PUBLISHER'S NOTE: What do police informants have to do with forensic science? (I'm glad you asked). Investigative Reporter Pamela Colloff give us a clue when she writes: "I’ve wanted to write about jailhouse informants for a long time because they often appear in troubled cases in which the other evidence is weak." That's my experience as will as a criminal lawyer and an observer of criminal justice. Given the reality that jurors - thanks to the CSI effect - are becoming more and more insistent on the need for there to be forensic evidence, it is becoming more and more common for police to rely on shady tactics such as use of police snitches (paying them for their favourable testimony occasionally), staging lineups, coercing, inducing, or creating false confessions out of thin air, procuring false eyewitness testimony or concealing exculpatory evidence.
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PASSAGE OF THE DAY: “Jailhouse informants pose a critical threat to the integrity of our justice system. They typically expect leniency or other benefits in return for their testimony, which is a strong incentive for them to lie,” Tricia Rojo Bushnell, Midwest Innocence Project’s executive director who is on Mr. Williams’ legal team, wrote in The Kansas City Star. According to the National Registry of Exonerations, incentivized witness testimony has contributed to 14% of death penalty cases that later led to a DNA exoneration. Only eight states have created a statewide database to track and disclose the use of incentivized, jailhouse informants. But legislation is moving in states across the country, not just Missouri, to enact this key legislation and help prosecutors fulfill their existing Brady disclosure requirements."
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POST: "This Missouri Bill Could Stop Wrongful Convictions of Innocent People Like Marcellus Williams," by Alyxaundria Sanford, published by The Innocence Project, on January 31, 2024.
SUB-HEADING: "Missouri Senate Bill 1271 would require prosecutors to show evidence that testimony of a police informant is reliable."
GIST: "A new senate bill in Missouri, sponsored by Senator Nick Schroer (R-Mo.), could regulate the use of informants in criminal cases.
The Missouri General Assembly is currently debating Senate Bill 1271, which would require “a record of each case in which an informant was endorsed by the state to testify against the defendant, the substance of the testimony, and any benefit the informant was offered.”
The bill could stop the wrongful conviction of people like Marcellus Williams, whose conviction primarily relied upon the inconsistent testimonies of two incentivized witnesses and who has spent 24 years on death row for a murder that DNA evidence proves he didn’t commit.
“S.B.1271 would make it crystal clear what steps district attorneys must take when using this risky information, and in addition, it would create a central database so that prosecutors can easily and quickly access all the pieces they already need to disclose,” said Bay Scoggin, a state policy advocate at the Innocence Project.
Ten months after Felicia Gayle, a former St. Louis Post-Dispatch reporter, was fatally stabbed in her own home, all leads went cold. A jailhouse informant, seeing an opportunity to secure a deal in his own cases, provided information to the police. Henry Cole told investigators that Mr. Williams had admitted to the crime while they were both in prison and that he would testify to that if they helped him in return. Prosecutors gave Mr. Cole $5,000 in exchange for his testimony.
Mr. Williams’ ex-girlfriend, Laura Asaro, mentioned to a neighbor that she also received payment for her testimony in the case. Not only did Ms. Asaro have a history of deception but she lied under oath in her recorded deposition regarding her arrest history, and at one point, police considered charging her as an accomplice in the murder.
5 reasons why Marcellus Williams is innocent.
“Jailhouse informants pose a critical threat to the integrity of our justice system. They typically expect leniency or other benefits in return for their testimony, which is a strong incentive for them to lie,” Tricia Rojo Bushnell, Midwest Innocence Project’s executive director who is on Mr. Williams’ legal team, wrote in The Kansas City Star.
According to the National Registry of Exonerations, incentivized witness testimony has contributed to 14% of death penalty cases that later led to a DNA exoneration.
Only eight states have created a statewide database to track and disclose the use of incentivized, jailhouse informants. But legislation is moving in states across the country, not just Missouri, to enact this key legislation and help prosecutors fulfill their existing Brady disclosure requirements.
“Prosecutors, and the state of Missouri, already bear the burden of disclosing when they use jailhouse informant testimony and what those informants receive in return for their testimony. Unfortunately, cases like Marcellus Williams’ show us that prosecutors either don’t understand those obligations, or worse, are willing to feign such ignorance,” said Mr. Scoggin.
Mr. Williams sits on death row due to testimony from two incentivized, jailhouse informants. Help the fight for justice to stop his execution."
Stop Missouri from executing an innocent man
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/
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/
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.
https://deadline.com/2021/11/alice-sebold-lucky-rape-conviction-overturned-anthony-broadwater-12348801
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