based on the evidence that the police provide, no? Isn't that how things work in Texas?
Thursday, June 26, 2008
How many innocents in prison: Exonerations make up 3% of Texas DNA case resolutions
It's hard to say if the data reflect a rate or percentage of wrongful convictions, but more than 3% of criminal cases solved by DNA since Texas began using the forensic technology have resulted in overturned convictions.
Somehow I'd missed the news announced earlier this year that Texas solved its 1,000th criminal case using DNA. OTOH, Texas has witnessed 33 exonerations of innocent men (mostly in sexual assault cases) using DNA evidence.
DNA exists in only about 10% of violent crimes, so the group is a pretty random sample compared to the larger criminal class. Might the rate of exonerations to convictions based on DNA give a potential wrongful conviction rate? There are a lot of factors going into both convictions and exonerations, so I'm not sure the comparison is entirely valid - too many variables. But at least it adds another data point toward the discussion about how many Texas prisoners may be actually innocent.
I'd noted earlier that death row exonerations occurred at a rate of 1.52% in Texas since the death penalty was reinstated in 1982. The percentage of DNA cases solved resulting in exonerations, however, doubles that number.
So how many innocent people are actually in Texas prisons? If it's 1.52% (the exoneration rate from death row), that would mean more than 2,300 innocent people are locked up in Texas for various crimes. If it's 3.3% (based on the DNA exonerations), the number would top 5,000.
By contrast, the lowest estimate I've seen for the rate at which innocents are convicted - the unlikely low figure of .027% cited by Antonin Scalia - would still mean more than 400 innocent people are locked up in Texas prisons.
http://gritsforbreakfast.blogspot.com/2008/06/how-many-innocents-in-prison.html
Murder conviction overturned; man walks free in West Texas after 12 years
06:28 AM CDT on Monday, June 9, 2008
By OCTAVIO RIVERA LÓPEZ / Al Día
April 29, 2008, will forever be engraved in Alberto Sifuentes' memory.
That Tuesday he walked out of the Lamb County jail in Littlefield, Texas, a free man after almost 12 years behind bars for a murder he says he didn't commit.
Mr. Sifuentes had been arrested, along with Jesús Ramírez, tried for capital murder and condemned to life in prison for the 1996 killing of Evangelina "Angie" Cruz, a clerk at the Jolly Roger store in Littlefield, a town about 40 miles northwest of Lubbock.
The mother of four was shot nine times in a robbery of the store.
The two men maintained for more than a decade that they weren't near the store on the night that Ms. Cruz was murdered.
-----------------------------
In court in 2005, Mr. McNeil argued that the murder investigation had been led by a corrupt detective, that both men had been wrongly identified, that false testimony had been accepted in trial, and that the first defense attorneys hadn't been given access to critical evidence.
In January, the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals overturned the sentence, essentially granting the men the right to a new trial.
The court ruled that an "appropriate investigation" would likely have produced evidence in trial that could have made a different jury verdict possible. A new trial was granted, but a grand jury decided not to reindict.
Texas men’s innocence puts a county on trial
DNA is expected to clear a convicted rapist, as it has 3 of his friends.
By Miguel Bustillo
April 09, 2007
Many men claim innocence when staring at iron bars. But James Giles knew he was no rapist – and he believed three fellow Texas prisoners who told him they too were wrongly convicted of rape.
They shared their despair over games of chess and dominoes, worked on longshot appeals together in the law library, and dreamed of the day they would win exoneration from a justice system that failed them.
It has taken nearly 25 years, but with the assistance of DNA testing, the men – all African American – are proving they are indeed innocent. Two were freed from prison. A third was cleared last month, years after serving his sentence. Today, Giles is expected to clear his name and become the 13th man from Dallas County to prove with genetic testing that he was wrongly imprisoned.
Giles, who spent 10 years in prison and was paroled in 1993, is seeking to vacate his 1983 conviction. New evidence suggests that another man – also named James Giles – committed the rape. Dallas County prosecutors more than two decades ago knew about the other James Giles, who lived across the street from the victim, but never told Giles’ defense.
http://articles.latimes.com/2007/apr/09/nation/na-exonerate9Juvenile justice on trial
Thousands of youths could be set free
By Howard Witt | Tribune senior correspondent
March 27, 2007
HOUSTON - The sentences of many of the 4,700 delinquent youths being held in Texas juvenile prisons might have been arbitrarily and unfairly extended by prison authorities and thousands of youths could be freed in a matter of weeks as part of a sweeping overhaul of the scandal-plagued system, officials say.
Jay Kimbrough, a special master appointed by Texas Gov. Rick Perry to investigate the system after allegations surfaced that some prison officials were coercing imprisoned youths for sex, said he would assemble a committee to review the sentence of every youth in the system.
The goal, Kimbrough said, is to release any youth whose sentence was improperly extended without justification or in retaliation for filing complaints. In his initial review of sentences, Kimbrough said, he had found many questionable extensions, adding that some experts estimate that more than 60 percent of the state's youthful inmates might be languishing under wrongful detention.
Such a mass emptying of a state's juvenile jails would be unprecedented, experts said.
Among the leading candidates for early release is Shaquanda Cotton, a black teenage girl from the small east Texas town of Paris, who was sent to prison for up to 7 years for shoving a hall monitor at her high school while other young white offenders convicted of more serious crimes received probation in the town's courts.
http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/nationworld/chi-0703260781mar27,0,1234763.story
Printer-friendly format
Email this thread to a friend
Bookmark this thread
(1000+ posts)
Send PM |
Profile |
Ignore
