From FEBRUARY 19, 2009 Find all these items below - and more - at Rick Halperin's site here
For Rick's site in general: check often if not daily - here (this site is also listed among the recommended sites on lower right column of this home page)
The following are mere excerpts of these important items - Be sure to see the ACTION item on New Mexico just below this post for today. (Also, there have been som NPR dot org items today, Feb. 20th on Texas and Virginia death penalty items.)
TEXAS: State panel opens case over last-minute appeal - A state judicial conduct commission is launching proceedings that could result in the removal of the top criminal courts judge from office for bringing "public discredit" on the courts by refusing to accept an appeal from a death row inmate hours before his execution...
The Texas Commission on Judicial Conduct today filed 7 charges of misconduct against Texas Court of Criminal Appeals Chief Justice Sharon Keller... The commission said Keller willfully and persistently failed to follow court procedures and state constitutional protections in her handling of the last-minute appeals of death row inmate Michael Wayne Richard...Richard was executed...More than 300 Texas lawyers filed complaints with the commission seeking Keller's removal from office-Jim Harrington of the Texas Civil Rights Project, one of the lead lawyers filing the complaint, said the commission's action is "pretty amazing."
VIRGINIA----execution: Edward Nathaniel Bell was executed by injection tonight for the Oct. 29, 1999, slaying of a Winchester police officer. Bell maintained his innocence to the end. According to Larry Traylor, spokesman for the Virginia Department of Corrections, the Jamaican national said: "To the Timbrook family, you definitely have the wrong person. The truth will come out one day. This here -- killing me -- there's no justice about it." Traylor said it was difficult to understand him because of his accent...The killer's last hope was Virginia Gov. Timothy M. Kaine, who personally opposes the death penalty. But in a statement released about 4 p.m. today, Kaine declined to interfere. (Bell's lawyers) contend that Bell's IQ was measured at 68 and that he functions at an intellectual level below 95 % of the population.-His lawyers also told Kaine that no court ever heard new evidence that cast doubt on Bell's guilt or that he was mentally disabled and, therefore, ineligible for the death penalty. The U.S. Supreme Court has banned the execution of people who are mentally disabled.-Since taking office, Kaine has allowed 9 executions to be carried out and commuted one death sentence. He briefly stayed Bell's execution last year while the U.S. Supreme Court took up the legality of lethal injection.-Bell becomes the 1st condemned inmate to be put to death this year in Virginia and the 103rd overall since the state resumed capital punishment in 1982. Since the death penalty was re-legalized in the USA on July 2, 1976, only Texas has carried out more executions (423) than Virginia.-Bell becomes the 14th condemned inmate to be put to death this year in the USA and the 1149th overall since the nation resumed executions on January 17, 1977.(sources: Richmond Times-Dispatch & Rick Halperin)
LOUISIANA: Manufacturing Guilt?----Experts say this exclusive video shows a dental examiner creating the bite marks that put a man on death row. Editor's Note: The following article contains graphic and disturbing photographs and video excerpts of an examination conducted on the body of a 23-month-old girl. The images are the basis of claims that forensic experts fabricated evidence in a case that put a man on death row, where he awaits exoneration or execution.
Warning: These video excerpts, approximately 30 seconds long, contain disturbing images. These are from reason dot com See here
(NOTE: you may need to go to Rick's site to see the logical/chronological development of this story and the videos.)
For most of the last 20 years, doctors Steven Hayne and Michael West have served as expert forensic witnesses for the state of Mississippi... 'Reason' has been following Hayne's deteriorating career since an October 2006 article that detailed his role in putting a possibly innocent man named Cory Maye on death row. See an archive of our Hayne-related reporting at: here
Last year, 2 men that Hayne and West helped convict of murder in the early 1990s, Levon Brooks and Kennedy Brewer, were exonerated and freed from prison through DNA testing after serving more than 30 years combined behind bars...Reason recently obtained shocking video from another Hayne and West collaboration that may shed light on the question...Forensic scientists who have viewed the footage say the video reveals not only medical malpractice, but criminal evidence tampering.
Reason also showed (one of the videos)to David Averill, a dentist and a former president of the American Board of Forensic Odontology. "The video is troubling. I don't know how you can explain where those marks come from. And there's just no justification for him to push the cast into the skin like that," Averill said. "That isn't an acceptable way to perform a bite mark analysis." Duncan's post-conviction attorneys hired San Diego forensic pathologist Harry Bonnell to review Hayne and West's testimony in the case. Bonnell, who has been highly critical of Hayne in the past, sits on the board of trustees for Parents of Murdered Children, Inc., a victim advocacy group. He has worked for the Armed Forces Institute of Pathology and formerly served on the ethics committee of the National Association of Medical Examiners. By email, Bonnell told Reason, "If what I am seeing on the video is accurate, someone is using the mold of Duncan's teeth to create an apparent bite mark; this, in my mind, is criminal tampering with evidence." (source: Radley Balko is a senior editor at Reason magazine)
USA: Report questions science, reliability of crime lab evidence----The National Academy of Sciences says many courtroom claims about fingerprints, bite marks and other evidence lack scientific verification. It finds forensics inconsistent and in disarray nationwide.- Sweeping claims made in courtrooms about fingerprints, ballistics, bite marks and other forensic evidence often have little or no basis in science, according to a landmark report released Wednesday by the nation's leading science body.-The National Academy of Sciences report called for a wholesale overhaul of the crime lab system, which has become increasingly crucial to American jurisprudence. (source: Los Angeles Times)
Find more on each excerpted item at Rick's site - Go
here
For Rick's site in general: check often if not daily - here (this site is also listed among the recommended sites on lower right column of this home page)
No comments:
Post a Comment