In the years since I started publishing this Blog I
have become increasingly disturbed by the 'white elephant' in the room:
Sheer, unadulterated, willful misconduct in the criminal justice
system - much of it involving forensic evidence - committed by lab
technicians, pathologists, police officers (bought, coerced through physical violence or threat) or induced false confessions), prosecutors and others.
Think Annie Dookhan; Think Sonia Farak; Think David Kofoed; Think
Charles Smith; Think Ken Anderson; I have therefore decided to run this
image of a white elephant at the top of every applicable post
henceforth, to draw our reader's attention to what I see as a major
problem in all too many criminal justice system's - my own included.
Harold Levy; Publisher: The Charles Smith Blog;
"Reformers have for years recommended that all forensic labs be
independent from law enforcement and prosecutorial agencies' and this is
a key reform promoted by The Justice Project (2008). But fixing
these problems is only half the answer' because half of the wrongful
convictions attributed to misleading forensic evidence involved
deliberate forensic fraud' evidence tampering' and/or perjury.
From "The Elephant in the Crime Lab," by co-authored by Sheila Berry and Larry Ytuarte; Forensic Examiner; Spring, 2009;
http://smithforensic.blogspot.ca/2010/04/david-kofoed-and-elephant-in-crime-lab.html
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RELEASE: "Man receives 6.42 million in wrongful conviction lawsuit," by Alejandra de la Fuente, released by The Florida Innocence Project, on October 25, 2016.
GIST: "This week we congratulate former Greensboro resident LaMonte
Armstrong for being paid 6.42 million dollars by the city of Greensboro,
North Carolina because of his wrongful conviction in 1995. Armstrong was exonerated in 2013 of a murder he did not commit. From
the start, the case against Armstrong was shaky. The charges against him
rested on testimony from
Charles Blackwell,
a police informant who later revealed he was paid $200 dollars for his
testimony and later threatened with jail time for the murder if he
didn’t testify. In 2010, the case crumbled when Blackwell recanted his testimony and
admitted to the detective misconduct rampant in the investigation.
The Duke Law Wrongful Convictions Clinic took on the case in 2011 and
discovered through DNA testing that a palm print found at the scene of
the crime did not match Armstrong but a convicted felon who had briefly
been a suspect in 1992. After Armstrong was exonerated, the state gave him $750,000 in
compensation as well as a governor’s pardon from Pat McCrory. However,
because of the aforementioned detective misconduct, he filed a lawsuit
against the city of Greensboro in 2013. On October 21th of this year,
Armstrong and his attorney David Rudolf won the case 5-1."
The entire release can be found at:
http://floridainnocence.org/content/?p=13474
PUBLISHER'S NOTE: I am monitoring this case/issue. 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. 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.
