QUOTE OF THE DAY: "“Jeff Titus is 71 years old. He was robbed of 21 years of his prime,” attorney Wolf Mueller said. “Who knows how long he will live? He doesn’t have a day to waste.”
PASSAGE OF THE DAY: "The file found at the county sheriff’s office revealed that a woman and her son had identified him as the man in a car in a ditch near the Michigan murder scene. The woman also described a car that resembled one owned by Dillon’s wife."
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STORY: "Man cleared in hunter's killings after 21 years in prison seeks $1M from Michigan," by Associated Press Reporter Ed White, published by WCBD News 2, on June 2, 2023.
GIST: "A man who spent nearly 21 years in prison for the deaths of two Michigan hunters filed a lawsuit Friday seeking $1.02 million for wrongful convictions, just a day after a prosecutor dropped murder charges and ruled out a second trial.
“Jeff Titus is 71 years old. He was robbed of 21 years of his prime,” attorney Wolf Mueller said. “Who knows how long he will live? He doesn’t have a day to waste.”
Titus’ convictions were thrown out in February based on newly discovered evidence, Mueller said, a key threshold to get compensation from the state.
Titus has long declared his innocence in the fatal shootings of Doug Estes and Jim Bennett near his Kalamazoo County land in 1990.
He was released from prison — and a life sentence — earlier this year when authorities acknowledged that Titus’ trial lawyer in 2002 was never given a police file with details about another suspect.
Thomas Dillon was an Ohio serial killer whose five victims between 1989 and 1992 were hunting, fishing or jogging.
There is no dispute that the failure to produce the file violated Titus’ constitutional rights.
“The ‘new evidence’ demonstrates that (Titus) is factually innocent of the crime,” his lawsuit states.
Under Michigan law, someone who is wrongly convicted can be eligible to receive $50,000 for each year in prison.
“We have not yet received the complaint and will evaluate it when we do,” said Kimberly Bush, spokeswoman at the attorney general’s office.
Dillon died in an Ohio prison in 2011.
The file found at the county sheriff’s office revealed that a woman and her son had identified him as the man in a car in a ditch near the Michigan murder scene.
The woman also described a car that resembled one owned by Dillon’s wife."
The entire story can be read at:
PUBLISHER'S NOTE: I am monitoring this case/issue/resource. 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;
SEE BREAKDOWN OF SOME OF THE ON-GOING INTERNATIONAL CASES (OUTSIDE OF THE CONTINENTAL USA) THAT I AM FOLLOWING ON THIS BLOG, AT THE LINK BELOW: HL:
https://www.blogger.com/blog/post/edit/120008354894645705/4704913685758792985
FINAL WORD: (Applicable to all of our wrongful conviction cases): "Whenever there is a wrongful conviction, it exposes errors in our criminal legal system, and we hope that this case — and lessons from it — can prevent future injustices."
Lawyer Radha Natarajan:
Executive Director: New England Innocence Project;
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FINAL, FINAL WORD: "Since its inception, the Innocence Project has pushed the criminal legal system to confront and correct the laws and policies that cause and contribute to wrongful convictions. They never shied away from the hard cases — the ones involving eyewitness identifications, confessions, and bite marks. Instead, in the course of presenting scientific evidence of innocence, they've exposed the unreliability of evidence that was, for centuries, deemed untouchable." So true!
Christina Swarns: Executive Director: The Innocence Project;
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YET ANOTHER FINAL WORD:
David Hammond, one of Broadwater’s attorneys who sought his exoneration, told the Syracuse Post-Standard, “Sprinkle some junk science onto a faulty identification, and it’s the perfect recipe for a wrongful conviction.”
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