If his life were made into a movie, Orlando Boquete would like Johnny Depp to star. Depp probably wouldn’t take a role that seems like a rip-off of The Fugitive: innocent man serves a dozen years in prison before escaping, then spends another decade evading capture. Boquete didn’t find the one-armed man, but the ending of his story is almost as dramatic. New DNA testing proved he didn’t commit the rape that resulted in his conviction, and Boquete walked free. Or almost free – since he can’t be deported to Cuba, he has to report regularly to ICE.

Boquete traveled from Cuba to Miami during the Mariel boatlift.

Two years later, police charged him with the sexual assault of a Stock Island woman after she pointed him out on the street as the man who had just attacked her in her bed. In 1983, a jury convicted him based on the victim's ID. He escaped two years later and ran for a decade before he was caught and sent back to prison. In 2003, he saw a television show about the Innocence Project and asked the organization for help.

Boquete was surprised to see how his face had aged in prison.

Today's addition to the list of wrongly convicted prisoners is Marlon Pendleton, who served 12 years for a rape he didn't commit. Judge Stanley Sacks in Cook County, Illinois ordered Pendleton's release yesterday.

The conviction could have been avoided if the government's scientist had done her job. (It may be, of course, that she saw her job as supporting the arrest rather than discovering the truth.)

The judge's ruling follows an announcement last week that DNA tests ruled out Pendleton as the source of genetic evidence left by the person who attacked and robbed a woman on Chicago's South Side in 1992.

Pendleton had claimed from the outset that he was innocent of the attack. He was convicted after Chicago police crime lab analyst Pamela Fish, whose work has been linked to several wrongful convictions, said there was not enough evidence for DNA testing.

But a forensic serologist chosen to analyze evidence by prosecutors and Pendleton's attorneys found that, even after the crime analyst used some of the evidence in her testing, he still had enough material to develop a profile.

It didn't matter to Kenneth Foley's jury that Luke Gaumond testified to committing the burglary for which Foley was on trial. After all, the prosecutor had God on his side.

Despite Gaumond's testimony, a jury convicted Foley and a co-defendant at the urging of Deputy District Attorney Charles Slone, who told jurors he was "sickened" by the "fraud" of the defense: "I'm not here trying to convict innocent people," he assured jurors. "I believe in God."

Foley got 25 to life for breaking into a truck. The sentence would be unjust even if Foley were guilty, but Gaumond admitted that he committed the burglary while using Mashelle Bullington's car. Foley had the bad luck to borrow Bullington's car twelve hours later. Police were able to connect the car to the burglary, and then they connected Foley to the car. They apparently didn't believe Bullington when she said she'd let a man named Luke use her car, particularly after the truck's owner picked Foley out of a photo array.

Prosecutors in Santa Clara County have a history of ignoring evidence of innocence while they pursue questionable prosecutions. Here's an example and here's another. The Mercury News documented the problem is a series of articles entitled "Tainted Trials, Stolen Justice."

Another jury got it wrong. Another innocent man languished in prison. And another DNA test set him free.

You've heard the story before. (If you haven't, check out TalkLeft's innocence cases link.) This man's name is Larry Fuller. He served honorably in Vietnam before he served two decades for a rape he didn't commit.

The woman looked at two photo lineups, both of which included Fuller. She picked him in the second one, even though Fuller was bearded in the picture and she said her attacker had no facial hair.

The police contributed to Fuller's misidentification by including his photo in two photo arrays. The unduly suggestive tactic (I know I've seen that face before) all but assured that the victim would pick Fuller. (TalkLeft explores identification procedures in more detail here.)

Fuller has consistently asked for the DNA evidence to be retested, but the Dallas County prosecutors didn't agree to retesting until this year. Remarkably, Fuller is the tenth Dallas County prisoner to be exonerated by DNA testing in the last five years.

by TChris

U.S. District Court Judge Rya Zobel awarded damages of $13.6 million to Eric Sarsfield, who spent about a decade in prison for a rape he didn't commit.

In her three-page decision, Judge Zobel said Mr. Sarsfield's problems with alcohol and drugs before his wrongful imprisonment worsened and his "social and communal life has been shredded." She said that the phobia and panic disorders he suffers from are the direct result of his incarceration.

The award includes a $2 million settlement that Sarsfield received from Marlboro, Massachusetts. Sarsfield's lawyer fears that the rest of the award may be uncollectable.

by TChris

Our second innocence case of the day (the first one is blogged here) involves Scott Fappiano, who was released today after serving 21 years for raping a police officer's wife. DNA tests established that he didn't do it.

Fappiano was arrested and first tried in 1984, despite blood-typing tests that failed to link him to cigarettes and stained clothing left at the crime scene. The main evidence against Fappiano was an identification by the rape victim, although he was five inches shorter than the 5-foot-10 attacker first described by the woman. The police officer, after viewing the same lineup, did not select Fappiano.

Fappiano's first jury deadlocked 11-1 in favor of acquittal. This is the poster case for the argument that charges should be dismissed after a jury hangs. The government should get one chance to convict, and that's it. Another trial increases the likelihood that an innocent man will serve time.

This is also the second post of the day to praise the Innocence Project for its good work in freeing an innocent man. How sad it is that it took 21 years for justice to arrive.

by TChris

Why did Jeffrey Deskovic spend 16 years in prison for a murder he didn't commit? According to Deskovic, part of the blame lies with former District Attorney Jeanine Pirro, now the Republican candidate for attorney general of New York, who refused his requests to retest DNA using advanced techniques. She made a huge mistake and, true to Republican form, refuses to take responsibility for it. But many others made the same mistake, and as a result, Deskovic lost 16 years of his life.

Last month, prosecutors agreed to free Jeffrey Deskovic, who had been convicted in [Angela] Correa's rape and murder. They said new tests on old DNA, conducted at the urging of the Innocence Project, a nonprofit legal clinic and criminal justice resource center, implicated another man.

Steven Cunningham recently confessed to killing Angela Correa. While Deskovic languished in prison for 16 years, Cunningham committed another murder.

More details of Deskovic's wrongful conviction, based in part on a false confession, are reported here. Kudos to Claudia Whitman who helped Deskovic achieve justice, and to the Innocence Project for its great work on the case.

by TChris

We can speculate about Ronald Ferry's motive for lying to the FBI, but whatever his reasons were, they turned Abdallah Higazy into another victim of 9/11. Ferry, ex-cop turned hotel security guard, claimed he found an aviation radio in a hotel room safe with Higazy's passport while inventorying property left behind by guests when the hotel was evacuated. The radio had actually been left in a different room, but FBI agents believed Ferry and therefore disbelieved Higazy when he told them he'd never seen the radio.

Higazy, an Egyptian graduate student, was arrested as a material witness. He knew he was in trouble when he was locked up in a maximum security wing with Zacarias Moussaoui.

Being in Moussaoui's company -- and being strip-searched, shackled and insulted by guards -- was unnerving to a moderate Muslim who had never even read the Koran.

Higazy submitted to a polygraph, but his story didn't square with the FBI's understanding of the "truth," so agents coerced Higazy into telling a story they liked better.

by TChris

North Carolina's new Innocence Inquiry Commission is a worthy experiment. It gives wrongfully convicted prisoners a final chance to prove their innocence after the judicial system has declared their convictions final.

Cases will be reviewed by a finely balanced, eight-member panel: a judge, a prosecutor, a sheriff, a defense lawyer, a victim's advocate, and three at-large members. If a majority finds compelling evidence of innocence, the case would go to a panel of three Superior Court judges, who would have to rule unanimously to overturn the conviction.

Whether the panel will feel insulated from political pressure to keep the convicted behind bars is unclear, but North Carolina is at least responding to the serious problem of wrongful convictions.

Michael Evans spent 27 years in an Illinois prison for a crime DNA evidence later proved he didn't commit. He was released in 2003.

What did he get as compensation? $6,000. a year.

Evans left prison in 2003 and received little more than a hug from his family. No money. No training. No job placement. No therapy. No apology. It took two more years and a governor's pardon before the state coughed up $162,000 to compensate Evans for his lost life. Evans has distributed most of that sum to family members and others who helped win his release.

On Tuesday, Evans lost a $60 million civil lawsuit he brought against 10 former Chicago police officers he accused of conspiring to manipulate evidence and coerce an eyewitness in his criminal trial. So $162,000 is likely to be all he'll get for his ... inconvenience.

Shame on Illinois.

History was made this morning when North Carolina Governor Mike Easely, a former prosecutor, signed into law a bill establishing an Innocence Commission.

Gov. Mike Easley signed a measure Thursday, creating the country's first innocence inquiry commission -- a state panel that will examine possible wrongful convictions.

"As a state prosecutor for more 15 years, I know that law enforcement's greatest nightmare is to have an innocent person in jail or on death row," Easley said. "As a state that exacts the ultimate punishment, we should continue to ensure that we have the ultimate fairness in the review of our cases.

"Its creation gives our criminal justice system yet another safeguard by helping ensure that the people in our prisons in fact, belong there. This is something all North Carolinians can be proud of," Easley said.

by TChris

The man who raped and murdered Michelle Moore-Bosko in Norfolk told the police he acted alone. Despite the absence of physical evidence to the contrary, the police and prosecution pursued four other men, all serving in the Navy. After being threatened with the death penalty, the men confessed. The true killer, Omar Ballard, "changed his tune and supported the gang-rape story -- and authorities spared him the death penalty, too."

Police never seem to have had much evidence of a gang rape -- other than confessions that took place when one suspect after the next was threatened with capital punishment. Indeed, charges had to be dropped against three other sailors who stood their ground and didn't confess. The physical evidence at the scene indicated a single attacker.

Ballard -- whose DNA confirmed his presence at the crime scene -- has now reverted to his original story, admitting that he acted alone. The four convicted sailors say they're innocent, that they were coerced to confess to avoid execution. The state parole board is investigating, but as this editorial suggests, it may take an act of bravery on the part of Virginia Gov. Timothy Kaine to set aside these troubling convictions.