Tuesday, June 7, 2016

Leo Ackley; Anthony Ball Michigan; The two separate murder trials have been rescheduled to October so Judge John Hallacy can hear from experts about two infant deaths attributed to Abusive Head Trauma..." The defense attorneys argued that the science of determining the cause of deaths in young children is changing and they should be allowed to challenge the credibility of the experts before the cases go to trial. "This area of the law is rife with problems," Schroder said. "It is only an hypothesis and it is not enough to support a prosecution for murder." Rodenhouse agreed, telling the judge "this science is ever-changing." In a written motion, Rodenhouse called "Shaken Baby Syndrome and its progeny, Abusive Head Trauma" hypotheses that try to explain how a child died. Rodenhouse wrote "It has never been scientific knowledge." Ackley had argued that Baylee Stenman died after she fell from her bed and Ball has argued that Athena Ramey died from falls and running into furniture. But five doctors testified for the prosecution in the Ackley case and deJong said during one court proceeding that the child suffered severe blows to the head.........(Judge) Hallacy told the lawyers "science is ever-evolving and creating an appropriate record is important, especially in the Ackley case, which has come back for trial." He said because the issues are similar, he will take testimony at a July 29 hearing in both cases." The Battle Creek Enquirer;

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"Two murder trials have been rescheduled to October after a Calhoun County judge agreed to first hear scientific testimony about ch...

Davontae Sanford: Detroit; Major Development; 4 News reports that a judge has ordered Davontae Sanford's his release from prison where he has been since he pleaded guilty to killing four people at age 14 - a crime for which a hit man later took responsibility. Wayne County Third Circuit Court Judge Brian Sullivan on Tuesday signed an order vacating Davontae Sanford’s conviction and sentence in the 2007 slayings, and directing that the Michigan Department of Corrections immediately release Sanford on his own recognizance..."Sanford has vision in one eye. His family said he has learning disabilities and cracked under pressure from Detroit police when he admitted to killing four people in what was described as a grisly shooting scene. Legal experts agreed. A team of legal investigators from the University of Michigan and Northwestern University were suspicious and began looking into Sanford's case for a possible wrongful conviction. They said he had been wandering around in his pajamas on the night of the shootings. There was no gun residue or blood found on Sanford's body. In 2015, attorney Megan Crane, of the Northwestern Center for the Wrongful Conviction of Youth, blasted the Detroit Police Department's actions and how the Prosecutor's Office handled the case. For 7 years, the Detroit Police Department and the Wayne County Prosecutor's Office have had in their hands extraordinary evidence that Davontae Sanford is, in fact, actually innocent," said Crane. David Moran, who heads the Innocence Clinic at the University of Michigan, also was outspoken. I can't come to any other conclusion here than the people who won the conviction against Davontae Sanford simply can't come to accept that they sent a 14-year-old boy to prison for four murders he didn't commit," said Moran in 2015."

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"A  judge has ordered the release of a young Detroit man who is in prison after pleading guilty to killing four people at age 14, a c...

Bulletin: Ben Butler: UK: Ongoing murder trial: The Mirror reports that six-year-old Ellie may have died after falling off of a chair and hitting her head - and that forensic pathologist Dr Janice Ophoven told the Old Bailey she believed Ellie could have suffered fatal injuries in a fall from a small chair, found upturned next to her lifeless body...The forensic pathologist told jurors evidence of healing to Ellie's skull and a review of the and a review of the CT scans showed evidence of three 'abnormalities'. She said: "My conclusion was that there was evidence of a recent injury to the skull of one to two, or perhaps more, weeks of age; a fresh skull fracture concurrent with her fatality and aging damage that was consistent with an abnormality dating back to 2007." Dr Ophoven added the more recent injury was consistent with an incident described by Butler and his partner Jennie Gray, 36, when Ellie fell down the stairs on October 10 or 11 while chasing the family Jack Russell puppy, Minnie. She has conducted hundreds of autopsies on children and young adults in her 30-year career and reviewed hundreds of cases of brain injury in the context of child abuse, the court was told. "My conclusion was the child died from blunt force impact to the head but the injuries were compounded by recent injury of fracture to the skull and also compounded by injuries that occurred in infancy," she said......... Dr Ophoven also told jurors the finger marks found on the little girl's jaw - previously referred to as grip marks - were most consistent with someone fixing a bag over her mouth to perform CPR."

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"Tragic Ellie Butler could have died from falling off a low chair and hitting her head weeks after suffering a skull fracture in ano...

Bulletin: Christine Bunch; Indiana; How to convict an innocent woman of arson and condemn her to a hellish existence: Time Magazine focusses on her wrongful conviction and almost 17 years behind bars in an article on the challenges some wrongfully convicted women face featuring an excerpt from Investigative journalist Alison Flower's new book 'Exoneree Diaries.' The fight for innocence, independence and identity: The excerpt reveals a disturbing statistic: "2/3 of exonerated women were wrongfully convicted for incidents that never occurred."..." They found that an accidental fire had claimed Tony’s life. There had been no crime at all. This is common among female exonerations. About two-thirds of exonerated women were wrongly convicted for incidents that never occurred, compared to about a fourth of men who were exonerated. A new analysis from the Women’s Project at the Center on Wrongful Convictions, based on data from the National Registry of Exonerations, shows that such false or misleading forensic evidence has played a role in more than a third of exonerated women’s cases. Many of these cases are also based on situational prosecutions where a female caregiver was blamed for someone’s injury or death. About 43% of women exonerees have been convicted of harming or killing a child or loved one in their care. DNA evidence rarely proves their innocence, as it has in more than 25% of men’s exonerations. Rather, DNA evidence has played a role in only 7% of women’s exonerations. But it was Bunch’s initial interrogation that set in motion her wrongful conviction."

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  "When investigators first tape-recorded Kristine Bunch , she was hospitalized. Her hair was singed, her skin was cut...

Tattoo Recognition: (Fascinating emerging area; Loaded with implications to free speech, privacy, police powers and identification (HL); Most informative article by Dave Maass and Aaron MacKey on the Electronic Frontier Foundation site ..."Tattoos are inked on our skin, but they often hold much deeper meaning. They may reveal who we are, our passions, ideologies, religious beliefs, and even our social relationships. That’s exactly why law enforcement wants to crack the symbolism of our tattoos using automated computer algorithms, an effort that threatens our civil liberties. Right now, government scientists are working with the FBI to develop tattoo recognition technology that police can use to learn as much as possible about people through their tattoos. But an EFF investigation has found that these experiments exploit inmates, with little regard for the research’s implications for privacy, free expression, religious freedom, and the right to associate. And so far, researchers have avoided ethical oversight while doing it. The research program is so fraught with problems that EFF believes the only solution is for the government to suspend the project immediately. At a minimum, scientists must stop using any tattoo images obtained coercively from prison and jail inmates and tattoos that contain personal information or religious or political symbolism. EFF has been filing public records requests around the country to reveal how law enforcement agencies are using mobile biometric technology—including facial recognition, digital fingerprinting, and iris scanning—to identify people based on their physical and behavioral characteristics. As part of this investigation, we learned that the National Institute for Standards and Technology (NIST), one of the oldest federal scientific institutions, began an initiative in 2014 to promote and refine automated tattoo recognition technology for the FBI." (Thanks to The Marshall Project for drawing this important article to our attention. HL);

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"Tattoos are inked on our skin, but they often hold much deeper meaning. They may reveal who we are, our passions, ideol...

Bulletin: Kathryn Salmi: Michigan: False memory syndrome; Significant Decision; Michigan Supreme Court declines to interfere with a lower court ruling that counselors like Salmi have an obligation not just to their patients, but to third parties who could be harmed by certain therapy techniques as well. (The Michigan counselor faces a lawsuit from parents who believe the therapist’s techniques gave their daughter false memories of abuse.)..."The false memories of abuse, according to the suits, exacerbated the emotional distress the patients were already experiencing. But the patients who were incepted with these emotionally disturbing and false memories aren’t the only victims of the discredited technique. As Cara reported: Although there is no full tally, University of California-Berkeley professor Frederick Crews, who wrote about recovered memory therapy, suggested (conservatively, he says) that one million patients may have been convinced they had recovered repressed memories. Of course, as Crews notes, the number of those affected was far greater; the accusations from each of these patients almost always radiated through families and communities, leading to bewildering and painful estrangements for fathers, mothers, teachers, and others."..."The lawsuit against Salmi in Michigan is ongoing, and she asserts that she does not practice repressed memory therapy. While the outcome of that case is still uncertain, there is now some legal precedent, at least in Michigan, for falsely accused friends and family members to go after counselors and psychologists who do still practice the discredited therapy." Kate Wheeling; Pacific Standard.

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"In Michigan, Christian counselor Kathryn Salmi has been fighting a lawsuit brought against her by the parents of a young client, ...

Bulletin: Rodricus Crawford: Louisiana: Compelling Wrongful Conviction Blog post by Jessica S. Henry, "On death row for a murder that wasn't?"..."Dale Cox was the Lousiana prosecutor against Crawford, a case which rested almost exclusively on the testimony of a state forensic pathologist who claimed that bruises on the child’s lip were consistent with death by smothering. It was undisputed that Bobo had fallen the day before, a fact confirmed by the child’s mother and a fact that explained the bruised lip. More importantly, BoBo also was found to have pneumonia is his lungs, a fact that the same state forensic pathologist dismissed as mere “coincidence.” Another forensic pathologist, Daniel Spitz, disagreed. After reviewing the case, Spitz concluded that BoBo died of pneumonia. Spitz added that, in his opinion, there: wasn’t enough evidence to even put this before a jury. You didn’t have anybody who thought this guy committed murder except for one pathologist who decided that it was homicide on what seemed like a whim. And it is not just Spitz. Other pathologists agree that BoBo likely died of pneumonia. The Innocence Network filed an amicus brief on behalf of Crawford, in which they too argue that BoBo died of an illness, not murder.So why is Crawford still sitting on death row? The answer may be as twisted, as it is true: he had the misfortune of being prosecuted by Cox."..."Ten people have already been exonerated from Louisiana’s death row. Perhaps Stewart will help Crawford be its number eleven."

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"Rodricus Crawford sits on Louisiana’s death row, awaiting execution for the murder of his one-year-old son, Roderius But although Rod...