POST: "Belynda Goff: Innocent and incarcerated on another Mother's Day," by Elizabeth Weill- Greenberg published by the Huffington Post on May7, 2016. (Elizabeth Weill-Greenberg is a Part-Time Lecturer at Rutgers University in New Brunswick, where she teaches a course on wrongful convictions.)
GIST:" Today marks Belynda Goff’s nineteenth Mother’s Day as an incarcerated mother, serving a life sentence for a murder she did not commit.........The police theory of the crime - developed almost immediately - was, as the prosecutor would tell jurors: “Hell hath no fury like a woman scorned.” Stephen had been unfaithful in the past and so, the State argued, Belynda must have killed him in a rage when he came home that night.........The police could not find bloody weapons or clothing in Belynda’s home so they surmised she must have cut up the clothing and flushed it down the toilet. While the police failed to find evidence to corroborate their theory, evidence that someone else had killed Stephen began to emerge. The evening before Belynda found her husband’s body, a neighbor had seen men with baseball bats parked in front of Belynda’s apartment. Fearing for her children’s safety, the neighbor reported the sighting to the police that day and again after the murder. According to Chris Lindley, Belynda’s brother, Stephen had asked Chris to join him in an arson scheme. They were to burn down a building in Flint, Michigan for $10,000. When Chris told Stephen he wanted to back out, according to Chris, Stephen became panicked, begged him to reconsider and told him that he (Stephen) had already spent the money and would be killed. About a week later Stephen was found dead. Two days after the murder Chris received an anonymous call stating he would be killed next if he opened his mouth. Belynda’s home was burned down before trial in a still unsolved arson.
The State sought to have Chris’ allegations excluded from the trial arguing that it was - as tunnel vision dictates - “irrelevant.” Tunnel vision is the scientific method, inverted. As Wisconsin Innocence Project Director Keith Findley wrote in his exhaustive analysis of tunnel vision: “Evidence inconsistent with the chosen theory is easily overlooked or dismissed as irrelevant, incredible, or unreliable.” On August 5, 1996, Belynda was convicted of first degree murder and sentenced to life in prison."
The entire post can be found at:
The entire post can be found at:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/elizabeth-weillgreenberg/belynda-goff-innocent-and_b_9857942.html
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/
Information on "The Charles Smith Blog Award"- and its nomination process - can be found at:
http://smithforensic.blogspot.
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;
