Imagine the feeling. You sit on a jury, convict a man of rape and sentence him to 45 years in jail. 22 years later, DNA proves the man innocent. Jurors in the case of Arthur Lee Whitfieled, released from jail this week, share their reactions.

In the past two weeks, Wilton Dedge left jail after 22 years. Robert Coney was freed at 76 after serving 41 years. And Michael McAllister, who served 18 years.

How many more of them are there? What can we do to find them? Pass a real Innocence Protection Act, for one. Bush won't do it. Kerry will.

William Dedge walked out of a Florida prison last week after serving 22 years for a rape he didn't commit. Finally, the press is asking, who's accountable when this happens? The St. Petersburg Times is calling for an independent investigation to answer that question--and for the prosecutor to lose his law license if it turns out he is at fault:

Money is only part of the recompense. Dedge also needs to know that the people who helped to steal his youth will face their own judgment. Being a prosecutor is a high privilege and with that comes the corresponding responsibility to put truth-seeking above all other considerations. When prosecutors are uninterested in evidence of a defendant's innocence, they have lost their professional way. They should not only lose their job but their license to practice law.

The States' Attorneys office say there will be no such investigation into the prosecutor, who fought allowing Dedge to get a DNA test for 8 years, and then, after the results came back showing Dedge was not the rapist, insisted for three years Dedge was still guilty. As Carl Hiaassen says, it's an abomination.

Florida does not allow compensation for the wrongfully convicted. That needs to change as well.

Who can blame him? Michael McAllister walks out of prison in Virginia Wednesday after serving 18 years for an attempted rape that the detective and prosecutor in his case later said he probably didn't commit. But, under Virginia's 21 day law, requiring new evidence other than DNA to be brought within 21 days of sentencing, McAllister had no chance of making his innocence case. At the time he was sentenced, his crime was parole-eligible, and his mandatory release date is finally here.

The case spotlights a growing national debate over faulty eyewitness identifications. DNA testing has cleared numerous prisoners nationwide, and mistaken eyewitness testimony has been blamed for most of the errors. Vanessa Potkin, a staff attorney with the New York-based Innocence Project, which seeks to exonerate wrongly convicted people through DNA evidence, said McAlister's case is particularly egregious. "It's extremely rare what this prosecutor and detective did in coming forward, and the fact that you would have people ignoring this evidence or turning a blind eye is extremely troubling."

McAllister's thoughts?

Unbelievable. Robert Carroll Coney is now 76. A judge has vacated his conviction, finding that his confession was forced by cops who broke his hand. He was released today after serving a whopping 41 years in jail. And he's not bitter.

A 76-year-old prisoner walked out of jail, a free man for the first time in 41 years, after a judge dismissed the conviction against him. Robert Carroll Coney, convicted of a 1962 robbery, exhibited a surprising lack of bitterness as he left Angelina County Jail with his wife on Tuesday. "I'm going to try to pick up the pieces," Coney told the Lufkin Daily News in Wednesday's editions. "If I was angry, what could I do about it?"

Coney said his identity had been confused with a man he had carpooled with through Lufkin on the day of the crime: March 7, 1962. Court documents state Coney falsely confessed to the crime after Angelina County deputies broke his hand, the Daily News reported. State District Judge David Wilson, who dismissed Coney's charges, investigated the case and found that then-Angelina County Sheriff Leon Jones and his deputies used physical force to extract confessions, often crushing prisoners' fingers between jail cell bars. (emphasis supplied.)

Wilton Dedge walked out of the Broward County Jail today, 22 years after being wrongfully convicted of rape. The reasons for his wrongful conviction: faulty eye-witness testimony and the testimony of a "notorious jailhouse snitch." The reason for his freedom: DNA testing proved his innocence:

A man who served 22 years in prison for rape was freed early Thursday after DNA evidence proved he was not the attacker. Wilton A. Dedge, 42, walked out of the Brevard County Jail with his parents just hours after the test results, which had been ordered last month by a judge. The state Legislature in 2001 passed a law that allowed DNA retesting in older cases.

There should be no time limits to obtaining DNA testing.

TalkLeft received an e-mail asking that it publicize a case of a wrongful conviction. I'm not familiar with it, so I submit it to you readers with the caveat, I'm reporting, you decide.

by TChris

Lafonso Rollins was 17 in 1993 when he was arrested during a police investigation of robberies and rapes of the elderly at a Chicago housing complex.

In police custody, Rollins, a special-education student who had completed only 9th grade, signed a confession detailing the attacks, was convicted and sentenced to 75 years in prison, his attorneys said.

Two years ago, Rollins' public defender, Ingrid Gill, asked for DNA from the crime scene to be retested. The results finally came back, indicating that Rollins was not the source of the DNA. After additional tests, prosecutors agreed that Rollins' conviction should be vacated.

Rollins was released from prison this month. He can't replace the things he missed most during his years in prison: time with his mother, father, sister, and grandmother, all of whom died while Rollins was behind bars.

by TChris

Martin Tankleff's case teaches us why police officers should not be viewed as doing their job well when they lie.

Since the 1990 trial, Martin Tankleff has been willing to tell anyone who visits the maximum-security prison that has been his home these past 14 years about how police got him to confess falsely by tricking him with a whopper of a lie: That his father had emerged from a coma and said that his 17-year-old son attacked him in his study.

Tankleff, convicted of murdering his parents in their Long Island home, is trying to prove that he deserves a new trial. That effort will be aided by new evidence of his innocence, discussed at length in the linked article: "that a career criminal with ties to Seymour Tankleff's partner in a chain of bagel stores was recruited or paid to execute the Tankleffs and end a business feud."

With Marty Tankleff in jail and Seymour Tankleff still comatose with an uncertain prognosis, the business partner -- Jerry Steuerman -- shaved his beard and faked his own disappearance by leaving his car's engine running and the doors ajar near an airport. At the time, questions about Steuerman swirled because he was the last of a half-dozen men to leave the Tankleff home after a high-stakes poker game the night of the attacks.

Tankleff contends that the police, having tricked a confession out of him, didn't seriously investigate other suspects, including Steuerman.

by TChris

There's joy in Tulia, where the government's attempt to railroad a community of African-Americans resulted in undeserved convictions, 35 pardons, and an eventual settlement (all chronicled in these TalkLeft posts). Checks began to arrive on Friday. Four million dollars will be distributed among 45 defendants. This is a well-deserved, albeit small, measure of justice for the Tulia defendants.

Ted Killory, an attorney for one of the defendants, said he was pleased that the wrongly accused got at least some compensation, but ''no amount of money is going to make up for losing four years of life in prison.''

Apparently, this is a first. Eddie Crawford is on Georgia's death row and scheduled for execution tonight. Last week, the Georgia Board of Pardons and Paroles refused the Innocence Project's request for a DNA test--even though the IP offered to pay it.

Barry Scheck, a lawyer who presented the case to the Board of Pardons and Paroles last week, said that to his knowledge it was the first time a death row inmate had been denied DNA testing after making every possible appeal at the state level. "It's just never happened before," Mr. Scheck said. "Usually some clemency board, or the governor or someone, will step in." In Georgia, the Board of Pardons is the final authority on clemency matters.

Heather Hedrick, a spokeswoman for the board, said it reached its decision because DNA testing had already proven guilt, there had been overwhelming circumstantial evidence and Mr. Crawford had confessed shortly after the crime.
Mr. Scheck said there was a great deal of evidence that had never been tested. "They have nothing to lose," he said. "And I'm mystified and extremely disappointed."

Given the abundance of cases showing DNA lab fraud or mistaken test results, as well as false confessions, Mr. Crawford should get a retest. It is very hard to get the Innocence Project to take up a case. The review process is very stringent. If Mr. Crawford didn't have a good claim of innocence, the IP would have passed on it.

The Supreme Court will get a chance to stay Mr. Crawford's execution. Let's hope the Court establishes once and for all that "defendants have a constitutional right to DNA testing of existing evidence."

by TChris

Jack Johnson, the first black heavyweight boxing champion, was arrested in 1912 for violating the Mann Act, a federal law that criminalizes the interstate transportation of women for immoral purposes. Johnson served ten months in jail. Documentary maker Ken Burns is convinced that Johnson was punished for having a consensual relationship with a white woman.

Johnson ... defeated challenger Jim Jeffries, who had come out of retirement as the "Great White Hope" to try to beat the black man. Johnson's victory, in an era when Jim Crow laws and segregation ruled, sparked race riots in parts of the country.

Burns is joined by Sens. John McCain and Orrin Hatch, as well as civil rights leaders, in a bid to obtain a presidential pardon for Johnson, who died in 1946.

by TChris

Julie Rae Harper's conviction for a murder that occurred near Lawrenceville, Illinois was reversed on what some might call a technicality: she was prosecuted by an agency that lacked prosecutorial authority in her case. While convictions that are reversed for procedural error often lead to retrials, new evidence should have made the State of Illinois question the wisdom of putting Harper on trial a second time.

Attorneys that Newswatch spoke with Thursday, said one of the big issues facing a possible retrial is the admission of new evidence, in particular the admission of Tommy Lynn Sells, to the murder.

Nonetheless, Harper's freedom was momentary, as she was released after two years in prison only to be taken directly to the county jail on a warrant for the reinstated murder charge.

"This is not seeking justice," said Bill Clutter, an investigator for the Downstate Illinois Innocence Project. "This is just further torturing an innocent woman who should be released."