RELEASE: Innocence Project: April 25, 2024: 'World DNA Day:
GIST: "Today is World DNA Day, a day that commemorates James Watson, Francis Crick, Maurice Wilkins, and Rosalind Franklin’s breakthrough discovery of DNA’s unique double helix structure.
DNA — or deoxyribonucleic acid — is in every cell of every living organism and contains the “blueprint” for building and maintaining living beings. Though humans share 99.9% of their DNA with one another, the 0.1% of DNA that varies from person to person can tell us a lot about each individual.
This revelation played a huge part in establishing the Innocence Project as a legal clinic at the Benjamin N. Cardozo School of Law more than 30 years ago.
Barry Scheck and Peter Neufeld, who met as public defenders at the Bronx Legal Aid Society, realized that if DNA evidence could be used to convict someone of a crime, it could also be used to prove someone innocent. To date, the Innocence Project has used DNA to help exonerate 202 people of crimes they did not commit, 20 of whom were scheduled for execution.
As we recognize this major discovery in genetics today, we want to tell the stories of two wrongly convicted people who were exonerated using DNA testing to remind us of its profound impact on overcoming injustice in the criminal legal system.
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Cornelius Dupree: 30 Years After My Wrongful Conviction, DNA Testing Set Me Free
In November of 1979, Cornelius was a typical 19 year old living at home with his mom when his life took an unexpected and harsh turn. A week after a young couple was attacked outside of a Dallas liquor store, Cornelius and his friend Anthony Massingill were falsely charged with robbery and rape. Throughout the whole process he maintained his innocence — but because of flawed eyewitness testimony and a system plagued by prejudice and presumption of guilt, he was convicted of robbery. The rape charge was thrown out. Cornelius spent three decades in prison, working relentlessly on his case, studying law books in the library. He eventually realized that the DNA evidence linked to that rape would ultimately set him free, and so he wrote to the Innocence Project in the early 1990s. With the help of our legal team, DNA analysis conclusively proved what Cornelius had known all along — he was innocent.
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The entire release can be read at:
injustice.https://mail.google.com/mail/u/0/#inbox/FMfcgzGxStrhLLVKnlKhjBjjVBzCDlzh
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Michelle Murphy: I Served 20 Years In Prison For My Son’s Murder — Until DNA Testing Proved My Innocence
Michelle Murphy is one of 15 women exonerated in the United States with the help of DNA, and the first woman in the state of Oklahoma. In 1994, Michelle was a 17-year-old mother of two young children when she woke up to find her 15-week-old baby in the kitchen, stabbed to death. She immediately ran to a neighbor’s house and called the police. Detectives interrogated Michelle for hours, without an attorney or family member present, while she was grieving the devastating loss of her son, and they eventually coerced her into falsely claiming that she accidentally killed him. Michelle was convicted of murdering her son and sentenced to life-without-parole. Despite many setbacks and betrayals, Michelle never gave up hope, and in 2014, DNA testing of crime scene evidence pointed to an unknown male as the real perpetrator. And exactly 20 years after her son’s murder, Michelle was finally exonerated.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
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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
