EDITORIAL: "How many innocent people did NJ send to prison with junk science?," published by the Star-Ledger on April 27, 2015.
PHOTO CAPTION: "Gerard Richardson was sent to New Jersey prison to serve 30
years for a murder he did not commit, largely based on bogus bite mark
evidence. It took him 19 years to prove his innocence."
GIST: "Now, it's basically left up to the discretion of individual states to
right these wrongs. Texas, New York and North Carolina are reviewing
their hair examiner cases, and New Jersey's Attorney General's Office
this week pledged to put its own audit in motion. But it hasn't yet said
what cases it will review. The audit should include all convictions
based on pattern and impression forensic practices that we now know are
not scientifically valid -- including bite mark evidence. The 2013 exoneration of Gerard Richardson is the perfect example why.
After he spent nearly two decades in a prison for a murder he didn't
commit based on false evidence that a bite-mark left on a victim matched
his teeth, a judge finally threw out Richardson's conviction when the
mark was tested and found to contain another man's DNA. Yet even then,
the trial prosecutor in Somerset County dragged his feet on dropping the
charges, still insisting the bite mark was Richardson's. Then there's Larry Peterson in Burlington County, who was convicted of murder and rape in large part based on flawed hair analysis.
A forensic scientist with the New Jersey State Police said the hairs
found at the scene and on the victim's body had the same characteristics
as Peterson's, but later DNA testing found they actually belonged to
the victim, and turned up the DNA of another, unidentified man at the
crime scene. Peterson was the first homicide conviction in New Jersey to be
overturned on the basis of DNA evidence. How many more people suffered
the same fate? We will never know unless a thorough review is done. We
owe it not just to the innocent people in prison, but to the public not
to let the real perpetrators go free."
The entire editorial can be found at:
http://www.nj.com/opinion/index.ssf/2015/04/how_many_innocent_people_did_nj_send_to_prison_wit.html
PUBLISHER'S NOTE:
Dear Reader. Keep your eye on the Charles Smith Blog. We are following this case.
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.
