Saturday, January 26, 2019

Susan Neill-Fraser: January 26, 2019: Writer Andrew L. Urban: "January 26th, 2019, marks the 10th anniversary of the disappearance and probable murder of Bob Chappell, a catastrophe to her partner Sue Neill-Fraser and the two Hobart families – and the beginning of the legal process that led to the catastrophic failure of the justice system in convicting her of his murder."

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PASSAGE OF THE DAY: "Despite the absence of direct evidence, the prosecution convinced the jury that after a social lunch with Bob’s ...

Back in action: On-Going: Henry Keogh; Australia; Government's efforts to keep secret a report questioning the evidence of fcontroversial forensic pathologist Colin Manock to be challenged in up-coming hearing...South Australian Ombudsman Wayne Lines: “In announcing the Governor’s decision to deny the petition, the Acting Attorney-General made statements, the evident purpose of which was to assure the public that there was no reason to doubt Mr Keogh’s guilt [but] the Acting Attorney-General did not refer to that part of the document in which the Solicitor-General referred to the fact that the expert had told him he doubted the accuracy of an important aspect of Dr Manock’s evidence."

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PASSAGE OF THE DAY: "In announcing the Governor’s decision to deny the petition, the Acting Attorney-General made statements, the evi...
Friday, January 25, 2019

Huwe Burton: New York: False confession case: "Huwe Burton exonerated today in the Bronx after 30 years," Innocence Project reports in a release..." Burton’s legal team and the Bronx CIU jointly conducted an exhaustive two-year re-investigation that uncovered newly discovered evidence, including: (1) scientific and scholarly research confirming that the psychologically coercive techniques used by the detectives produce false confessions; (2) the same detectives who elicited Burton’s false confession also obtained false confessions from two other individuals three months earlier; and (3) the background and prior criminal history of the alternate suspect, Emanuel Green, that strongly supports the defense team’s contention that Green committed the crime alone. Based on these findings, the Bronx CIU recommended that Burton’s conviction be vacated and the charges be dismissed."

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PUBLISHER'S NOTE: This tragic case - decades seized from an innocent man's life -  is a classic example of a pressing theme of thi...

Back in action: On-Going: Melissa Calusinski: Michigan: 10 years after she was accused of the Lincolnshire day care killing, efforts to clear her name persist - as her father claims, "They framed her."..."Her case has been featured on national news and true-crime programs.But if Calusinski has won sympathy in the court of public opinion, she has gained little traction in court. In 2016, amid assertions from Calusinski’s defenders that a new X-ray of Benjamin’s skull had been found in the Lake County coroner’s office that undermined the prosecution’s case, her lawyers were granted the opportunity to present what they said was new evidence of her innocence. But after three days of testimony, the judge ruled that the murder conviction against Calusinski would stand."

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PASSAGE ONE OF THE DAY: "Two days after Benjamin’s death, they charged Calusinski with first-degree murder following her confession...
Thursday, January 24, 2019

Tommy Zeigler: Florida: DNA denied. Podcast: I have been following his quest to survive death row and be exonerated for years. In Part Five of the podcast 'blood and truth' - from Pulitzer Prize winner Leonora LaPeter Anton - Zeigler learns about new forensics and pushes to have the evidence in his case tested.

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-------------------------------------------------------------- PUBLISHER'S NOTE: I adopt the words of the formidable Ohio crimin...

Back in action: On-Going: Partrick Pursley: Illinois: (Flawed ballistics evidence): The Jenner and Block law firm describes the mammoth effort - totalling 9,478 hours in more than a decade - which led to Patrick Pursley's acquittal acquitted after 25 Years based on precedent-setting new ballistics evidence..." While in prison, Mr. Pursley wrote an article stating that the law should keep up with technology and allow for ballistics testing in post-conviction settings just as it did at the time with DNA. After lobbying efforts on Pursley’s behalf, the Illinois legislature amended the law in 2007 to provide for post-conviction ballistics testing. In October 2008, at the request of Northwestern’s Center on Wrongful Convictions, the firm agreed to assist Mr. Pursley in his effort to get the state of Illinois to retest the ballistics evidence. On January 26, 2011, the Illinois Appellate Court, reversing a decision by the lower court, granted his request, making People v. Pursley the first case in the country to allow a prisoner new ballistics testing under a Post-Conviction Testing Act. The firm then submitted the ballistics evidence to two preeminent and independent ballistics specialists who examined the evidence using new technology and concluded that Mr. Pursley’s firearm did not fire either of the bullets or either of the cartridge cases found at the crime scene.".

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Publisher's Note: I was fascinated to read  The Jenner and Block account of their ground-breaking pro bono representation of Patrick Pu...
Wednesday, January 23, 2019

Flawed forensics: 'How bad science is undermining America's justice system' - an insightful, comprehensive story by Crime and Justice reporter Jon Schuppe, with a somewhat discouraging ending..."Karen Kafadar, a co-director of the Center for Statistics and Applications in Forensic Evidence, said the reform effort isn’t meant to undermine solid cases. “But when evidence is presented with shockingly little probability, I think it would be wise for people to be very cautious,” Kafadar said. There have been scattered attempts to improve forensic science, and some examiners have started changing the way they testify, describing the limits of how certain they can be that evidence points to a suspect, researchers say. However, Kafadar said, “for the most part, things haven’t changed much.”...Alternative heading: 'We are going backward': How the justice system ignores science in the pursuit of convictions: Forensic techniques including bite-mark comparisons and blood-spatter analysis have sent dozens of innocent people to prison."

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PASSAGE OF THE DAY: "Over the past decade, dozens of studies have warned of the inaccuracy of commonly used methods of forensic scien...