A state’s forensic examiner takes the stand saying the defendant’s DNA profile excludes “everyone else in the world.”
http://abclocal.go.com/ktrk/story?section=news/local&id=9213680
New post: A deeper look into the conflicts in Chinese forensics.
Forensic science (testimony) and political environments collide in China. The issues are similar to problems in the US.
http://m.us.wsj.com/articles/BL-CJB-18551
Chicago’s machine politics invades the criminal justice system. Outside influences used to prevent or at least delay ex mayor Daley Jr. from giving courtroom testimony. The case in point deals with litigation aiming to release an imprisoned victim of long ago police torture and other police and potential prosecutor misconduct. The current Chicago DA Office, run by Anita Alvarez, a Daley appointee, was previously booted from this current case for her political connections.
Read the full article here.
One comment in this article about this maneuvering comes from the Chicago Innocence Project director.
“If Bonjean’s (the defense attorney) allegations are true, high-ranking officials have obstructed justice to promote a political agenda. Nothing less than a full-blown federal investigation is needed. Everyone who has subverted Stanley Wrice’s decades-long fight for freedom must be held accountable.” To me, this is the crux of it. Enough.”
This article shows the problems that surround attempts to reveal police misconduct when coverups, goofs by federal investigators and good ole back door jury tampering occurs. Note the Justice Departments is hiding the ball on the details of what they did or did not do in reviewing illegal police shootings in New Orleans. A judge will determine if the public has access to federal DOJ records.
AP Joins Bid to Unseal Court Records
By MICHAEL KUNZELMAN Associated Press Aug 19, 2013, 4:27 PM
The Associated Press on Monday joined a New Orleans newspaper in urging a federal judge to unseal court documents related to a Justice Department probe of alleged prosecutorial misconduct in its investigation of deadly police shootings that happened after Hurricane Katrina.
AP attorneys argued in a court filing that the public’s interest in monitoring the profile case “cannot be overstated.”
U.S. District Judge Kurt Engelhardt hasn’t ruled on The Times-Picayune’s Aug. 6 request to intervene in the case against five current or former police officers who were convicted of civil rights violations stemming from the shootings on a New Orleans bridge less than a week after the 2005 storm.
The Times-Picayune and AP are seeking access to sealed court filings and transcripts of closed-door hearings that Engelhardt held after ordering federal authorities to investigate the source of leaked information about the case.
“As The Times-Picayune’s memorandum already demonstrates, the First Amendment’s qualified right of public access to judicial proceedings and records in criminal cases applies regardless of the public status of the defendant, the nature of the crimes charged, or any allegations of prosecutorial misconduct,” AP lawyers wrote.
During a hearing in June 2012, Engelhardt said it appeared federal prosecutors didn’t conduct a “full-blown investigation” after AP and The Times-Picayune published articles about former New Orleans Police Lt. Michael Lohman’s anticipated guilty plea while his case was under seal. In December 2012, the Justice Department appointed one of its prosecutors from Georgia to investigate the leaks and ensure compliance with Engelhardt’s order.
Police shot and killed two unarmed people and wounded four others on Sept. 4, 2005, at the Danziger Bridge before engaging in a cover-up designed to make the shootings appear justified.
Lohman and four other former officers pleaded guilty to participating in a cover-up and are serving prison sentences. The five former officers convicted at trial in 2011 on charges arising from the shootings were sentenced by Engelhardt to prison terms of up to 65 years.
Attorneys for the officers convicted at trial claim that a series of leaks to the media, including about Lohman’s guilty plea, were part of a “secret public relations campaign” designed to influence the pool of prospective jurors. They have asked Engelhardt to order a new trial.
“Not only is the federal prosecutors’ conduct questioned in the post-conviction proceedings, but a substantial allegation of intentional jury tainting has been made,” AP attorneys wrote.
Former U.S. Attorney Jim Letten resigned in December 2012 after two of his top deputies acknowledged they had been posting anonymous comments on nola.com, The Times-Picayune’s companion website, about cases their office had handled, including the Danziger Bridge probe.
Several months before his resignation, Letten had told Engelhardt he didn’t authorize anyone from his staff to leak information about Lohman’s case and was furious when the reports were published.
This case could be the 25th person wrongfully convicted in the US by a bite mark opinion.
The ex-prosecutor (now a law professor) and a bitemark expert continue to deny errors in an exoneration case in the US. They protect and represent themselves in the media as being innovators in forensic research. Federal law enforcement grants have paid them $700,000 to continue publishing their
“scientific” study of pigs. You wonder what pigs have to do with actual forensic casework? The answer…
VERY LITTLE.
This www.examiner.com expose reveals how these two faculty members of Marquette University have “reverse engineered” their sketchy public relations image by convincing the US Department of Justice that their “new science” has merit. You can be assured their research will support their claims (one as the prosecutor, the other as his star witness) used at the original trial.
What they really are doing, is gerrymandering this “research” into absolving themselves from ongoing criticism and possible civil litigation from the wrongful conviction. They have been using this DOJ money to create a personal firewall for themselves. Pretty smart idea. Too bad its real purpose is obviously self-serving.
The financial connection between wrongful convictions and the costs to taxpayers is a fairly new topic for media discussion. It is rather localized (a $10 million civil award 2013 case from Chicago) in information as nationwide statistics do not appear to be determined. Info in regional media coverage of revelations on what taxpayers are ultimately spending is stunning. The above claim is only for civil costs plus and resulting exoneree compensation package. The amounts do NOT cover for the costs in obtaining the original conviction (add the defense costs) or the costs for the DA post-conviction objections to the exoneration litigation in criminal court). The available expenditure data in Illinois stands as a window into this arena of costs (Illinois $214 million cost [up to 2011] for 85 exoneration cases; a Texas $61 million compilation because of 89 exonerations. . This information also stands in stark opposition to culpable prosecutors’ assurances of infallibility. In a quote from the AP via HuffPost:
“Counties such as San Bernardino in California and Bexar County in Texas are heavily populated, yet seemingly have no exonerations, a circumstance that the academics say cannot possibly be correct.”
The list of erroneous convictions available at the National Registry of Exonerations contains over 1000 cases within the US. There are legislative statutes in some states that compensate innocent people for their years in prisons. Where compensation does exist, newer statutes allow compensation rates ranging from $50,000 to $75,000 per each year incarceration. A large minority of states do not compensate via legislation. This creates years of litigation in civil courts for the exonerated. Successful cases generally result in awards in millions of dollars. Hence, the advocates of statutory relief for the wrongfully convicted seem to have a reasonable solution. The political, media and law enforcement processes in establishing a state-by-state movement towards compensation are worth following.
Updates on research, cases and costs from the Internet:
<Current legal costs to a county in Texas for Michael Morton’s exoneration (principally the costs to convict the RIGHT person after Morton’s release) has been reported. It stands at $158,000. This figure has now been doubled by court documents from court documents.
<"In half of the 873 exonerations studied in detail, the most common factor leading to false convictions was perjured testimony or false accusations. Forty-three percent of the cases involved mistaken eyewitness identification, and 24 percent of the cases involved false or misleading forensic evidence." Nat'l Registry of Exonerations 5/12/12
<"On TV, an exoneration looks like a singular victory for a criminal defense attorney, "but there's usually someone to blame for the underlying tragedy, often more than one person, and the common culprits include defense lawyers as well as police officers, prosecutors and judges. In many cases, everybody involved has egg on their face, the report stated." AP via the HuffPost.
<a
There is a short announcement in the above news release and here's a partial quote from this consortium of various US forensic groups. "proper forensic science helps convict the guilty and exonerate the innocent…..”
The topic of personal liability for forensic expert witnesses has been around for a couple of decades. I am not talking about an expert being sued by his/her client for negligent actions in the course of the employment (traditionally this … Continue reading
The AP article (use your search engine for “bite marks” and “unreliable”) in June 2013 suggested that the bite mark dentists of the American Board of Forensic Odontology have been “supplanted by the more reliable science of DNA.” More recently, an internal ABFO response states there is a “conspiracy” backed by the news media, the Innocence Projects, the University of Buffalo bite mark research center, and unnamed “bite mark haters” to reject their beliefs in matching human teeth to human skin injuries in order to keep them out of the court system. This is regardless of the 24 people wrongfully associated with crimes that these folks have helped put in prisons and jails. From the AP article, the ABFO president has a sliding scale of acceptable outcomes, when he discounted these 24 people suffering as insignificant due to all the “good cases” the ABFO members have assisted the prosecution.
Uhm…
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