Eideard

Superior Court Judge Paul A. Bacigalupo posed a question to the slim man wearing blue jailhouse scrubs. Which is worse, the judge asked, an innocent man wrongfully convicted or the real perpetrator remaining free?

“The wrong guy going to prison,” Francisco “Franky” Carrillo replied without hesitation. “For the past 20 years, I’ve lived that experience. And I think it’s the worst predicament any human being can be under.”

Days after the courtroom exchange, Carrillo, 37, was expected to be freed late Tuesday or Wednesday from Los Angeles County Jail, having spent two decades behind bars for a fatal drive-by shooting he insists he did not commit.

Bacigalupo overturned Carrillo’s 1992 murder conviction Monday after witnesses recanted their identification of him as the gunman and a dramatic reconstruction of the shooting raised doubts about whether they could have ever reliably identified the shooter.

The murder case against Carrillo hinged solely on the word of six teenage boys who had been standing with the victim on a Lynwood street when the gunman drove by. One jury deadlocked 7 to 5 in favor of acquitting Carrillo, but a second jury found him guilty. He was sentenced to two life terms in prison.

Last week, five of the six witnesses testified at the Compton Courthouse that they had not clearly seen the gunman. Among them was the victim’s son, who said he made his identification because one of his friends at the scene said he recognized Carrillo as the shooter. That friend also recanted.

The case underscores what legal experts say is the danger of eyewitness testimony. Studies have shown that faulty identifications are the biggest factor in wrongful convictions and that witnesses are particularly unreliable when identifying someone of a different race. The witnesses who identified Carrillo are black, while he is Latino.

Yes, the case could still have moved differently with any number of variables. RTFA and come to your own conclusions.

I recall personal eyewitness testimony I’ve offered on trial – when I had been bright enough to write down my experience right after events happened. When I went back to those notes during an interview with a defense attorney, I had to admit surprise at the faultiness of my recollection vs. the notes I made that day.

Preserving embryos by freezing has become commonplace in fertility treatment to allow women to attempt multiple cycles without repeatedly creating new embryos. Now scientists have announced that a baby boy was born in May to a 42-year-old woman after being adopted as an embryo from a couple who created it 20 years ago.

Previously the oldest successful frozen embryo was 13 years old.

The couple who created the embryo had completed their own family through IVF and anonymously offered their remaining frozen embryos to other couples. The children are all biological siblings although born 20 years apart…

Inter-generational donation has already been raised as a possibility.

In 2007 a mother froze some of her own eggs so they could be used by her then-seven-year-old daughter who was likely to be infertile because of a medical condition. If the girl used the eggs she would effectively give birth to her own half brother or sister.

Amazing stuff. And taken in concert with relevant advances, another positive avenue for families concerned with reproductive problems.

Everything is nice and tidy

An elderly woman has been questioned by police after allegedly keeping her mother’s body in a freezer for up to two decades, it emerged today. Police found the body wrapped in a black bin liner in a chest freezer at a semi-detached house in Sidcup, south-east London.

Officers interviewed Daulat Irani, 83, under caution after the body was discovered and identified as that of her mother Gulbai Freedoon Murzan, who was born in 1901. Police believe she may have been dead for up to 20 years.

Metropolitan police said the death was being treated as unexplained, rather than suspicious. Postmortem results are expected later this week.

It is understood that officers were called to the property in Park Mead on 10 May after being alerted by a neighbour, and forensic officers removed the corpse.

It is unclear why the body was kept in the freezer, but neighbours of the elderly woman suggested she may have been worried that immigration authorities would discover her mother had been living illegally in the UK.

A neighbour, who did not wish to be named, said Irani was a “very private person” who kept her garden in pristine condition. “Obviously it was shocking when the police came and told me what happened. They said they believed she had been in the freezer for more than 20 years”.

Of course, in the U.S. the obvious reason always is receiving and cashing Social Security checks sent to the deceased. Direct deposit helps that whole process. Dunno how that’s handled in the U.K. nowadays.

I like the touch about the garden being pristine. The usual quote from a neighbor in the States is that she was “always friendly and got along with everyone” – especially if discussing an axe murderer.