Friday, December 27, 2019

Toforest Johnson: Alabama: The disturbing, haunting case of a man on death for more than two decades on tainted evidence. "An Alabama Man On Death Row Says He Is Innocent. Will He Get a New Trial? In 1998, prosecutors failed to tell the defense that a key witness in Toforest Johnson’s capital murder trial would receive thousands of dollars in reward money for her testimony, Johnson’s attorneys say. Now a Birmingham judge must decide whether their argument has merit." The Appeal, Reporter Loren Gill.

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PUBLISHER'S NOTE: This disturbing, haunting  case is in the news because defence lawyers have filed a brief on their application for a ...

Henry Lee Lucas: Netflix’s “Confession Killer”: Salon (Reporter Ashlie D. Stevens) shows how Clint Eastwood 'un-solves murders as a ruthless true crime story in reverse.' (Quite a neat perspective. HL)..."Despite this, very few of the cases have actually been reopened; that means that the actual murderers have gone free for years. “I hated this dead man, but then the people that created it, I hate them more,” said a family member of one of Lucas’ alleged victims. “These are the people you trust to find the killer, bring them to justice and that wasn’t done.” In “Confession Killer,” Kenner methodically lays out the faults in the system, taking no prisoners. He leaves viewers with a very clear message: while Lucas was a despicable human being, there’s true culpability found in the officers who so wanted to mark cases closed that they ignored the very real evidence to the contrary."

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PUBLISHER'S NOTE: It's a true 'man bites dog' story. A suspect inducing police interrogators to believe his false confessio...
Thursday, December 26, 2019

Lamar Johnson: Missouri: Former Assistant U.S. Attorney Rich Finneran explains why Lamar Johnson deserves his day in court..."As a federal prosecutor, I was always taught that my job was not merely to obtain convictions, but to seek justice. It was just as much my duty to ensure that the innocent go free as that the guilty were brought to justice. That is why it is so troubling that Missouri Attorney General Eric Schmitt is fighting St. Louis Circuit Attorney Kimberly Gardner’s efforts to obtain a new trial for Lamar Johnson. Johnson was convicted of murder in 1995. Since that conviction, two other men have confessed to the crime and denied Johnson’s involvement, and the Circuit Attorney Office’s Conviction Integrity Unit has uncovered additional information that was not known at the time of trial — including direct payments made to an eyewitness and the relevant criminal history of a jailhouse informant. That is the sort of evidence that prosecutors are constitutionally and ethically required to reveal before taking a defendant to trial. In light of this new evidence, the circuit attorney moved for a new trial for Johnson. That is what any ethical prosecutor would do.

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PASSAGE OF THE DAY: "It is appalling to think that the chief law enforcement officer of our state would be more concerned with enfo...
Wednesday, December 25, 2019

Really neat blog department: (1): Polygraphy: A pseudoscience: Neat Blog discovery: AntiPolygraph.org: It's devoted to providing news and analysis of polygraphs, voice stress analyzers, and other purported "lie detectors." - important 'technology-related' topics which are appearing increasingly on The Charles Smith Blog.

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                                                      NEAT BLOG PUBLISHER'S NOTE: This is the first post I am publishing under the ru...
Tuesday, December 24, 2019

Cristhian Bahena Rivera: Iowa: Setback: False confessions? A judge has ruled that key evidence can be used against him in the Mollie Tibbetts’ slaying, The Seattle Times reports. (Associated Press; Reporter Ryan J. Foley)... "In a victory for prosecutors, a judge ruled Monday that they can use key evidence at trial against the migrant worker charged with killing University of Iowa student Mollie Tibbetts. Judge Joel Yates agreed with prosecutors that some statements made by the defendant, Cristhian Bahena Rivera, must be suppressed because they came during an interrogation after he was not fully read his legal rights. But Yates ruled that prosecutors can still use the information provided by Rivera that led them to the body of Tibbetts, who disappeared in July 2018 while out for a run in her small hometown of Brooklyn, Iowa. He also ruled that statements made by Rivera after the discovery of the body were admissible because he was read his rights at that point. In addition, Yates also ruled that Rivera gave consent to search his vehicles, so prosecutors can use blood evidence discovered in the trunk of one car that allegedly contained Tibbetts’ DNA. Rivera, a 25-year-old dairy farm employee who was allegedly in the country illegally, is scheduled to stand trial in February. He faces life in prison if convicted at the trial, which has been moved across the state to Sioux City due to extensive pretrial publicity."

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PUBLISHER'S NOTE: This Blog is interested in false confessions because of the disturbing number of exonerations in the USA, Canada an...

Louis Schexnayder: Louisiana: Back to Louisiana: (Another shameful dark cloud over that State's criminal justice system - like the stacked against blacks jury selection process in the Rodricus Crawford case - subject of much attention on this Blog. Louis Schexnayder's grounds for appeal: A key witness against him promptly recanted after trial - and evidence that might have helped him was lost or destroyed by the state. The dark cloud as related by Marshall Project Senior Editor Andrew Cohen: "What Schexnayder did not know was that pro se appeals — that is, when defendants represent themselves — did not at that time get reviewed by a duly-sworn, impartial judge. Instead, nearly 300 appeals written by prisoners were reviewed by staff members within the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeal and were automatically rejected using one of 15 pre-written legal justifications for the rejection. In other words, Schexnayder’s appeal fell victim to a sham proceeding that the appellate court had countenanced for 13 years. Worse, the appeals court profited from its refusal to provide a meaningful appeal to defendants who could not afford to hire lawyers to help them with their post-conviction appeals. The Fifth Circuit billed local parishes $75,000 for the orders dismissing these pro se cases and then turned around and cited the automatic dismissals to state legislators to try to justify more funding for the court itself. The appellate court, in other words, defrauded local officials by charging them for a service — judicial review — they did not provide."

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PASSAGE  OF THE DAY: "The scheme came undone nearly a decade after Schexnayder’s conviction only after one of its perpetrators, Jerr...
Monday, December 23, 2019

Bill Richards: California: Falsely imprisoned for 23 years on baseless forensic (bitemark) 'science' - and now a documentary - by Rob Hatch-Miller reveals the horrific price paid because of this junk 'science'. As Dr. Mike Bowers puts it on his instructive Blog CSIDDS: Forensics and Law in Focus: "Bitemarkers still believe their BS garbage is science. See the damage it creates. I'm glad I could help with Bill's case. I saw him convicted in 1997 and saw him, walk out of jail in 2016." Link provided to the seven minutes powerful documentary which Hatch-Miller directed for the web-site SoulPancake in conjunction with the National Academy of Science.

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PUBLISHER'S NOTE: Congrats to Director Rob Hatch-Martin who proved able to prove the fraud behind so-called bitemark evidence - and th...