POST: "Court rejects ttempts to devalue life of the accused in South Texas capital case," by Brian Stull, published by the American Civil Liberties Union on April 5, 2013.
GIST: "In December of 2012, Judge Lopez held an
evidentiary hearing on whether Manuel received effective assistance of
counsel at trial. This week's order was the decision on the December
hearing. By late in the hearing, the writing was on the wall: Manuel Velez was
innocent. He had been convicted of killing the child and sentenced to
death only because of ineffective defense attorneys who failed to
present available medical evidence conclusively showing that the child's
serious head injuries (and other injuries) were caused when Manuel was
away working in construction in Tennessee. This evidence shattered the
State's circumstantial trial theory that Manuel Velez must have been the
guilty culprit because the child was a healthy baby before the last two
weeks of his life and had become injured only after moving with his
mother and siblings into Manuel's home. At the hearing, one by one the medical experts came to the stand –
forensic pathologists, neuropathologists, medical examiners,
pediatricians, State's experts, and defense experts. They talked of
skull fractures, of microscopically-examined brain hematomas (blood on
the brain), of cat scans, and the dramatic increase of the child's head
circumference beginning three to four months before his death. All of
this evidence converged to show the child had serious head injuries (and
other injuries) long before he lived with Manuel Velez, but while he
was living with his troubled mother, who had a drinking problem,
irresponsible habits, and a bad temper. The experts uniformly stated
that had they been called to the stand and/or asked these questions at
the 2008 trial, they would have given this same exonerating testimony.
But the experts either weren't called or, for those who were called by
the State, were not asked the right questions because defense counsel
had fallen down on the job."
The entire post can be found at:
http://www.aclu.org/blog/capital-punishment/court-rejects-attempts-devalue-life-accused-south-texas-capital-case
PUBLISHER'S NOTE:
I
have added a search box for content in this blog which now encompasses
several thousand posts. The search box is located near the bottom of
the screen just above the list of links. I am confident that this
powerful search tool provided by "Blogger" will help our readers and
myself get more out of the site.
The
Toronto Star, my previous employer for more than twenty incredible
years, has put considerable effort into exposing the harm caused by Dr.
Charles Smith and his protectors - and into pushing for reform of
Ontario's forensic pediatric pathology system. The Star has a "topic"
section which focuses on recent stories related to Dr. Charles Smith. It
can be found at:
http://www.thestar.com/topic/charlessmith
Information on "The Charles Smith Blog Award"- and its nomination process - can be found at:
http://smithforensic.blogspot.com/2011/05/charles-smith-blog-award-nominations.html
Please send any comments or information on other cases and issues of interest to the readers of this blog to: hlevy15@gmail.com
Harold Levy: Publisher; The Charles Smith Blog.
