Michigan
is one of 20 states that offer no help or compensation to wrongfully
convicted people — not even a night in a motel. In Michigan, 55 people
have been wrongfully convicted and exonerated since the mid-1980s, and
about 1,600 nationwide, according to the University of Michigan
Innocence Clinic. In 1985, David Gavitt´s house in Ionia caught fire. His wife and two children died and he was seriously injured. Gavitt was convicted of arson and murder, even though the house was not insured, and prosecutors did not find a motive. In
2012, the case was re-opened by the University of Michigan Innocence
Clinic, the only clinic in the state that handles non-DNA cases. Modern
fire investigators, working with the Ionia County Prosecutor´s Office,
found that the signs of arson used to convict Gavitt in 1985 have been
discredited since then. A new investigation found no evidence of
gasoline or accelerant. Gavitt was released June 26, 2012, after serving 27 years in prison for a crime he didn´t commit.........On
May 7, Gavitt, Davis and four other wrongfully convicted people
gathered at the State Capitol for a hearing on the compensation bill. One
of the six was Julie Baumer, convicted of first-degree child abuse and
thrown into prison for more than four years until her conviction was
overturned in 2009. Scans of the baby´s brain revealed that a stroke,
not shaking, was the cause of death.........The latest success for Cooley´s Innocence Project is a classic tug of war between DNA testing and junk science. On
May 22, after hundreds of hours of work by the Cooley Innocence
Project team, the Michigan Supreme Court ruled that the Court of
Appeals must consider a request by a man convicted in 1989 of murder,
Gilbert Lee Poole Jr., for DNA testing in the Oakland County Circuit
Court. Poole has been in prison 26 years. The Court of Appeals or dered
the DNA testing July 6. A controversial Michigan forensic dentist, Allan Warnick, testified that Poole´s bite marks were on the victim.
"[Warnick]
has been associated with three or four cases in Michigan where he´s
been 100 percent someone´s teeth marks are on a victim´s body,"
Mitchell-Chicon said. "There´s no scientific support for that
whatsoever, and yet Gilbert Poole is still in prison because that was
used against him." But the evidence in the Poole case is not in the best condition. The case hangs, literally, on a thread. "The
blood on the bloody stones and grass was lifted with a piece of thread
and blood typed," Mitchell-Cichon said. Blood typing uses up a lot of
evidence. "Hopefully we have the threads and hopefully we have some
visible blood on there." Cooley´s Innocence Project team didn´t take much time to celebrate the recent progress in the Poole case. DNA testing "gets better as we speak," Mitchell-Cichon said, but it´s not a magic bullet. "I´d love to be put out of business," she said."
http://www.lansingcitypulse.com/lansing/article-11636-raw-deal.html
