Access to DNA Testing

Despite the widespread acceptance of DNA testing as a powerful and reliable form of forensic evidence that can conclusively reveal guilt or innocence, many prisoners do not have the legal means to secure testing on evidence in their case.

Barriers to the truth
Forty-eight states have some form of law permitting inmates access to DNA testing. The other two states have no law granting such access. Click here to learn if your state allows access to testing.

Even in many of the states that grant access to DNA testing, the laws are limited in scope and substance. Motions for testing are often denied, even when a DNA test would undoubtedly confirm guilt or prove innocence and an inmate offers to pay for testing.

Federal incentives for granting access to DNA testing
Federal law, the 2004 Justice For All Act, grants access to DNA testing for federal inmates claiming innocence and also allocates various justice-related funding to any state that grants DNA testing access to inmates claiming innocence. To meet the requirements of the federal law, states should pass or strengthen laws granting access to DNA testing.

Clear and comprehensive laws can ensure justice
Some states have passed statutes that include barriers to testing that are insurmountable for most prisoners. These include restrictions against inmates who pled guilty or whose lawyers failed to request DNA testing at trial. In many cases, the questionable evidence used to convict a defendant at trial – like eyewitness identification or snitch testimony – is used by judges as grounds to deny a DNA test. These barriers keep innocent people from securing DNA tests that could prove their innocence.

An effective post-conviction DNA access statute must:

• Allow testing in cases where DNA testing can establish innocence – including cases where the inmate pled guilty


• Not include a “sunset provision” or expiration date for post-conviction DNA access


• Require states to preserve and account for biological evidence


• Eliminate procedural bars to DNA testing (allow people to appeal orders denying DNA testing; explicitly exempt DNA-related motions from the restrictions that govern other post-conviction cases; mandate full, fair and prompt proceedings once a motion seeking testing is filed)


• Avoid creating an unfunded mandate, and instead provide the money to back up the new statute
  Provide flexibility in where and how DNA testing is conducted

For the Innocence Project’s complete recommendations for post-conviction DNA access statutes, view our DNA access fact sheet or review model legislation on the issue.

Alaska, Welcome to the Club

From the blog PLAIN ERROR :

Seth — May 28, 2010 @ 2:30 PM

We forgot to document an important story that happened a few weeks ago. Alaska, then only one of three states left without a DNA access law which would allow for postconviction DNA testing, finally passed such a law. Out of all places, the Dallas Morning NEws Crime Blog covers it:

On May 14, Alaska Gov. Sean Parnell signed a new state law allowing prisoners to seek post-conviction DNA testing in cases where it can prove innocence. The groundbreaking new law will help Alaska prisoners fight injustice and leaves only Oklahoma and Massachusetts without such measures.

Passed this month with unanimous support in both houses of Alaska’s legislature, the critical reform came about thanks to years of work by a coalition of advocates including the Alaska Innocence Project and the Innocence Project. Among other provisions, it provides for state funding in cases where a judge decides that DNA testing could prove innocence and requires the state to preserve biological evidence from crime scenes as long as a defendant is in prison (or for 50 years in unsolved crime).

Congrats to the One-Man Innocence Project, Bill Oberly, director of the Alaska Innocence Project and the folks at The Innocence Project for making this a reality. Now what is the matter with Oklahoma and Massachusetts, the last holdouts?

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In Death-Penalty Cases, Innocence Has to Matter

By Adam Cohen

Hank Skinner, who is on death row in Texas, had a simple request. Before the state took his life, he wanted to test DNA evidence from the crime scene that could prove he was wrongly convicted. Texas prosecutors, whose love for the death penalty is legendary, refused.

Skinner then sued, claiming that federal civil rights laws gave him a constitutional right to do the testing. A federal appeals court ruled against him. (See TIME's death penalty covers.)

On Monday, the U.S. Supreme Court agreed to hear Skinner's case. That's good news. The Justices should use the case to expand the right to do DNA testing. But Skinner's case also gives the court a chance to confront a disturbing aspect of the nation's approach to the death penalty: the fact that the legal system does not always seem to care whether the people it executes are actually guilty.

There's no denying the crime Skinner, now 48, was convicted of in 1995 was a vicious one. Skinner's girlfriend and her two mentally challenged sons were stabbed, strangled and bludgeoned to death. But Skinner has always insisted he is innocent. The evidence against him is largely circumstantial, and his lawyers argue that the girlfriend's uncle, who they say had been harassing her that night and acted suspiciously after the crime, was likely the real murderer.

When students from Northwestern University's Medill Innocence Project investigated, they found evidence that raised serious questions about the prosecution's case. A toxicologist who testified for the defense said he had "never known a verdict of the jury to be so at variance with what I believe to be scientific fact."

It's not hard to believe Skinner could have been wrongly convicted. With the rise of DNA evidence, we now know that people are falsely convicted of crimes, including capital crimes, all too often. According to the Death Penalty Information Center, 138 people have been released from death row since 1973 with evidence of innocence. (Read "The Death Penalty: Racist, Classist and Unfair.")

Skinner has tried for 10 years to get access to key pieces of biological evidence — including his girlfriend's rape kit and two knives that may have been used in the killings. After prosecutors turned him down, Skinner sued, arguing that the refusal violated due process and constituted cruel and unusual punishment.(Comment on this story.)

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit, one of the most conservative courts in the country, rejected his claim in a brief decision. The judges focused on legal fine points without engaging the larger injustice of the situation — that Texas was seeking to execute a man while denying him access to evidence that could exonerate him.

Skinner's case never should have gotten this far. When someone facing the death penalty asks for relevant evidence for DNA testing, the state's answer should simply be yes. After all, the government's interest is not in seeing people put to death or in reflexively defending criminal convictions. It is in making sure that the guilty are punished and the innocent go free.

Prosecutors do not always see it that way. They defend all sorts of practices that call into question the reliability of the convictions they obtain. A while back, in an infamous case, Texas fought to execute an inmate even though his lawyer slept at his trial — repeatedly, and for long stretches of time. The Fifth Circuit ultimately ruled that the defendant was entitled to a new trial.

This callousness about death-penalty cases is not limited to states like Texas — or to prosecutors.

Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia set off a firestorm last summer when he wrote a dissent — joined by Justice Clarence Thomas — that the highest court in the land is not necessarily concerned with whether a person facing execution had actually committed the crime. The court "has never held," Justice Scalia wrote, "that the Constitution forbids the execution of a convicted defendant who has had a full and fair trial but is later able to convince a ... court that he is 'actually innocent.'" Scalia was taking issue with the court's ruling that a lower court give Georgia death-row inmate Troy Davis a new hearing.

This idea that the Constitution allows innocent people to be put to death should be abhorrent to anyone who cares about justice. As Harvard Law School professor Alan Dershowitz pointed out, Justice Scalia seemed to be saying that if a man was convicted of murdering his wife and then showed up in court with the wife, who was still alive, seeking a new trial, it should not matter. As long as the man's conviction was procedurally proper, Justice Scalia apparently believes, he should still be executed. (See a photo gallery of Supreme Court Justice John Paul Stevens.)

The Supreme Court — which will take up Skinner's case in its next term — should rule that people accused of capital crimes can use federal civil rights laws to obtain the DNA evidence they need to prove their innocence.

And the Justices should use the case to underscore that we, as a nation, care whether people facing the death penalty have actually committed the crimes they were accused of.

— Cohen, a lawyer, is a former TIME writer and a former member of the New York Times editorial board

Wrongful Convictions Clinic client released from prison

May 07, 2010 | Duke Law News

Duke Law students and faculty welcomed the release of Shawn Giovanni Massey after 12 years of incarceration for crimes he didn’t commit.

Massey, a client of the Law School’s Wrongful Conviction Clinic, was released from the Maury Correctional Institution in Maury, N.C., on Thursday, after Mecklenburg County District Attorney Peter Gilchrist ’65 secured a Superior Court order vacating his conviction on multiple counts of second-degree kidnapping, as well as one count each of felonious breaking and entering and robbery with a dangerous weapon. Incarcerated since his May 1998 arrest for the crimes against a Charlotte woman and her two young children, Massey, 37, had two years left to serve on his sentence.

Clinic co-directors James Coleman and Theresa Newman picked Massey up from prison and took him to Charlotte where he was reunited with his jubilant family. Coleman, Newman, and Kim Kisabeth ’07, a fellow with Duke’s Center for Criminal Justice and Professional Responsibility, have worked with numerous other students, alumni, and friends for more than four years to build their argument that Massey was a victim of erroneous eyewitness identification.

Their case turned on the perpetrator’s hair style and weight, two key issues at Massey’s trial. On noting his resemblance to her attacker in a series of photos, the victim told the police that he lacked her attacker’s cornrow braids. She made the same observation on seeing him in person for the first time prior to the start of his trial, and also observed that he had a lighter complexion and weighed less than her attacker. These observations, and photo notations uncovered years later by Duke students investigating the case, were not passed on to Massey’s trial lawyer.

“We believe the evidence is clear that Shawn is innocent and this was an erroneous eyewitness identification,” said Coleman, the John S. Bradway Professor of the Practice of Law. “We think when the victim identified him at trial she did so in good faith, but we think she made a mistake. She confirmed to us that the person who committed the crime had cornrows. We are certain that Shawn did not have cornrows at the time — he couldn’t have had cornrows. And we presented evidence to the district attorney that supports that.” Coleman credits the victim for her willingness to meet with Kisabeth and others to discuss her identification of Massey during their investigation of the case.

For Kisabeth, who first worked on Massey’s case as a student enrolled in the Wrongful Convictions Clinic, it was a joy to call Massey in prison to tell him he would be released within hours. “He was thrilled,” she said. “This has been a long time coming and I think he was speechless. His initial reaction was excitement at getting to reunite with his grandmother and with his aunts and especially to be able to see his son, Dantrez, who is now a junior in high school.” It was equally thrilling to tell his aunt and grandmother to expect him home, she said.

“Both of them just started crying as soon as I gave them the news. [His aunt] started praying and thanking God for making this happen — and thanking Duke for making this happen.”

Three teams of Wrongful Convictions Clinic students worked on Massey’s case: Kisabeth and Aleksandra Kopec ’07; Susan Pourciau ’09 and Emily Sauter ’09; and Jessica Neiterman ’09 and Toby Coleman ’10. Last fall, Pourciau joined Kisabeth in Georgia to interview the victim about her identification of Massey as her attacker. As the case neared a resolution, the clinic also enlisted the assistance of Tommy Holderness and Adam Doerr ’06, a partner and associate, respectively, at Robinson Bradshaw & Hinson in Charlotte.

“These cases really do take a village,” said Jim Coleman. “This is an effort that a lot of people worked on. And I think all of them contributed something that was important to the result.”

Kisabeth recalled her first meeting with Massey, during her student days, as being her first lawyer-client interaction — and her first ever visit to a prison. “It was a great learning experience. And having that experience under Jim and Theresa’s leadership was wonderful,” she said. “Having been so invested in this case as a student, I was excited for the opportunity to come back as a fellow and build on the work that the other students had done. They did amazing work on this case.”

Taking in the reaction of Massey’s aunt and grandmother to news of his release offered another lesson, she added.

“I think it’s easy to lose sight of the fact that the legal system impacts people, and this is really about people.”

Wife’s outrage over wait for murder appeal

By Colin Adwent, 
Crime reporteThursday, 20 May, 2010
12:00 PM

CAPEL ST MARY: Outraged by the wait for the date of her husband’s appeal against his murder conviction, Simon’s Hall’s wife has written to the new Home Secretary.

Hall, 32, formerly of Hill House Road, Ipswich, was given a life sentence for stabbing to death 79-year-old Joan Albert at her home in Boydlands, Capel St Mary, on December 16, 2001.

However, Hall has always strenuously denied killing the pensioner.

In October last year the Criminal Cases Review Commission (CCRC) decided to refer Hall’s conviction to the Court of Appeal as it found new forensic evidence.

Despite a directions hearing in March this year, Hall and those fighting for his freedom are still awaiting a date for the appeal.

Now his wife Stephanie has sent a letter to Home Secretary Teresa May and the new Justice Secretary and Lord Chancellor Ken Clarke, along with Prime Minister David Cameron and Deputy Prime Minister Nick Clegg.

The letter briefly outlines the background to Hall’s case.

Mrs Hall, who lives in Ipswich, then comments: “Simon has served nearly eight years in prison for another man’s crime and has had to wait for over seven months, and is still waiting for a date for his appeal to be heard. It is absolutely outrageous that a public body has been allowed to stall and avoid accountability. I am therefore contacting you to ask that this matter be looked into at the earliest possible opportunity.”

The CCRC has said it believes its findings cast doubt on whether Hall is guilty of the murder.

They centre partly on fresh forensic analysis of fibre samples taken from the crime scene and other locations during the original police investigation.

There is also said to have been significant evidence relating to another burglary in Capel St Mary on the same night as Mrs Albert was murdered.

At the time it announced it was referring Hall’s case for appeal, a spokesman for the CCRC said: “The commission has decided to refer the case to the Court of Appeal because it believes that new forensic evidence is capable of undermining key forensic evidence presented at the trial and therefore raises the real possibility that the court would quash the murder conviction.”

Hall was convicted at Norwich Crown Court in February, 2003. He appealed against his conviction, but it was dismissed in April 2004.

Hall then applied to the CCRC for a review in June 2005.

Court takes prosecutorial immunity case (March 22, 2010)

The Supreme Court has agreed to decide whether a district attorney's office can be held liable for the actions of prosecutors in the case of a former death row inmate who accused them of withholding evidence to help convict him of murder.

The case concerns John Thompson, who was convicted of attempted armed robbery in 1985, shortly before he was scheduled to stand trial in an unrelated murder case. He did not testify during the murder trial. Prosecutors used Thompson's conviction in the robbery case to help secure the death penalty in the murder case.

In 1999, an investigator working on Thompson's case discovered a crime lab report that prosecutors had not turned over, indicating Thompson's blood type did not match the perpetrator in the attempted robbery.

A state appeals court set aside Thompson's murder conviction in 2002 after deciding he'd been unconstitutionally deprived of his right to testify during the murder trial. That cleared the way for the new trial in which Thompson was acquitted.

After Thompson's acquittal, he sued the district attorney's office that was led at the time of his 1985 conviction by Harry Connick, alleging that evidence had been wrongfully withheld.

The current Orleans Parish District Attorney, Leon Cannizzaro, has said the judgment is roughly equal to his office's annual operating budget and would have "devastating" financial consequences.

On March 22, the U.S. Supreme Court accepted the case for review. The justices will hear oral arguments in the fall.

Question presented: Does imposing liability for failing to train a prosecutor on a district attorney’s office for a single Brady violation contravene rigorous culpability and causation standards?

Source(otd.oyez.org)

Thirteen police officers accused of framing three men over Cardiff prostitute murder

4/03/2009

Thirteen police officers were yesterday accused of framing three men wrongly jailed for killing a prostitute 21 years ago.

They are alleged to have fabricated evidence in the case of Lynette White, 21, who was stabbed 70 times.

Her boyfriend and two friends - dubbed the Cardiff Three - were originally jailed for life for the killing but freed two years later on appeal.

The real murderer Jeffrey Gafoor was eventually convicted six years ago through DNA evidence.

This sparked an inquiry into the detective work in Lynette's case.

Now the CPS says there is enough evidence to prosecute 13 officers - three serving and 10 retired - involved in the original investigation.

They are to be charged with conspiracy to pervert justice. Two civilian workers face perjury raps.

Tom Davies, the Independent Police Complaints Commission boss in Wales, said yesterday: "It is important for public confidence in the police and the complaints process that the full story of this re-investigation is told.

"The trial of these people will enable that to happen."

Lynette was murdered in a flat above a betting shop in Cardiff in 1988. Stephen Miller, Yusef Abdullahi and Anthony Paris were jailed for murder but released in 1990 after their convictions were quashed by the Court of Appeal.

Last October, three witnesses were jailed for perjury after admitting lying under police pressure at their trial.

The CPS decision to charge 15 officers and civilian staff over a miscarriage of justice is unprecedented in its scale.

Few officers have ever been tried over claims they fabricated evidence.

The accused have been summonsed to appear at City of Westminster magistrates court next month.

The maximum sentence for conspiracy to pervert justice is life. The longest for perjury is seven years.

DUE IN COURT

The 13 summonsed with conspiracy to pervert the course of justice are: PC John Howard Murray, Det Sgt Paul Stephen, Det Con Paul Jennings, Wayne Pugh (now a civilian police worker) and former officers Graham Mouncher, Richard Powell, Thomas Page, Michael Daniels, John Brian Gillard, Peter Greenwood, John Seaford, Rachel O'Brien and Stephen Hicks.

Civilians Violet Perriam and Ian Massey are summonsed with two counts of perjury in relation to the evidence they gave at the murder trials.

"Last chance to prove my innocence," Skinner tells Medill student-reporters

By Gaby Fleischman and Emily Glazer
May 2, 2010

LIVINGSTON, TEXAS – For the past five weeks, Henry “Hank” Skinner wakes up hoping to hear that the Supreme Court has taken his case, and given him a chance to leave Texas Death Row a free man.

On Monday, the Supreme Court is expected to make its decision. Since granting Skinner a stay of execution on March 24, there have been three delays.

“Every Monday morning I come out on pins and needles, about to have a stroke,” he said. “In a way you're relieved, but then I’ve gotta live the rest of this week wondering what’s gonna happen now.”

Skinner, who was convicted of a triple homicide in 1995, has been on Death Row for 15 years. Less than an hour before his scheduled execution, he was told the high court had spared his life – at least for the time being.

If the Supreme Court takes the case, it could lead to DNA testing of all the crime scene evidence. Much of the physical evidence in Skinner’s case has yet to be tested and could conclusively prove his guilt or innocence.

“I was trying to get the DNA tested because I really feel that’s my last chance to prove my innocence,” Skinner said in an interview Wednesday afternoon.

Skinner has always maintained his innocence. He was sentenced to death for the brutal murders of his live-in girlfriend, Twila Busby, and her two sons, Randy Busby and Elwin Caler. Skinner does not deny being present at the time of the murders, but says he was passed out from a combination of codeine, alcohol and anti-anxiety medication. According to toxicology reports, Skinner would have been in a near-comatose state. He was found several hours later at a neighbor's house, his clothing stained with blood from two of the victims. All of his appeals have been denied, leading him to ask the Supreme Court to review his case.

After the Court granted the stay of execution, Skinner and his legal team said they thought they would hear an update the following Monday, March 29. But Monday came and went without word from the nine justices.

Waiting for the Supreme Court decision has not been easy for Skinner. He compared the experience to a game of Russian Roulette.

“The first 20 or 30 times it would scare you, but after 20 years when someone does that to you…you’d just become so unaffected by it,” he said.

Doug Robinson, one of Skinner’s appellate lawyers, has also anxiously awaited the decision.

“The last two Mondays I sat at my computer just hitting the refresh button on the Supreme Court website waiting for that order list to come up,” he said.

Robinson said he does not think the decision will be a “plain old ordinary” denial of a writ of certiorari, the most common way the Court is asked to hear a case. (Last term, the justices denied 98% of all such writs.)

There are many possibilities, but Robinson said it’s probable there could be a denial of certiorari with a dissent, which means the Supreme Court would not take the case over the written objection of one or more of the justices.

Another possibility is a summary judgment where the Court orders a hearing on the DNA evidence in the federal district court. Down the road, this could turn into a suit based on federal civil rights law, Robinson hopes.

“If we’re successful, it would provide a means by which a lot of other prisoners in Hank’s situation could get DNA testing,” he said.

Skinner’s legal team has been unsuccessfully pushing for complete DNA testing for the last decade.

The current Gray County District Attorney, Lynn Switzer, has repeatedly refused to release the biological evidence for DNA testing.

“It's already been handled,” Gray County District Attorney Lynn Switzer told the Texas Tribune on March 30. Switzer is the third district attorney in Pampa involved with the Skinner case, but she is the one being sued to release the DNA evidence.

“He doesn't need to keep trying it over and over and over again. It's already been handled.”

In legal documents opposing the DNA testing, lawyers for Switzer have contended there was sufficient evidence to convict Skinner without additional DNA testing and that Skinner waived his rights to new tests when he didn't request them before his trial.

Harold Comer, Skinner’s attorney at the time, did not respond to repeated interview requests.

Some evidence that was tested did not match Skinner, including a head hair found in Twila’s hand and blood found on the sidewalk in front of the home. The majority of the evidence found at the crime scene, including the murder weapons, the rape kit, skin cells under Twila’s fingernails, and a windbreaker found next to her body, have still not been tested. The blood-stained windbreaker was similar to one worn by an alternative suspect in the case -- a man who witnesses saw stalking Twila shortly before the murders.

Skinner said the untested evidence could prove his innocence and unveil the imperfections of the justice system.

“Citizens think in terms of us and them. If you’re one of us, you’re one of the good guys and if you’re one of them, you’re one of bad guys,” Skinner said. “So this evidence…proves that I’m not one of them, I’m still one of us. And if it could happen to me, it could happen to you, your sister, your brother, your son, your daddy.”

Skinner’s two daughters, Kristen Keaton and Natalie Skinner, said they pray the Supreme Court will make the “right” decision. Kristen and Natalie were re-united with their father the day before his scheduled execution.

“I wanted the glass out of the way," Natalie said. "I wanted to be home across the kitchen table or anywhere but where we were…the setting was not proper for the feelings."

Despite the circumstances, just seeing his daughters was life changing for Skinner.

“When my daughters came back into my life, I had a renewed reason to live because of them,” he said.

But for now, like Skinner, his daughters can only wait.

“I’m scared for him,” Kristen said. “I’m scared for him more if he doesn’t get justice, if he doesn’t get a fair shake at this.”

Robinson, Skinner's attorney, said when you’re dealing with a person’s life all the evidence should be tested.

“It should not be the law in this country that it’s possible to execute someone when there is troubling evidence as to their guilt or innocence, and there’s still some uncertainty about it,” he said.

But for now, Skinner’s fate is out of his hands and with the Supreme Court’s decision on Monday.

“I gotta deal with whatever happens and I don’t know what’s gonna happen,” he said. “You just have to try and pull yourself together with every fiber you got and hold on to your sanity.”

Rachel Cicurel and Alexandra Johnson contributed to this article.


Editor's note: The Supreme Court on Monday, May 3 once again failed to announce a decision in the Skinner case. No reason was given for the delay, the fourth time the justices have met to consider the case without issuing a ruling. The next date the justices will conference is Thursday, May 13, with announcements of their decisions expected on Monday, May 17.

Frank Sterling and the Next Exoneree

On April 28, 2010, Innocence Project client Frank Sterling was exonerated in Rochesterm New York. He served 18 years in prison for a murder he didn’t commit before DNA testing proved his innocence and implicated another man as the real perpetrator.

The Innocence Project is committed to helping Sterling and other clients adjust to life after exoneration, and we’re hard at work on freeing other innocent prisoners across the United States.

Can you donate $25 today to help us answer cries for help from prisons across the United States? Click here to donate online today.

Learn more about Frank Sterling’s case here.

(Photo: Frank Sterling and Innocence Project Staff Attorney Vanessa Potkin)

Source(www.innocenceproject.org)

A PLEA FOR JUSTICE: The Timothy Cole Story

During the closing months of 1984 and extending through March 25, 1985, a number of violent rapes occurred around Texas Tech in Lubbock, Texas. As a result, females, both students and employees of the university, along with those who worked in the general area, were caught up in a wave of terror in the persona of the Tech rapist.

A PLEA FOR JUSTICE: The Timothy Cole Story recounts how a 24-year-old black student, an army veteran also attending Tech, became entangled in a web of deceit that branded him as the assailant.

After conducting a brief investigation that yielded no physical evidence whatsoever to link Tim Cole with a recent rape, overly-aggressive police detectives concluded nonetheless that he committed the aggravated sexual assault on a fellow student whom he had never actually seen until the first day of his trial.

Before he passed away while serving the thirteenth of a twenty-five year sentence, Tim Cole expressed a fervent desire to be vindicated, exonerated, and pardoned, and in an effort to honor his last wishes, a devoted mother and family, supported and represented by the Innocence Project of Texas, carried the fight through the court system, both houses of the Lone Star State’s legislature, to the Board of Pardons and Paroles, and finally to the governor.

This is a gut-wrenching story of courage, devotion, conviction, honor, a family that never compromised its principles—and at the end of a struggle that lasted almost twenty-five years, the manner in which the Lone Star State conducts criminal investigations and treats its exonerees is rocked to the very core.

Read more: FOREWORD by Jeff Blackburn, founder and chief counsel, the Innocence Project of Texas

Source(www.timothybriancole.com)

Protecting the innocent

Sending innocent people to prison and keeping them there are among the worst mistakes government can make. It has happened at least a dozen times in Florida, by one group's count.

Florida could learn from those mistakes -- and, possibly, prevent them in the future -- if the Legislature supports a state senator's push for an "innocence panel."

The senator, Mike Haridopolos, R-Merritt Island, added a budget amendment last week that would provide $200,000 for a commission to "examine why people have been sent to state prison for crimes they didn't commit," according to an article in Florida Today. The panel also would work "to prevent more innocent people from going to jail."

A group of attorneys suggested the panel idea to the Florida Supreme Court last year. Last month, the court expressed support for the suggestion but noted a lack of funding for implementation.

Haridopolos' measure aims to clear that hurdle, although $200,000 may not be enough, experts say. Still, it's an important step that deserves the Legislature's backing.

Florida prisoners exonerated

In Florida, 12 prisoners have been exonerated by post-conviction DNA testing since 2001, according to the Innocence Project. The group is a national network that specializes in using DNA evidence to clear people wrongly convicted of serious crimes.

Anthony Caravella, imprisoned for 26 years after being found guilty of a Broward County rape and murder, was Florida's 12th person to be freed by the process. The 1983 crime occurred before DNA testing was available. But last year, the evidence was put to the test. Final results, made public last week, confirmed that his DNA was not found on crime scene materials. The hunt for the real killer continues.

In another case, Alan Crotzer was released from state prison in 2006 after spending 24 years incarcerated for crimes he didn't commit. Crotzer was arrested in 1981 and charged with robbery, kidnapping and sexual battery in connection with crimes committed in Tampa. He was convicted and sentenced to 130 years. He was released after being vindicated by a series of DNA tests and other discoveries. A court vacated his conviction and sentence.

Two years ago, the Legislature appropriately provided Crotzer with $1.25 million to compensate for his wrongful imprisonment, which was the result of flawed testimony from witnesses and the use of questionable tactics by the prosecution.

Four key factors

The Innocence Project has found that at least one of four key factors often plays a role in wrongful convictions. Those factors are:

Eyewitness misidentification, the "leading cause" of wrongful conviction.

Use (and misuse) of scientifically unproven forensic techniques. Comparative bullet-lead analysis, for example, is considered questionable.

False confessions -- particularly when the defendant is a juvenile, has diminished mental capacity, or is under duress. (Caravella, just 15 when charged and with an IQ considered mildly mentally retarded, is one example.)

"Snitch" testimony, which can be highly unreliable.

Criminal justice procedures are needed that reduce the incidence of these errors prior to conviction -- and that provide opportunities for post-conviction relief.

The Innocence Project advocates legal reforms that include requirements to preserve DNA evidence in all cases of serious crime; recording interrogations in their entirety; double-blind police lineups and photo identification procedures; and policies that reduce obstacles to DNA testing late in the "justice cycle."

Compensation for the wrongly convicted and help as they re-enter society are also needed.

Florida already has instituted some of these reforms, but more are necessary.

An "innocence panel," exploring the "how" and "why" of wrongful convictions, would be a powerful, positive step.

Source(www.heraldtribune.com)

Wrong man convicted even though "everybody did their best"

By LINDA P. CAMPBELL

lcampbell@star-telegram.com

Shortly after he opened a church-based office to help poor people with legal problems, Brooks Harrington took up the case of a woman who faced jail for not paying child support. She was indigent and unemployed and hadn't received the hearing to which the Constitution entitled her.

Harrington challenged the entire process by which his client could be sentenced to jail and persuaded the judge to drop the contempt conviction.

A lawyer and ordained Methodist minister, Harrington applies the same thoroughness and tenacity to representing clients who can't pay that he used while becoming one of the most successful defense lawyers in North Texas.

Now representing battered women and children, he believes he's answered his calling.

But in December came shattering news: A man Harrington helped send to prison for murder in 1982 was being released because DNA testing showed he was the wrong guy.

A Washington, D.C., jury had convicted Donald Eugene Gates of shooting and raping Georgetown University student Catherine Schilling in Rock Creek Park, not far from the Kennedy Center.

As an assistant U.S. attorney, Harrington prosecuted Gates and had been certain a dangerous man was kept from harming other women.

But he was wrong.

That left him sick and sleepless: What red flags had he missed? What would happen to Gates, who had been homeless 28 years ago? Where was the real killer? Were other convictions flawed?

And there was the sobering reality that "You can do your best and the system still fails."

Texas' criminal justice system has taken a beating because of case after case in which DNA testing has revealed wrongful convictions.

In response, state leaders have explored ways to boost accuracy, such as monitoring crime labs better, recording interrogations and improving eyewitness identification procedures.

But it isn't just Texas that needs self-examination. It doesn't take callousness or wrongdoing to cause injustice; even good people doing their jobs in good faith can make mistakes.

Harrington, a former Marine from Fort Worth, spent five years in the U.S. attorney's office, handling some of the toughest cases. He visited neighborhoods where tourists don't go and the only hopeful voices came from African-American churches.

He still sees the scene of a couple's murder-suicide, where a 3-year-old sat crying so hard no sound came out and the dead man's blood dripped through the floor, puddling next to a mattress where two toddlers slept.

He knew the system didn't always work. In 1981, he did the legwork to free a man wrongly charged with rape based on mistaken identity. The charge was dismissed the day of the trial.

In Gates' case, the prosecution relied on several pieces of evidence.

An FBI analyst testified that Gates' hair matched one found on the victim. Harrington said the defense team's analyst didn't dispute the match, just the odds that it was Gates' hair.

A paid informant said Gates had confessed. Harrington said he "pushed the informant hard" to test the validity of his story.

"The more time I spent with him, the less I liked him and the more I believed him," he said.

The jury also heard about Gates attacking another woman in the park not long before Schilling was killed.

Gates maintained he didn't commit the murder but lost his appeals.

Harrington, meanwhile, came back to Fort Worth in 1983. He quit private law practice in 1990, spent five years co-pastoring a church in a low-income neighborhood, then took up medical malpractice defense. In 2006, he started the Methodist Justice Ministry at First United Methodist Church Fort Worth.

He wasn't aware that in 1997, a Justice Department report raised questions about the FBI analyst's testimony in a case involving a federal judge. The credibility of the analyst's work in Gates' case wasn't reviewed by the U.S. attorney's office for years.

A public defender sought more DNA testing for Gates in 2008, and today's sophisticated tests determined he didn't match the specimens found on Schilling.

In a letter the day before Christmas, Harrington told Gates he was sorry, included his phone number and enclosed a money order.

Gates wrote back, "I forgave you long ago and now consider you my friend."

Harrington called that "the greatest gift I've ever received."

Gates is entitled to compensation from the government, but it's not yet clear how much.

He's living in Tennessee, though he recently told Harrington he can't find work and is feeling stressed.

There are many pressures on those within the criminal justice system: to protect the public, get convictions, move the sheer volume of cases. Mistakes are inevitable. But they can't be taken lightly.

"Everybody did their best, and we convicted the wrong guy, and that's terrifying," Harrington said.

"The mindset has to be one of fear and humility: Fear of convicting the wrong guy and humility about your own judgment."


Source(http://www.star-telegram.com)

New Science to Right Old Wrongs

DNA technology has proven 252 Americans innocent of crimes years -- even decades -- after their convictions.

New science is burgeoning that will give advocates of the wrongly convicted more tools to prove actual innocence.

Join us April 16-18, 2010, to learn the latest information in forensic science and the newest methods Innocence advocates are using to help their clients.

This weekend of cutting-edge law and science will leave you newly inspired.

Source(http://www.innocence2010.org)

Texas Forensic Science Commission to reopen discussion of Willingham case this month

Posted Saturday, Apr. 10, 2010

Read more: http://www.star-telegram.com/2010/04/10/2104682/texas-forensic-science-commission.html#ixzz0lIqwlqLG

By DAVE MONTGOMERY

dmontgomery@star-telegram.com

AUSTIN -- After months of delay and internal upheaval, the revamped Texas Forensic Science Commission is poised to reopen discussion of the Cameron Todd Willingham case when it meets April 23 in Irving.

Tarrant County Medical Examiner Nizam Peerwani, appointed to the panel in December, is likely to play a central role in the inquiry to determine whether a flawed arson investigation led to Willingham's execution in 2004.

The commission also includes two other members from Fort Worth: defense attorney Lance Evans and Jay Arthur Eisenberg, a professor and chairman of the department of forensic and investigative genetics at the University of North Texas Health Science Center at Fort Worth.

The meeting will mark the first time that the commission has revisited the Willingham case since a membership shake-up halted the inquiry more than six months ago.

"I think the commission is looking forward to being able to get down to work," said Evans, who was appointed in October.

Willingham, an unemployed Corsicana mechanic, was convicted of setting a house fire in 1991 that killed his three daughters. But several fire experts, including one hired by the commission, have challenged the arson findings, raising the possibility that the fire may have been accidental.

Controversy, criticism

The case has drawn national attention, becoming a rallying point for anti-death penalty groups saying Texas may have executed an innocent man on Gov. Rick Perry's watch. The controversy intensified in the fall when Perry replaced four of the nine commissioners.

Commission Chairman John Bradley told the Star-Telegram in e-mails last week that the commission will discuss the Willingham case and other pending complaints when it meets at the Omni Mandalay Hotel at Las Colinas. It is not known how long resolving the Willingham case will take.

Bradley, who is the Williamson County district attorney and was named by Perry to replace ousted Chairman Sam Bassett, came under fire at a legislative hearing last week for what critics suggested was a heavy-handed leadership style that stifles public discussion. Bradley, who was not at the hearing, later called the assertions unwarranted and his approach fair and inclusive.

"I'm not knocking their right to criticize," Bradley said. "I'm just suggesting that it isn't a balanced view of our work."

A new approach

In a meeting in January, the restructured commission adopted policies and procedures that Bradley said were necessary before the commission can move forward on pending investigations, including the Willingham case.

The new policies call for creating separate panels to screen complaints and handle investigations, with recommendations ratified by the full commission. Panel members are appointed by the chairman, subject to approval by the commission.

Bradley declined to discuss the commission's investigations, but three other commissioners said the Willingham inquiry has been tentatively assigned to a three-member investigation panel: Bradley, Peerwani and Sarah Kerrigan, a forensic toxicologist and director of a regional crime lab at Sam Houston State University in Huntsville.
Bradley, Peerwani and Eisenberg are also on a committee that will valuate complaints and recommend to the full commission whether they should be pursued. If the commission votes to go ahead, complaints are assigned to three-member investigative panels that will present their findings to the full commission.

Still up in the air
Peerwani said that the screening committee has scheduled a meeting for Thursday in his Fort Worth office but that members of the second panel who were assigned to the Willingham case have yet to get together. It remains unclear to what extent the Willingham panel will rely on the previous work of the original commission, but Peerwani hopes that the panel won't have to start from scratch.

"We do have a lot of material that the commission has collected," said Peerwani, who has been Tarrant County's medical examiner for 30 years. "I don't think we have to go back and restart all those investigations."

But "it's still up in the air. I don't know what the commission is going to do," he said.

Eisenberg, a member of the commission since October 2006, said he is "pleased that we're going to get back to the discussion."

"We had invested a lot of time and effort in terms of the material," Eisenberg said.

Renewed inquiry

One crucial element from the original inquiry was a report that was prepared for the commission by Baltimore fire expert Craig Beyler, who concluded that the arson investigation that led to Willingham's conviction was based on outmoded techniques and could not sustain a finding of arson.

The commission agreed to look into the case after receiving a complaint from The Innocence Project, a New York-based advocacy group, in December 2006.

Beyler, whom the commission hired December 2008, submitted his report in August 2009 and was scheduled to appear at a commission hearing that was abruptly canceled after the membership shake-up in September. Beyler told the Star-Telegram late last week that he has not been invited to the upcoming meeting.

Under the new policies and procedures, the commission can find that a "forensic analysis met the standard of practice that an ordinary forensic analyst would have exercised at the time the analysis originally took place."

Other options are concluding that the evidence did or did not sustain a finding that "professional negligence or misconduct" occurred in a forensic analysis and taking "such other action as appropriate."

'Quagmire of delays'

The restructured investigative approach -- which may still have to be formally ratified at the upcoming meeting -- has raised questions among Bradley's critics, who believe that it may give him too much power over the Willingham case.

Bradley's appointment by Perry-led accusations that the governor was trying to dictate the outcome of the Willingham case to avoid potentially embarrassing findings, assertions that Perry and Bradley have denied.

"The notion that he would be on this particular committee in light of everything that has gone on in the last year is particularly inappropriate," said Rep. Lon Burnam, D-Fort Worth. "A suspicious mind would be concerned about nefarious activities."

Burnam, who said he plans to attend the upcoming meeting, also expressed concerns that the new approach would keep the investigation out of the public eye. "It runs contrary to every gut instinct I have about how government should work," he said.

Bassett, the former chairman who has criticized Bradley's approach, said the creation of the panels would differ from previous practice, in which the commission conducted inquiries as a body. He said Bradley's presence on an investigative panel would give him more control over the ultimate outcome.

"He can have an influence over what's written, there's no question," said Bassett, an Austin defense attorney. "I don't think it's improper. I'd say it's more a question of personal style. I would have preferred the entire commission to debate the findings that are going to be in the draft report rather than just three people."

At last week's hearing of the House Public Safety Committee, Rep. Tommy Merritt, R-Longview and committee chairman, sharply challenged Bradley's insistence that new policies and procedures were needed before the commission could move forward on investigations.

The result, he said, was "a quagmire of delays" that needlessly stalled the work of the committee.

But Bradley, in e-mails after the meeting, defended the new rules. "Previously the Commission literally had no written guidelines. There was no definition of misconduct or negligence. There was no written process for how to accept or investigate a complaint."

Bradley also disputed assertions that he single-handedly prepared the new policies and guidelines, saying they were drafted by a committee that included Eisenberg and Evans, and were "debated and amended considerably" at the commission's last meeting. He called the product "very much a collaborative effort.

"No doubt it will be revisited, but it does give us a strong set of policies and procedures from which to work," he said.

Source(www.star-telegram.com)

Innocence Commission – The Ball is in the Florida Supreme’s Court

From the blog of the Innocence Project of Florida :

Seth — March 31, 2010 @ 8:50 AM

We have had some new news on the Florida Actual Innocence Commission front. We had previously discussed this idea on Plain Error a few months back here and here. The Innocence Commission got some mixed news last week.

On March 22, 2009, Florida Supreme Court Chief Justice Peggy Quince sent Senator Mike Haridopolos, the next Senate President, a letter stating:

The court is very much interested in looking at the cases of actual innocence and is considering the establishment of a commission or task force to study this issue and to make recommendations. We are most appreciative of your interest in and support of this effort, and hope that we can additionally count on the support of the Legislature during this session.

Justice Quince noted that the budget for the Gender Bias Study Commission over a three year period was $321,589, peaking at about $146,000 in fiscal year 1988. The Racial and Ethnic Bias Study Commission had a $378,350 budget over five years, with the highest yearly appropriation at $278,350 in fiscal year 1991. Of course, Justiece Quince noted, that these figures needed to be adjusted for the passage of time. This was a very positive letter.

In response to Sandy D’Alemberte’s petition to the Florida Supreme Court to create the Commission by rule, Chief Justice Quince sent Mr. D’Alemberte a separate letter stating that they were denying our petition to create the commission, BUT:

The Court, however, is very much interested in looking at the cases of actual innocence, and is considering the establishment of a commission or task force by Administrative Order,” she wrote. “As we explore the best avenue to make inquiries on this subject, we welcome any input you or your colleagues may have concerning funding sources, etc.

Since the letters, both the Daytona Beach News Journal and Jesse Diner, President of the Florida Bar have made impassioned pleas for the Supreme Court to create this Commission.

So it seems that either the court was blowing smoke or they are completely serious about implementing the Innocence Commission if they can just find the money in these tough economic times.

Well, as of this morning, we are likely going to find out the Court’s real intentions. Florida Today is reporting that Senator Mike Haridopolos is seeking to include $200,000 in THIS YEAR’s budget for the establishment of the Innocence Commission. That funding, as well as his pledge of staff support, should be enough to get this thing off the ground:

“This is really a two-way street,” Haridopolos said. “It will protect accused people who are innocent of crimes, but also give people the confidence to know that the people in prison are guilty.”

Politics is a funny business. I think it would be fair to say that Senator Haridopolos and I would agree on little in terms of the big public policy issues of the day. But he has been one of the strongest leaders on innocence issues in his time in the Senate, beginning with his sponsoring of the Dedge compensation bill, continuing with the sponsorship of the Dillon claims bill, and now his pursuit of an Innocence Commission.

Let’s give credit where it is due. If you get a chance, drop the good Senator a line and thank him for his leadership and commitment to this issue:

District Office: (321) 752-3131
Tallahassee Office: (850) 487-5056

haridopolos.mike.web@flsenate.gov

Related posts:

1. Key Senator Expresses Support for Formation of Important Innocence Commission Key Senator Expresses Support for Formation of Important Innocence Commission Senator Mike Haridopolos Sends Letter to Florida Supreme Court Pledging...
2. Innocence Commission is Cooking with Gas As you can see from our Press Release below, IPF’s efforts to create an Actual Innocence Commission in Florida have...
3. The Florida Actual Innocence Commission This sounds like something every state should have but most states, including Florida, do absolutely nothing to study the cases...
4. Great Start, But Not Quite There Yet Yesterday I wrote, prematurely in hindsight, that because an amendment was offered to the state budget to appropriate $200,000 to...
5. Innocence Project of Florida Files Amicus Brief with Supreme Court of Florida Innocence Project of Florida Files Amicus Brief with Supreme Court of Florida IPF Urges Court to Allow Defendants to File...
6. FL Supreme Court Stays Execution of Paul Beasley Johnson Johnson was convicted for the 1981 murders of three individuals including a Lakeland deputy. Governor Crist recently signed Johnson’s death...

Great Start, But Not Quite There Yet

Seth — April 1, 2010 @ 1:14 PM — Comments (0)

Yesterday I wrote, prematurely in hindsight, that because an amendment was offered to the state budget to appropriate $200,000 to the Florida Supreme Court for the creation of the Innocence Commission, that the ball was in the FSC’s court to actually create the Commission.

This of course is only partly true. Late yesterday, the Senate approved the amendment. Now this budget item must make its way into the House Budget, either through amendment or in conference, and then the Governor has to sign the budget into law.

Only at that point, will the burden shift to the Florida Supreme Court to get this Commission moving.

Related posts:

Innocence Commission – The Ball is in the Florida Supreme’s Court We have had some new news on the Florida Actual Innocence Commission front. We had previously discussed this idea on...

Maryland Compromise on Capital Punishment Maryland’s much-storied recent efforts to abolish the death penalty have been tempered into compromise legislation that cleared the state Senate...

Key Senator Expresses Support for Formation of Important Innocence Commission Key Senator Expresses Support for Formation of Important Innocence Commission Senator Mike Haridopolos Sends Letter to Florida Supreme Court Pledging...

The Florida Actual Innocence Commission This sounds like something every state should have but most states, including Florida, do absolutely nothing to study the cases...
Great opinion piece on obtaining post-conviction DNA testing I ran across this wonderful opinion piece on the Criminal Justice blog. It says everything that needs to be said...

Tim Cole still awaiting pardon Earlier this year, Timothy Cole was exonerated of a rape in Texas – ten years after his death in prison....

Execution delayed in DNA case

The Supreme Court on Wednesday evening delayed the execution in Texas of Henry W. Skinner, at least until the Court acts on his new case seeking to pursue a civil rights claim that he was denied a chance to have DNA evidence tested in an attempt to prove his innocence of a triple murder more than 16 years ago. The Court’s order blocked an execution that had been scheduled for 7 p.m. Washington time. The Court has not yet scheduled its consideration of his pending appeal (Skinner v. Switzer, 09-9000; his stay application was 09A743).

Skinner is seeking to raise an issue that the Justices had agreed to review last Term in District Attorney’s Office v. Osborne (08-6). The Court decided the Osborne case on June 18, but left unresolved that specific issue. The question is whether a state inmate seeking access to and testing of DNA evidence may pursue that claim under civil rights law (Section 1983), rather than in a federal habeas challenge. Skinner’s lawyers contend that he has tried unsuccessfully to use Texas state procedures for DNA testing, so his only remaining chance to get it is through a civil rights claim.

He was convicted in 1995 and sentenced to death for the slaying of his live-in girlfriend and her two mentally retarded, adult sons, in their home in the small town of Pampa, Texas, on New Year’s Eve in 1993. He was in the home during the murder rampage, but has contended repeatedly since then that he was unconscious from using drugs and alcohol earlier in the evening. He also has contended that new evidence, about the physical nature of the killings, indicates that in his condition he had neither the strength nor clarity of mind to commit the crimes.

For ten years, his lawyers have said, he has sought access to DNA evidence that was never tested by prosecutors. He filed his federal civil rights claim only after those efforts had failed, his counsel has said. Although prosecutors arranged for some DNA tests on some of the evidence, and used the results to help convict Skinner, his attorneys contend that prosecutors only sought selective testing of crime scene materials.

In his petition for review, Skinner contended that he has a constitutional interest under state law in seeking to use evidence that would help prove his innocence, but that he has been frustrated in trying to vindicate that interest in state proceedings. In addition, the petition argued that the conflict among lower courts on whether a DNA access claim can be pursued under civil rights law, or only under habeas law, has intensified since the Supreme Court agreed to examine that issue in the Osborne case last Term. Thus, it said, the need for Supreme Court guidance is now “more urgent.”

Lawyers on both sides have completed all of the filings in the case on that issue, so the Court is expected to schedule it for Conference within a matter of weeks. In the meantime, the postponement granted Wednesday will stay in effect until the petition is acted upon and, if granted, until it is decided. If review is denied, the postponement will expire automatically and the state could then schedule execution anew.

Source(www.scotusblog.com)

After 16 years in prison, a whole new world

For the last month, exoneree Greg Taylor is adjusting to life at home. He's photographed with his daughter.

To see the world through Greg Taylor's eyes, imagine being stuck in a time machine for 16 years and delivered to 2010.

Facebook, flat screens and DVDs are all new to him. Relationships that used to come with natural ease seem awkward.

Since 1993, Taylor, now 47, had been locked away in North Carolina's prison system for the murder of a prostitute. Last month, he was exonerated and freed.

"All that frustration and confusion I had stored up all those years was just let out," Taylor said, recalling the day he was released, February 17. "There was a lot of relief and gratitude. There was a whole lot to get used to."

He agreed to jot down his impressions and share them with CNN.

After a month readjusting to life outside prison, Taylor has concluded that Facebook is "neat but a waste of time." He's in awe that a flat, round disk called a DVD lets him rewind and fast-forward movies by just pushing a button. He finds the automatic soap dispensers in the mall bathrooms startling.

Taylor is the first man to be exonerated by a state innocence commission, which makes his case stand out from those of the more than 500 people across the country who have been exonerated by the work of private attorneys, according to the Life After Exoneration program.

The group that freed Taylor, the North Carolina Innocence Inquiry Commission, was created in 2006 after a succession of wrongful convictions were revealed. It's a one-of-a-kind program with a state-mandated panel that re-examines questionable cases, including those that don't involve DNA evidence like Taylor's.

Other jurisdictions are following North Carolina's lead, looking at creating government agencies to prevent and reverse wrongful convictions. In New York City, the Manhattan District Attorney's office launched a program this month to proactively flag common errors such as witness misidentification and false confessions before the case go to trial.

A petition filed before the Florida Supreme Court by a group of attorneys asks the state to create an agency based on North Carolina's model that will examine why wrongful convictions occur. Attorneys hope gathering useful data on eyewitness misidentifications and snitch testimony will highlight systemic flaws that need repair.

In Taylor's case, the commission considered new tests that revealed that a stain found in Taylor's truck was not blood, as the prosecutor had argued. The commission also reviewed testimony from the jailhouse informant who implicated Taylor at the trial.

By the time the commission decided to free Taylor on February 17, he had already spent a total of 16 years behind bars.

That day, he stumbled out of the courthouse without shackles for the first time. He grinned when his 26-year-old daughter embraced him tearfully. No longer a 9-year-old, Kristen Puryear had a child herself, making Taylor a grandfather.

She drove while her father sat in the passenger seat.

The post-exoneration journey is daunting for many former inmates, most of whom have spent a large portion of their adult lives in institutional settings.

The Life After Exoneration Program found one out of three inmates has lost custody of children. About 25 percent develop post traumatic stress disorder, but access to counseling and medical care is limited without employment.

Unlike parolees, who are convicted of crimes, those exonerated don't have access to corrections services.

When Taylor left prison, the state of North Carolina gave him a $45 check. It was intended to get him a hotel room and back on his feet. The amount makes him laugh.

Taylor spent his first day after his release at the mall, eager to trade his scratched plastic prison glasses for new ones. He passed a bakery where the aroma captivated him. In prison, sights and smells are muted, he explained. Inmates wear identical uniforms and eat the same tasteless cafeteria food.

"I could have stood there all day," he said.

Incarceration can also place strains on relationships with loved ones. For Taylor, it separated him from his wife and some of his closest friends.

Three days after his release, Taylor received a phone call from his childhood friend, Kenny, who had sent Taylor letters and magazines in prison but never visited.

"There was a lot of people that could not stand to see me in prison," Taylor explained.

The two friends grew up as University of North Carolina basketball fans. This spring, they reunited in front of the television to cheer their favorite team on.

Taylor's marriage was another relationship that suffered when he was in prison. His wife of 10 years, Becky Taylor, supported him throughout the trial. But several months after he entered prison, they divorced.

For their first face-to-face meeting in 16 years, Taylor's ex-wife came for dinner at their daughter's house. The conversation was cordial. She had moved to another suburb and remarried. But the comfortable ease he once felt around her had faded.

"It was the loss that hit me," Taylor said. "I just don't know her that well anymore."

But some things are just like he remembered. Taylor spent last weekend at Lake Jordan State Park, one of his favorite retreats. Before prison, he used to go boating and water ski in the summer with his daughter. This time, they sat on the lake front watching the dark, still water and inhaling the crisp air.

"It was the largest body of water I had seen in a long time," Taylor said.

After three weeks of living with his daughter, Taylor knew he needed to pull his life together. He knew he couldn't stay in his grandson's room forever.

He's looking for a car. He's gone online to build a model of the Honda Accord he wanted using the slim laptop his family bought for him. They didn't have computers that skinny in 1993, he pointed out.

He went to the barbershop for a haircut to prepare for job interviews. There, a woman cut his hair with scissors. In prison, he said, other inmates used toenail clippers to trim his hair.

Taylor says he sometimes feels overwhelmed by the daunting tasks ahead -- getting a job with medical benefits and finding a place to live. Two-thirds of those exonerated will not become financially independent, according to the Life After Exoneration Program.

Sometimes, he said, it feels as if his body is being yanked in too many different directions. His father has helped him pursue some job leads. So far, he's had no luck.

"I can't live in my grandson's room forever," he said. "When I have a routine, that's where the happiness is going to be."

But he's in no rush. He's got a daughter and grandson to get to know -- and plenty of people to catch up with.

He says he's taking it month by month.

Source(edition.cnn.com)

Isn't a man's life worth an extra 30 days?

Posted Saturday, Mar. 20, 2010

By BOB RAY SANDERS

bobray@star-telegram.com

Henry W. "Hank" Skinner, convicted of murder in 1994, may be guilty as sin.

Then again, he may be innocent.

But so what?

This is Texas, and Skinner is scheduled to be executed Wednesday evening even though simple testing might prove conclusively that he was not the killer of his live-in girlfriend and her two adult sons 16 years ago in the Panhandle town of Pampa.

Of course, the DNA testing could confirm his guilt, or perhaps be deemed inconclusive.

Either way, would it not make sense to do the testing if it helped us to be sure one way or the other? Why is the state so adamant about not doing it?

Do we permit Texas to make a possible deadly mistake without even trying to learn the whole truth?

It seems almost ironic that Gov. Rick Perry came to Fort Worth on Friday with a freshly issued pardon for a man who was wrongly convicted of raping a Texas Tech student in 1985.

Tim Cole, who was exonerated by DNA testing last year, was not there to receive his pardon -- his mother accepted for him. The test that proved his innocence came too late for Cole. He died in prison while serving a 25-year sentence for that wrongful conviction.

Cole's family fought hard and long to clear his name and has worked tirelessly for legislation that would help keep such miscarriages of justice from happening. A state advisory panel on wrongful convictions was named in his honor.

I was with Cole's family Friday afternoon as his mother, Ruby Session, along with Cole's sister and five brothers accepted the pardon.

After Perry's visit, Session took the governor's pardon to her son Tim -- at his grave.

Session has said no other family should have to go through such an ordeal, especially when DNA testing could have proved a defendant's innocence.

That brings us back to Skinner's case.

He maintains his innocence, but none of us knows for sure whether he bludgeoned Twila Busby to death and fatally stabbed her two sons on New Year's Eve, 1993. Skinner's attorneys argue he was convicted on "entirely circumstantial" evidence even while untested evidence remains sealed. Prosecutors and the courts have refused to permit a forensic examination for DNA as Skinner's execution date draws near.

Last week, the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals refused to intervene in the case, so hope lies with the U.S. Supreme Court and Perry.

Lawyers for Skinner officially asked the governor this month to grant a 30-day reprieve and order DNA testing on evidence that prosecutors say still exists.

In addition to the problematic trial evidence, the attorneys offer evidence to prove that Skinner was too incapacitated by alcohol and drugs to have committed the crimes even though he was in the house when they occurred.

Students of Northwestern University's Medill School of Journalism, who investigated the case in 1999 and 2000, helped uncover some of the disturbing revelations in the case.

The state's star witness, a woman whose home Skinner went to after he left the crime scene, recanted her testimony on tape. She has repeated, under oath, that she lied after authorities intimidated her.

Several witnesses believe, as was suggested during the trial, that the dead woman's uncle was the killer, and it has been suggested that a windbreaker found next to Busby's body belonged to him. Again, prosecutors never followed up on those allegations, attorneys say.

But the most crucial evidence -- seven items, in fact -- could be the most revealing if only tested for DNA: 1) vaginal swabs taken from Busby; 2) Busby's fingernail clippings; 3) a knife found on the front porch of Busby's home; 4) a knife found in a plastic bag in the living room; 5) a dishtowel also found in the bag; 6) the windbreaker; and 7) hairs found in Busby's hands.

Hair that was introduced at trial, by the way, was not Skinner's.

This overwhelming information could give new insight into the case, not to mention other things in the lawyers' petition to the governor.

Texas has waited this long; what's wrong with taking an extra 30 days if it could get to the truth?

"I'm not an advocate of Hank Skinner," law professor Robert C. Owen wrote in the appeal to the governor. "If DNA tests could remove the uncertainty about Skinner's guilt -- one way or the other -- there's not a good reason in the world not to do it."

I totally agree.

As a resident of this state, and with Tim Cole constantly on my mind, I don't want the death of another innocent man on my hands -- or my conscience.

Bob Ray Sanders' column appears Sundays and Wednesdays. 817-390-7775

Read more: http://www.star-telegram.com/2010/03/20/2053857/isnt-a-mans-life-worth-an-extra.html#ixzz0iibP2i50