Eideard

A Virginia appeals court declared Thomas Haynesworth an innocent man Tuesday, clearing his name and acknowledging that he spent 27 years behind bars for rapes he did not commit.

It is the first time the state has issued a “writ of actual innocence” in a rape case without the certainty of DNA evidence. Haynesworth, 46, was supported by Attorney General Ken Cuccinelli II and two state prosecutors — all of whom concluded that he was mistakenly identified by a rape victim as he walked to a Richmond market for sweet potatoes and bread one February afternoon in 1984.

“It’s a blessing,’’ Haynesworth said as he stood with his attorneys and Cuccinelli. “There are a lot of people behind the scenes who believed in me. Twenty-seven years, I never gave up. I kept pushing. I ain’t give up hope.

“I am very happy. Me and my family can finally put this behind us, and I can go on with my life. And I can finally vote.”

The case shows how far Virginia has come in allowing convicts to argue their innocence. Historically, prisoners were barred from introducing new evidence more than three weeks after sentencing, and in the 1990s, then-Attorney General Mary Sue Terry famously said, “Evidence of innocence is irrelevant.” But when DNA testing resulted in hundreds of exonerations nationwide, it prompted Virginia lawmakers to open the door for courts to reconsider guilt based first on genetic evidence and later on other evidence, such as recanted testimony, fingerprints or ballistics.

Although Haynesworth was released on parole in March, he has not been fully free. Now, his photo has been taken off the state’s sex offender registry. He is allowed to use the Internet. Finally, he can take a woman on a date without first introducing her to a parole officer.

Our system of justice is once again found whole by exception rather than the rule.

Racism is still a given in the all-American equation.

A Las Cruces woman has been charged $1,122 by a local hospital for a forcible body cavity search ordered by the Metro Narcotics Agency that did not turn up any illegal substances.

She is now asking the county to pay her hospital bill.

The woman, who is not being named because she was not arrested or criminally charged, was searched at Memorial Medical Center on July 1, according to a tort claim notice Las Cruces attorney Michael Lilley served to the county this week.

The woman is refusing to pay the $1,122 she was subsequently billed for the body cavity search, the tort claim notice shows.

Metro Sgt. Mike Alba said agents had “credible information from a reliable source” that the woman was concealing up to an ounce of heroin, leading to the search warrant from Magistrate Court. The woman, who has no criminal history in New Mexico, was in custody for several hours…

The county has a policy of not commenting on threatened or pending litigation.

Idiots. So much for what coppers in Las Cruces consider credible and reliable. Try requiring some old-fashioned legwork before putting someone through body probes based on some paid informant.

Thanks, Cinaedh

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.

A Swiss man fined for nude hiking has won an appeal of the 100-franc penalty because a court decided that the charge of “indecent behaviour” did not apply.

The 47 year old went to the court in eastern Switzerland’s Appenzell Ausserrhoden canton to defend his right to hike naked, after he refused to pay a fine of 100 francs imposed following a complaint from a woman who saw him. The woman had complained to the authorities about his “indecent behaviour.”

The nudist’s lawyer argued however that his client was not behaving in an indecent manner, and that the woman must have followed him to observe his actions. In addition, the lawyer noted that the canton’s penal code did not prohibit hiking naked.

The hiker said he has been rambling nude over the past two years, and that he always sticks to little used tracks.

The court waived the fine on the nudist and instead ordered the state to cover legal costs of 2,000 francs…

Hiking naked off busy trails is not a crime in Switzerland. But the unidentified hiker chose a path that passed a Christian rehabilitation center and a woman reported him to police.

I didn’t know that Switzerland had centers specifically designed to bring Christians back to reality – if possible.

Can you imagine a court in the US or UK dealing with a case in such a sensible manner?

Cutting off the GPS monitor

A Florida judge threw out the rape and murder conviction of a man who served more than half his life in prison before DNA testing exonerated him.

“Let me take the opportunity to apologize to you for the criminal justice system of the state of Florida,” Broward County Circuit Judge Thomas M. Lynch IV told Anthony Caravella, 41, who served more than half his life, or nearly 26 years, in prison for a crime DNA tests said he didn’t commit…

Caravella was 15 and had an IQ of 67, well below normal, when he was charged with the Nov. 5, 1983, murder of Ada Cox Jankowski, 58, in Miramar, Fla.

Public defender Diane Cuddihy argued last year new evidence showed police had hit and coerced the mentally challenged teen into confessing, promising a girlfriend would be freed if he helped them…

DNA test results exonerated Caravella Wednesday. County prosecutors asked Lynch Thursday to throw out his conviction and life sentence.

“I waited a very long time for this — it feels good, man,” the Sun-Sentinel quoted Caravella as saying.

Caravella was provisionally released six months ago when early tests seemed to clear him. But he had to wear a GPS monitor and obey a curfew while prosecutors did further forensic testing.

He said Thursday he felt 10 pounds lighter without the GPS device around his ankle.

How many more like him remain in prison – convicted unjustly?

John Thompson spent 14 years on death row for crimes he did not commit.

Convicted of killing New Orleans hotel executive Ray Liuzza, and for a carjacking weeks later, he was preparing to be sent to his death at the notorious Angola State Penitentiary in Louisiana – the largest maximum security prison in the United States.

After six execution dates, John had exhausted all his appeals. His seventh date – 22 May 1999 – was to be his last.

In one final twist, a new investigator uncovered some previously lost evidence. After a retrial, John was freed in 2003.

It was the start of another struggle – surviving in the outside world. It was a struggle which has led John to found a new charity helping former death row inmates: Resurrection After Exoneration.

He told BBC World Service’s Outlook programme his story.

“I was glad to be coming home. I was overwhelmed with the thought of me having my freedom, but at the same time I was scared to death because I didn’t know what I was coming in to. I didn’t know where I was going.

“I only had a mother. My two sons had grown. I was coming into a world where I had no future – I didn’t know what to expect.”

Yet, unusually for a death row inmate, John was surrounded by people willing to help him get his life back on track.

The article is a nice read. It starts a decade ago and that can seem like short time for someone who’s been on Death Row.

It says something extra about a system of jurisprudence that you have the context for an organization dedicated to those who have been exonerated from wrongful conviction. And, oh yeah, there ain’t nothing makes up for time in Sugarland – the Louisiana state prison in Angola.

The DNA of most innocent people arrested in England, Wales and Northern Ireland will not be kept for more than six years, the Home Office has said…

The move comes after the European Court of Human Rights ruled last year that the National DNA Database was illegal…

Ministers defend this as a proportionate tactic that protects the public, rather than a principled but simplistic stand for privacy. The problem is that there is a lack of data on how many crimes have been cracked thanks to retaining DNA from innocent people…

That leaves critics saying anyone in this category has been judged “not guilty – yet”. If the plan gets through before the general election, it will be challenged, testing ministers’ claims to have balanced privacy with a duty to protect the public.

Wasn’t there once a standard of constitutional rights being based upon principles rather than expedient policies enacted by a government run by fear-filled cowards?

How can people be judged temporarily innocent?

The Crown Prosecution Service spent £20,000 on the trial of a man accused – and later acquitted – of stealing a 25p banana, it has emerged.

James Gallagher, 23, was found not guilty this week of stealing the fruit from an Italian restaurant in Birmingham’s Bullring shopping centre before it opened at 8.45am on 13 March.

The two-day trial was heard in Birmingham crown court rather than a magistrates court – incurring significantly more costs for the CPS – because Gallagher elected to have his case heard in front of a jury. He said he believed that magistrates would have found him guilty.

Gallagher, from the Handsworth area of Birmingham, said after the trial: “It’s shocking, it’s just a waste of taxpayers’ money. I cannot understand how they’ve got away with it.”

The CPS defended its decision to spend around £20,000 on the case – “We felt that there was sufficient evidence and it was in the public interest for the prosecution to proceed.”

Niall Skinner, for the defence, told the jury that Gallagher and another man, who was given a 12-month conditional discharge after pleading guilty in March, were tipsy after drinking to celebrate Gallagher’s 23rd birthday. He argued that Gallagher had not been given the chance to pay for the banana, even though the restaurant had not opened, because security guards had acted so quickly.

Har!

The home secretary, Jacqui Smith, will publish plans this week for the destruction of the DNA profiles of nearly a million innocent people from the police national database. The government’s response follows a ruling by the European court of human rights last year that the practice of retaining the DNA profiles was illegal.

In a retreat from plans to get round the judgment, first reported in the Guardian in February, the new proposals will also include the destruction of all physical samples, such as mouth swabs, hair and blood. They will be published in a consultation paper on forensics.

Smith told the Observer today that there were genuine concerns over the size and scope of the DNA database. “It is crucial that we do everything we can to keep the public safe from crime and bring offenders to justice,” she said. “The DNA database plays a vital role in helping us do that. However, there has to be a balance between the need to protect the public and respecting their rights. Based on risks versus benefits, our view is that we can now destroy all samples.”

Of the 5.1 million people on the database, about 800,000 have no criminal conviction; they may have been arrested and never charged, or taken to court and found not guilty. After the court ruling last December which criticised the “blanket and indiscriminate nature” of the UK regime, Smith ordered the profiles of all young children to be removed immediately, and indicated that time limits would be introduced for those not convicted of any crime.

Civil liberty groups will be anxious to see how long the police are allowed to keep the DNA data before they are required to remove it.

The next step.

Law enforcement officials are vastly expanding their collection of DNA to include millions more people who have been arrested or detained but not yet convicted. The move, intended to help solve more crimes, is raising concerns about the privacy of petty offenders and people who are presumed innocent.

Know of any local prosecutors who presume you’re innocent until proven guilty?

Until now, the federal government genetically tracked only convicts. But starting this month, the Federal Bureau of Investigation will join 15 states that collect DNA samples from those awaiting trial and will collect DNA from detained immigrants — the vanguard of a growing class of genetic registrants…

Law enforcement officials say that expanding the DNA databanks to include legally innocent people will help solve more violent crimes. They point out that DNA has helped convict thousands of criminals and has exonerated more than 200 wrongfully convicted people.

But criminal justice experts cite Fourth Amendment privacy concerns and worry that the nation is becoming a genetic surveillance society…

Sixteen states now take DNA from some who have been found guilty of misdemeanors. As more police agencies take DNA for a greater variety of lesser and suspected crimes, civil rights advocates say the government’s power is becoming too broadly applied. “What we object to — and what the Constitution prohibits — is the indiscriminate taking of DNA for things like writing an insufficient funds check, shoplifting, drug convictions,” said Michael Risher, a lawyer for the American Civil Liberties Union.

Just in case you haven’t heard this predictable slogan in a while – Rock Harmon, a former prosecutor for Alameda County, Calif., and an adviser to crime laboratories, says…“If you haven’t done anything wrong, you have nothing to fear.”

Those who would toss out the Constitution haven’t come up with a new excuse since the days of Joe McCarthy – or their more recent matinee idol, George W. Bush. We’re supposed to believe they’re doing everyone a favor in the name of protecting us from crime or terrorists or Martians – by limiting our liberty.