalled the first time he was shown the recording in 2016 and being “horrified and surprised that the video had been available at that point for over 20 years and just essentially ignored and deemed not relevant.” The video would provide the foundation for Duncan’s latest bid for freedom.

Filmmaker Catherine Legge, who spent more than three years creating a documentary about his case, also played a pivotal role. Duncan said he’s indebted to her for tracking down Statham, Haley’s mother, and convincing her of his innocence. He knows it wasn’t easy.

“Allison spent 30 years being accused of being a partner to her baby’s killer,” Duncan said.

In April of last year, then-Ouachita Parish Judge Alvin Sharp overturnedDuncan’s conviction, criticizing the “questionable” work of Hayne and West. Tew appealed, claiming that bite mark evidence was an accepted science at the time of Duncan’s trial and that some experts still consider it to be a useful forensic methodology.

At Duncan’s bail hearing last July, Statham told the court that the district attorney’s office had lied about her daughter’s death to make it look like murder and continues to perpetuate the lie. She said Duncan deserved to be free. He wept as he listened to his former girlfriend come to his defense.

Four months later, Sharp granted Duncan bail. He was released into the embrace of his family the day before Thanksgiving. Then, this June, the state Supreme Court rejected the district attorney’s appeal and threw out Duncan’s conviction. Of the four people sentenced to death based in part on the work of Hayne or West, Duncan was the last to be freed.

Rebuilding a Life From Scratch

Since his release from prison, Duncan has been trying to piece together some semblance of a normal existence. There were the everyday logistics of finding permanent housing and a job. And then the deeper work of addressing the decades of pain that he — and his family — experienced.

At first, he slept on his aunt’s living room couch in Pineville in central Louisiana. But she broke her leg in June, which required twice-weekly visits from nurses and physical therapists, leaving little room for Duncan. That’s how Duncan ended up at the motel across the Red River in Alexandria, with half of his belongings packed into the back of a truck. In August, he moved into his own apartment, the first place he has ever lived by himself.

Duncan’s main focus now is doing the best job he can at work. On most nights, he said he puts his earbuds in, listens to music, unloads the trucks and lets the world drift away. “Ain’t got to think about nothing else,” he said. But Duncan has his eye on the future and enrolled in a Walmart management training program that will bring additional responsibilities.

One day soon, though, he knows that he will need to shift his attention back to the flawed criminal justice system in Monroe and the conditions in Angola prison. He wants to make sure the horrors he experienced don’t happen to anyone else, including the guys on death row, men who were convicted of terrible crimes but with whom he still formed true friendships.

“I was under the same roof with those people twice as long as I was under the same roof with my own family,” he said.

He’s also rekindled a relationship from long ago. Recently, he was going through Facebook friend requests and saw a familiar face, but one he couldn’t quite place. He accepted, and the woman texted him a photo of herself when she was just a kid. It was his childhood sweetheart.

The last time he saw her was at a skating rink just after Christmas in the early 1980s. He had given her a pair of earrings. A short time later, her family moved out of town.

“She just disappeared,” Duncan said. “She’s one of the only people I remember from my past. I still missed her just the same as I always did.”

That part of his life seems at times to be more of a dream than reality, Duncan said. He lived a simple, country life. He hunted and fished. He drank beer, rode motorcycles and worked on hot rods. And he planned to become a firefighter like his dad.

But then Haley died.

“I can’t be a simple person anymore,” Duncan said. “I try to find ways to be happy, but nothing is simple anymore.""

The entire story can be read at: 

 https://share.google/AI00SwgUrZb9M8i6T

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;